Welcome everyone! It’s week five of the “On Being Childfree” blog series and I wanted to say a HUGE thank you for your continued support. Every week the post is the most read on my blog and I receive emails from people wanting to take part and DMs on Instagram that people are finding this so helpful. This week I’m delighted to welcome our fouth guest story, Haydy. Haydy and I first met a couple of years ago at a blogging event and have kept in touch ever since. Please do read, leave a comment and share as much as you can, I’m really willing this to grow and grow so that we can help as many people as possible who may be going through something similar.
(If you would like to see where it all began, click here. Thank you so much for your support, if you would like to share your own story please email me on booandmaddie22@gmail.com)
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We Are: Haydy & Mike, late 20s and early 30s
Home Is: Gidea Park, Essex
I Do: My background is marketing but I describe myself as a freelance writer & photographer
Find Me: Instagram @squibbvicious | Twitter @squibbvicious | Blog
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If I had a pound for every time someone asked me when I was going to have children, in all honesty, I don’t think I’d need to work! As I’m slowly edging towards turning 30 this year, I’m being asked more and more. Friends and family all around us are settling down and having children and I’m beginning to feel the pressure from those around me to have offspring of my own. The shock and horror I receive when replying ‘Oh, I don’t want children!’ is almost unbearable at times. I often joke ‘I’ll think about it when I can dress myself properly of a morning and brush my hair every day!’ to ease the situation, but it’s far from true, it’s not something I will be thinking about any time soon.
Having children was never something I had planned for myself. Being an only child and of a similar age to all my cousins, I was never brought up around children. It was just never something that interested me, but people often told me that it’ll change as I grew up. I hit 25 and expected to wake up wanting a child; it never happened. I hit 28, still didn’t want a child and now upon the doorstep of 30, I’ve even more sure now than ever that having a child isn’t for me.
When my parents were growing up they had never planned on having children. Let’s just say, I was a bit of a surprise. So I often wonder if that has anything to do with the way I feel about having children. Its been said you learn your maternal skills from your mother and mine is the first to admit she never was overly maternal. I think she did a pretty decent job raising me, but despite that, she still has very little interest in children and didn’t go on to have any more. Could it be hereditary in an odd way?!
When talking to people they often ask how my partner, Mike, feels about me not wanting to have a family with him, which is when I correct them. Being a family doesn’t mean you have to have children. For us, our idea of creating our own family is buying a forever home, getting married and being fur parents to a couple of dogs.
We also, having both had many discussions about it, think our lifestyle wouldn’t suit having children. I know you can take children on holiday, I know you can take children out for dinner, and I know you can do almost anything we do now with children, but it’s not something we want to do. When we travel we like to travel light which I think isn’t doable with children, and we spend all day out walking and exploring which would be so tough with a pushchair or toddler. When we go out for dinner we don’t want to be worrying about feeding a child and if our child is disturbing other dinners; we like to enjoy our mealtimes undisrupted.
We enjoy our lives very much as they are, and I often say maybe we’re currently too selfish or set into our ways to have a child. I also think it’s a lot to do with where we are in our lives as well; we aren’t in our forever home, I don’t have a full-time job that I’m happy in, and we aren’t engaged or married. We’ve said we’d both want all those things before thinking about having a child as it’s how we were brought up. And the closer we get to achieving all those things the more we’ve realised that we don’t have a child-shaped hole in our life, we have a Staffordshire Bull Terrier shaped hole that needs filling as soon as we have a garden!
We, for sure, don’t see ourselves as childless, we see ourselves as childfree living the lives we are very happy living.
Thank you so so much to Haydy for sharing her story as a guest poster and sharing her thoughts and views in this piece. As I’ve stressed from the very beginning, this is a warm, empathic platform for people to share their stories, hopes, dreams, fears. Please do read Haydy’s story, leave a comment if you’d like to and share this series if you know anyone it could help. Together we are making changes.
Thank you to you and everyone in this series.
I felt alone and now I know it’s not just me.
It’s fantastic to see childfree being represented positively rather then hidden and shameful. Hugs!
I relate to this so much! It really saddens me how much you have to defend not wanting children – what would these people prefer? You to have kids you don’t really want and then resent?!
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Thank you so much Lizi for taking the time to read and support. It’s strange isn’t it that these days it should even be an issue but hopefully we can gradually move into a more tolerant accepting time X