The choice to be child-free: Two Israeli women share thoughts, regrets on not having kids

M started realizing that she might not want to have children while she was studying in seminary, but knew even before then that she was not enthusiastic about having kids of her own.

She learned, while babysitting, that she “was never really into the child part of childcare.”

As part of a marriage prep class at her Orthodox school, M was given an assignment to write a letter to her teacher from her future self. “We were supposed to talk about when we met our husband, when we got married, how many kids we have,” she recounted. “I didn’t even mention kids; or if I did, I was like ‘Yeah, we will think about that later,’” she added.

“It’s just so not what I see for myself, even when I am trying to play it up for the people who want to hear that.”

When she took the time to consider how she wanted to incorporate these things that were expected of her, she was able to “peel apart” some of what was behind her decision-making, realizing that while she appreciates children, she doesn’t want them herself.

“I feel like I have seen more and more people who are older than me, married, partnered, whatever and [who] just do not have kids and don’t want them,” she said, adding that these people “don’t deride [children] but just don’t want that in their lives.”

One of the reasons M feels that she still wants to be “open” to having kids is a desire to avoid backlash from her surroundings.

“If you’re the loud, outspoken feminist who is like ‘I won’t ever have kids,’ and then you do, then everyone is like ‘Got ‘em!’” she explained.

“I don’t really want to feel like I have to apologize for wanting what I want or believing what I believe,” she said.

When it comes to how those around her react, M said that in the past, people would tell her that “maybe she would change her mind,” but that recently she has surrounded herself with those who know better. It’s a statement that isn’t “helpful” to anyone, M clarified.

“I have friends who have kids, and it’s interesting watching them make choices that I wouldn’t have made, but I think they are happy, and I’m happy for them,” she stated.

M said that her best friend has been extremely supportive of her decision, and that “I feel like anyone who would respond negatively just wouldn’t be someone I would classify as a friend.”

FOR G, her surroundings – the educational and communal frameworks within which she was raised – fashioned what would eventually become her own decision to not have children.

She grew up in a classic American Modern Orthodox community, where it was “normal for everyone to get married, with very few divorces.”

G went to an all-girls’ school, like many in Orthodox circles. Various societal and cultural influences told her what her future was supposed to look like, but that only left her confused.

This manifested for her in the fog-like social pressure to get married and raise a family, a pressure that most girls in these spaces feel sooner or later. She felt this pressure particularly in statements like “I want to see you settled” and “I want to see you married.”

G noted that her sister really wanted children; G just didn’t. “I personally never felt such a strong pull to it, but I still thought I would do what everyone did,” she said.

So, G got married.

She said she knew that the marriage “was a mistake as I was doing it because I felt like I couldn’t not... I felt like a train was coming at me.” G recounted how her parents gave her the space to pull out of the marriage if she wanted, but that at the time she felt that the pressure was too strong.

“When we realized we weren’t getting along, he said to me, ‘We should hold back on having kids because we see that we’re having some issues.’ I hadn’t even thought about having kids with him.

“If I was with someone I was madly in love with at that point, I probably would have done that natural progression,” she explained.

The marriage ended when she was in her late 20s.

“The divorce derailed me... It took me a few years to get over it,” she said, adding that her close circles were “great about it, but I also had a bad rabbinical court experience, which turned me off even more [to the institution of marriage].”

Now, at 44, G is in “a really good place [in] a long, stable relationship. I learned to come to terms more with not being married – that, along with where I fit into this, what I wanted was much more important to me against all the pressures that came after my 20s.”

While for G, her family served as an anchor of support against societal tides, M was concerned with how her immediate family would react to her choice.

Asked about what her family thinks and if she feels pressure from them to have children, M first talked about her brother. He is close to their cousins, so she asked him how he would feel if her choices meant that his children would not have any.

While he told her it would be sad for him, he also assured her that this shouldn’t impact her actions and decisions in any way. “He doesn’t expect that of me,” she explained.

Regarding her mother’s expectations of her, M said that the two aren’t very close. Her mother, who recently remarried, told M that she had asked a rabbi if M’s children would count for the halachic obligation of her new husband to have kids.

“I don’t feel particularly inclined to help him along his journey to halachic obligation,” M said. “I don’t like the idea that my kids would count for his tally. That is gross and stupid to me.

“I do think a lot about how, it’s not just bringing a kid into my life, it’s bringing a kid into my family. Like most people, there is a mixed bag there,” she said. “I think it would be hard to raise a kid where it’s like, ‘Yeah, we don’t talk to Grandma. We don’t talk to Grandpa. We also don’t call him Grandpa,’” M said, referring to her parents.

It’s not that she thinks a child couldn’t handle this family dynamic, M explained, it’s that she doesn’t feel “particularly inspired to bring a kid into that situation.”

M said she doesn’t feel a special connection to her family name or a desire to continue the line. “I don’t see continuing the family line as that important, really.”

She also thinks that her family has had an impact on her decision not to have children, saying that the decision comes up in therapy when working through things from her childhood.

“Whether it’s having been parentified and then thinking about all the things you wish your parents had done differently. And then being like, ‘Do I think I have it in me to make better choices than them?’”

At the same time, “even if the answer is yes, and I’m working on myself, I don’t need to prove it by having kids myself and doing better,” she added.

She tries not to let her feelings about her family’s potential reaction to her not having children be the deciding factor, impacting her choice. “The deciding factor is just what I think a happy future for myself looks like: A house with no kids, several cats, a partner, and family, and people who are closer than family coming over and going over to them and spending holidays with them – that feels happy to me.”

FOR G, children became a second priority after self-fulfillment in all its manifestations – which she said is simply more important to her.

“It was something I never really felt was a priority,” she said. “It was a priority for me to make aliyah; to meet someone – but I always wanted that companion [first].”

She added that her sense, always, was that her path would be different. “As I got older, I let go of the worries and the anxiety,” she said.

One of the arguments in favor of getting married sooner rather than later is that one becomes less malleable with age, that people are more set in their ways.

G said that, in her experience, it’s been a mix of fixedness and fluidity.

“There are things I’m way less strict about now; it’s not all or nothing. You get smarter as you get older, you see what is really important and what you actually truly want,” she explained.

Asked if she ever worries about feeling that not having children has left an empty space in her life, M said she is not worried at all. “Definitely not,” she said, describing examples she has of people who have made the decision not to have children and whose lives are full of travel, hobbies, interests, their career, and their partners.

“I don’t really see it as empty space, I see it as a little more leg room,” she said, adding that she sees the lives of her co-workers who have children as being very regimented. “All your decisions are based around your kid, which is how it should be,” she said.

“Kids might be fulfilling, but there are so many things in life that are fulfilling, and I want to explore those. I think I already kind of know what having kids looks like, and I want to see what not having kids could look like,” she said.

Asked about how her decision impacts her dating life, M said she is torn between not wanting to close off options, and not wanting to lead people on. She recalled being surprised when she matched with someone on an app, and as soon as he noticed she had it marked that she doesn’t want to have children, he unmatched her.

“I remember just being struck that someone would take it so seriously,” she said, adding that, at the same time, this gave her the confidence to swipe left (reject) those who said that they definitely want kids.

While she found it strange that someone wouldn’t even want to meet her for a drink because she doesn’t want to have children, she also thinks it would be strange if someone went out with her assuming she would change her mind about this.

M noted that the choice not to have children is a dynamic one, and that not all dating apps have flexible ways to address this.

“I definitely do keep the child stuff in mind when I’m swiping, and I guess people keep it in mind when they are swiping on me, too.”

But ultimately, every time M worries about how she labels herself on an app, she remembers that “anyone who would be scared off by that is probably not someone who is thinking about this critically enough to actually be a person I would want to be with.”

Someone who is scared off simply by a label on an app about her preferences, and doesn’t recognize that there is more to her or that the decision is a dynamic and complicated one, is probably not compatible with M in the first place.

She also doesn’t rule out being set up with those who definitely want children.

“I’m not going to rule it out if the person is the right person, and maybe we together become people for whom having kids makes sense,” she said. Even so, she doesn’t anticipate being the one to initiate bringing children into her life.

G said that as she grew up and got older, she didn’t actively think about what her options to have children at a later age or non-biologically could be, “but it was in the back of my mind.”

She explained, “Contrary to a lot of my friends, who, at a certain age, started asking themselves, ‘Should I freeze my eggs?’ [I didn’t],” while her friends started asking this in their 30s, it only really struck her in her early 40s.

“For me, there was the element of time because Israel’s [medical insurance] covers egg freezing – unlike in America... So, I knew that if that was something I wanted to do, I would have thought about it.”

But, she said, “I really dismissed it; I thought [to myself], ‘I don’t want to give myself injections, I don’t want to disrupt my life.’ It just didn’t seem to fit in. Let me find the man first, then I’ll worry about the kid.”

G recalled how a few years back, she was seeing someone who was in the same age range as her – both in their early 40s.

She said that he was concerned about their ability to have biological children, so she called a hotline to find out more about what the chances were that they could safely have children.

The responders said the chances “weren’t great…” and G found herself reassuring her partner, before pausing to wonder what her role in this was and why she was filling it.

Like M, for G part of the considerations that played into her decision were financial security and the type of lifestyle she envisioned for herself.

“I have engineered my life to be the way I want it,” she said. Living in Israel was her top priority, followed by a job that is fulfilling and allows her to live comfortably and responsibly.

And now she has that. “Why would I mess with that? A child doesn’t fit into that; and more than that, a child deserves a mother who really wanted them. If I had a kid, I know I would be a good mother, but I would [also] be resentful. People always say, ‘You’ll fall in love with your own.’ But what if you don’t?”

Money is a real issue – for single people just trying to pay all their bills on time; all the more so for parents, especially ones who want to raise their children in relative financial security.

“If I were to change my mind about having kids now, it would have to be [due to] a drastic lifestyle opportunity,” G said. “It’s hard enough making it through the month here.”

G touched on one of the more terrifying aspects of having children: Bringing them into a world where they could lead an agonizing life.

“My brother has had serious, life-altering, mental health issues from the age of around 20.” she said.

“It’s been horrible; the illness took someone who was vibrant and healthy and stole everything from him and from us. I can’t protect him, despite being his always-protective older sister,” she recounted.

She explained that having her brother live with mental illness since early adulthood played into her desire to make aliyah when she was younger. “I felt like... I needed to strike out on my own and figure things out,” she said.

G’s sister has young children of her own today. G wonders if “the fear of the same thing happening” comes up for her sister, since her brother’s illness is genetic.

“I really love [my brother] and want him to feel well, but I also had to set boundaries. And I saw how the illness destroyed [parts of] him and my family. We’re not destroyed, but I saw what it did, and it scared me. That, along with the divorce... made me afraid of what life could bring – not my ability to handle it, but what can come.”

Though it may not be the most common decision, G noted that in her day-to-day life, she doesn’t face much scrutiny for her choice.

“People don’t ask about it as much as you think – why I’m not married or don’t have kids. They just think, ‘There she is!’” G said. “Maybe because I come across as so confident of my lifestyle.

“The regrets I have right now are more about not spending enough time with family like my grandmother when I have the chance…,” she explained. “I feel like the ship [to have biological children] has sailed.

“I have tried to think it through as much as possible because I know time is flying by... People need to hear that it is okay. I have a partner, friends that are family, I’m very close to my parents, and [have] a country that has become a sort of child for me in a different way. Not everyone has the same path, and that is okay.” ■