Childfree: why they don't want children

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

The minds of millions of women do not understand how one can voluntarily give up the role of a mother, from the birth of a desired child. But in contrast to this opinion, representatives of the modern childfree movement speak out, who believe that offspring is far from the main goal of a woman's existence. Moreover, many of them are sure that children only interfere with self-realization, and see in the little “flowers of life” only screaming and eternally aching egoists who only take away precious time and energy.

It is believed that the term "childfree" (from the English childfree - free from children) appeared as an opposition to the term "childless" (childless), which was seen as a lack of much desired children and a kind of suffering due to the fact that they are not. As if childless people are such not of their own free will. Followers of the childfree trend decided to prove to the whole world that their abandonment of offspring is more than voluntary. The number of women who deliberately refuse motherhood is growing every year. They are found in virtual communities that bring together people who never want to have children. Among them there are those who are not just indifferent to the role of parents, but also those who really hate children (from the English childhate - child-haters). The latter trend is perceived by many people as a socially dangerous phenomenon, since representatives of childhead often show aggression towards children and pregnant women.

So, what makes hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily abandon the very idea of ever becoming parents, and sometimes even hate who they were a few years ago (according to statistics, most of the followers of the trend are young people under 30)? What do psychologists think on this score, and how do childfree themselves justify their point of view?

Childfree reasons

1. "Live for yourself." The main reason most often called by followers of the childfree movement is the waste of precious time with a child, while it is more useful and correct to spend it on yourself. Such people believe that it is possible to give up on career, education and self-improvement when children appear in the family. In addition, female beauty suffers, which sometimes simply cannot be returned back.

You can divorce your husband, quit your job, move from one city to another, but you can't put your child anywhere.

2. "Do not turn back." Childfries are guided by the following motive: everything in life can be changed except for a child that has already been born. You can divorce your husband, quit your job, move from one city to another, but you can't put your child anywhere. What if motherhood makes a woman unhappy?

3. "We are responsible for those we have tamed." And they don't want to or are afraid to take responsibility for another person. They are not sure that they can give a child everything they need for a comfortable and joyful existence. Often childfree are inclined to blame the world around them, believing that it is at least dishonest to give birth to a new person in modern conditions.

4. "The third is superfluous." While ordinary people believe that a child makes a family even stronger, childfree fear that it is children who will disturb the harmony of relations between them and their partners. The new family member will take up the time that the two previously devoted only to each other.

5. "These are awful children." Some childfree people actually have a dislike for children, considering their uncontrollable behavior nightmarish, whims - annoying, and constant thirst for attention - exhausting. But if childfree rarely try to "convert" others to their faith, then the opinion of child haters on this matter is really cardinal, and the statements are cruel.

6. "Without instinct." Childfree women claim that they simply do not have a maternal instinct. They are not opposed to other people's children, they can spend time with a friend's child, play with him and tell fairy tales, but they do not want to acquire their own offspring.

The opinion of psychologists

Experts are in no hurry to call childfree "abnormal". They believe that if a person voluntarily and independently made a decision not to have children, while he does not need constant confirmation of the correctness of his choice and does not try to prove to others that only his point of view is the only correct one, then this is a conscious approach to life, which cannot be condemned costs.

But in cases where the followers of the childfree movement actively agitate others to abandon childbearing, they see in children and their parents a kind of threat to their peaceful existence, then we are clearly talking about psychological trauma.

Psychologists, as a rule, identify two main reasons that make childfree so actively promote childlessness.

1. Difficult childhood. Experts are sure that today's childfree, for the most part, yesterday were unhappy children, whose parents did not pay attention to them, showed cruelty, said phrases like "I wish I hadn't given birth to you, all the troubles are only from you." Having received severe psychological trauma in childhood, the childfree decide not to have a child of their own. For some, the form of refusal reaches extremes - they begin to hate both children and their parents.

2. Fear of losing control. Childfree fears that after the birth of a child they will not be able to belong to themselves, and control over their own lives will be lost once and for all. There is a measure of selfishness in this approach, since childfree do not agree to share their life with anyone else. Often such people choose complete loneliness, seeing in it freedom from obligations to loved ones, and, therefore, some hardships.