The insistent pressure of settling down and starting a family can be crippling to many of us. People, especially women, are often expected to become parents and are criticized when they choose not to be. But raising kids takes a lot of responsibility, time, energy, effort — and not everyone is ready to commit to the sacrifices that parenthood demands.
In the eighth episode of Returning Home, Elise shares the reasons behind her decision to remain childless. Here, she highlights the importance of “freedom” and “living life on her own terms.” She hopes her journey will help you reflect on your priorities in life and whether having children is something you truly want – and that there’s nothing wrong if you don’t.
If you want to learn more about the decision of being child-free, this episode is for you!
Here are three reasons why you should listen to this episode:
- Discover what it means to be childless by choice.
- Find out the possible reasons — and Elise’s reasons — for choosing to be childless.
- Reflect on your perspectives and priorities on becoming a parent.
Resources
- Slow Down To Speed Up: Visualization Masterclass
- Sign up for Elise’s Newsletter and receive a FREE PDF to start your self-compassion journey!
- Connect with Elise on Instagram: @elisekindya
Episode Highlights
[02:12] Choosing to Be Childless
- Currently, Elise feels good about her decision of being childless.
- Change is constant; she might change her mind in the future but doesn’t see herself having kids right now
- Growing up, she used to think about having kids.
- Becoming a parent and starting a family someday are expected from almost everyone.
[05:29] Why People Choose Not to Have Kids
- Raising kids takes a lot of responsibility, and not everyone is ready for them.
- Some people might just not want to have children.
- You should live life on your own terms.
- Capitalism is another reason people decide not to have kids since living in a capitalist society is both time and energy-consuming.
Elise: “Everybody’s on their last limb on their last thread on their last nerve, right? Like it’s just this constant grind… And it makes me think of trauma. Because trauma is too much too fast too soon. And it seems like there’s this whole hustle of raising kids.”
- The world we currently live in and its cultural and social expectations influenced Elise’s decision to be childless.
[10:24] Healing Trauma
- Elise thinks having kids right now will impede her journey of trauma healing and set her back to a place of scarcity.
- The inflexibility of time due to constant work may activate trauma and lead to burnout.
- Trauma can be passed on through biological tissues, resulting in generational trauma.
[14:43] Other Reasons for Being Childless
- Climate change, population increase, and industrialization are detrimental to our planet and have become a problem for future generations.
- Elise worries about her kids’ safety and quality of life in such a damaged world if she chooses to have children.
- She wants to enjoy her time and not deal with the anxieties that having a child entails.
- Some people are childless by choice because they want to experience certain things in life that parenting would take away from them.
[19:23] Treasuring Your Freedom
- Most people adore cute babies without realizing that they will grow up to develop their own personalities, behavior, and personal issues.
- Elise believes that dealing with children would strip away most of her freedom.
- Essentially, she enjoys her alone time and refuses the idea of children trespassing into her space.
- You can choose the battles you want to fight and make empowered decisions in your life.
[24:04] Knowing Your Priorities
- Her decision could change, but choosing to be childless feels true to her.
- It’s important for Elise to prioritize herself, her health, and other aspects of her life — she is her priority right now.
- She still struggles with putting herself first sometimes.
- For a long time, Elise didn’t put herself first, which made her unhappy.
Elise: “For me, what it means to be childless by choice is to put myself first, all the time, every single day, no matter what because I didn’t do that for a really, really long time. And it made me extremely unhappy.”
[25:43] The Choice is Yours
- Having kids will probably make her feel resentful.
- While exploring other possibilities, she is grateful that her life unfolds in such a way that led her to this perspective.
- Your life is unfolding the way it’s meant to unfold.
Elise: “If you’re listening to this, your life is unfolding how it’s meant to unfold. And the desires that you have are meant to be there, and the type of life you want to have is possible for you. And so you get to make these decisions from an empowered and informed place.”
- Life doesn’t come with rules, so don’t let anybody tell you what to do.
- If you want to know more about being childless by choice, search relevant hashtags on Instagram and look for podcasts.
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Transcript
Elise Kindya: When I think about my reasons for not wanting to have kids or being childless by choice, one of the guiding words of my life is freedom. That is something that means a lot to me and helps me make decisions — like does something help me to feel more or less free? When I think about kids, I think about the opposite of that. That is part of why I choose not to because I want to embody freedom, I want to embody like — living life on my terms.
Welcome to Returning Home: The Podcast. My name is Elise Kindya, and I am a trauma-informed and intuitive therapist. This podcast is a space that I have created for you to discover a deeper understanding and love for yourself which leads to expanding what you think is possible in your own life. My goal is for you to feel excited to live your life as your full, authentic self.
By listening to these episodes, you will learn things like how your brain works, my favorite resources for healing, stories from my own life, practices that you can press play on to add to your healing toolkit, and so much more. I invite you to return home to yourself in big and small ways to live the life you desire on your terms. You can live connected, empowered, and aligned. When you return home to yourself, anything is possible. I can’t wait to share all of my insights with you. Now, let’s begin.
Hello, and welcome back to Returning Home: The Podcast. This is Elise Kindya, and I am the host of this podcast. I’m a licensed clinical social worker. Today, I want to talk about something that is more of like personal interest to me, and something that I’ve been kind of chatting with people about on social media. It sounds like it’s a podcast episode that people are interested in and wanting to dive into. I want to talk a little bit about —
I’m 35, about to be 36, and I have chosen to be childless. I think a lot of people in my generation are also making this choice. It’s something that I’ve been talking about on my social media, and just wanted to hop on the podcast, and talk a little bit about what I’m learning and what I’m hearing about. I want to say that, of course, this is where I’m at in my life right now. It might change. Who’s to say the only constant in life is change, of course? We keep evolving and growing.
But I will say that right now, this is a choice that I do feel really good about. I know some people that follow me on Instagram and that we’ve been talking in the DMS — there are other people that feel similarly. I want to preface this also by saying if you’re one of my friends, or clients, or somebody that I know listening to this podcast that does have kids, this is in no way an attack on you, or anything like that. This is just something in my own life, this is a choice that I’ve made, and I want to speak to it.
I know that there are other people out there that are making similar choices. Again, no shade. Nothing like this has nothing to do with anybody personally besides me. This is just a choice I’m making for my own life. But like I said, this could always change. Maybe in a few years, I’ll wake up and be like, “I’m ready for this now.” But I haven’t felt that way in my adulthood.
I do know as a kid, I used to think about having kids. I think as girls, maybe we’re socialized that way. That’s one of the toys that we received — is like a baby, right? When I was — I forget what age. Maybe I was in first grade, I received a baby bassinet for Christmas or something.
It was this really pretty pink — like deep pink, magenta kind of color, velvet — really pretty baby carriage, and had tons of different baby dolls and toys, and things like that. It’s always something that’s put on kids as — put on girl children — as like something to aspire to. “You’re going to be a mommy.”
As a kid, I think I wanted that because like what do we really know about life and choice, and all of that when we’re kids? Not a whole lot. It’s an expectation. As I’ve gotten older, who’s to say — and this is something I’ll explore in this episode around what’s choice and what kind of life circumstance, the state of the world. But that desire definitely is not present in my life right now.
As I’ve been talking with people in my DMs, I’m learning a lot about why other people don’t have the same desire. There are some people that say things like, “I don’t understand why people want kids. I don’t like kids. It’s not something I’ve ever wanted.” I mean, I think that we see — I don’t know if you’ve ever looked up any of those hashtags like #ChildlessbyChoice and #CoolAuntie, and things like that.
But raising kids comes with a lot of yucky stuff you have to deal with. I was saying this to a client recently, where I was like, “I’ve seen how the sausage gets made, and I’m good.” I used to be a counselor in a school, as well as doing intensive in-home counseling, and I was a nanny and a babysitter. I was babysitting from the age of 12, all the way up through — even when I was in grad school, I would find babysitting jobs just to make ends meet.
I’ve like seen kids in lots of different settings, in lots of different stages, and lots of with different needs that they have. It’s just like, “I’ve seen how the sausage gets made.” And I’m like, “So good.” I think a lot of people can relate on that. It’s like — they’re changing the diapers, and potty training, and throwing up, and the bottles, and the food and then this and that — it’s just not for everybody.
A lot of people are saying like, “I want to live life on my terms.” Whatever that means to you. I definitely think that there’s something to be said for making time for travel and hobbies, and making our schedules the way that we want them to be, taking vacations that aren’t just on school holidays, being able to set your life up in a way that has you at the center.
This kind of like leads into another topic. But I don’t even know that the way that life is set up right now is how it’s supposed to be — like how we start school in September, and we work through until Christmas, winter break kind of thing. Then, pick back up, and then work until the spring. Take spring break, and then work until the summer and take summer break.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Society isn’t necessarily set up in a way that’s really serving anyone, let alone kids, let alone families. But another reason that I think people aren’t having kids right now is capitalism. It’s not possible in — but maybe that’s overstepping, maybe it’s possible for some people. But what I have seen, and with the people I work with, and even people that are in my social orbit, and just me having to eyes and like, I can see what’s going on. It doesn’t seem to be working too well to have family and work, and all of these things going on.
It always seems like there’s a scarcity of time. There’s a scarcity of energy. Everybody’s on their last limb, on their last thread, on their last nerve. It’s just this constant grind. I really do think that it’s so fast, it’s so much, it’s so “ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da”. It makes me think of trauma because trauma is too much, too fast, too soon. It seems like there’s this whole hustle of raising kids. There’s this, and this, and this, and this, and this. It’s not slow, it’s really fast and it’s really overwhelming.
All that I hear is sleep deprivation and overwhelm, and that’s not good for your body. That’s not really good for anybody. That’s definitely one of the reasons I am choosing not to have kids is the environment that we live in right now — the society we live in, the cultural expectations, the cultural conditioning, what kids are or are not learning in school. We really don’t have — not that I need to have control over another person, but there isn’t a lot of…
I hear parents say this like, “Well, I don’t want my kid exposed to this or this.” I mean, there’s this whole conversation in our country right now are on critical race theory and people not wanting their kids exposed to that. It’s like, “What the heck are you talking about?” First of all, I don’t want my kids exposed to people like you. What?
That’s just not a battle that I want to fight, and I don’t want to think about that every single day. This is going to be coming on a later podcast episode. But something that I’m getting in touch with right now with myself is healing trauma at a deeper level. Like I said, I’m going to unfold a little bit more around that like what that means.
But I know for me, if I were to choose to have kids right now, I would be going backwards in my journey to heal trauma because I’m just finally peeling some layers of this onion that I haven’t had access to before, and I’m finally having access to them. I know that having kids would just set me all the way back to the beginning of that cycle of that journey.
I do think that living in this system that we live in with work, and sick days, and sick time, and sick leave, and PTO, and vacation time, and, “You can only take this many days off”, and “There’s only this much flexibility” — I think it’s really burning people out into this. Maybe, it’s not necessarily trauma, but it’s definitely activating. It’s definitely making people question their resources. Even time is a resource, and people are finding that that feels really scarce.
It brings to mind the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The very basic, most foundational need of all people is to have safety, security, housing, food, clothing, water. What I see is this — I don’t want to say a lack of those things, but from what I’ve seen, and heard, and experienced, and witnessed, and been a part of firsthand having kids, I think sets would set me into a place of, “I don’t have enough — there’s not enough time, there’s not enough of this, there’s not enough of that.” Already on that the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
I want to get to the top, I don’t want to be at the bottom. This is maybe a privilege that I have that I’m able to see that and to see, “Okay, I’m like in the middle. I’m approaching the top. I’m doing what I need to do.” And I can choose to not set myself back. Again, this is a very personal opinion of mine. I’m not saying that everybody has to agree with me, or everybody has the same experience as me. They don’t.
But this is something that I’ve noticed in my own kind of thinking around this and journey around this. I do think there is a sense of — and I’ve talked about this before of trauma can be passed on through biological tissue, like through your body to your child’s body. You might have seen this image that was going around — it was like a couple of years ago at this point — but the egg that made you was inside of the fetus that your mother was inside of your grandmother.
Whatever happened to your grandmother’s body while she was pregnant with your mother is inside of some of that DNA that is now flowing in your body. It’s possible. This is why we have generational trauma — not the only reason. There’s a lot of reasons why there’s generational trauma, but this is one of the reasons. The way that I think about that is like I don’t know enough about that to want to keep passing that down.
I don’t want to be part of that continual cycle. I definitely think healing is possible in this lifetime for everybody. I think if I were to have kids, that would just be like a whole another level of healing that they would need to do too. I don’t want to do it. I just don’t want to do it. I think kind of going towards the in the same vein of society not being the type of environment that I want to raise a kid in, the planet — although we have such a beautiful planet, we also have climate change. It’s a really real problem.
We have an increasing population on Earth and not an increasing space of Earth. Earth is still the same size as it was when there were like a million people on it. Now, there’s over a billion. I think this is tied in with capitalism. For whatever reason, the Earth isn’t a priority to the people in charge. They’re prioritizing money and production of goods over the Earth. That is going to be very detrimental to human life.
I believe in science. I think it’s really amazing when you see a — there’s this… I don’t know if it’s some type of a time-lapse or what it is, but it’s an image of the earth and what the Earth looked like for the millions of years it was here before humans, and then as humans lived here for a few 100,000 years. But then when the Industrial Revolution hits and the amount of damage that has been done to the earth in such a short amount of time, and how it’s just going, and going, and going — it just feels like it feels a little hopeless.
For me, if I were to have kids, and they had kids, and they had kids, and they had kids — I would worry about their safety. I would worry about their quality of life living on this planet. That’s just not a thing that I want to enter into or expose myself to. It’s just, “Okay, I’m good.” I don’t need to fight that battle. I don’t need to do all those mental gymnastics. I don’t need that guilt on my heart or on my conscience.
Some people, maybe they don’t think about that. Maybe that’s not something — or maybe they do and if that’s something that you think about, and you have a way for coping with that, I would love to hear that. I would love to know more about how you cope with that. I’ve mentioned this on the podcast before, I’m an Aquarius. I am in my head 99.9999% of the time — that’s an over-exaggeration, but somewhere in there — I would think about something like this.
It’s not a priority. For me is, if I’m already here, and I’m already like a human taking up space, I just kind of want to enjoy my time and not think about, “Wow, what’s the like repercussions of like all of this I’m producing — whether it’s kids and all their waste, and all of that. Then, they have to be here with all of the corporations that are producing billions of tons of methane gas and all this other stuff, and whatever. You know what I’m saying?
It’s just not something — I’m just kind of taking myself out of that equation. Maybe, that’s selfish. I mean, I’m okay with being selfish for that reason. That’s okay with me. When I heard from some other people on my Instagram, they were saying they were childless by choice because they want to experience certain things in life that parenting would take them away from — like not being able to do this one thing full force, 100%-all-in.
Because being a parent, clearly your attention and your responsibility is kind of occupied over there I totally respect that. That’s something that I’m dealing with as well in my life. One person responded that they like dogs better than kids — which I think is really funny. I think something that we have to remember is that children are whole people. A baby is born and sure, babies are freaking cute until they vomit or poop, and then goodbye.
But babies are so cute — they’re supposed to be cute because if they weren’t, then nobody would actually take care of them. It’s an evolutionary advance that they’re cute like they’re supposed to be. It’s meant to be that way. But what I think some people forget is that babies grow up into toddlers. Then, they will become school-aged kids, and then they become middle schoolers.
Oh, my God. No offense if you’re in middle school listening to this, talk to me in five years. Then, they become high school students, and then they’re adults. Babies don’t stay babies forever. I don’t know if people forget that. Your child, your cute little baby is going to grow into a toddler, and then they’re going to grow into a middle schooler. I mean, a 13-year-old girl is — no offense again — but, oh, my God. I can remember myself at 13, and I apologize to all of my teachers in school and to all of the kids in my class. That was the worst time ever.
Thinking about having to share my personal space with any other type of offspring — like older than a very small infant. Even that, I would be sleep deprived, so then I would still be miserable. I can’t imagine it. I don’t want to give up my freedom in that way. I really enjoy being alone. If you look at my astrological chart, most of my planets are in the 12th house, which means I love me some alone time. I could be by myself for a long time and that would be fine.
I kind of think of my home as my safe haven. I think that I would feel really — I don’t want to say it would feel like an invasion. That feels a little bit harsh. But I think it would be really difficult for me to share my space with children. I like things to kind of be a certain way. I’m not a neat freak by any means. There are a few things out of place. But overall, I take care of my stuff. I put it back where it goes. I like that kind of vibe.
I remember myself as a kid, you couldn’t walk in my room when I was in middle school. I’m so ashamed of this — my mom wanted to get the wooden floors refinished in the house, and she was like, “Hey, Elise. You need to clean your room so that we can get the floors refinished.” I was like, “I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m going to be doing that.” And I didn’t. That was the kind of kid I was.
Those are not battles that I’m trying to fight. It’s not that serious to me to like… If you’re someone that has kids, loves kids, wants kids, is planning to have more kids — I would just love to hear why? I guess I think about myself as a kid, and I’m like, “Oh, Lord.” That was a lot.
I know on the previous podcast episode, I talked about inner child healing. Still on that journey, for sure. But this is part of me making empowered decisions in my life. It’s like, “Oh, I can choose. I have the choice, and I’m choosing not to go down that road.” I mean, I think when I think about my reasons for not wanting to have kids or being childless by choice, one of the guiding words of my life is freedom. That is something that means a lot to me and helps me make decisions like — does something helped me to feel more or less free?
When I think about kids, I think about the opposite of that. That is part of why I choose not to because I want to embody freedom, I want to embody like — living life on my terms, going where I want to go, doing what I want to do, making my schedule the way that I want it to be. I choose freedom for myself.
Like I said, this could change. Like I said, I’m going on this whole other layer of my own trauma healing journey. Maybe, once I get through this layer and the next few, maybe this will change. But right now, I’m feeling pretty solid in that decision. It feels from a place of truth for me. For me, it’s really important to take care of myself — like my mental health, my physical health, and other aspects of my life right now are the top priority in my life.
As I say that, I envision a list, there is a hierarchy of who is most important in my life. I am number one on the top of that list. It used to not be that way. There are days that I struggle with that. But that is my aspiration right now in life. My goal is to make it so that that never changes. Like I always see myself as number one on the top of my list from now until the day that I die.
That is how I’m choosing to go forward. For me, what it means to be childless by choice is to put myself first all the time, every single day, no matter what because I didn’t do that for a really, really long time, and it made me extremely unhappy. Something else that I’ll talk about on a future podcast episode is this — is the feeling of resentment and how that has played out in my life, and how I don’t want to feel that on a regular basis.
I know for me, that would be probably the leading emotion in my life if I were to have kids, I would feel very resentful. Maybe that means I’m less evolved than people who are parents. I don’t know. I’m okay with exploring what’s good for me. I have to say I am really grateful to be able to have the choice, to have the perspective that I have now in life and the experiences that I’ve had that have led me to this point, that have led me to this perspective. I’m really grateful and thankful that this is how it’s unfolded for me.
I think for you, if you’re listening to this, your life is unfolding how it’s meant to unfold. The desires that you have are meant to be there, and the type of life you want to have is possible for you. You get to make these decisions from an empowered and informed place.
There’s no rush, there’s no rules. Nobody’s telling you you have to do one thing or the other. Nobody’s telling you you have to agree with them. I’m not making this episode in hopes to persuade anybody to not have kids. I’m not making this episode to shame anybody who has had kids. I’m making this episode to speak my truth on why I haven’t.
Then, for people that maybe are also thinking about these things, I just want to provide a place where maybe you’re going to hear something that you don’t normally hear. It’s not really talked about that much. As I was — this idea just kind of came to me in the last few days, and I went on Instagram and searched the hashtag #ChildlessbyChoice. If you are childless-curious, or whatever you want to call it, maybe search that hashtag on Instagram.
There’s tons of — there’s podcasts, there’s people. I saw somebody that’s like a childless coach, there are people out there talking about this. It’s not super popular, and I’m sure if you’re my age — like I said, I’m 35 — you probably are seeing a lot of people posting that they’re pregnant, that they’re having kids, you’re going to baby showers, all of this stuff. If you’re wondering, “What the heck? Why?” Maybe search that hashtag out and see if you find some kind of messaging that resonates for you.
These are some of the reasons I’m considering or that I’ve considered, and I have decided not to have kids and wanted to share some of the feedback that I got in my DMs and in my polls when I put this out in my story recently. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode. I hope that you got a lot out of it. If you know somebody that is wondering about having kids or not, go ahead and share this episode with them.
If you got something out of listening to this episode today, I would so much appreciate if you could rate my podcast by scrolling down and just clicking on the stars. If you want to even leave a review, that really helps in getting this message out there to more people. Make sure to follow me on Instagram. My handle is my name — so @elisekindya. I don’t talk about being childless a lot on Instagram, but maybe it’s something I’ll talk about more.
So if this is a topic that you are interested in, please feel free to give me a follow and send a DM or something. I think that this is a really interesting topic to think about. I do think that as millennials, we’re like — all these expectations were put on us, and now we’re waking up like, “Oh, wait! What?” I can’t even afford to do that, let alone like the desire to do that. I think it’s a funny time to be alive for sure. Again, I so much appreciate you being here, and I will look forward to catching you on the next episode.
