Recently, I attended a virtual social gathering and was interacting with a group of married people. Most of them had children and few didn’t. Given the Indian ecosystem, married couples are often subjected to societal pressures of having children and continuing the family ‘legacy’. There is an intrinsic connection between marriage and procreation. The link is so deep that many people in this group believed that couples who do not have kids cannot really be married. Judgments were passed on child-free couples such as “life without children has no meaning”, ” child-free couples are selfish”, ” its a shame”, ” you will never know what real love is” and the list was endless. Although, I had some humorous answers in the favor of child-free couples, I chose to stay quiet and excused myself rather than disrespect anyone’s choice.
There appears to be a bizarre stigma around people who voluntarily decide not to procreate. Please accept my apology for being rude, but this belief is quite inane. I know so many couples who are married for years, have taken a conscious decision of not having children and are happy. Everyone loves children, but if a couple decides that they never wanna go there, we think there is something wrong with them! Why can’t we accept and respect others’ decision? Why do we ridicule people who intend to be child-free for the rest of their life. They may not be anti-children, they may just feel that it is not the best place for them to channelize their energies. May be they want to simply experience other things in life and have a different purpose. But I guess, its hard for our society to break the stereotype and admit that a couple’s life without a child can be complete and prosperous. Probably, more live examples in the years to come will help break this myth!
Until then, I sincerely urge to people (with or without children) to only respect each other’s choices. What may work for us, may not work for others and vice-versa!