Chapter 13: Embracing Your Childfree Life

Summary

• The chapter begins with celebrating the reader's decision to embrace a childfree lifestyle, emphasizing the importance of congratulating oneself on making a considered and important life choice.
• If childfree was not the reader's first choice, perhaps due to infertility or partner issues, the author recommends visiting resolve.org for supportive help and resources, and having short-term couples therapy to navigate the decision and plan for the future.
• The author warns readers to anticipate and accept some natural feelings of ambivalence or fear after making a significant life decision, advising them to take some time to adjust and reflect.
• She continues with numerous guidelines and advice for living a happy and fulfilling childfree life. These include not justifying the decision, seizing solitude and quiet time, maintaining a strong romantic relationship, developing a chosen family and nurturing a fulfilling sex life, among others.
• The author recommends reading resources by other child free authors such as Laura Carroll's Families of Two and The Baby Matrix, and attending life planning workshops and other personal growth activities to inspire one's journey forward.
• She introduces the concept of sterilization, framing it as a final step to seal one's childfree decision. Sterilization is presented as a two-step choice: one to not have children, and another to make this decision irreversible.
• The advantages to sterilization are discussed, including an end to worry about contraceptive failure, contraceptive inconvenience, the potential of a new creative phase in life, and a sense of closure in the childfree discussion.
• The author is cautious about sterilization, especially at a young age, and implores readers to take their time with the decision. Long-standing relationships and a very firm intention to remain childfree are seen as pre-requisites before undergoing sterilization.
• Finally, the chapter concludes with advice on discussing the childfree decision and possible plans for sterilization with family and close relations. The author suggests empathy, patience, dignity, respect and careful explanation of the childfree choice to family members, anticipating their potential feelings of disappointment, loss and confusion.

• The process of deciding to be childfree often reveals positive personal traits such as independence, a preference for privacy and silence, and introspective or maverick thinking.
• It's important to nurture these personal traits even further now that the decision to remain childfree has been made.
• Becoming childfree opens up opportunities for productive and fulfilling conversations and brainstorming sessions with your partner.
• Choosing to be childfree is a pioneering lifestyle choice in the 21st century, providing the opportunity to focus energy and time on satisfying pursuits instead of child-rearing.
• The decision to be childfree often involves self-awareness, risk-taking, and assertiveness, skills that are valuable in navigating life without children.
• Even though choosing to be childfree is becoming more common and accepted than when The Baby Decision was first published in 1981, those who make this choice can still be trailblazers, offering a different but viable life path to others.