A recent study in the UK found that almost one in five women are choosing to highlight their careers and enter their middle age childless. While women born in the 1970s had an average of 2 children, those born in the 1980s are going for a single child or none. In UK, this is mainly because of the costs of raising children.
This trend is in the rise among Asian women based in the UK; who are challenging the Asian societal norm of reproducing to have an heir to take the family name forward.
Asian Voice spoke to women aged between their twenties to forties on their views about being childless by choice.
Liberated women find nothing wrong with going childless because they are unprepared to take on the additional financial and emotional responsibility. Not forfeiting their freedom, lifestyle and work hours is what they would rather do - than dedicating their finances and time to raise children.
Chumki Koley, an entrepreneur said “women across the board have to succumb to self-postponement once they have to bring up a baby. Most of us cannot ‘lean in’. I am therefore, pro choice.”
With the biological progression of the sexual union between a man and a woman residing in the woman, they are taking the decision on what to do with their bodies.
According to Ekta Singh a banker in London, not everybody feels a void in their life that only a child can fill. “I myself never felt any particular urge to have a baby. The world is over populated as it is. Human beings want to go on reproducing without a thought for how they are consuming natural resources. To be honest in today's day and age, people who choose not to have a child or choose to adopt are doing the planet a bigger favour,” she said.
Globally, to adopt, postpone or not have a child are still decisions of the educated class. This class also undergoes tremendous stress and lifestyle changes that lead to complications in conceiving and expensive fertility treatments when they finally feel ready to have children sometimes closer to their middle age. This minimises their chances of having multiple children at a later age.
Some younger women are freezing their eggs to counter this, but many feel no urge to have children till much later.
“Someone once told me that children keep you young and I think they may be right. So don't think about whether you want children or not. Just let it happen while you continue living the rest of your life. Freeze your eggs until you're ready,” said Gayatri Desai in London. Maintaining a work- life balance is key and paediatrician Tasneem Rupawala supports the trend. “Either one has kids voluntarily and spends quality time with the kids, or understands one's own limitations and not have kids who are raised by techno nannies, that often leave children psychologically maladjusted.”
Childcare is expensive in UK, and many first generation Asian women feel that a lack of grand-parental support would make raising children expensive and difficult. Whatever the reasons, having children are clear choices taken by Asian women and that seems to be the way ahead.
