The biological imperative - Is there something wrong if you don’t have kids?

I just saw a post on FB from a friend who also lost her mother. The post described needing to talk to her mother and understanding her mother even more when she became a mother herself. While I would have to agree there is a realization about your parents that dawns on you once you yourself become a parent. I have seen it happen often with my friends as I am someone who does not have children and made a conscious decision for that to be the case. I am not blind to the sacrifice and hard decisions that my parents had to make. If anything, I think it is quite the opposite. At a very early age I saw just how much my parents loved being parents as well as the agony of making some of the decisions and choices they were faced with.

In all fairness, my mother never quite understood my choice not to have children. I think she may have felt my not wanting to be a mother was a sort of failure on her part. If she only knew just how much I respected her approach to motherhood, she would know that she showed me exactly what it was like to be a good mother. She gave me the strength and wisdom to realize it wasn’t the role for me.

Her willingness to allow my independence meant that I thought about my future and what I wanted. Don’t get me wrong, I have made some choices along the way that I would love to have the chance to go back and change, but the choice to not have children is one that I have never wavered on.

Does that mean I am not meeting my biological imperative?

My answer is no. We should not have to be defined by socially constructed expectations that others put on us. There are long standing socially accepted practices of what we should and should not do with our professional and personal lives as women/men. These practices have a strict division between genders as a means of convenience and control. We cannot continue to let these practices and expectations go unquestioned.

People have been working for decades to try and change these predefined roles, however, they are still very present in many aspects of our day to day lives. The idea that you should have children just because you can is one such practice that needs to be questioned. Not everyone likes being a mother, not everyone is good at being a mother, and people should not be or feel pressured or be forced to have a child by their loved ones. It should be a choice. It can’t always be. We know that things happen. Some people do not have a choice, but if you want to choose not to have a child, you should be able to do so.

I commend the question because through reflection we can avoid feeling trapped by those pre-defined roles. I urge you to believe that your biological imperative is to be true to the person you want to be and not what others think you should be. Besides, you know as well as I do that many of the people our Mom cared for as her own children were not her biological children. We can- and should- care for the people that we surround ourselves with and society as a whole. Know that your role still important even if you are not biologically responsible for those around you.

ED Missie Brown