Childfree People Over 40 Reveal Whether They Regret Their Life Choices

To gain more insight on this topic, we reached out to author and blogger Sue Fagalde Lick. Sue is the creator of the Childless by Marriage blog and author of several books including Childless by Marriage, Love or Children: When You Can't Have Both, and No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer's, which comes out this June. Sue was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda about her experience being childless and when she realized that kids weren't in the cards for her.

"I grew up assuming that I would have children. All of the women around me were mothers. I mothered my many dolls and my big black cat," she shared. "Before my first husband and I were married, we signed forms at church saying we would welcome children and raise them in the Catholic faith."

"During our six-year marriage, I spent a lot of time knitting and crocheting baby things and fantasizing about being pregnant. My husband was in no hurry to have children," Sue continued. "Not yet, he kept saying. By the time I realized he didn’t ever want kids, the marriage was broken. He married twice after me and didn’t have children with those wives either."

"When I remarried in my early 30s, I thought I might still have children, but my second husband, who was 14 years older than I was, already had two sons and a daughter from his first marriage and didn’t want any more," Sue shared. "He had had a vasectomy after his youngest son was born."

"I should have known then that it was never going to happen for me, but I spent years hoping for a miracle that didn’t happen. I was in my 40s when the truth finally sank in," she continued. "I hoped that my stepchildren would fill the gap, but we never formed a close bond. When my husband was 65, he developed Alzheimer’s Disease. He died at 73, leaving me a widow at age 59. I have been single and living alone since 2011."

Although Sue didn't choose to be childless, she can still acknowledge some of the upsides of not having kids. "Freedom is the big one. No babysitters, no working around a school schedule, no being interrupted every five minutes by a child needing attention," she noted. "During the years we might have spent raising children, we are free to work, travel, and pursue our dreams. We don’t have to wait until the kids are grown to do things for ourselves. We have more choice about how to use our money, too."

While many people choose to be childfree and are happy with that choice, there are also many people who did want to have families. So we were curious what Sue wishes parents understood about what it's like to be childless. "So many people don’t understand that it really is not by choice. Not directly anyway. I am childless because the men I married wouldn’t or couldn’t give me children. The man I dated between marriages would have gladly gotten me pregnant, but he was abusive, and my life with him would have been horrible."

“'You did this to yourself,' my sister-in-law told me once," Sue shared. "Her whole life is wrapped around her children and grandchildren. 'Stay away from Aunt Sue. She doesn’t do kids,' she told her daughter’s children. Wrong. I love children. Don’t shut us out because we’re not moms and dads."

"Parents don’t understand that we didn’t choose this, that it hurts like hell, that we are not anti-kid, and that we’re not weird or crazy because we’re not parents," she continued. "I wish they understood that we grieve the loss and are ever conscious of what we’re missing."

Sue also shared what she would like people to understand before deciding whether or not to have children. "Yes, raising children is difficult and expensive. You sacrifice a lot, but they are not children forever. Eventually they become adults you’ll be glad to have in your life," she told Bored Panda. "You should not let someone else make the decision for you. If you don’t have children, you could end up very alone in your older years. The loss doesn’t go away."

Sue also pointed out that IVF costs a fortune and frequently doesn’t work, and adoption is expensive and difficult as well. "There are no easy fixes. If you physically cannot have children, you need to grieve that loss as much as if someone you loved has died, but know that there are other things you can do with your life and you have the gift of time and freedom to pursue your dreams," Sue shared.