Life without children: chosen and unchosen

“Oh, you don’t have children? Oh.”

A cousin’s wedding, a round table, ten people who know each other more or less. The question was asked in passing, between the soup and the main course, and the “oh” at the end was short. Yet it held everything: a little pity, a little awkwardness, a little curiosity as to whether this was a sad story or a strange choice. The woman who told me about it was forty-six. She said she had learnt to answer with a smile. And that every time it still takes her breath away for a moment — not because of the question, but because of that “oh”.

Life without children is very different depending on how you came to it. For one person it is a choice made calmly and without regret. For another it is an outcome they did not choose: after years of infertility, after losses, after treatments that did not work, or simply because the right moment and the right person never coincided. Other people often do not distinguish between these two stories — and both of them sometimes leave people no peace. In this post I write about both.

Two words for two different stories

English has settled on a distinction between childfree and childless: the first describes people who do not want children, the second those who want them but do not have them. Slovene has no good words for this. We say “brez otrok” — without children — and use it to cover both experiences, even though they are almost opposites.

Reality is more varied than two words. Between a clear choice and a clear absence of choice lies a wide band of people for whom something happened in between: they put it off because they had not found the right partner, because they were caring for an ill parent, because the flat was too small or the job too uncertain — and at some point time decided for them. These people often do not know where they belong. They did not choose, but neither were they turned away. They often feel they have no right to grieve, because “they could have, but didn’t”.

What happens twenty years later

We know less than you might expect about how people live once the decision is behind them. Most research on infertility ends on the day of the last treatment. One of the rare exceptions is a Swedish study in which Ingrid Wirtberg and colleagues, in 2007, conducted in-depth interviews with women twenty years after unsuccessful infertility treatment. It showed something that surprises many people: after two decades the experience was still an important part of their lives. Not as an everyday pain, but as something that returns — at the menopause, as friends became grandparents, when thinking about old age.

Another important finding comes from a 2017 review by Sofia Gameiro and Amy Finnigan, which brought together studies on the long-term adjustment of people who did not become parents after assisted reproduction. Most of them adjust over time and live satisfying lives. But adjustment was harder for those in whom the wish for a child stayed alive — who could not, or felt they were not allowed to, let it go. So the key is not whether you have children, but whether the life you are living can gradually come to feel like yours again.

If you are in the period when this decision is still being made, you may find When is enough enough? Deciding to end fertility treatment helpful. Here I write about what comes afterwards.

Grief without a date

When someone close dies, there is a day, a funeral, an anniversary. With an unchosen life without children there is none of this. There is no moment when the loss happens. There is only a slow realisation that comes in waves: when you realise it is too late; when a friend tells you she has become a grandmother; when your parents die and you realise there will be nobody after you to remember them as a grandchild’s grandad and grandma.

The American researcher Kenneth Doka introduced the term disenfranchised grief for grief of this kind — grief that others do not see and therefore do not support. I have written more about it in The grief nobody acknowledges. With life without children there is something more: you grieve for someone who never existed and for a life you never lived. Some authors describe it using the concept of ambiguous loss introduced by Pauline Boss — a loss without clear boundaries, without finality, without ritual.

This grief is not an illness. It cannot be “fixed”, and not because a person is too weak. It is because the loss meets each new stage of life afresh and takes on a new meaning there. You will find a short explanation of how grief unfolds in the knowledge base under grieving. People who have lost some other big plan go through something similar — I have written about this in The loss of a plan: when life doesn’t turn out the way you thought.

When a choice is treated as suspect

People who chose a life without children themselves carry a different burden. Their difficulty is often not sadness but the fact that others do not believe them. “You’ll change your mind.” “Who’s going to look after you when you’re old?” “You don’t know what you’re missing.” Deciding to have children requires no explanation to anyone, yet for deciding not to, people expect a full defence.

Leslie Ashburn-Nardo tested this in a study published in 2017. Participants read a short description of a married person who had decided either to have children or not to. They rated the people who had decided not to have children as less fulfilled in life — and reported something the researcher called moral outrage. As if it were not a personal decision but a breach of a rule.

Even a chosen decision does not mean it contains no doubt at all. A person can be entirely sure they do not want children and still feel something at a friend’s new baby, on Mother’s Day, or about parents who will never be grandparents. That is not proof they were wrong. It is proof that every path gives something and takes something. The knowledge base entry regret writes about this — and about the difference between regret and simply being aware that you have chosen something.

When there are two of you

In a couple, the stories rarely overlap entirely. One wanted a child more, the other less. One has already accepted it, the other not yet. One would continue with treatment or consider adoption, the other cannot face any more. The conversation about this can stay unspoken for years, because both fear it would open something that could never be closed again. This is how it might sound when it finally happens (composite, not a real person):

“Sometimes I feel you’re relieved.”
“I’m not relieved. I just couldn’t bear watching you suffer every month any more.”
“So you gave up because of me.”
“I gave up because of us. And yes, sometimes I am relieved. And then I feel guilty for being relieved.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Because I thought you’d think I never really wanted you as a mother.”

In a conversation like this, nobody is right. There are two people who found themselves in different places in the face of the same loss — and who hid it from each other for a long time to protect one another. Once it is spoken, the relationship often feels lighter. I have written about why partners grieve the same loss differently in Grieving as a couple: why you grieve differently.

What helps: letting go and investing again

The psychologist Carsten Wrosch and his colleagues studied what happens to people who face an unattainable goal. They showed that two abilities matter here, and that they are independent of each other. The first is letting go of a goal that can no longer be reached: no longer investing energy and hope in it. The second is re-engaging: finding other goals that have meaning for you. People who managed both reported greater wellbeing.

With a life without children, this is easier to write than to do. Letting go of the wish for a child does not mean forgetting it or pretending it does not matter. It means it stops steering every day. And re-engaging does not mean finding a “substitute” for a child. It means asking yourself what mattered most to you in wanting a child — care, closeness, meaning, continuity, play — and where in your life you can live that differently.

Caring for the future takes many forms

Erik Erikson described middle adulthood with the term generativity: the need to pass something on, to care for what will outlive you. We often equate it with parenthood, but Erikson himself stressed that generativity is not limited to one’s own children. A teacher whom pupils remember for decades is generative. So is the aunt a teenage niece turns to when she is not getting on with her parents. The mentor who opens a door for a younger colleague. The person who creates something that will last.

I am not writing this as consolation. If you wanted a child, no niece will give you back what you lost, and nobody should tell you that “it’s all the same anyway”. I am writing it because people without children often feel excluded from the story of what a good adult life means. And that story is too narrow. I have written about how the question of meaning opens up in other transitions, when you lose a role that carried you for a long time, in Retirement, the loss of a role and the question of meaning, and you will find a short explanation under meaning.

For some people, finding others with a similar experience is decisive too. In surroundings where every lunch is about nurseries and schools, the first conversation with someone who knows what it is like can bring a relief nothing else can replace. It is worth being careful with social media here: other people’s lives appear there in their best light, and comparing yourself with them rarely helps. I have described what such constant measuring does in Comparing yourself on social media.

Exercise: what was in the wish

This exercise is mainly for those who wanted a child. Give yourself half an hour and a sheet of paper.

1. Write down what you pictured when you pictured a child. Not in general, but scenes: what you were doing together, where, what it was like.
2. Next to each scene, write one word for what is precious to you in it. For example: care, playfulness, belonging, continuity, being needed.
3. Circle two or three words that keep coming back. These are the values that stood behind the wish. The personal values list can help you find the words.
4. Next to each circled word, write where you already live it today — even in small ways. If the space stays empty, leave it empty. That is information too.
5. Choose one small thing you will do in the next month for one of these values. Not as a substitute, but as an answer to the question of what matters to you.

If the exercise floods you with sadness, stop. That does not mean you did it wrong. It means the loss is still close — and that it deserves space before the search for new paths begins.

Where this view falls short

This whole post is about adjustment, and that can be misleading. Not every life without children is a story of loss. Many people who chose it never grieved and have nothing to grieve for. If we attribute a hidden sadness to them, we are simply failing to take them seriously in a different way. For them, the greatest help is simply people around them who believe them.

Nor is the decision necessarily final. If you are not sure whether the medical options really are exhausted, talk to your gynaecologist about it — not to a psychotherapist. My work is to help with what the decision stirs up in you, not to judge whether it is medically justified.

And finally: sadness that lasts for years can be entirely natural. But if it is joined by hopelessness, withdrawal from everyone, sleeplessness or thoughts that life no longer has meaning, it is no longer only grief. Then turn to your GP. If things are very hard, in Slovenia you can call the Samaritans helpline (Zaupni telefon Samarijan) on 116 123 at any time, or the crisis line Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 pm to 7 am), and in an emergency 112.

Where therapy comes in

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we often find that a life without children does not concern only the couple. It also concerns the parents who were waiting for grandchildren, the siblings who did have children, and family stories about what a “successful life” means. Sometimes part of the burden is inherited: a mother who always said she was happiest when she was a mother; a father who expected the family name to continue. These expectations do not dissolve on their own, even when you are an adult.

A look at the whole family across several generations can help here. With me, the longer session A Look into the Past is meant for this: together we draw a genogram and look at which patterns and expectations have come down to you. Some couples, before reaching this decision, are still asking themselves about other paths — I write about this in Adoption: the emotional journey before the decision and after it. You will also find a short explanation of what infertility means for wellbeing under infertility and distress. I also work with English-speaking clients, in person in Ljubljana.

What to remember

• “Without children” covers very different experiences: chosen, unchosen and everything in between. Each needs something different.
• An unchosen life without children is grief without a date that returns with each new stage of life — it is not an illness.
• Research shows most people adjust over time; it is harder when the wish stays alive and cannot be let go.
• Two shifts help: letting go of an unattainable goal and re-engaging with what was precious in it.
• Those who chose not to have children owe nobody a defence — the decision needs no excuse.