The wider American culture often expects Black women to be selfless. This ranges from the political narrative of Black women saving U.S. democracy to the expectations of Black women being emotional caretakers. It also includes Black women having children we may not want. There are conflicting narratives: either we have children too early, or we choose to have them too late if we put our careers first. I am very heavily leaning toward remaining child free, and that has cost me romantic relationships. At 28, I am now older than my mother was when she had me, and I am reminded every day that I am not growing younger. I have been grappling with the fear of possibly regretting this choice later on in life, and the United States’ constant debate over bodies like mine worries me, so I’m connecting here with Black women who have also chosen not to be mothers to better understand what led them to their choice.
Khiara Bridges, an anthropologist and professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that Black girls are socialized from childhood to become mothers with little room for negotiation. “I think that people who identify as women, we get these messages from very early [on] that your destiny is [that of] wife and mother. And so, I think it involves a certain amount of privilege in order to step out of those constant messages and examine them critically,” she observes.
In the United States, Black women’s children were considered property, sources of wealth for white slave owners during slavery. As such, they didn’t belong to their parents, and their parents ultimately had no say over their care. That legal and historical framing of Black birth and motherhood echoes down through culture today, most prevalent in the phenomenon of state intervention in Black parenting that some have called Jane Crow. The government’s inability to recognize Black mothers’ proficiencies—particularly the mothering of working-class Black women—has meant a fraught cultural connection to the idea of motherhood. Black mothering is a condition that is subject to scrutiny, commentary, and study from everyone who is not a Black mother. So no wonder some of us may wish to forgo the whole story altogether.
I speak to Black women who have made the decision not to have children for various reasons. Within these conversations, we explore the external and internal pressures they have faced, the doubts and fears they’ve experienced, and how the choice to be child free impacts their personal lives.
For Luzcelyn, a 28-year-old solar quality control specialist from New Jersey, the decision to remain child free was one that came easily. She helped raise her younger sister and eventually realized that “the person I really want to take care of is myself.” Luzcelyn, who is of Dominican descent, found that her culture definitely pressured her to have children. “As a Latina … after a certain age, you get married, you have kids.” However, she is secure in her desire to remain child free, saying, “I don’t think a lot of us [women] are told we have the option to live our lives.”
Aria, a 28-year-old freelance journalist from Long Island, tells me, “There was no point when I ever definitively wanted children. I just sort of assumed it would happen. Like the way that when you’re a kid, they tell you you’re going to grow up big and tall because the adults around you are big and tall. So you’re like, ‘Okay, sure.’ It was less of a desire than an assumption that it would happen. As I got older, I realized, ‘Oh, no, it is a legitimate choice.’ It’s not what I’m interested in.”
Jamika has been with her partner for six years. The 34-year-old creative freelancer from Tacoma, Washington, has no plans to become a mother, but says that if she were to have children, she is in a situation where it would not be disastrous. She says of her partner, “He is somebody that, if I were to get pregnant, it wouldn’t feel like absolute dread. I guess it would feel like, ‘Okay, this is something that we could do and probably do well.’” Learning about how Black women in particular experience maternal mortality at a higher rate than other races and a general fear of childbirth made giving birth unappealing to her. “I think reading statistics about giving birth, especially as a Black woman … it got to me a bit, so [the statistics] kind of validated those fears [of giving birth],” she says.
Black girls are often called upon to be caretakers at a young age, and that has affected how some of the women I interview came to feel about having children later in life. The caretaker role is necessary, as Black girls in the United States are more likely to live in poverty and the social safety net of services for families disappears, so girls pick up the slack.
Alkebuluan, a 24-year-old assistant teacher and digital archivist from Chicago, grew up largely raising her neurodivergent sibling. “I have a sibling that is neurodivergent, and I grew up assisting my parents, even to this day, to help care for them in as many capacities [as] I could,” she says. “It wasn’t till I hit 20 where I realized, ‘Hey, you know what? I’ve been taking care of somebody for X amount of years. And I don’t want that anymore.’ Not to say I don’t love my siblings. It was just that having that labor put on [me] as a young child really affected my decision of like, I don’t see myself bearing children. However, I do see myself being involved in the lives of my friends’ children.” She does not anticipate changing her mind regarding becoming a mother. Alkebuluan dreams of expanding her artistic endeavors and traveling while exploring punk throughout the African diaspora. She also pushes back against the idea that one must dislike children if they don’t want any of their own, saying, “No kids for me, but that doesn’t mean I hate children. That’s another thing people assume, like, ‘Oh, I must hate kids.’ I work with children. I currently work as an assistant teacher, and I enjoy all the students I work with, but at the same time, I don’t feel the need or desire to have any [children]. And I’m at peace with that. And also, let’s not act like children or childcare in the United States isn’t expensive. And [with] what I’m getting paid as an assistant teacher, it’s not like I can really afford a child.”
Camika, a 43-year-old professor in Maryland, finds that, although she does not have kids, she is able to be part of the support system that raises her loved ones’ children. “My line sister has three children whose lives I’m very much involved in; they come down here twice a year,” she tells me. “My little cousin, she has twin four-year-olds. … There’s lots of ways that I spend time with children, and I enjoy them. … Over here, we’ve got puzzles. We play in lipstick. We do a little dance party, and then I’ll be like, ‘All right, y’all, what movie do you want to watch?’ … I get to spend time with them and help to develop them. I get to consult their parents on different things, because I’m also an educator.”
Aria anticipates that when children enter the lives of her friends, a distance will eventually form between them and herself, saying, “I’m not feeling it so much yet, but I am very much anticipating a divide between myself and those friends who will have children, because our lives will just not resemble each other’s at all. I really don’t have any friends with children just yet, but it’s already something that’s begun to happen just with the ‘marrying and buying a house’ part, and I can’t imagine how much more exponentially that divide will grow once there are little humans in the picture.”
When I ask about the fear of regretting the decision to not have children, a number of the women express contentedness with their current lives. With the comforts they’ve created, the pros of having a child don’t outweigh the cons of switching up the lives they’ve worked so hard to build. “A lot of me accepting that I didn’t want kids was me letting go of the fact that I was going to be missing something in life,” Luzcelyn tells me.
Camika says, “I think I had not thought through the day-to-day of having my own child who needs me for every damn thing until the pandemic hit … and I was like, ‘I can’t do that.’ It sounds like a nice life for somebody, but not for me. It’s not what I want for me. I like being able to read. I like being able to travel when I get ready.”
Choosing to remain child free has, most of all, provided these women with freedom. Aria says, “I think the world really hates when Black women are open about anything pertaining to our self-actualization. Anytime we talk about desires that exist outside of and beyond servitude or nurturing other people, it goes against the fabric of the universe. … It’s one of the most explicit ways in which we say, ‘No, like, my life is for me. My time is for me, my money is for me, it’s all for me. I am going to invest all of my energy and resources into making my life as excellent and comfortable and happy as possible.’”
The potential demise of Roe v. Wade could spell disaster for women who want to remain child free but find themselves pregnant. The antiabortion movement is based in control of women, particularly Black women’s bodies. Black women’s desire to control our reproductive destiny has been weaponized; for example, Black women’s abortion rates have been framed as genocide.
But such framing deliberately erases all the ways Black women have fought for and exercised their reproductive freedom in the past, present, and future. What strikes me in speaking with these women who choose to remain child free is their understanding that such a choice is made within community. They don’t necessarily understand choosing themselves as meaning that they’re choosing rugged individualism, or renouncing communal ties altogether. These women envision a future where children, mothers, fathers, and family are parts of their lives, even as they choose to not have children of their own. It’s a stark rebuke to stereotypical narratives that pit parents and non-parents against each other. In their understanding, I begin to see a future that could serve us all.
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Black and Child Free
Source: Filipino Journal Articles
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