[OPINION] Women choosing to be child-free are not lonely, they are free

By Gem Marquez

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Our mothers would tear heaven and earth just for us to have a room over our heads, food on our table, and clothes on our back. But for some reason, I don’t want to be responsible for these humble expectations. I don’t want to be the light of one’s home or a bedrock of mental health, and that should be okay.

I would admit, it crossed my mind. Growing in a conservative and strict environment, groomed with religious beliefs and patriarchal ruling had borne norms that socialized children and women with values that should be complied with, which only sedated women from traversing through different opportunities that have always been found for them. I’ve seen it through small-scale actions when I was still a child, from my parents giving me a kitchen set as toys to being dragged by my mother to cook and clean, which she said to be an imperative learning for women to be a good and effective housewife for her family in the future. If you’re living long enough in a space that planted this kind of practice and perspective, it comes as a helpful nudge, a motherly advice. But I grew up, and it became painful to see that female subservience is considered as the foundation of a society. It is frustrating that in girls’ fledgling years, domestic labor is tethered to a future of having kids. Women are often asked about how many children they would want to have, but they are almost never asked if they want it in the first place. Women are often encouraged to have children so they have someone to coddle them when they get lonely and old, to have a financial safety net they could fall into when they retire. Maybe I want to give birth to my own struggles and success, and the only one who is lying in the middle of the night is myself crying and striving for my dreams I trust yet unborn.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015, 7.4 percent of 15-44-year-elderly people and women were voluntarily childless. The choice of being childfree is still being tied with prejudice where questions on this matter still ignite moral outrage from those who beg to disagree. Many women my age would rather choose to save money to transcend from their chosen careers and travel around the world, but others see this arrangement as selfish. A lot of people don’t realize that there are more things beyond women’s longing for independence in choosing to be child-free. Some of us are thinking practically by chewing over factors socially, financially, and environmentally. Our world is suffering because of corporate wringers, destruction of nature, threatening political climate, and economic imbalance. Some of us don’t want this as their children’s future while women ourselves are still suffering under these circumstances. Others think that having a child would make them complete, and that’s also fine, but others who want otherwise have dreams that come in different forms; some come in a degree carved in cold medals, or some just want a life with cats.

But this isn’t just all about being child-free, this is also about the fact that women should be able to make and to have their own choices without getting implicit criticisms guised as advice that women don’t need. This isn’t just all about being child-free, this is also about how imposing Maria Clara ideals on every Filipina, where fertility and motherhood are deeply associated, should be stopped as a part of Filipinos’ societal standards. In the words of Stephanie Zacharek in TIME, “What I want to say to younger women who believe that a child-free life is an unfulfilled life is that your future self is a person you haven’t met yet. Don’t presume to know everything about her in advance. And don’t presume that you can control every element of your life just by making choices.” For now, tear heaven and earth for you.