Married, childfree and happy

How does it feel to go against the widespread idea that marriage must result in procreation? In a heartfelt essay, writer C K Meena describes why she bucked the ‘expectation’

Picture me as a prepubescent girl in 1960s Kozhikode, wearing a frock stitched by mother or tailor, skinny as a beanpole, curly hair bob-cut to earlobe-level. I’m in a marriage pandal among guests milling around before the plantain leaves are laid out for the festive meal. Numerous aunties hold chubby infants in their arms and I can see girls my age or even younger making goo-goo noises at them. These girls in silk blouse and pavada are sticking out their arms, coaxing the babies to accept the invitation which is often rejected with a haughty turn of the head. The successful ones proudly stagger away with the prize balanced unsteadily on their hips.

C K Meena

Meanwhile, the aunties spot me and I try to sidle away. One of them offers me her trophy and I know what’s going to happen next because it happens every single time. The damn baby chortles and, with a toothless grin, flails its arms to reach out to me as if I were a long-lost friend. I smile sheepishly, arms hanging stiffly by my sides. Aunty reproaches me and I feel a twinge of guilt. Actually it became a sort of game with the aunties to prove a point, an unvoiced chant: baby wants Meena, Meena doesn’t want baby.

I didn’t imagine that the latter phrase would become my calling card. The inchoate feeling would solidify in time and harden into a concrete choice that was questioned by all and sundry, but never by me. There was not a smidgen of a doubt in my mind at any point in my 66 years on this earth. I felt no atavistic instinct to reproduce, and therefore I would not — it was as simple as that.

Teenage confusion

I did periodically question my own inner being (words like ‘identity crisis’ did not exist in my time). Those girls at the wedding — none of the boys, remember — how automatically they cooed over the infants. Propagating the species was seemingly their — and my — natural role. Was I unnatural, a freak? Now in hindsight I realise that girls were expected or encouraged to lovingly handle babies as implicit training for future motherhood — good old social conditioning — but back then I just felt awkward in my body, different from the rest.

This difference grew more pronounced in my teenage. I had never been the girly sort — case in point: when the barber came home to cut my father’s and brother’s hair I would also want my turn under the clipper. While many of my classmates were shod in slip-ons with pointy toes, I was comfortable in my chunky ‘Naughty Boy’ shoes, a Bata brand that still survives. But it was only when I got my period at 13 that a turbulent force built up inside me and shoved its way out. It met an equal and opposite force — social convention — and the battle lines were drawn.

When I met my dear school principal, Sister Mirabel, in Bangalore 25 years after I’d left school, she remembered me, among the hundreds of pupils she’d taught in many states, as the girl who kept saying “But why?” to everything. It struck me that “But why?” has indeed influenced my behaviour, attitudes, and mode of living. But what set off this questioning? At many stages in my life I’ve turned this over in my mind and despite much cud-chewing I could only conclude, rather tamely, that it was “nature plus nurture”, a lethal combination of harsh upbringing and physiology.

Corporal punishment was familiar to many middle-class children of my generation but my brothers, and I to a lesser extent since I was a girl, received a heftier dose than was advisable, to put it mildly. Hence each of us rebelled in our own ways. In my case, though, there was the added ingredient of what is currently known as gender dysphoria. At 13, my tomboy nature gained alarming proportions and I announced to my classmates that I was a boy. I stuck both hands in my pinafore pockets and desperately wished I could whistle. I remember reading a newspaper article about the Welsh writer James Morris having a sex change operation to become Jan Morris (the late great journalist and travel writer) and continuing to live happily with her wife Elizabeth. Was it possible to switch girl to boy? My state of mind, however, didn’t prevent me from (paradoxically?) having boy-crushes.

‘But why?’

This tumultuous phase lasted through high school and into the first year of college. Outwardly I was a girl; my frocks had given way to short skirt and blouse. But entering a co-ed college demanded a change of attire. Even my parents knew that a sari was inconceivable; the aunties were always chiding me for “marching like a man” instead of demurely taking small steps. Then my eldest brother, who was working abroad, miraculously came to my rescue by buying me pants and shirts. 

By my second year of college, though, my parents had had enough. Off came the shirt tucked into trousers that sported a buckled belt. They allowed the pants to remain, but paired with long tops. Their daughter was approaching marriageable age. Marriage was a topic that Sister Mirabel had brought up in our high school moral science class. “Who plans to get married?” she had asked. Every right hand in the room shot up except mine. The girls stared curiously and Sister couldn’t get a coherent explanation out of me. How could I tell her that Shashi Deshpande was to blame?

I looked forward to Deshpande’s early short stories that occasionally appeared in Femina magazine because they were strikingly different from the usual mushy stuff. (Incidentally, I thought she was a man since Shashi is a common male name in Kerala.) Then I read ‘The Intrusion’ and I was terrified out of my wits. Couple on honeymoon, arranged marriage, woman acutely uncomfortable, and finally, the shocking lines that describe marital rape. The scene set my virginal 15-year-old heart quaking and I swore that I would never expose my naked body to a stranger — for an utter stranger it would be, if you had an arranged marriage those days. The girl would briefly glimpse the boy during the ‘girl-seeing’ tea ceremony and they would have no contact whatsoever until the wedding day. The ‘first night’ was a nightmare for many women.

Today, as a cisgender woman who has had lots of happy hetero sex, I am thankful for never having undergone that nightmare. I also know that a fragment of a Y chromosome has been dormant in me all these years. I’ve always been ‘one of the boys’ in the company of men, a few of whom are my closest friends, and I jell smoothly with my gay, lesbian and transgender friends. I still favour trousers and often gravitate towards the men’s section. Long before I read western feminists and decades before ‘non-binary’ became a thing, I dismissed gender stereotypes as ridiculous — this business of corralling girls into a box that defines how they act and behave.

A streak of androgyny might have been why I vowed to never have a baby. But what drove me towards the rather unorthodox life I’ve led? The “but why?” mindset I suppose. Ably assisted by my elder brother, I could confidently beat back parental pressures. As for social scrutiny, I cared two hoots what people thought. My mum was cornered, though. Everyone cross-examined her about my singlehood and she was forced to intone, “She doesn’t want to get married, it seems.” Oh but I did — on my own terms.

Like-minded partner

I couldn’t have been more fortunate to fall in love with a man who, I realised to my delight, wanted no children either. His reason, too, was simple and confined to one sentence (as an editor, he tends to express his thoughts succinctly): I don’t want the responsibility of being a father. Over our lengthy ‘courtship’ (those who know me will snicker at this description!) we would periodically do a ‘status update’ of our decision to be childfree. Still holding strong? Two huge sighs of relief.

I started questioning whether women really did have a natural tendency to bear children or were simply falling in line with every other married woman. I have no doubt that most conventional couples breed unthinkingly because their parents and in-laws expect them to. Even those who marry for love — don’t they just decide at some point, “We might as well…” or “Wouldn’t it be fun if…”? I know of only one case, the wife of a dear friend of mine who, when she reached a certain age, felt an intense need to have a baby. My friend was happy to oblige. 

Ideally, the womb-holder should cast the deciding vote in favour of a baby. Men are the sleeping partner. No man feels a biological urge to reproduce. Of course there are maternal and paternal instincts but they surface after the fact! Once the child is born, most parents develop strong protective feelings like other animals do. But are there equally strong instincts that impel them to procreate? I like kids — I’m quite fond of my nephews and nieces — but don’t expect me to pop them out of my body. By Indian standards, I was past my childbearing age when I married, so my in-laws didn’t expect a grandchild.

Heard of anti-natalists?

A few of my peers are childfree and the reasons for their choice vary wildly. One thinks kids are a nuisance. Another had early health issues and was glad not to conceive thereafter. So inflexible was a male colleague’s decision that he had a vasectomy before marrying. Gen Z appears to have different motivations for its childfree option. The overwhelming one is, not surprisingly, “we don’t want to strain the planet’s resources”. Others range from it being too expensive to raise a child, to the rising crime rate.

A Bengaluru-based writer, B, childfree and in her thirties, enlightened me about ultra-radical worldwide trends that were seeping into India as well. I didn’t know that there was an anti-natalist convention in Malleswaram in 2019. I hadn’t heard of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and its founder Les Knight who had coined the slogan ‘Thank you for not breeding’. I hadn’t heard about Efilism, the belief that the entire animal kingdom should perish because it destroys the planet. Or about the anti-natalists who say it is unethical to bring a baby into the world without its consent.

B put me in touch with Anugraha Kumar (49), founder of Childfree India. Anugraha, an independent branding consultant and a Hegelian philosopher, told me that Childfree India’s WhatsApp and Telegram groups combined have nearly 700 members (eight Indian language sub-groups too), and it has 20,000 Facebook followers worldwide. In Bengaluru, a group of childfree couples meets once a month on Sunday in Electronics City to play board games. It’s too early to tell whether they’ll stay the course. If some of them later decide to have a baby, good luck to them.

There is no hole in our lives that we need to fill with a baby. Many of our passions intersect, and these we enjoy together. We also separately pursue our individual interests. The other day my husband said with a mischievous chuckle: “Have you noticed how many childfree couples have dogs?” I laughed. We don’t need pets. We have each other.

Don't hold back

Simple answers to simplistic questions from parents and utter strangers who feel they have the undisputed right to interrogate you:

Isn’t it time you got married?

I don’t want to, now.

Better marry early or your baby might have problems [code for “intellectual disabilities”]

I don’t want babies.

How selfish of you! [Code for “So you want to just enjoy sex?"]

[To parents] If I’m being selfish, what exactly am I depriving you of? Ah, the patter of little feet. Have you forgotten all that you underwent when bringing me up? You want me to go through the same ordeal?

[To strangers] I could have a kid and unselfishly share my parenting responsibilities with you. How does that sound?

Who will look after you in your old age?

Look at the couples in old age homes, or in houses with empty bedrooms, or doing free nanny duty for their children leading busy lives abroad. Can you guarantee that I won’t be one of them?

You’re missing out on the joys of being a mother.

And saving myself a lifetime of anxiety as well. I think I’ll pass.

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