I love spending holidays with my family, particularly the matriarchs who’ve sacrificed so much for their children and grandchildren while keeping their fire. But lately, I dread the comments I know I’ll be getting from some of them.
“When you’re my age, you’re going to end up alone over the holidays,” one of my tías declared as I ate dinner at my Mexican grandmother’s house with my many cousins for Thanksgiving. The room grew quiet as she addressed me, the 35-year-old woman without children. Suddenly, I was as self-conscious in my body as I’d been during puberty, except instead of maturing, I felt like I was decaying in people’s eyes. “I’m freezing my eggs in January,” I said meekly. Then, with a bit more oomph, I declared: “Either way, I don’t think I’ll ever end up alone.”
Like most educated women in their 30s who don’t have kids but want them, I’ve delayed having children for various reasons, mainly my career and struggle to find a partner who is supportive and stable, who adds rather than detracts from my life, which is rich in community, purpose and other passions. Many of us face unhelpful family pressure over the holidays. It can be even more intense within historically marginalized communities that are held together by strong matriarchs.
My mom says I’m too picky, that I need to lower my standards. Whenever I break up with a man because he suffers from addiction, Peter Pan syndrome or other significant problems — the majority of the straight male dating pool, according to anecdotal evidence and academic research — she’s crestfallen. “Nobody’s perfect,” she argues. “You could have had a baby and then left.”
My mother had me and my sister with my dad, a magnetic but deeply flawed and absent man. She loves us and doesn’t want me to miss out on motherhood. “I’ll help you,” she tells me.
But if I’m going to have a kid, it’s going to be with the help of a stable partner. Not because I doubt the power of single moms, but because I don’t want any child to live with the same guilt I have from seeing mine carry a huge burden by herself. And I want to have the resources to help my mom when she needs me.
This desire to break bad generational patterns is common among women in their 30s, especially first-generation daughters cultured to pick up the slack for troubled relatives. Yet often, our family members are urging us to ignore red flags in making this critical life decision.
We live in a society where women’s bodily autonomy is under attack, where Fox News runs stories that ridicule childless women, where teenage victims of rape in red states are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Why can’t our families respect our decisions to delay or forgo childbearing? Many women who want kids can’t have them; this doesn’t detract from their value. I know all of this, but when I’m with my family, I can’t help withering in the face of their pity and scorn.
Seeking guidance, I called Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, a 38-year-old Latina author whose writings about family have helped me before. She has a forthcoming book that touches on women without kids. “The best thing we can do as childless women is to become desvergüenzas about it,” she said, using the Spanish word for a certain impertinence and boldness. “We are tasked with carrying shame. Release the shame they’re trying to put on you, because it doesn’t belong to us.”
She used to want kids, but not anymore. She loves her life, with its freedom to write, to be an activist, to help take care of other people’s children. She has decided not to visit family for Christmas because she’s had enough of their remarks. “As I become older and childless it seems to be like an elephant in the room, and I’m just sick of it,” she told me. Instead, she’s going to spend time in Mexico with one of her best friends, a queer single mother, and her daughter.
The idea that women will end up alone in old age if they don’t have kids is an oft-told lie. “In my mostly queer circles, we know that we’re going to be together as we get older and we’re helping raise each other’s kids,” she said.
Mojica Rodríguez argues for expanding our notions of motherhood. For example, there’s allomothering, a phenomenon in nature in which living beings parent the offspring of others, improving the health of a species. And there are other forms of creation, in which we leave other parts of ourselves. “As writers, we’re opening paths for people who are going to see us as their foremothers,” she said.
Women without kids have more time, energy and financial resources to fight the many threats we face, from climate change to fascism and Big Tech’s AI. Many of us are prioritizing larger society, while demonized as selfish. The casual lack of empathy toward childless women is misguided and hurtful; studies show 90% of them are childless not by choice.
Research also shows that women without kids generally end up happier than moms in the long term. That doesn’t mean childlessness is necessarily the better choice. Birth rates are plummeting, most dramatically among Latinas. We need little ones. But women who don’t have them are worthy of as much admiration as strong mothers.
Let’s reject divisive views of women. Instead, we can link arms in the fight for universal child care and paid parental leave. Those of us without children should be unabashed about it over the holidays; we’re forging a better world for all children.
Jean Guerrero is a Los Angeles Times columnist. ©2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
