If you’re a woman, from cradle to menopause; you’ll get asked this question: When Are You Having Kids?
Note, it's when, not if.
At some point in time, our wombs became the defining attribute of who we are as women, in a way that a man’s reserve of sperm simply never does. What it means to be a woman has become so intrinsically linked to having and caring for children, that it’s had a bizarre ripple effect in the rest of our lives, from how we date (that good old biological clock) to how we proceed in our careers, and in some cases, to how visible and desirable we are perceived.
So, what happens when a woman rejects that classification and - controversially - doesn’t want kids? How does society view her and what does her life look like?
That is exactly the subject of one TikTokker, who has chosen to be child-free's viral video.
Jackie Dives frequently shares videos of her everyday activities, as an artist, photo journalist, and solo traveller. She often mentions that she is child-free, which she says has been the subject of hate from viewers.
According to Jackie, people tell her that it ‘doesn’t make a difference’ if she mentions that she’s child-free or not. In response to the trolls, she created a video explaining why she chooses to be child-free - and label herself that - so others can “see what a life without children can look like” and it's pretty empowering.
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In the video, which has 2.8m views, Jackie, 39, explains: “My partner decided that he wanted to have children. We’d been together for five years, and he actually left our relationship. So I had to decide [and] be very, very sure that I was willing to let my partner go in exchange for living a child-free life. I really loved my partner a lot.”
Whilst her friends told her that she’d be “crazy to let him go and not just have a baby with him”, she says she just knew in her heart that she didn't want to be a parent. “But after we separated, it was really hard for me to visualise what my life would look like," she said, whilst blaming the lack of child-free women in media and pop culture. "I could see what my life would look like if he and I had stayed together. I would be with him and we’d have a house, and a baby, and a family, and great in-laws, and a white picket fence, the whole thing.
“I had no idea what my life would look like if I didn’t go down the path that everyone expected me to go down. It felt really lonely and strange, and I had to go seek out other women who had also made that choice.”
Jackie had to “seek out other women” who made the choice not to have children and therefore wanted to share videos branding herself as ‘child-free’ to make other women feel seen - and it seems her decision paid off. Jackie has been inundated with comments from other women who decided not to have children.
One user wrote: “Omg I have found my side of TikTok,” one wrote. “42, no kids, single and have felt moments of not fitting in …I love it here.”
“Childfree tiktok was literally the first place I saw this type of thing. I then realised that I wasn’t crazy or alone in not wanting kids,” one wrote. “I also think that in the media it’s also hard to find childfree women that aren’t depicted negatively,” another added.
We salute Jackie for encouraging women to stand together, accept and celebrate individual choices and stop trying to label and categorise each other.
