“Brainwashed into being childfree”

I see this sentiment sometimes online: the idea that everyone naturally wants to be a parent, and those who don’t were simply brainwashed by childfree culture or feminism if they’re women. I even heard this from my parents multiple times back when I used to talk to them about this topic. (I have since realized this was a waste of time and stopped.)

I still think about it sometimes though, especially since it is completely false for me. So many people insist that there’s some external propaganda brainwashing CF people into choosing that life, and that we would have been happy parents otherwise.

But for me, it was all internal. Even in middle school I remember thinking to myself that it would be nice to live life without children, and that parenthood seemed quite unappealing to me. I came up with this myself and had never heard of childfreedom. If anything, the only “external propaganda” I was getting was pro-parenthood, which made me feel ashamed for feeling the way I did.

It wasn’t until I had been daydreaming about never having kids for a few years that I saw the phrase “childfree by choice” online for the first time. And I remember feeling a sense of relief. “Wait…that’s allowed? That’s an option?” All that external input did was validate what I had already been feeling. It did not invent those feelings for me.

I know there are a lot of anti-CF insults we hear, and that we should just ignore them and live our lives. But I do think there’s something particularly offensive about this one. Insulting my life choices is one thing, but implying that they aren’t really my choices and that I’ve been manipulated or brainwashed? That’s a whole other level.