The INSIDER Summary

• Lifestyle blogger Alexis Chateau has decided not to have children.
• Despite the stigma surrounding women not having children, Chateau is confident with her decision.
• These are the factors that affected her decision. 

If you really think about it, your life is composed of a series of hard decisions — what to eat for brunch, where to go to school, and, oh, who you marry and whether you’ll have kids or not. Excluding your order of quiche, these decisions are pretty personal, especially if you’re talking about stuff like marriage and children. Lifestyle blogger Alexis Chateau has joined an increasingly visible group of women who’ve made the choice not to have children. “I can confirm that the stigmas surrounding voluntary childlessness exist,” Chateau asserts. “Perhaps gender norms have not changed enough.” Chateau explains that a few factors affected her decision not to have children.

1. Prioritizing Her Relationship With Her Spouse 

“I see children as an impediment to the life I want to live and the kind of relationship I want to maintain with my husband,” Chateau shares. Since people only have so much emotional energy to give, saving a huge amount for your life partner makes sense. Additionally, Chateau explains that the strain a child causes on a woman’s work life can be detrimental to a marriage.

2. The Effect Children Would Have on Her Career

Chateau calls out the major difference between men and women when it comes to the relationship between children and working outside the home: “People believe that career men’s wives and kids must be lucky to have such a wonderful provider. Career women are still frowned upon for ‘deserting’ their children at home.” All in all, Chateau believes that children would inhibit a guilt-free, uninterrupted career.

3. Financial and Travel Goals

Financial goals are, in a way, directly tied to career goals. Travel plays into this scheme as well, considering the time and energy it takes to raise another person from a baby. Even if she could accomplish these goals with a child in tow, Chateau says that she wouldn’t have kids.

4. The Gamble of Children

“I was a good kid: the kind most parents dream about,” Chateau relates. “I was always top of my class, stayed out of trouble, never did drugs, was perfectly immune to peer pressure, and had no run-ins with boys that my parents had to be concerned about. There is no guarantee I’ll have an easy-breezy child like myself, and having skipped out on all those ‘rite of passage’ experiences voluntarily, I’m not equipped to deal with my opposite.”

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