Ever since I was a teenager, I felt super maternal toward my younger siblings and always imagined having kids myself one day. Cut to today: I’m a 40-year-old writer living in LA where $70,000 a year is considered low income, a house in a terrible neighborhood is $1 million, and the news is an onslaught of war, global boiling, and AI coming for our jobs.
On the bright side, I love my life, I travel a ton and I’m passionate about my work.
So how do I feel about having kids now? Pretty damn ambivalent. It’s stressful to be uncertain about something so important, especially when there’s a ticking biological clock on it.
As I ponder a child-free life, research shows that not having kids is a growing trend. The birth rate in Los Angeles is declining. According to The LA County Department of Public Health, since 1990, Angelenos have been having fewer babies than the rest of California and the nation at large. The reasons are myriad, including financial concerns and increased use of birth control. Some people who aren’t having kids want them but can’t (for whatever reason), while others are consciously and joyfully choosing to forgo parenting.
As someone wrestling with this choice, I yearned to talk to happily child-free people to see what an alternative version of adulthood looks like.
I posted on Instagram asking people to get in touch, and out of 35 direct messages and emails, I chose four people to interview.
The first was Lucy Rimalower, a 44-year-old therapist based in LA who told me she’s seeing more people struggling with this choice.
Lucy Rimalower is a therapist in LA. Credit: Felicity Murphy.
Rimalower explains, “Among my clients, the demographic that experiences the most pressure and anxiety around making the child-free decision is cis straight women. They've been hearing their whole lives that being a mother is a moral imperative. It is a requirement to be a complete woman.”
Because queer people have been so marginalized, there’s less expectation for them to be parents. Whereas for straight couples, choosing not to have kids is still seen as a bit odd, unusual, or outside the script.
That’s definitely true for Ursula Taherian, a TV writer and actress who declined to share her age. Taherian wrote an LA Times opinion piece titled “I chose to be child-free. (The correct response is ‘Congratulations!’)”
Ursula Taherian poses with her husband Randall Loker. Credit: Randall Loker.
Taherian has experienced moments of alienation for not being a mom. “My dad's Afghan, he’s Muslim. He's the oldest of nine brothers and sisters. And I am the only one out of the cousins — which we have so many — that is married without children. That's why I refer to myself as the brown sheep of the family.”
Going into her marriage, Taherian was ambivalent about parenthood. Until one night, she had a check-in with her husband, Randall. When she asked where he stood about the kids thing, his answer stunned her. “He said, ‘I think I might want children more than I think I might not want children.’ And I remember sobbing. It made me realize, more than ever before, that I didn't want to.”
Then Taherian had some follow-up questions.
“I said to him, ‘Are you willing to be the primary parent, and I get to be the hero parent that swoops in for the bedtime story and a kiss? And when you're in South America for work, and something comes up with a kid and I have an audition, who's missing out?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, well, I'm not gonna stop traveling for work.’ And he didn't want anything else in his life to change.”
Among my family and friends who are heterosexual and have kids, the moms always do more of the child rearing — even when the dads are great and loving and present. The woman’s body, career, and time gets sacrificed. For Taherian, the price was too high.
“The main reason is I just want time to do whatever I want.”
When I asked Taherian about an example of something she gets to enjoy specifically because she doesn’t have kids, she mentioned travel. “My husband and I were both working from home and in our one-bedroom apartment, and we thought we could do this anywhere. Fast forward two weeks later, we're in Cape Town, South Africa, in a gorgeous condo, top floor right on the beach for the next five weeks.”
While it took Taherian a long time to make her final decision, Wendi Weger, the 49-year-old owner of The Curatorial Department vintage store, knew from a young age that motherhood wasn’t for her. But it was a process to admit that to herself.
Wendy Weger owns The Curatorial Department vintage store. Credit: Shawn Smith.
“The moment I really realized I didn't want kids was when I froze my eggs. So as soon as I froze them, I knew immediately, ’Oh, hell no, do I want children.’”
Once Weger made her decision, it was a weight off her shoulders (and womb!). But not everyone was supportive.
“My own mother once said to me, ‘I don't think everybody's made to have children because some people are too selfish to have children.’ And obviously, it was directed at me. But that’s par for the course. ‘You're selfish. You're narcissistic, or you're an only child.’ Or whatever it is.”
To me, the idea that if a woman is not a mother, she is self-centered — is wildly offensive and the definition of sexism.
When I ponder a child-free future, my biggest anxiety is: Who takes care of you when you’re old? My friend Molly suggested I speak to this amazing 80-year-old woman named Leigh Sauser.
When I pulled up to Sauser’s bright purple house in Laguna Beach, I knew I was in for a treat. She came out to greet me, her blue eyes sparkling and her white hair thick and glossy. Her unbridled joie de vivre reminds me of Maude from the movie Harold and Maude. Sauser’s career was selling homemade chocolates for 40 years!
Leigh Sauser’s career is selling homemade chocolates. Credit: Rose Surnow.
“I always assumed I would have children,” she says. “In the mid (19)60s, that's what you did. And every time I had an option, I chose not. Finally, when I was 37, I made that choice clearly. And I've never been sorry.”
Even though Sauser is healthy and vivacious and lives alone, I wondered if she ever worried about the future.
“I can't say that it never crosses my mind. But I've always known I would be okay.”
So what does a single, child-free, 80-year-old free spirit do with her time?
“I'm working on a new chocolate project that I'm very excited about. I’m a member of a 30-year book group, so I have friends there I do things with. I have a lot of young friends, and it’s just so thrilling to have young people that want to hang out with somebody as old as I am.”
Sauser wants to assure younger people, “It is so entirely possible to live a very happy life without children. A very satisfying life, a life where you're free to do anything you want to create your life.”
My conversations with these incredible women were really stimulating, but unfortunately my heart is still undecided. Some days I think to myself: I love my life as it is, and I don’t want it to change. Other times, like when I was at temple recently for Yom Kippur, I looked around and saw loving families and thought: That’s so beautiful, maybe I do want that.
Therapist Lucy Rimalower has some advice for people who feel torn.
“I think people have the fantasy that once they make the choice to be child-full or child-free, then they will be done with the feelings. You can make the right decision about whether or not to have a child, and you can still feel grief about it. And that doesn't mean it was the wrong decision. It just means it was a complicated, deep decision.”
Wise words of comfort for an undecided person like me.