It’s not a new concept that from a very young age, girls are taught that motherhood is the best part of their life as a woman. What happens, though, if you come to find that you don’t actually want kids?

I am no stranger to this concept. It may come as a shock to many people who haven’t heard me preach about it for the past couple of years, but I’ve discovered an interesting fact about myself: I don’t want to have kids.

It’s not to say that I think it’s a stupid idea for an individual to have children, but I think it’s a stupid idea to place such heavy stress on the toxic concept that having children is the only thing that makes a person’s life fulfilling. Not only that, but we’re practically pigeonholing young girls into the mindset that the only way to be a real woman and keep a life partner is to give them children. We’re forcing them to think that the only way to gain acceptance and validation as a woman is to put themselves through months of discomfort and pain; to hurt themselves for other people.

It took me a very long time to recognize that it was okay to be different from the majority. In fact, I don’t think I remember crossing the line and finally being able to speak out about what I wanted my future to look like. Looking back, though, I think I spent the majority of my young life telling people I wanted kids after I married because I just felt like it’s what I was supposed to do. I just thought that all girls were supposed to want to be moms because that’s what everyone said was supposed to happen.

The truth is, however, I’m actually quite terrible with children. I haven’t held a baby in several years because I think they’re too fragile and I become very afraid that I will damage them. I am not able to empathize with toddlers and their toddler problems. I subconsciously expect children to have the same knowledge of the world that I do, and therefore I am really bad at communicating with them. I recognize the shortness of my own temper, and in my mind, I’m not the kind of woman who thinks she can be a good mom. I think it would be selfish of me to bring a child into the world while knowing I can’t adequately take care of it the way its need to be taken care of, and I don’t think it would be fair of me to let my future spouse do all the work because of that fact, either.

The frustrating part is the reaction I get upon telling people I don’t want kids. There’s the initial shock; the hand on the chest, the slightly widened eyes, the gasp. Then the worst part: “You’ll change your mind.” Here’s what’s wrong with this… You know, maybe I will change my mind someday. Maybe I will be the best mother the world has ever seen. But when someone says that I’m bound to change my mind, I’m being invalidated for how I feel now. So are millions of other women scared to tell their families they don’t want to give them grandchildren; the women who will not one day change their minds.

It’s ridiculous, too, that so many people seem to feel personally targeted when I tell them I don’t want children. They try to spin it that they’re worried about me, but I don’t really know what their true motives are. Why is it so far-fetched that the idea of being pregnant is not appealing to me? The first time I told someone that “The Miracle of Life” was the most disgusting and horrifying thing I’d ever seen, they actually got angry with me. The question is… why is it anybody’s concern but my own?

The answer is simple. Humans have a natural desire to be a part of, or to create, something that is much bigger than themselves; to have something to surpass them. It happens to be a very common concept that procreating is the only way to preserve a legacy. I don’t claim to know where along the road we picked up these ideals, but they’ve remained fairly stationary for decades. People are afraid of leaving this world without something to tell future generations who they were and why they mattered. And we just happen to be trapped into thinking that the only way to do this is through children.

What I mean to say is that I am not any less of a woman, and I never will be, for choosing not to have children. I plan to marry and have a hefty some of adventures that make great stories, of which a child couldn’t keep up. But this idea that a life is not fulfilled without children is a toxic mindset I don’t believe in, and I will be among those who prove it isn’t so.