#childfree

#childfree

It's not that I don't have a maternal instinct. I do, I just don't want children,

Throughout my engagement, people joked about how I'd lucked out in the mother-in-law department because my husband's mother was extremely chill and not obsessed with the idea of grandkids. My husband and I are dedicated to being child-free (he got the snip in college), and it was a relief to us both that his mother was fine with that. I never expected that the problem would be with my (younger) sisters-in-law!

A wily trial lawyer I once worked for delighted in asking outrageous personal questions, and people almost always answered him. "Never forget," he told me, "a question asked is not necessarily a question you have to answer." That got me thinking. When I was feeling tender, defensive, or vulnerable, I wasn't ready to explain my situation. Then I decided I had every right to skirt the subject, because my reproductive status was no one's business but my own.

Married and childfree millennials have a higher net worth compared to their parental, single, and divorced peers, establishing a new version of the American dream.