I've changed my mind about "having" kids.
I want to take care of children, but not in the way we're traditionally taught to.
I’ve known I don’t want children ever since I’ve been able to comprehend that I could have them. There’s a million reasons why and there’s no reason why. A million reasons: kids are a big responsibility, they cost money, they take up time, I have no idea how to take care of them. And there’s also no reason, because you don’t need a reason to not want kids. If anything, you need a reason to want them. “It’s what you’re supposed to do” is not sufficient. In fact, I’m sure most people who want kids would agree with my reasons for not wanting them, but they see some inherent reward in having children that just doesn’t resonate with me.
I grew up feeling alone in my childfree desires. My insistence that I didn’t want children was always met by adults with confusion and claims that I would change my mind. Everyone else my age around me talked about having kids someday. I didn’t think I’d make it to 30 years old because I felt trapped in a society that put marriage and nuclear family above all else. I cobbled together a dream of traveling the world and living in a treehouse1 with my friends. But, I thought, will anyone even want to live in my treehouse?
I’m not alone in wanting to be childfree anymore. In 2023, 47% of adults under age 50 in the U.S. said it’s unlikely they’ll ever have kids. This is up from 37% of young adults who said the same in 2018. Birthrates are similarly at a historic low. I wonder what the stats were like in 2010-2014, when I was 14-18 years old and hearing from the majority of my peers that everyone wanted kids. My feelings could be anecdotal. But when I went online and met other girls my age who also wanted to be childfree, they expressed similar experiences in feeling alone in their desires. It could also be that in 2010-2014, teenagers had no idea the work it took to take care of a child, so it was easy to say you wanted kids.
In that Pew survey, the majority of people are similar to me in that they just lack a desire for children. But as you may know, there are other reasons to go childfree. 38% are concerned about the state of the world, 36% can’t afford to raise a child, 26% have concerns about the environment.
Childcare is especially expensive in NYC. Some stats from the comptroller’s office and the Citizen’s Committee for Children of New York:
In 2024, the average cost of childcare for infants and toddlers ranged from $18,200-$26,000. Using the conventional federal affordability benchmark of 7% of family income for childcare, a family would need to make $334,000 to afford the cost of care for a two-year old.
More than 80% of families with children under 5 cannot afford childcare in the city.
A family making the median income for families with young children, who have one infant and one preschool age child, might spend 36-43% of their income on childcare.
It’s also bad for childcare workers, who have the lowest median personal income of any care workers in NYC — $25,000 in 2023.
There’s also something to consider about cities that are not designed for families: car-centered planning that causes traffic violence which makes it unsafe to play on streets, third spaces like malls kicking out groups of teenagers, a lack of public play spaces in general. I’ve been reading CityLab’s “Designing Cities for Families” series and am in love with many of the design features they say will support families, such as courtyards in apartment buildings and making pedestrian-only streets. Young families will leave cities that are unaffordable and not built for them, and I would rather my friends not leave NYC.
Here’s another anecdotal stat: roughly half the people my age that I talk to now don’t want kids. Many are like me and simply don’t want them. Still many others don’t want them due to lack of affordability or climate change — both the worry of exacerbating greenhouse gas emissions2 and of bringing children into a world roiled by climate disasters.
You would think it makes me happy that more people are choosing to be childfree and I won’t be so alone in my desires. However, this is obviously not an ideal situation. I am happy that wanting to be childfree is now common enough that people feel less societal pressure to have kids when they never really wanted to. (This is at least true in LA and NYC, the main places I’ve lived.) I’m not happy that people who’ve always dreamed of having children now feel forced to forego that dream because of world conditions that they did not create.
Now, in the year before I turn 30, my desires are changing slightly. I do want to take care of kids… but not in the way you’d traditionally think.
I like kids. They’re inquisitive, playful, curious, and so much easier to be around as an awkward person who feels like they never really grew up. I’m excited to be an auntie. I could imagine myself taking care of kids for a weekend and being the cool adult they can tell their secrets to and ask for help.
As I get older and friends begin to think about marrying and starting families, I’m envisioning more and more what I want life to look like. I do want a family. A found family, a chosen family, whatever. I want to live in a village, and a healthy village has healthy, happy, and educated children.
There seems to be a false dichotomy of adults: you’re either childfree and never even talk to a child, or you have kids and your family is your entire life. I want to see something in between those two. Breaking the supremacy of the nuclear family goes both ways. Getting out of the “my resources for my family and no one else” mindset goes both ways. Yes, it is heartbreaking when your friends become parents and suddenly stop talking to you because they prioritize their partner and children. But the childfree cannot forsake a world of children. It takes a village to raise a child, and if you want to be part of a community, you’ve got to be part of that village.
I envision a world where yes, no one is pressured to have kids anymore.3 Cultural stigma stops (I’m looking at you, Asian immigrant parents). People don’t have kids just because “it’s the next step in adulthood.” The question “who will take care of you when you’re older?” isn’t floated as an excuse because we have excellent elder care and a culture of taking care of people you’re not related to by blood. People who want kids feel supported to have them, both through financial resources provided by the government, but also support from their community. Everyone cares about kids, even the ones they’re not related to.
In this world, I imagine myself sitting at a breakfast table, asking a kid what their day at school will look like. The parent(s) of the kid are sitting there too, and they’re my friends, and we’re hanging out. Maybe we live together, or at least close to each other. I see these people on a regular or even daily basis. I’m not the auntie who stops by just once a month — I’m involved with the kid’s life, with the lives of other kids, children of my friends. One big village. The kids drop in on my place when they feel like it, I help them with homework or cook with them, we all take family vacations.
It’s not “having" kids. But it’s also not a “childfree” life.
I’m not saying people aren’t already doing this, but it’s not nearly as mainstream as I’d like, at least not in the US. So while this world may be a long way off, we can start building it, and writing about it. Childfree people, we should shuck off our fears of responsibility and offer to support our child-having friends. It’s hard for them right now, and will only get harder once the inevitable impacts of climate change take more effect. Child-having friends and others, we just ask that you stop patronizing us about not having kids. Help us develop a culture where childfree people won’t be abandoned when we become old.
That’s a family life I could look forward to. If that’s in my future, turning 30 doesn’t seem so scary after all.
P.S. If you live in NYC and are a registered Democrat, there’s a mayoral primary coming up on June 24. You should look into Zohran Mamdani, and if you like his policies, rank him #1 on your ranked choice voting ballot. Universal no-cost childcare is one of his big goals, and in general he’s running on an affordability platform. Rank a full slate of progressives (fill out slots #2-5 with other candidate names), and DON’T put Andrew Cuomo on your ballot.
“Treehouse” is metaphorical. It’s a living space in which we break the traditional bounds of family structure. Play and nature are celebrated and magic is possible. If it happens to be a literal treehouse, though, I don’t mind.
There’s a whole debate about whether or not having kids is bad for the environment. This is not that essay. But my short answer is no. Billionaires are destroying the planet. Parents aren’t the enemy here.
Oh, and as always, it would be nice if the government didn’t take away our reproductive rights. I absolutely never want to be pregnant, but I’m too scared of surgery to get sterilized right now. Seeing the way our administration is going, though, maybe I should try to be brave…