Rethinking Motherhood

Child-free by choice

STORY BY SAM SUNDERLAND
photo by Annmarie Kent

As a 7-year-old in day care, Tonya Kniest could not stand to hear the other children cry. Although she wasn’t aware of it at the time, Kniest says it was around this age that she first knew she wouldn’t have children. In her mid-twenties, she realized this feeling was normal. Now at 38, Kniest’s feelings toward being childfree have grown stronger.

Whether a personal choice or due to circumstance, more women are choosing not to have children. Childfree lifestyles have increased among all ethnic groups in recent decades, according to a 2010 Pew Research study about new family types.

In 1980, 10 percent of women ages 40 to 44 had no biological children, and by 2008 that number grew to 18 percent. The study also notes that Americans’ attitudes toward childless women have become more approving. In 1988, 39 percent disagreed that “people who have never had children lead empty lives,” according to the General Social Survey. In 2002, 59 percent disagreed.

Kniest connects with other childfree friends online, which is how she discovered the Bellingham Non-Moms group on social networking site Meetup.com.

Founder of Bellingham Non-Moms, Amber Oelschlager was inspired after reading an article by Lauren Sandler in Time magazine, titled “The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children.” The article detailed another Meetup.com group called non-moms. She instantly connected with the sentiment and, in August 2013, created the group to meet similar women.

Oelschlager, 34, says as women have become more independent, the number of childfree women has increased. Children emotionally, financially and physically change a woman’s life, which is something childfree women evaluate, Oelschlager says.

“When I was younger, I would probably have said I wanted children, but when I was 18 I don’t think I knew the responsibility of life,” Oelschlager says.

Today, the Bellingham Non-Moms group has approximately 60 members across a spectrum of ages from their 20s to 40s. Meet ups happen monthly and typically include movies, dinners and concert outings.

For Kniest, being a non-mom is the core of who she is. Within the group, she finds security in being around other women passionate about not having children.

“We can sit together and not talk about diapers and babies and all the things that really don’t interest me … it’s really nice, almost freeing,” Kniest says.

Fellow member Catalina Hope loves children, but doesn’t want any of her own. As a young girl, Hope watched her parents struggle while raising her and her many siblings. She swore she wouldn’t do the same.

Hope also observed her friends in the foster care system struggle without parents. While in college, she worked as a mentor for pregnant teens, where she witnessed the responsibility needed to raise children.

“I was learning from other people’s mistakes, basically,” she says.

Today, Hope spends her time with her husband of more than 20 years, and teaches at Whatcom Community College.

Although the Bellingham non-moms share similar perspectives about having children, each woman’s individual reasoning remains unique.