I Don't Know Why We Don't Have Kids And That's Okay

We've been married almost twenty-three years today, and we're childless. A lot of our friends have kids, and we love having them around. Still, we miss nothing.

Childlessness is a big problem for many couples. For us, it has never been.

It's not that we didn't want kids before. At the beginning of our marriage, we did not use contraception and would have been happy to have a child.

But nothing ever happened. We were unable to have children. But it never occurred to us to try to figure out what was wrong.

We didn't feel incomplete just because we didn't have children. We had friends who had similar experiences, and those friends tried everything to change their fate.

They tried in vitro fertilization for months and finally succeeded. But getting there was frustrating and emotionally exhausting. Their marriage suffered, and they were both unhappy until it worked out.

Today the child is in school, and the marriage is divorced. My wife and I are still happily married. We've always been content with ourselves. Maybe that's the secret of our marriage.

When I think back to that time, I notice we never talked about why we stayed childless. For some reason, we didn't want to know.

Maybe subconsciously, we feared an answer would pressure us. Perhaps we would have felt obliged to repair the defect that a doctor might have found in one of us.

Today, we are both happy that we acted in this way back then. We like our life as it is, and we miss nothing. Today I can't even imagine being a father.

Our role in society is different. Instead of being parents ourselves, we support parents from our surroundings. If friends of ours want to spend time together, we take care of the children. We try to be the uncle and aunt that you can always rely on.

We neither feel incomplete nor guilty towards society. We have not decided against children, but have accepted that not everyone can have them.

We are lucky that we both think the same in this respect. We know couples where only the woman or only the man urgently wanted a child and the other partner just let himself be persuaded. I do not believe that such partnerships are healthy.

I think childless couples should not have to justify themselves even if they consciously decide against children. They are often accused of selfishness, but I believe that many couples who have children are the real selfish ones. It's not always about giving a child life. How many children are in this world because a couple thought a child would save their relationship?

Is that a mortgage to put on a child? Is that a legitimate reason for the decision to bring a child into the world? Children aren't meant to make parents' lives better. The decision to have a child should always be an altruistic one.

When we are asked why we don't have children, we always say that we don't know and don't want to discuss it further. Some people try to persuade us to go to the doctor, and others suggest adoption.

This is invasive. We do not suffer, and we do not miss anything. That is why we do not need unsolicited advice.

Nowadays, everyone should have the right to have children or not have children without having to account to anyone. Just as children are not there to make their parents happy, couples are not there to meet society's expectations.

I don't know why we don't have kids, and that's okay. I don't have to have an explanation for everything. Some things are the way they are, and that's fine.