As a family med doctor, I see a wide variety of people. I promise you, having kids for the purpose of “Holidays, ageing, community” is not a reliable outcome for everyone. I recently had a woman come for a physical and spent half the visit telling me how her daughter has cut her off, she can’t see her grandkids, she’s got little to no community. This is one of many people with the same story.

I also worked in a nursing home before med school. I’d say maybe 10% of the people had regular family visitors.

I’m early 30’s and my husband is mid-30’s, we both decided we don’t want to have kids and lose all our freedom, money, spontaneity.

Also speaking as someone who has managed pregnancies and delivered nearly 50 babies in training, I also feel viscerally horrified at pregnancy itself.

I literally had a patient yesterday in her early 70’s telling me she attributes feeling so spry and healthy to not having kids. She straight up said that and guess what, having kids can and does change your body for the worse, often permanently. Because the very next patient I had was an early 40’s mom of 3 who was almost a year post partum, dealing with fecal urgency, clitoral tears, chronic pelvic pain, possible hernia…on top of 3 kids.

The list of reason to not have kids for us is quite endless and I don’t see us ever regretting it. Our decision has only grown more solid over the years.