Neither parenting nor being childfree is a privilege, not everything can be delineated cleanly along privilege lines.

Some people are childfree by choice but some are not. Some people are parents by choice but some are not. So it’s not even possible to say “it’s a choice” for either with any certainty. That’s all I really have to say on that.

I do often see people declare with a lot of misplaced confidence that childfree people had the “privilege” to make that choice, or that parents “made that choice” so any difficulty is their own problem, and it’s just one of those things where neither is true.

Cw sexual assault

Choice doesn’t make challenges disappear, and you truly do not know whether that person actually made that choice. Religious, family, interpersonal and cultural pressure, reproductive coercion, and even sexual assault, can make parenting not a “choice” at all.

People might be childfree because they’re infertile. If either of us were infertile we would be childfree very much not by choice because disabled people are usually not allowed to adopt. LGBT people have sometimes not been able to adopt.

Disabled parents can have children removed legally in some states just because they are disabled. It’s just not that simple.

Focusing on choice here not because choice means you deserve whatever challenges come with it, but just because I’ve seen so so so many claims about status as a parent or as childfree being “obviously” a choice, and it’s just... not true.

When I was younger I was much more religious and was dating someone who was very against birth control, in a religious culture that encouraged women to do what men said. If I had married him and become a parent, that would not have been a true choice made of my own free will.

Cw: abortion, reproductive coercion

Imagine how it must feel for people who were pressured into having or not having kids or abortions, who were religiously coerced or abused or sick, to now hear that they made their bed (whatever that bed is) and now they have to lie in it.

Also yes I know I said “that’s all I have to say” and then wrote a long-ass thread listing everything I had to say. It’s my fatal flaw

It makes arguments with me super fun