When I was a young married 20-something in the Midwest, I thought a woman’s role and joy in life was motherhood. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when I would step into my role of birthing babies and raising them. But life took many turns, including separating from my husband and finding passion in my career.
This calibration away from the straight-and-narrow gave me space to consider what I prefer to do in this life as opposed to the “shoulds” set before me by the church, gender roles and society.
“Shoulds’’ that insist that my body primarily be a means of reproductive labor. Assumptions that my greatest good can only be realized in procreation. “Shoulds” that couldn’t have been further away from my values of community, my identity as a queer woman and my own concerns about bringing another Black body into a country that doesn’t feel we matter. My decision to be child-free was a result of years of thinking through how to live my most productive life.
