WE ARE CHILDFREE

I only realized recently that I am a childfree woman, as weird as this may sound.

I am from a family, like many others, where people get married in their twenties and have children in the years after. This was never something I challenged, but I also was not eager to being a mother myself.

I met my husband through a mutual friend when we were 18, it was our first really serious relationship and we grew up together, traveling, going through our studies, always close to our friends.

As years went by, we witnessed family members and friends getting married, having children, sometimes struggling with parenthood, sometimes getting divorced. We also had single friends and we discussed a lot about what we wanted.

We quickly realized both of us were not willing to have kids, but – under social pressure – we assumed that this was because we were young and going through other phases of our lives, getting our first jobs etc.

After 10 years together, we got married and that’s when the topic became much more present, as people around us assumed this was the next step, and were asking non-stop when this would happen.

It took us some thinking, and we ended up acknowledging that this would not be the path for us, not because of our careers, not because we can’t, not because we didn’t find the right person but simply because we don’t feel like it.

We don’t know yet what we will continue to fill up our lives with, but we are excited to be able to decide that one adventure after the other.