The relationship dilemma facing women who don’t want kids

NOT wanting kids could be the ultimate relationship deal-breaker. So how do you tackle this difficult conversation?

Cameron Diaz told Women’s Health years ago that she likes her life too much to bring a child into it. But after marrying Benji Madden there have been many rumours that the couple are looking to have a baby. Picture: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

FOR the seven per cent of Western women now choosing to remain childless, it can be challenging to finding a partner who is on the same page.

Melbourne woman Candice*, 31, has never envisaged a life with children. Travel, her career and social justice campaigns all vie for her attention and she’s never been able to picture a life with a rug rat in tow.

She met Alex* speed dating a couple of years ago and was upfront about the fact that kids weren’t part of her life plan but he assumed she’d eventually change her mind and the conversation was swept under the carpet.

“I have always had an absence of desire to have children — I’ve just never felt that having children was something that I wanted out of life,” she says.

“My partner didn’t take me seriously at first and I realised we needed to talk about it further. He implied I was being selfish, which hurt and made me feel completely misunderstood.”

Two years down the track the topic has become the elephant in the room. Candice would like a commitment that he’s happy to sign up to a sans-children life but he is avoiding the topic.

“I love him and I know he loves me but I have concerns that he won’t be able to accept my ‘terms’ and we may need to go our separate ways,” she says.

“I don’t think it’s a good thing to bring a child into the world unless both parties are 100 per cent committed.”

Relationships therapist Somerset Maxwell says that there are few relationship issues that are quite as loaded as whether or not to have children, and it’s crucial couples lay their cards clearly on the table.

“Someone who cares about you should care about you enough to sit down and talk through the hard stuff,” she says.

“It’s important to have trust and be able to say what you want to say without fear of persecution. If you can’t have conversations about things that are difficult, then there’s an issue in the relationship to begin with.”

But asking somebody to have a deep and potentially difficult conversation is not always an easy ask.

“People who have been hurt in the past often come into relationships with their guard up,” Maxwell says.

“But if you go into a relationship and don’t want to bring up what your deal breakers are, then you can get three or four years down the track and realise that you don’t agree on the things that are fundamental.”

Amber*, 28, has also never been able to picture a life with kids but in her case, her husband Pete* is happy with that idea. They recently moved from Sydney to New York and have plans to wander the globe for the foreseeable future — a life choice made much simpler without offspring.

“Whenever one of our friends announces they’re pregnant, we check in with each other to see if there has been any change on that front, but so far there hasn’t,” Amber says.

“If he said he wanted kids, I would take some time to think long and hard about it. I’d want to have a lot of honest conversations about what our life would be like — who would stay home with them, where we’d live. We’d need practical, not biological or emotionally driven conversations.”

Sue Yorston, Relationships Australia senior manager, recommends couples who are struggling to work through the issue sit down with a couples counsellor.

“It’s really helpful to have an independent third person to guide the conversation and [enable] people to express what they need to without it degenerating into an argument or bringing other things into it,” she says.

Yorston says that if you don’t work through such issues, they’ll likely rear their heads down the track.

“One of the killers of a relationship is resentment,” she warns.

Ultimately, it’s up to individuals to try to forecast whether they could handle foregoing their long-held assumption that they would become a parent.

“There are a lot of trade-offs for not having children — if you’re a really strong partnership it can mean that you can travel, have properties and have any interior styling you want without the consideration of crayon on the walls,” Maxwell says.

“Some people will change their mind after they get to 38 or 39 and have ticked off their career or travel bucket list and go, ‘This is all great but there might be something missing’. I also think that people can make the decision that the relationship works well and is more valuable and they love that person more than the idea of having children.”

*Names have been changed