Childfree

Not childless

Photo by Andrew Itaga on Unsplash

And she knows, she knows And I know she knows, and I know she knows And deep down, she knows, she knows

— J. Cole

The script was prewritten.

By the time your chest shows evidence of maturity, you should be thinking of getting kids. Breast maturity may precede the first menstrual period, which could be hidden from the public. A maturing female chest couldn’t. You were now ripe to have children. That was the script.

In the past, no constitution guided when it was right for a man to sleep with a woman. Sometimes, they were hardly old enough to be called a woman, but these kinds of arguments could have the lady burnt for witchcraft. You never questioned men.

Marriages were arranged. It was strategic. Find a partner who would uplift your status. Better yet, if you’re male, find several ladies. In certain communities, such as the Lele of Kasai, females were tied to different males. Then, make as many babies as you can.

My grandmother had a soccer team for children. It was more unusual if you had fewer kids. It was a sign of wealth and innate endowment. Therein lies the clue.

A man could not consider taking a second wife if he didn’t have the vigour and means to sustain two families. Life back then was simpler, easier, and less competitive than it is presently. Today, you have to compete with everyone, because everyone is online. A few centuries ago, close kin was only the group you knew.

At the turn of the 20th century, land was abundant. Families could buy homes. Henry Ford was on a mission to make cars affordable. The feudal system was the proper incentive to push families to get more children.

In the African setting, when a lady could not get pregnant, she was blamed. The men were falsely without fault. Plans could be organized by other women to have another man try his luck. If she got pregnant, the secret went with her and her conclave of women to the grave. The man’s prestige could be restored thanks to some other man’s little man’s job.

Queen Catherine of Aragon was the unlucky one who never gave King Henry VIII a son. Frustrated, the King seceded from the Catholic Church, took a second wife, and birthed the Anglican Church.

Being childless was that powerful. Unless you were a priest, not having a child was one of the worst states for any adult. Some were specific about the kind of child they would have. A son, for the father to train. A daughter, for the mother to either mould or scold.

Everyone was doing it. From the royal families to the peasants. You just had to have children. The details of this story matter. To appreciate it, let’s consider a thought experiment.

Persisting vs reproducing

I can’t be what you want from me, well, alright

— J. Cole

Consider a world with only two categories of living creatures — humans and bacteria.

Luckily, in this world, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek still discovers microscopic life. We begin to notice that we are not the only creatures on our planet.

In this world, Darwin and Wallace also formulate the theory of Natural Selection, but solely from observing human behaviour. Viruses still exist, but the biologists don’t think they are alive. Unknown to them, these are the entities that allow humans to have placentas and give birth. Watson and Crick discover the DNA, and further studies reveal that it’s the source code. In short, many of the human biological discoveries in our world happened in this other world.

We then begin to investigate bacteria. They have features similar to ourselves. A membrane. Metabolic activity. They produce proteins. They have DNA. However, the moment we discover them, our world undergoes a climatic shift. For as long as we study them, they show almost all the features similar to ours except one — they don’t reproduce. They move, they excrete waste, they harness energy from their environment, but they don’t reproduce.

Would Darwin and Wallace still think their theory holds?

In truth, bacteria can stay for centuries, even millennia, without reproducing. When conditions turn favourable, they begin to do what God asked of Adam and Eve. Favourable conditions push organisms to consider making versions of themselves, to reproduce. It also means there can be conditions when reproduction can be the farthest thing anyone contemplates.

My thought experiment is a windy path only to assert that organisms prefer to persist first rather than reproduce. Lessons from the microscopic world reveal that they can withhold this drive for years. Prioritizing persistence over reproduction started with our ancestors. Today, it’s here with us.

In 1955, the fertility rate in Kenya was 7.6 per woman. More than enough to replace the population. In 2026, it’s down to 3.13. It’s still growth, but the rate has gone down by more than 50%. It’s not unsurprising. Bacteria have known about this for billions of years. When conditions turn unfavourable, it’s better not to reproduce.

The effects are felt at a global scale. Not even men, who were once considered proud and proper members of a community when they started a family, are now contemplating the costs it would take to raise theirs. One barely makes enough to survive on their own. Bringing another small human is a burden inflicted upon oneself. An avoidable burden.

Conversations when I was starting my internship were that women did not fear getting sexually transmitted infections, diseases, or even HIV/AIDS. What they feared most was getting pregnant. They would rather abort.

Barely a week into our clinical years, a friend tells me that one of her close confidants, a non-medic, was asking for assistance to terminate a pregnancy. Abortion is a heavy topic because one contemplates how they can survive with another human being when life is practically unbearable. In the words of J. Cole:

Damned if I do Damned if I don’t

The male spider risks having their head decapitated during the mating process. Why? The female needs to have adequate nutrition to sustain the pregnancy. The same goes for the praying mantis. Females who don’t get the right nutrition raise small hatchlings.

It means that for the women who decide not to have children, they are different from the women in the past only in context. Today’s women are not childless. They are childfree. The decision is rational. Having children when life is hard defies the evolutionary urge (according to the theory of Organismal Selection). But if it’s globally felt, it’s either our theory (Natural Selection, which speaks about reproduction or replication) is potentially lacking, or the universality of the phenomenon needs to be fit inside the curve.

I’m all for getting a new theory. Reproduction is a choice. Even for the microscopic life forms. It means that evolution stems from choice. There is agency. Prevailing theories of evolution hardly factor in agency. Luckily for you, who is reading this, I have developed an alternative theory. The changes in fertility rate the world over are an added piece of evidence.

This new theory supports the notion that a lady can be childfree. Being childless means a list of possibilities, one of which is that somebody has tried to get babies but failed. Being childfree means one does not even want to think of trying. And she knows, she knows. All revolve around reproduction and the situational conditions.

The more women got educated, the more they fought against arranged marriages. It was about time men and women, both sides, thought about their preferences. One’s status could not be nipped in the bud because of the other in the interest of preserving customs. Education also reduced early marriage.

Education thus shows that raising a family has always been a decision all along. One could therefore opt to be childfree, even in the best of times, as opposed to our present unbearable economic times.

What I’m trying to say is…

Childfree is not childless.

I don’t think I need to say more.

[embed]This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube