Kim Cattrall’s Poignant, Spot-on Response to Those Still Asking Why She Doesn’t Have Kids.
According to Census data, a record number of women are choosing not to have children.
In 2014, nearly 48% of women between the ages of 15 and 44 had never had kids. That’s the highest percentage of women without children since the Census Bureau started tracking the statistic in the 1970s.
But despite nearly half of American women going child-free, the expectation to have kids is still there. Women who make the choice to forgo motherhood are slammed as selfish or immature. Entire articles are dedicated to the plethora of reasons women choose not to have kids, as if their decision warrants a longer explanation than “works for her, not for me.”
More: Kim Cattrall’s Poignant, Spot-on Response to Those Still Asking Why She Doesn’t Have Kids.
Millennial women understand the challenges they will face if they choose to have children, including navigating the division of childcare with their partners. A March article in New York Magazine looked at straight couples in which the women are more unsure about whether they want kids than their male partners. Bryce R. Covert, the author of the article, wrote that the women he interviewed “were all acutely aware of how having a baby would significantly rearrange all of the pieces of their lives, many of which they worked hard to put in place.”
Many women still want to become moms, but others realize that life without kids can be just as fulfilling. As Sezin Koehler wrote for The Huffington Post in September: “I don’t need to push a child out of my vagina to be a real woman.”
Also see