As someone who works in retail, as well as other jobs where I frequently interact with people, I have noticed that my ultimate pet peeve is continuously seeing the way women who do not have children are treated, or the way that women who do have children treat others. Having children seems to be an amazing choice for many women and obviously has its perks, like reproducing little spawns of yourself and your partner. What I would like to note is that it is a choice to have or not to have children, which means that you do not have the right to assume another person has kids, to look down on them for not having and or wanting children, or therefore act as if you are above others for having children.

As a woman in my twenties, I can say with 99.9 percent certainty that having children is not the right choice for me. When I tell people this, I could explain to them that I do not want children because even at 16 years old I was told that having children is almost impossible for me. Although this is true, when I tell people I can’t have children I explain to them that I simply do not want children and that it does not seem like the right fit for me. I tell them this because I am not obligated to explain my health circumstances to justify why I don’t want children. Even if I were to be perfectly able to hold the capacity of another human in my body and then successfully give birth to that human, I would still believe that having children is not the right choice for me.

Instead, I have the option to choose what I want to do with my body. Get married? Maybe. Travel? Probably. Foster kids? I have definitely have thought about it. Only have fur babies? Most likely. The possibilities are endless even if you do or do not have children. The rights you have to your own body mean that you are the only one who needs any sort of justification for your actions and decisions.

In order to ease the thousands of women who feel the burden of being questioned and undermined by others everyday, as women and respectable humans in general we need to acknowledge that we are not entitled to the justification of what other people do with their bodies. It is extremely important, especially as millennials, to recognize that as generations are changing so are the foundations for unequal social structures that have put women at the bottom of the totem poll. As we’ve seen progression we have also seen the growth of single women in the United States. This is not a phase, this is purely a direct response to the empowerment of women and the right that women now have to their own bodies.