In 2024, the US Census tract revealed that 85% of women aged 20-24 were childless, up 10% from the previous survey in 2014. As time goes on, more women are choosing childlessness, which, contrary to traditional values, is a beautiful thing.
In a world corrupted by the still remains of the patriarchy, women are seeing it through, relinquishing themselves from the realities they’ve never wanted. The lives their mothers, grandmothers, and aunts never wanted. It is a simple request that women may exist outside of their wombs.
The prevalence of modern feminism and the gender equality movement has provided women with a multitude of opportunities in their lives, relative to what they once had. The normalization of financial autonomy has enabled women to build a life for themselves without relying on a man to provide.
Women are actually ahead in terms of higher education. The Postsecondary National Policy Institute recounts that as of 2022, “female students made up 57.9% of all postsecondary enrollment.”
As societal norms become more progressive, more young girls are developing life-related dreams that differ from marriage and family. There are 52 women in the Fortune 500. Roughly 41% of US lawyers are female. In more developed countries, it makes little sense for a woman to choose a life of exclusively caretaking when so many doors have been opened.
However, as many societal changes do, these have negatively impacted women as well. For women in the workforce who choose to have children, there is a double burden, as it is now almost impossible for a family to afford basic living necessities on a single income. This concept is just one of the double standards that makes the idea of having children leave a bad taste in a woman’s mouth.
It remains taboo for a woman to pursue a career and her own personal ideals of happiness over a family. The prevalence of religion in our society, and the undertones of post WWII purity culture, suggest that a woman’s value is found within marriage and reproduction.
Kerrie Dallman teaches AP Human Geography and Economics at Arvada West, where both subjects analyze the choice to not have children through the lens of female empowerment demographics and cost benefit analysis. Dallman remarks, ¨there’s a strong linkage between people’s religious beliefs and their feelings about whether or not they should have children¨.
It is a wonderful luxury for first-world women to elect not to have children. For women in less developed countries, it is not uncommon for their only option in life to be marriage and children, often before turning 18.
In South Asia, the husbands and families of women douse them in gasoline and burn them alive, because the woman is infertile, or, “for her family´s refusal to pay additional dowry.”
In the developed world, we have made enough progress to dismantle the sickening misogynistic fundamentals that have prompted such violent atrocities against women. However, women are still afflicted by the male judgments and predispositions of what it means to be a woman.
In a modern society that still retains various patriarchal structures, we must encourage women to use the agency they do have, to seek out the life they desire, including or not including children. Regardless of the judgments of others and snarky remarks such as ‘you’re going to regret that,’ as a young woman, never forget that it is your body, your choice.
