Questions I Am Often Asked As A ChildFree Woman In Nigeria.
I have been very open about my choice to be single and child free for a quite sometime now but one thing that happens everytime I talk about my child free decision to a new person is the questions, just after the denial and shock.
They deny what I said.
"What? You just didn't say that."
"You are joking, right?"
"It's a joke, I know. Impossible."
And when I say it again, stressing that I wasn't joking, they try to change my mind, that's the second thing they usually do.
They make an attempt and I when I insist that I'm not interested, they start asking me questions.
Sometimes this is fun for me as I love to watch people get shocked and surprised that women can choose to not give birth. Hehehe
Everyone in Nigeria craves children so bad (except me and a very few others who don't want kids) but they hate kids who were adopted. They keep talking about "my blood" as if there's something special in their blood.
People hate on women for deciding to get an abortion but they never adopt the ones in the streets left to die.
Even when anyone adopts one or two, the adopted children are often stigmatized and discriminated against by family members especially if they are a traditional family.
Well, one would think that a society that claims to want children so badly would love all children and not stigmatize them. Well, their hypocrisy and urge to oppress other people must come alive, right?
Okay, I digressed, back to what I was saying. I am just barely 25, I'll be 25 in a few days. People already expect that I should be married and with at least a baby by now. Or that maybe I'd be preparing to be both a wife and mother. Not a bad thing for women who want these, but its definitely a bad thing for me.
I get told a lot that I will change my mind as I grow older as I would become lonely and it makes me laugh so much like what my primary school mates used to call a "laughing jackass".
I still don’t know if that is an animal or just a word they made up.
So, as a woman who always publicly says that she doesn't want kids. These are the questions I get asked often and my response to them.
1. Why don't you want kids, your mother had you, you have to give birth to someone too.
There are lots of reasons for my decision to be child-free. First of all, I don’t have the emotional,physical and psychological strength that is required to raise kids. But even if I do, I’ll still choose to not have them. I have exhausted all that energy being a surrogate parent for my siblings and other people’s children.
Secondly, The world is crazy, It’s not conducive for humans anymore, so many people having depression and anxiety, Climate change, economic problems and insecurity. It’s not fair to keep birthing humans here.
Now, Children are not tools or goals and should not be used as some sort of competition or repetition method to gain approval of any kind.
I think of children as human beings, not toys that you have to manufacture to please the society or your parents.
One more thing, I didn’t ask my mother to give birth to me. I don’t like that I exist and if I had a chance to choose, I would have chosen to not be born. Life is crazy, I’m not bringing another person to suffer this crazy life.
2. Why do you want to waste your life?You are Choosing To Become Useless?
People who think their lives are meaningless without kids are exactly the people who should never have kids. I really need people to stop seeing kids as something that completes them or give their lives meaning.
Your life should be meaningful. Your existence should be meaningful, without kids.
There are so many things you can do with your life. Why do you think that choosing to not have kids means I’m wasting away and being meaningless?
What do you think children are?
People who think like this often do not have a life outside their kids.
They build their whole lives around their children, pressuring them and forcing them to behave according to a particular standard because they need the child to live the life they didn’t live for themselves in order to feel good.
They make children an extension of themselves instead of understanding that children a whole human beings outside of them.
They are the parents who often abuse and make their children live their lives to please them and for " what will people say?".
3. Do you want your father to win? You should have kids to shame him.
Okay, this one often comes from close family members. My father during one of our heated quarrels silly things to me because I stood up to his tyranny. He said I wouldn’t have what other women have and crave.
I don’t know what that means because the women around me crave money and by my own standard I am doing way better than him when he was my age. Nothing to worry about.
So, there’s absolutely no need for me to have kids and I am not bringing any human being to this planet just because I want to shame a person. I am more intelligent and aware than that.
4. What If every woman becomes like you? Do you want People To stop having babies? Do you want humanity to go extinct?
First of all, every woman cannot possibly be like me. I am probably the only woman in my local Government Area who doesn’t want a child.
Why do you care now? Have you ever asked women to stop giving birth because the population is getting too much? Why do you care now about women being like each other?
Secondly, I want women to stop having babies. Wish I could do something about that but I cannot because humans have needs and I will not control other people and what they desire.
Thirdly, yes, I want humanity to go extinct. We are a very horrible species, the universe will take a breathe of fresh air if we stopped existing. That doesn’t mean that humanity will go extinct just because I want it to.
5. Children are important, You will be lonely, Who will Take care of you when you grow old?
Do you realize that people who say these things are openly telling everyone that they just have kids so that when they are old the kids will take care of them.
I understand the need the for self preservation but I also see the selfishness in creating babies just because you don't want to be lonely and you want them to take care of you.
I see the selfishness and I’m not about to partake in that. Matter of fact, many children do not take care of their parents, they hire a nanay to do that and parents often grow old feeling lonely because of many reasons. For example, the children grew up and left home.
6. What about your mother, don't you want to give her grandchildren? She will be so hurt.
I have many siblings, there’s no way most of them wouldn’t want to have children. She can get enough grandchildren from them. Also, children are not gifts you manufacture just to please people and make them happy. She’ll be very okay.
7. Why are you open to adopting kids since you don't want to give birth, You should give birth to your own and not take other people's children.
There are millions of children without parents, why birth more when you can take in one or two and be their parent until they grow up?
I don’t see anything wrong with taking in other people’s children whose parents are probably dead or deadbeat and just giving them love, housing, affection and everything that a child needs to have a better life.
Why do you care that I give birth to children but you hate the idea of me taking in random children who need love and care?
Do you really like children or you just see them as a means to an end?
8. This is Insane, Why are You choosing to be stupid?
I wonder how being smart enough to know that I can't birth and raise is called stupidity but birthing many children knowing you can't take care of them is welcomed and okay.
I’ll need you to emancipate yourself from mental slavery and misogyny. Because misogyny is the reason you think of me as stupid for choosing not to be a baby-making machine. And mental slavery is why you think every woman should have a child for the system.
You only see women as a means to an end, you don’t see women as human beings, you see women as tools for procreation and for raising children, and now you are mad that a woman chooses not to be and do those things.
You are mad that a woman is choosing to live her life the way she wants it.
I think that the only stupid person here is the person who thinks that women are baby making machines.
9. Children are blessings from God, everyone wants and craves those blessings, you can't possibly reject them.
Not everyone wants children. Children are also not blessings from any God, they are humans created by other humans. They are a lot of work, a lot of responsibility, and I don’t know about you but I am glad that I thought about this and decided that I don’t want children. I cannot imagine having kids before realizing that I shouldn’t have walked that path.
So, I'm not rejecting them, like they are some sort of package. I just do not want to create any human being.
10. What Happens When You get old and change your mind?
I don’t see myself changing my mind but if I do change my mind and want kids, I’ll adopt children, raise them with them knowing that they don’t belong to me. They are their own persons and they can always go back home if they know their parents and want to.
However, I don’t see any change of mind happening at any time, I plan on being the 50 and 60year old rich auntie who has her nieces and nephews coming over just to chill at my place. Having lots of siblings, I except to have lots of children in my home too. Cos I’m their rich aunty. And I’m fine with that, as long as they go back to their parents.
Thank you for reading my articles.
