Growing Old Without Children – – I’m not old yet, but getting there. I am 54 and I have never married. I was open to it, but I never met the right guy. It is likely I will stay single, which is fine by me. (I feel like I was just 34. The years go fast. Buckle up.)

I never planned on having kids. And like so many other women, I was told I would change my mind. Having your decisions questioned as if you don’t know your own mind and you are a slave to your maternal desires gets very tiresome. It is incredibly condescending.

I don’t see how I would afford kids. With a mortgage, a car loan, student loans, medical loans, and living costs in general, I would struggle to give kids much on my teacher’s salary. I don’t see how people do it, especially single parents.

Instead of scrabbling to come up with $30,000 a year to send a kid to college, I am saving to travel again. I want to see Cuba and go back to England and Italy. Someday, I want to see Thailand. I travel alone and go where I want, when I want.

I don’t have to clean up after anyone except myself and my pets. Kids can be troublesome at school (I teach), but once I come home, my evening is all mine. No noise, no nagging, no supervision.

I don’t have to choose a car or house based on needing room for a bunch of kids. I don’t have to cook nasty kid-friendly processed food for dinner and still have unappreciative kids turn up their nose at it anyway. I can sleep all day on the weekends if the mood strikes me. I don’t have to find a sitter whenever I leave the house.

People who call me selfish for not having kids can fuck right off. I donate more to charity than anyone I know in my income range. I volunteer ro help resettle refugees, moving endless boxes and furniture and shuttling oeople around to appointments. I help my neighbors. I do a hell of a lot for kids in my job that is not in the job description. I help stray animals. I do kind things for friends. Being a parent might be noble, but it does not give a person the edge on being selfless.

I used to worry about not having kids to come visit me in my old age, but from the sad stories I read, most kids hardly visit their elderly parents anyway. I try to visit my mom as much as I can, but she lives very far away.

So as I move towards old age, I do not regret staying child-free. My old age will be my life as it is now, just older and a bit slower.

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What a can of worms this answer opened up! To be very clear: having kids is fine. Not having kids is fine. Hats off to parents, and hats off to those who knew parenting was not for them. I like kids. My career is all about kids. If a person doesn’t like kids, that is also fine. I don’t intend to “defend” my life because it requires no defense. I simply tried to answer the posed question honestly and in detail.

Audrey Vera Monroe