To envy my sister's freedom?

Goes back to the choice of a partner. Bad moral values - a good man would not have left.

Seriously?? Maybe a "good man" wouldn't have left but bad ones do - or have to be removed.

And no, women can't predict what a partner will turn out like. Abusive men and/or deadbeat dads (who sod off and don't pay child support), etc don't wear a t-shirt declaring what they are. By the time it becomes apparent it's too late.

Then what if you work hard in that career and save money and still plan to travel after your parents died but get made redundant and then the world goes into lockdown and you end up living off savings and struggle to find another job you love because it was a niche position and you end up in debt?
Choices - making career choices that lead to a niche position in the first place

Loads of careers aren't niche yet people still get made redundant. Also some careers might be niche now but weren't several decades ago when someone chose it. Most people don't have crystal balls to see into the future.

not being willing to retrain or diversify; not being willing to take other jobs; not trying hard enough to get an alternate jobs; insisting on holding out for 'another job you love' as opposed to choosing to prioritise income or any job as a stop gap; not having a good enough CV or good enough qualifications or good enough references.

It's well known and backed up by studies that very often it's not the jobseeker who's unwilling to get a different job but employers unwilling to hire someone with experience in a different role.

Also re qualifications and/or a candidate "thinking a job is below them", it's employers deeming people "overqualified" or "too old" (that happens as young as 40 or 50). And references nowadays are usually simple confirmations of dates worked with the company.

Same here! Child free by choice, I’ve NEVER envied anyone with children EVER!!!

@didmymakeupsonice

I don't want to derail the thread so hope OP doesn't mind me replying to you.

It's not only childless/childfree women, it's also single mothers.

Single income - but the same cost of living as a dual income household, especially one of life's biggest expenses - housing, makes things hard financially. And if childless there's low priority for social housing. Yes single men are also affected but it seems, according to studies, it's worse (on average) for single women - with or without children.

Exclusive data shared with i by the Women’s Budget Group (WBG), an independent think tank which campaigns for a more equal economy, has found there is now not one area in England which could be considered affordable for a single woman to rent or buy a home.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/mortgage-scandal-no-one-wants-to-talk-about-3147143

Single women, particularly in old age, are at highest risk of poverty
https://eige.europa.eu/publications-resources/toolkits-guides/gender-equality-index-2021-report/single-women-particularly-old-age-are-highest-risk-poverty

The article below is about Australia but it's relevant for the UK too

Caring duties for elderly parents (and sometimes siblings) disproportionately falls on single, childless daughters

The study focused on the economic security of single, older women and shattered the myth that women without children have uninterrupted careers and therefore healthy retirement savings
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/dec/03/i-fret-about-the-years-that-lie-ahead-the-unique-caring-burden-of-single-childless-daughters

I just find your response to be so lacking in nuance. It is great to take as much autonomy as we can over our lives. This does not mean we should ignore the role society, our upbringing, our communities, our genetics has on us. Choices are not made in a vacuum and not everyone can make every choice. Also different people making the same choice will be perceived in different ways e.g. a woman leaving her children vs a man or a black woman asserting herself vs a white woman. We come in a range of intelligences with a range of attractiveness and as we know race, disability, brain structure (ND etc) all plays into how we perceive the world.

It is not only the choice but a combination of the choice, situation, timing etc etc

Yea I'm sorry I don't either...

@Minimili

What about if you have a career you love and plan to travel but then your dad dies, your mum has an illness that leaves her disabled and then gets cancer with no one to care for her? You might choose to look after your mum because you love her but the choice wasn’t influenced by any decisions you made.

It's still a choice to care. It's still a decision. You may feel there are no moral alternatives but there are alternatives so it's your decision.

Then what if you work hard in that career and save money and still plan to travel after your parents died but get made redundant and then the world goes into lockdown and you end up living off savings and struggle to find another job you love because it was a niche position and you end up in debt?

Choices - making career choices that lead to a niche position in the first place (obviously restricting future choices) choosing to stick to the niche position; not being willing to retrain or diversify; not being willing to take other jobs; not trying hard enough to get an alternate jobs; insisting on holding out for 'another job you love' as opposed to choosing to prioritise income or any job as a stop gap; not having a good enough CV or good enough qualifications or good enough references.

What if you have a happy marriage with someone from another country who ends up having to return to his family because his parents are dying but it’s not a country safe for you to travel to and live in.

A clear choice to marry someone from another country and a dangerous country. This is always going to be high risk for clash of culture, values, future problems of elderly parents being far away. Worse if it is an unsafe county. Choose to marry someone else.

What if you end up alone in your late thirties when you always wanted children and assumed it was on the cards for both of you then find out you have early menopause?

Choice of a partner who was more interested in children than in you. There are other choices such as adoption, surrogacy. Finding another partner who wants that or a partner who has children already. They might not be your own biological children but if you want children in your life and that is important to you, you can make choices that prioritise that above all else.

What if you have a great career, a happy marriage and you end up having an accident that leaves you paralysed and your husband leaves you, you end up out of work and left to survive on benefits with your adult children caring for you?

Goes back to the choice of a partner. Bad moral values - a good man would not have left. Obviously a random accident can happen to anyone but many, many accidents are a result of deliberate decisions to take a risk of a serious accident - working in dangerous jobs, horse riding, skiing, riding a motorbike, even choosing to get on a plane you are running a risk. Choice to not take out income protection insurance to maintain income.

All those scenarios are ones that have happened to me and close friends. I don’t see how “stacked up bad decisions” led us to any of it.

Look a bit harder. It is always decisions that lead you there to a particular situation overall. Of course horrible things happen to people every day many of which they have no control over - but a lot of what gets you there are choices you need to take responsibility for. Even if that is making a bad choice of partner, or not looking propertly before you cross the road.

I actually think you are lucky for living a life where you haven’t had the chance to understand this yet. I hope your life continues in this way but have some compassion for those who haven’t had the same opportunities.

Don't be so patronising. Ironically, I am in exactly one of the situations you describe because I am a full time carer having given up everything. I am mature enough to accept my present situation is my own choice and to take responsibility for it. I could have walked away and put my relative in a home or left them to other relatives to deal with. Or abandoned them to the state and social services. I didn't but that was my own choice.

That was my point. Shit happens but how you deal with it, what leads you to where you are is a result of your own choices every single day.

This mentality of 'oh you are victim blaming' is just another way of saying 'I have no responsibility for my life choices or where I am today.' This is actually rarely true. It certainly isn't when you are talking about the OP's post of a single woman v a married with children woman. Choices.

People dying, people becoming ill, people getting murdered or attached are all things we have no control over but that doesn't mean your hard core, drilled down basic situation you are in today - location, job or no job, maried or single - is not a result of your own choices.

Pardon?

Thanks yoda

You can have a solo holiday. I have two DC and DH and I each have a solo break every year since they were tiny. I'm not long back from a life-changing solo walking holiday. Maybe not a spontaneous, last-minute solo holiday, but a solo holiday nonetheless.

Incidentally, my SIL is childfree by choice and I'm quite sure she never envies my life. Nor do I envy hers. Do I look forward to my DC being more independent and having more personal freedom, sure. But I had my DC because I wanted to, and I don't regret my decision, and all the things that were possible in my childfree life are still possible. Not as easy, maybe, take more planning, but possible.

Every path taken is another path not taken. Your sister may (perhaps) envy your children. To have your family, there are other things that you can't do, at least not now. Try to reconcile to the fact that no-one can have it all.

It’s an odd way to describe people, makes them sound like objects. And no you did not literally say ‘you could only go to the theatre with your children’ but you DID mention it in relation to not resenting childfree people, as though the two are related?

Yes sometimes choices are taken away from us - in particular bereavement and illness.

HOWEVER I agree with the sentiment. The vast majority of decisions in life are a choice. Even ones that don’t feel like it sometimes. Once you realise that, you don’t feel quite so trapped.

Parenting is so much more fun when you lose the guilt. The occasional weekend away won't hurt your kids and will reduce any envy.

Why do people with children need the childfree to think it looks fun though? Childfree by choice here, and I don’t think any part of having kids or being a parent looks like fun.

Well, we never did Santa as literally real at all, and I’m pretty sure DS (who’s been a savvy type since toddlerhood) pretty much always knew perfectly well that the tooth fairy was a fun ritual from which he benefitted financially, so I certainly don’t see these as some kind of essential component of parenthood, certainly not its pinnacle in any way. Mildly enjoyable extras, sure.

I wouldn’t let whether you’re enthusiastic about Santa/the tooth fairy/Easter bunny/birthdays etc factor into your decision about whether or not to have a child. Nor would I assume that parenthood is necessarily a transformative experience. I think I’m pretty much the same as I was before I had DS (at 40, so plenty of adult freedoms to compare with). I’m delighted I had him (was very ambivalent), but I certainly didn’t turn into a different person, start seeing my previous monochrome world in technicolour etc.

The problem with parenthood is that (1) it’s very subjective and depends on age, health, temperament of parents and child, plus circumstances et etc — my experience as the comfortably-off WOH parent of one healthy, NT child is going to be very different to a SAHM to several children with additional needs. And (2) it’s not something you can get a good sense of what it’s like by observing other people doing it. No accounts of parenthood I’d read before I had DS in any way resemble what it’s been like.

Im childless and I love it it was my choice.
I'm looking to take a cruise or a holiday this December to avoid Christmas again with a friend.
It will be my 5th getaway this year.
But I still have responsibility for other things.
I still have to pay bills tax feed myself get things fixed etc.
Just have no worries or responsibility for a child.
I have 2 friends one as a 3 & 6 year old and having her 3rd shes 43.
The other one 42 her children are 21&22 both moved out.
Its a choice we have no matter if we have kids or not have them. Have them younger or have them older it's a choice.
Friend one wants friend 2 to help her out more friend 2 told her my days are mine now.
Friend 1 says it's not fair that she's missing out.
She really isn't missing out and all her freedom will come back one day.
But no way in hell am I going on a avoid Xmas getaway with kids.
Op it's fine to feel oh buggers wish it was me.
It will be you one day.

I’m in your sister’s situation, and I get really tired of people envying my perceived ‘easy’ life, when in reality I have some very crushing responsibilities and worries which are usually dismissed because they don’t involve motherhood.

Ok.
In any case the OP hasn't clarified if she can go for a weekend away on her own or not, so hard to advise on her particular situation.

What actual statistic is it that childless women are the poorest group in society. I don’t generally go around reading statistics on things like this.

I’m curious why you think a financially well off woman is dependent on having a partner?

Very interesting post.

Serious question - and I hope it doesn’t offend - but if one considers the ‘fun’ things with kids that you listed (build up with santa, tooth fairy etc.) completely banal and tedious, would you say that person ought not to have children as they will be bored out of their brain?

Asking for myself. (See above about being on the fence.)

I think it’s probably the way you write things and they are very likely to come across very differently to how you intend it.

Yes I did think your comment was wtf. It’s a very odd way of expressing your opinion.

I’m mid-30s and on the fence about having a baby (like 70:30 against vs for), and it really comes down to loss of freedom for me. Could I give up spontaneous holidays and raving into the early hours of the morning then sleeping in the next day?

It’s encouraging that your envy is only fleeting, OP - perhaps I would get over the loss of freedom. Something to think about!

Is the childfree an offensive term? I didn't think so. What's your objection to it?

And I didn't say you could only go to the theatre with your children. That would be v odd.

Even then, there would be something else.
Happiness is accepted when you live in the here and now and life dosent have a load of conditions attached to it.