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Childlessness Quotes

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Childlessness Quotes

“There were a lot of these middle-aged single types in the neighborhood, shipwrecked by every kind of catastrophe, but she was one of the few who didn't have children, who lived alone, who was still kinda young. Something must have happened, your mother speculated. In her mind, a woman with no child could be explained only by vast untrammelled calamity. Maybe she just doesn't like children. Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.”

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Book:This Is How You Lose Her
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“Had any children? the doctor asks. I say No. And close my lips—the other half of the answer. If this were a party, I'd feel I had to go on, even if the other person hadn't asked Why not? Or Are you planning on having any? They feel free to ask. And almost always, I explain something about wanting them but not enough, or how I wish I had two lives: in one of them I'd have a child by now. But it's no good, not doing something never sounds as real as doing it. I seem to stand in for reserve, my life a keeping back, a state of being not in active service.”

ChildrenPoetryPoemHolding BackChildlessnessReserveMultiple Lives
Book:No Moon
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“Something she and her husband had in common but rarely discussed was the absence of a desire for children, to fill their home with people besides themselves. It was a silent agreement, felt rather than spoken, and in her experience the soundest agreements were the ones that did not require the reassurances of language. Therefore this line of questioning was the inverse of what she usually fielded, since a childless married woman in her thirties was so often regarded, by men and women alike, as a puzzle or a pity. What's the story here? people would ask, inquests designed to make women like her suspect there was something malformed inside, blinding them to the hideous reality of their choice.”

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Book:The Third Hotel
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“Sometimes, she wondered what she was missing, if her life was somehow incomplete because she didn't see the reflection of her face in the face of a son or daughter. Maybe. That's what mothers told her: Oh, you don't know what you're missing; it's spiritual; I feel closer to the earth, to the creator of all things. Perhaps all of that was true--it must be true--but Grace also knew that mothering was work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. She'd known too many women who'd vanished after childbirth; women whose hopes and fears had been pushed to the back of the family closet; women who'd magically been replaced by their children and their children's desires.”

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Book:The Toughest Indian in the World
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“Wherever they went—Moscow, Tehran, the Syrian coast, Switzerland—a furnished house, villa, or apartment awaited the young couple. And their philosophies of life were the same: "We have only one life!" So take everything life can give, except one thing: the birth of a child. For a child is an idol who sucks dry the juices of your being without any return for your sacrifices, not even ordinary gratitude.”

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Book:The First Circle
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“...it is plain that the proportion of celibates was high in the Roman empire and that the fall in the fertility of marriages was going on. It is the childless marriage, the small family system that contemporary writers deplore....'The human harvest was bad,' It was bad in all classes, but the decline was most marked in the upper ranks, the most educated, the most civilized, the potential leaders of the race.”

PoliticsRaceHistoryDeclineCivilisationEugenicsFertilityChildlessnessNatalismBirthrates
Book:Medieval People
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“Forget about the other girls’ ambitions, Bethany, whatever you think they are. What do you want? “ She stops, and together we look at the wall of red creeper. “If I had a baby I call it Felix. That means happy, right? It would be kind of an ironic name.” I wait for more, thinking: The name I always had in mind was Max. “But I won’t be having a baby.” Me neither. They said I nearly died, there was “no way of saving anything.” Anything: an interesting euphemism. No Max. Not now, not ever. “But how can you know you’ll never have children? “ “What’s the point, when the world’s fucked? I’d have to be a sadist.” Haresh Modak and the Planetarians would agree with her. They’re singing from the same hymn sheet.”

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Book:The Rapture
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“No, what Great Aunt Winifred was suffering from was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she'd learned during a university course on feminist history (with a strong Marxist slant): spinsters are a threat to patriarchy.”

SufferingCoursesStrongSocialIndependenceThreatUniversityFeministPatriarchyPersecutionAuntPredictableCondemnationMarxistSingle WomenSpinstersChildlessnessGreat Aunt
Author:Tobsha Learner
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“Maybe I wanted children, maybe I didn't, but I wanted the decision to be a choice, not a mandate. Last time I checked, childlessness was only supposed to be a condition of career advancement for nuns.”

ChildrenWantedLastsChoicesDecisionCareersConditionsSupposed To BeLast TimeAdvancementNunMandatesChildlessness
Book:Waiting for Daisy: The True Story of One Couple's Quest to Have a Baby
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“There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness - her selfishness, in short - is a reproach to the American way of life.”

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Book:Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition
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“There have been times when I wanted children and other times I've been grateful not to have them. I am a mess if I have to say goodbye to my dog for longer than five days. I don't know how I would deal with kissing my children as I left for work. I know there are women who are able to do that. I don't know if I could.”

IfsKnowsChildrenHas BeensAbleWantedLeftDealsKnow HowFiveDogKissingGratefulMessMy ChildrenIf I CouldGoodbyeMy DogSaying GoodbyeChildlessness
Author:Anjelica Huston
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“If any value is deeply evolutionarily familiar, it is reproductive success. If any value is truly unnatural, if there is one thing that humans (and all other species in nature) are decisively not designed for, it is voluntary childlessness. All living organisms in nature, including humans, are evolutionarily designed to reproduce. Reproductive success is the ultimate end of all biological existence.”

IfsHumansEndsValuesExistenceOne ThingUltimateSpeciesIncludingFamiliarOrganismsUnnaturalLiving OrganismsChildlessness
Author:Satoshi Kanazawa
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