We work nine to five jobs, we want promotions, and we work harder. We go through years of education and hard work for our dream job, to be denied it based on the narrow-minded fact that we may just have to leave temporarily.


For one reason: the 'M' reason. Maternity. 
 

We are the women with ambitions. The growing majorities that live life childless to avoid these circumstances, and can you blame us?

Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey shows that almost 50% of women in 2014 between the ages of 25 to 29 were childless. This is an all time high. 

I find this interesting. I receive daily criticism for sharing similar childless goals to this hefty percentage of women. Unlike them, however, I don't think I could change my mind. Other women do. 

The same survey revealed that, in the same year, only 28.9% of 30 to 34-year-olds were childless. And so it seems, we as women, change our minds.

Not the first time you’ve heard that, I’m sure.

Our mothers whine for their grandchildren, our friends start popping them out and we start to get looked at funny when we arrive at family gatherings still of normal bodily proportion. It gets tense.

 I can understand why it's easy to crumble into the social roles society tries so hard to squeeze us into.

As females, we grow up learning to nurture small beings. I know; I was one of those five-year-old girls begging their parents for a Baby Annabelle. We are taught our expressive roles and are socialized to fulfill these. 

Become pregnant, give birth, and experience motherhood. People ask - how could you possibly have lived without this?

I propose you can. 


The modern woman has so much access to choice on whether motherhood is for her, or not. There are support groups for women who make the choice against it. Gateway Woman being a great one. Whether childless by choice or circumstance, they are a group of women of represent how empowering childlessness can be.

“We’re all acutely aware of how having a baby would significantly rearrange all of the pieces of our lives, many of which we have worked hard to put into place.”

- Bryce R. Covert wrote for New York Magazine in March.

If this doesn’t explain a key and understandable reason for women’s choices against motherhood, I don’t know what will.

I, myself, understand my own set of extensive choices. I do not choose motherhood right now, or perhaps ever. No woman has to.

The beauty of choice. 

x KM