I Decided Not to Have Children. Why Do I Still Feel Guilty?

I was alone in my apartment when my sister-in-law told me she was pregnant.

It was right after I ended my engagement, which felt like an almost comically efficient way for life to present me with two versions of womanhood at once. Hers was expanding in a way everyone immediately understood. Mine had just cracked open, and I had no idea what I was going to build inside it.

Something about her pregnancy made the question of children feel real to me in a way it hadn't before.

Not answered. Just real.

I had spent roughly fifteen years saying the same thing whenever someone asked whether I wanted kids: "If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. I'll learn to live with either."

It sounded relaxed. Open-minded, even. Like I trusted life enough not to wrestle it into a particular shape.

To be fair, part of me meant it. But it was also a very effective way to avoid answering the question.

I Thought I Would Know When I Knew

I don't have childhood memories of wanting to be a mother. I didn't really play with dolls, and I never played wedding dress-up. I played with Barbies, Legos, Lincoln Logs, and video games. I loved putting on the old Halloween costumes stored in the upstairs attic of my grandma's craft room.

I liked becoming someone else for an afternoon. I just don't remember pretending that someone was a wife or a mother (<-- this was a new "AH HA!" moment to be completely honest... as in, just a few weeks ago I realized this).

That does not mean I secretly knew I would never have children. I didn't know anything. Motherhood was simply part of the general scenery of adulthood, like a house or a husband or suddenly understanding how health insurance works. I assumed the details would arrange themselves later.

Partners helped keep that assumption alive.

"I can't wait to make you a mother. You're going to be such an incredible mother."

Some told me how important it was that they have biological children of their own. They spoke with certainty, and I absorbed it. I mistook their desire for a shared plan without ever spending much time alone with the question of whether it was my desire too.

I thought my answer would arrive like a lightning bolt. One day I would wake up with the same clarity some of my girlfriends seemed to have. They wanted to become mothers. They knew it in a way that appeared physical, almost cellular.

I waited for that knowing. It never came.

The Fence Did Not Feel Crowded

The question became harder to ignore when one of my younger brothers (I have 3 younger brothers... shout out to all the eldest daughters & only girls), started talking about having a second child and suddenly the future I had treated as distant was happening around me in real time.

People I grew up with now have children graduating from high school. Women my age have frozen their eggs so they can preserve an option while they wait for the right partner. People kept telling me I should do the same. Even if I didn't want children now, I might change my mind.

Their concern made uncertainty feel irresponsible.

I wanted to say, "I just don't know."

Sometimes I wanted to add that it was none of their fucking business.

Instead, I gave them my familiar line, If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

What I could not explain was how lonely it felt to be suspended between those two lives. I didn't identify with women who had always known they wanted children. I didn't feel the certainty of women who proudly knew they didn't. I was living inside a question everyone else treated like a multiple-choice test with only one correct bubble.

It turns out the fence is more crowded than it feels. In a Pew Research Center survey, 25% of adults 50 and older without children said they had been unsure whether they wanted them. I don't know how many years they spent inside the question. I only know I would have felt less defective if more of us had admitted we were there.

I kept thinking the problem was my inability to answer.

Now I think part of the problem was believing I owed everyone an answer they found acceptable.

A Medical Result Is Not a Desire

In a previous relationship, I was pressured to have fertility testing done. My AMH was low, although the rest of my results were normal. The reproductive endocrinologist told me that I needed to figure out what I wanted as soon as possible. I was also told I should have considered trying to have children immediately... that was a little over 2 years ago now at this point. And... obviously, I have not.

The appointment gave me information, but it did not give me desire. It gave the question a deadline.

Those are not the same thing.

Here is something I did not understand at the time: AMH measures ovarian reserve. It is not a verdict on whether someone can become pregnant without assistance. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine says these tests are useful for predicting how the ovaries may respond during fertility treatment, but they are poor independent predictors of reproductive potential.

The number was real. The meaning I attached to it was much larger than the number could support. I carried it around like a countdown clock anyway.

That is what a deadline does to a question you have not answered.

For a long time, I treated age, fertility, partnership, and wanting as if they were all one enormous question. I was trying to determine whether I wanted a child while simultaneously calculating whether I could have one, who I might have one with, what it would cost, how much time I had left, and whether "Future Me" would hate "Present Me" for getting it wrong.

No wonder I could not hear myself think.

Ann Davidman, a marriage and family therapist who has worked with people experiencing parenthood indecision since 1991, separates desire from decision in her guide to determining whether you want to become a parent. What do I want is one question. What am I going to do is another. It is language I wish I had found earlier.

I had been demanding that I answer both at once.

What I Wanted From Motherhood

When I picture the part of motherhood I genuinely want, I picture the friendship.

I love the relationship I have with my mom. There is something incredibly special about knowing another woman across different versions of her life, first as the person who raises you and eventually as a person you can know more fully.

I understand why I might grieve never having that particular relationship with a daughter of my own. I will also never know the love mothers describe when they say they did not understand its depth until they had a child.

I believe them. I believe there is a form of love I will never experience.

But a child is not the only way to love someone younger than me, guide her, believe in her, or become a safe place for her.

I love being the favorite aunt. I am competitive, so yes, being the favorite matters. Ha! But loving them matters more. I love being a mentor and a guide for the younger women who seem to find me. I love cheering them on and giving them somewhere soft to bring the things they are struggling with.

Older women did that for me. They helped define and carve my path forward. None of those women had children, and none of them regretted that choice.

They still mothered parts of the world around them, me included.

Maybe what I wanted was not motherhood as much as I wanted to participate in that kind of love.

The Parts I Did Not Want Count Too

There were also parts of motherhood I did not want, and for years I treated those thoughts like evidence of a character defect.

I was afraid of what pregnancy could do to my body. I worried about the financial cost, the relentless responsibility of raising a good human being, and all the terrible things that can happen to someone you love but cannot completely protect. I saw how children could strain relationships, expose every existing fracture, and reorganize a life so thoroughly that the woman at the center of it could disappear.

I know motherhood contains joy. I also know joy is not the only thing it contains.

Not wanting every sacrifice does not make me cold. Not believing the sacrifices are right for me does not mean I think mothers made the wrong choice.

It means their choice and mine can both be sacred.

That sentence is easier for me to write than it is to believe every day.

I Decided. The Guilt Stayed.

My decision emerged only a few weeks ago, after about a year of journaling, therapy, and continuing to ask myself what I actually want from my life.

I decided not to have children.

Even writing that sentence creates the reflex to explain myself. I feel like I need one hundred reasons ready, hoping whoever hears them will accept at least one.

My body. My finances. My age. My relationship history. My fertility test. My freedom. My work. My fear. My lack of a lightning bolt.

Please pick whichever reason makes you think I am still a good person.

The guilt sounds like me, but a very "church" version of me. The version who believes there is a correct order to a woman's life and worries that stepping outside it is not merely different, but wrong. She worries that my mom, grandma, and aunt wanted me to join their club and that I have disappointed them. She worries they feel sorry for me. She worries everyone will look at my life and conclude that I chose the wrong partners for too long, and this is what I ended up with.

She worries people will mistake softness without motherhood for hardness.

For a long time, I thought the guilt meant I secretly wanted children. Now I think it means I am a recovering people pleaser trying to live on my own terms.

Guilt is not always proof that I made the wrong decision. Sometimes it is the feeling that appears when I stop making the decision everyone else understands.

Relief Is Part of the Answer

Deciding not to have children has brought me an enormous amount of relief.

I can plan now.

I can stop holding my life in a waiting room while I search for a partner I trust enough, an answer certain enough, or a future version of myself who suddenly wants something I have never clearly wanted.

When I picture the life I am choosing, the possibilities feel endless. I can go anywhere. I can build a life around friendship, mentoring, love, work, travel, family, and whatever else I have not imagined yet. I am not tied to the timeline I thought I was supposed to follow.

It feels freeing.

It also requires grief.

As I have gotten older, I have had to grieve the life I thought I would have by now, along with all the different versions of what it could have been. Choosing this life means I will never know the other one. I can be relieved and still mourn the child I will not meet, the friendship we might have had, and the version of me who existed in that imagined future.

Grief does not reverse the decision. Relief does not erase the grief.

Both are receipts.

If You're Still Inside the Question

I spent too long here to pretend seven journal prompts and a pros-and-cons list can answer this for everyone. But these are a few places I would start:

- Ann Davidman's guide is free. Her central instruction is one I wish I had found earlier: decide to *not know* on purpose rather than repeatedly forcing yourself between yes and no. She also suggests temporarily living as if you have chosen each path and noticing what comes forward.
- The Baby Decision by Merle Bombardieri offers exercises designed to help people examine doubt, ambivalence, and the expectations they may have absorbed from others.
- A therapist familiar with parenthood indecision can help when the question is tangled up with grief, a relationship, your childhood, or several of those things at once.
- r/Fencesitter can make the question feel less lonely, although a community full of people making the same decision cannot make it for you.

For the Woman Who Still Doesn't Know

I am not going to tell you how to decide whether to have children. I spent too long inside this question to pretend literally any tool I share could answer it for everyone.

But if you are awake at 11 p.m. wondering why everybody else seems to know, I want you to know you are not the only one.

If age is part of your answer, that is real. If you have not found a partner you trust enough to raise a child with, that is real. If you can imagine happiness in both lives and grief in both lives, that is real too.

You do not owe anyone certainty while you are still uncertain.

And if you eventually choose not to have children, you are allowed to cry for the life you thought you might have. You are allowed to need a big, warm hug. You are allowed to feel guilty while slowly learning that guilt is not the same as regret.

I spent fifteen years waiting for a lightning bolt.

What arrived was quieter. A preference. Then relief. Then enough trust in myself to stop asking whether everyone else would accept my reasons.

I have decided not to have children.

I am still soft. I am still loving. I am still a woman.

And now I can live my life.

Written by: Jacquelin Blegen