why do we still assume everyone wants kids?
For a long time, adulthood felt like a map.
A sequence of milestones you just…followed.
Graduate college. Get a job. Fall in love. Get married. Buy a house. Have kids.
I didn't question it, well, until I actually became an adult. It just felt like the natural next step—like hitting "next" on life's to-do list.
I’ve always pictured myself having kids someday. That part hasn’t changed. But what has changed is how I think about the people who don’t.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the people around me who’ve quietly, intentionally chosen a different route.
The ones who are choosing a life without having kids. Not because they can't. Not because they're waiting. But because they just…don't want to.
When I was younger, key word younger, I used to think not wanting kids was temporary. Like a “just focusing on my career right now” season.
I thought one day, they’d change their mind. Fall in love and have a movie-moment epiphany where everything suddenly shifted.
Why? Because that’s the narrative we’re fed.
But what I’ve realized—slowly, in bits and pieces—is that some people are sure. Really sure. And that surety isn’t selfish. It’s just…true.
Recently, a friend of mine told me that she’s done explaining her decision to the world.
She’s had enough of the “You’ll change your mind” comments. The knowing smiles from relatives. The awkward silences when she says she’s happy with her life the way it is.
She and her partner have been together four years. They love their weekends. Their freedom. Their slow mornings. Their ability to pick up and go whenever they want.
She loves her nieces and nephews, shows up for her friends' kids, but isn't secretly wishing for her own. Both she and her partner never pictured themselves as parents. And yet some people can't understand that. She always says "her life isn't waiting to start. It's already happening."
It’s funny how we don’t question other big life choices like this.
Nobody pulls aside a single woman in her 30s and says, “Are you sure you don’t want to be an accountant? You might regret it later.”
But when it comes to motherhood, it feels like the one choice women aren’t fully allowed to make without pushback.
We treat it like the final level of personal growth. Like, if you don’t want kids, you must still be figuring yourself out. Or running from something. Or not fully healed.
But maybe…they’re just done deciding. Maybe they already have.
I think about Tracee Ellis Ross a lot when this topic comes up.
If you listened to her conversation with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson on The Light Podcast, you know what I mean.
Tracee—52, never married, no kids—talked about the layers of that decision with so much clarity.
She was honest about the grief that sometimes comes with it. About the moments she’s sat with the gap between what she imagined at 22 and what her life looks like now.
But she was also clear that grief doesn’t equal regret.
Her life doesn’t look like the version most people expect—but it’s full in its own way, and she’s allowed herself to want exactly that.
Not Plan B. Not a compromise. Just…her life.
We forget that every path comes with trade-offs.
People with kids can grieve freedom. People without kids sometimes grieve the version of life they thought they’d want at one point.
Both are true. Both are allowed.
One isn’t more mature, more loving, or more fulfilled than the other. They’re just…different.
But we rarely leave space for that in conversation.
Instead, we default to questions like:
“What if you regret it later?”
“What if you change your mind?”
“But wouldn’t you make a great mom?”
As if a woman’s happiness is always supposed to end with a nursery.
I’ll be honest—I still picture myself with kids someday.
But I don’t feel entitled to that vision for anyone else, and I don’t think others should either.
The more I see people around me building happy, intentional lives without kids, the more I realize there’s no single way to do adulthood right.
It’s important to remember that choosing not to have kids doesn’t mean your life is empty, or that you’ll wake up at 50 full of regret, or that you’re missing some essential piece of adulthood.
If anything, it’s shown me that whatever choice you make—whether to have kids or not—should come from a place that’s honest to yourself. Not pressure. Not fear. Not because it’s the next thing on some invisible checklist.
Having kids is beautiful but only if it’s something you want. It’s not something you do just to prove you’re grown or to fit into a timeline that doesn’t feel like yours.
It just means your version of “full” comes in its own form.
And this life decision - like any other - is not something anyone should ever feel pressured to explain—or apologize for.