A childless woman writes about not having kids and why women are childfree

Some 6.6% of women surveyed in 1995 said that they chose to be childfree, and some 44% of women between 16 and 44 are childfree or childless, according to Nancy Rome.

Her impact graphs in The Washington Post:

Those of us who are not mothers do not fit into any of society's convenient boxes: We're not slaves to carpools or homework. At the same time, we are not necessarily obsessed about our careers or even ourselves; nor are we anti-family. Our days are simply lived according to a different rhythm: Children don't tug at my clothes and beg for attention; I don't leave my cellphone on during films or dinner parties in case the babysitter needs me; I travel; I read books -- lots of them -- as well as the newspaper.

I am also a filmmaker, and a few years ago I began to work on a documentary about childless women -- not only those of us who have lost or can't have children, but the growing number who don't want to have them. Their reasons vary. In the most devastated areas of Baltimore, I found women who told me they had chosen to be childless because there were simply too many children in their families or neighborhoods who needed looking after. An immigration lawyer told me she had done motherhood when she was a teenager, helping her mother with her younger sibling. Many reflected the attitudes of an academic who told me that her decision to remain childless made her feel like "an outlaw."

Some of the most telling comments come from the women I first talked with -- three friends, all like me now in their 50s. Dyann, a lawyer from Boston, recalls a moment at her local pizza joint when the owner asked how many of the children she came in with were hers. "None of them; I chose not to have kids," she said. "That's okay," she remembers him replying. "You still have time; maybe you'll change your mind."

Having grown up as an oldest child, Dyann felt she should be free to choose a career instead of motherhood. With a wry smile, she told me: "Just because I've chosen not to have children, doesn't mean I'm some sort of W.C. Fields character who hates kids, doesn't have patience for them."

The other point Dyann makes to me is that, in her view, raising children is "a job, which calls on the depths of your soul to give to another person. And because I respect that, I didn't want to call forth a life and raise a child when I wasn't 110 percent passionately committed to the idea."