Patrick Freyne

What we have learned and what, you know, we've had conversations with a lot of friends about this is,

is that there's a kind of sense, particularly I think for women, that your life, that you can't be happy without children, right?

And there's a messaging out there that everything kind of is about that.

And I think that makes people feel worse than the actual experience.

I think the reality is,

maybe there's a small minority of people who really need to have kids and there's a really small minority of people who shouldn't have kids and don't want them.

But most people, and I know this from talking to a lot of people, can be happy one way or another.

And there might be a bit of sadness there that it didn't happen.

But actually there's all these other things you get instead.

Like I called the essay I wrote something else after something Elizabeth Gilbert said about how...

because she doesn't have kids that she didn't get kids, but she got something else.

And you get these other things, you get these other relationships, these other kind of ways of living in the world and these other opportunities.

And I don't think that's focused enough on like, I think even the terms childless or child free are problematic because there's like a, in both of those, there's a judgment, you know, there's a sense that one is a bad thing and that one is a good thing.

Whereas actually, I think just saying you don't have kids, it should be neutral enough.

So there is a kind of, I did feel like there's an external pressure.

And a sense of failure?

Yeah.

And actually, there shouldn't be because there's a hundred different ways of living a good life.

That's another thing I wrote that I got loads of responses to from people who

basically had that sense that, you know, they were being judged or that they had failed and they just wanted to hear the message that they hadn't, that there's more ways of doing life.