There are always stages of changes when deciding about your life. Well, it is not about making decision. I would rather call that as accepting. On one stage of your life you decide to do plan A. But because plan A is not working, then you decide plan B. Then plan B results in zero. Are you going to go through C to Z? Maybe yes if you want to get cranky and depressed. Or you stop; either to feel hopeless or just want to swallow that fact and live with it.
When a woman decides to get married, naturally she will want to have children. However, she must realize that not all women are easily getting pregnant. One woman can wait only one month after the wedding to know that she is pregnant successfully. Another woman must wait for the pregnancy longer than one year, even years. She either has to force herself to get pregnant by using the medical technology or chooses to finally not have a child.
The woman who can finally have a child with the help of modern technology will feel happily relieved because she can look like a normal woman in the eyes of the society. That normality is what the society hopes from a woman. Meanwhile, the woman who has not been pregnant within years of marriage and who finally decides to be childless (no adoption whatsoever) will be regarded as imperfect by the society. Then how will that woman react? She must choose either to care less or live in despair.
There is one young, famous influencer from Indonesia who doesn't need to wait for a long time to make a decision to have children or not and is so proud of being childfree. I myself don't have problems with that. I will, however, consider her as a big, serious problem if she thinks that being a woman with children is a bad idea and encourages all young women who follow her to be childfree. But, I must understand that her job as an influencer is to influence her followers. It's up to her followers whether to do what she says or to disagree with her.
And for me, a forty four year old, married but childless woman, to say that a woman is childless or childfree depends on the perspective. From my perspective, a woman saying that she is childless shows that she actually wants to have a child, but can finally accept the fact that she cannot be pregnant or adopt a child. If a woman says that she is childfree, she shows her true self of being a woman who needs to be stress-free from the existence of a child in her life.
What about you? How will you label a married woman who doesn't have a child? Childless or childfree? How you will label her will define how you face your life, how you view life, and how you make important decisions for your life.
