There are a plethora of different reactions when I mention to people I do not want to have kids. They run the gamut from nonchalance acceptance, vehement agreement to blatant horror, but the most common reaction is surprise. People are genuinely surprised I have no interest in bearing kids and want to know why. I mean obviously since I am a young woman, there HAS to be something wrong with me to not want kids.

Here's the thing; I just don't want them.

I don't want to get pregnant, I don't want to raise them...I just have no interest in being a parent. Nothing happened to me, its just my personality. I know that I don't have the temperament or desire to be a mother, therefore I am simply not going to be one. And yet, people try to change my mind. Countless people have retorted to my proclamation of a fruitless future with no multiplication that I'll change my mind, or I'll end up having a bunch of kids.

And wouldn't that be ironic? Don't you think? But no. I am not going to change my mind. I have never wanted kids once in my last 20 years of life and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Most older people complain that I am "too pretty not to have kids", or "you'll find the right boy one day". And once again, I have to disagree. Your perception of someone else's beauty is not going to influence them to conceive to further their genes, and the right boy for me will be one who accepts that I do not want to have kids.

Once or twice classmates have told me that I was "going to hell" because I did not want to have kids. What the criteria is for getting shipped to hell is, I don't know, but apparently I'm doing something wrong. Of course what it boiled down to is that they believed I wasn't preforming my duties as a woman.

That is the root of all the replies, reactions and rebuttals. I am a woman, therefore I have to become a mother. And honestly? That's total bullshit.

Motherhood and Womanhood are not synonymous and we need to unsubscribe from the narrative that they should be treated as such. I know that if I have kids, they will not receive all the attention they deserve, because as much as I am sure I'll love them, I won't want them. As harsh as it may seem, its true, and my children would recognize that. I would rather simply not have kids, than to half heartedly raise a dozen to fulfill society's idea of what a woman is.