Childless By Choice

Why Some Latinas Are Saying No To Motherhood

By Irene Middleman Thomas
May 1995

Lopez Clayton is one of the growing number of women in this country who are childless by choice. According to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report, 22 percent of women born between 1956 and 1972 will never have children-the highest rate in U.S. history. In 1992, 26 percent of women 30 to 34 years old and 19 percent 35 to 39 years old were childless.

A graphic artist in Harlingen, Texas, Lopez Clayton, 40, says dedication to her career was probably the main reason she opted not to have children. Yet, she feels her childlessness has also worked to her disadvantage in her career. She's had to fill in for working mothers who had to tend to their children. She's also had to overlook a general lack of understanding for her perspective. "I always felt like I had to try harder, even to be more feminine. People think you're not normal if you don't have kids."

Before the 1900s, married women who did not have children were assumed to be infertile or in poor health, explains Mardy S. Ireland in her book, Reconceiving Women, Separating Motherhood from Female Identity. But this century brought about the possibility of voluntary childlessness, stemming from the changes caused by urban industrialization and the suffragette movement, jobs, and birth control clinics. The progressive sixties, with its equal rights advances and new workplace opportunities, was catalytic in bringing forth a significant number of women who chose alternatives to motherhood.

Yet, despite the civil, social, political, and technological advances this century has brought, child-free women are still, for the most part, isolated and often maligned. They are attacked by those family members, friends, coworkers, and even strangers with traditional expectations; these people label nonmothers as selfish, pitiable child-haters or as immature and incomplete, says Leslie Lafayette, founder of the Childfree Network, an organization based in Citrus Heights, California, that provides support and information to child-free women throughout the U.S. Lafayette started her group in retaliation to the "family values" ethic being competitively preached by both major political parties in the early nineties. She says there was no recognition by society of child-free adults or their lifestyle. "The implication was that childless adults didn't fit into the family values picture. We were invisible." Lafayette stresses that the Childfree Network is not urging people to refrain from having children. Rather, she wants the childless choice to become a lifestyle that is respected, appreciated, and considered as a valid alternative.

Hispanic child-free women face even more prejudice than others do, says Jay Bender, co-founder of Childless by Choice, based in Leavenworth, Washington. "I think there's more pressure in the Hispanic community to have children," he says. "This is a less-accepted lifestyle. I know a lot of our members, both Hispanic and otherwise, get a lot of persecution from their families for their decisions." Childless by Choice promotes the belief that not having children is a part of reproductive choice.

Theresa Peqa, a 35-year-old Boulder, Colorado, resident, enjoys children. But growing up with twelve siblings, she well understood from a young age the responsibilities and sacrifices that having her own would entail. "I was fairly sure I didn't want kids early on. There were a lot of reasons. I was afraid it would hold me back from attaining the goals I was pursuing in my career. I wanted to be able to move around, relocate if necessary, and it wouldn't be good for kids. In a lot of ways, it seemed like it wouldn't be fair to them," Peqa, who works for the American Cancer Society, explains. When Peqa married, she reexamined her decision, but it remained the same. Concerned and surprised by her choice, Peqa's family did not take the news in stride. "My mom sat me down one day and initiated the discussion. She was pretty accepting, but of course by then she had other grandchildren. My father talked to me about our Catholicism. It was just a couple of lectures' worth, but that's a lot," she recalls, with a chuckle. "They all saw me as the kind of person who would have kids and were very surprised that I didn't. I was nervous it was tough to talk to them about those kinds of things."

Ireland, who interviewed more than 100 childless [married] women for her book, believes that the most crucial element to supporting the woman's decision is the husband, who can help to "cushion" the announcement. "There's a sense of estrangement when you're not doing the role most women do. I definitely feel there would be more women who would be childless if there were not so much cultural devaluation of women who aren't mothers. The issue is how to be an adult woman without having a child attached." She goes on to say that in her research of child-free women of all cultures, it appeared that most made the decision not because they didn't want a relationship with children, but because they didn't want to be the primary caregivers. Peqa agrees with this analysis. "If a woman is going to have kids, she should be able to give them a certain quality of life. If I was going to be a parent, I'd want to do it 100 percent."

Both Childless by Choice and the Childfree Network fight the stereotypes to which their members are continually exposed. For example, when Lopez Clayton arrived for work one day in an attractive new suit, all but one of her female coworkers flocked around to compliment her. The one who stood aside dismissed the praise, tossing off "Sure-she doesn't have kids, so what else does she have to do in the morning but get dressed and primp?"

"The thing is, people without kids are often attacked for being selfish," says Smith. "But when you examine the reasons many parents give for having children, you find many of those are very selfish reasons, such as, 'I want someone to take care of me when I'm old' or 'I want someone to carry on the family name' or 'I want a boy.' "

As for the allegation that the childless hate children, Lafayette, in her book Why Don't You Have Kids?-Living a Full Life without Parenthood, writes, "The nearly three million reported cases of child abuse in the United States in 1992 were not committed by childless adults. They were committed by parents! Child abuse is definitely anti-child." Lafayette is adamant in her opposition to the discrimination, rudeness, and insensitivity that she says child-free women are subjected to. "There is no short, quick, easy reason to be a parent. It involves so much work, sacrifice, and dedication that only those truly informed, mature, financially capable, and committed to being the best parents they can be-knowing they will make mistakes, encounter setbacks, and problems, and yes, even despair, along the way-should take on the responsibility."

Yet for Irene Salamanca Williams of Denver, who reluctantly faced motherhood and a bad marriage just out of her teens, that was all irrelevant. "Growing up in a Hispanic family, you kind of get the guilt laid on top of you. You should stay with the husband, the kids need their father, your own personal happiness doesn't matter. That's what women are supposed to do, have kids, stay married, cook and clean." She suffered from shame and guilt because of not wanting more children, but supports others' choice to remain childless. "I feel so strongly about it, if somebody doesn't want kids, they shouldn't have them. I say more power to them. But I feel the same about people who do want kids. If you know what you want, go for it."

Lopez Clayton proclaims, "To all those who tell my husband and me that we don't know what we're missing, we tell them we are perfectly happy the way we are. I've never regretted not having kids, never. I feel no void." And Peqa advises, "What we need to give each other is respect. Not just for women who are remaining childless, but for all women's decisions. We need to understand there is validity in everyone's choice of a lifestyle."

In life, you choose your friends, your mate and your career. For Lopez Clayton, Peqa, and presumably many more Latinas, the decision to be child-free was yet another carefully considered personal choice.