'I felt like a freak because I didn't want children'
The number of women choosing not to start a family is growing and the global birth rate is plunging.
While their reasons vary from climate worries to financial concerns and health complications, those making the decision to be "child-free by choice" say societal acceptance is yet to come, often leaving them feeling ostracised.
The BBC spoke to members of Bristol Childfree Women, a social group with more than 500 members, set up by women and for women who have decided not to have children.
While Caroline Mitchell always knew she never wanted children, she wasn't prepared for how hard reaching "child-bearing age" would be.
The 46-year-old, who lives with her husband in Brislington, Bristol, said while it never bothered her when she was younger, she had not anticipated the barrage of personal questions she would face as friends and acquaintances started families.
"I have felt like a freak because of it," she said.
"I feel like my perspective and my experience is just not acceptable."
In Caroline's eyes, society is set up for motherhood.
"You realise how you're quite excluded from a lot of life," she said.
"It's really hard for me to meet people, because it's all about the women you meet at the school gates or the writing clubs for mums."
Caroline said she thinks that sometimes women with children believe the "whole world" is set up for child-free women.
"Actually, it's really exclusionary," she said.
Many in her circle of friends have children and while they have never knowingly done anything to make her feel different, she says, the fact they are "all doing one thing" and she is doing another has been "quite hard".
While Caroline is "100% certain" and "very comfortable" in her identity, she admits she has, on occasion, “agonised" about her decision.
She said that was down to the "cultural expectation" of what was normal and the concept that if you were a woman, having a child was "the natural thing to do".
Official figures released in 2022 show record numbers of women are reaching the age of 30 child-free.
More than half (50.1%) of women in England and Wales born in 1990 were without a child when they turned 30 in 2020, the first generation to do so, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Megan Stanley, who is originally from Oxfordshire and lives in Bristol, was so certain about her decision to not have children, she has been trying to get sterilised since the age of 19.
When it comes to her painful periods, Megan said it feels "cruel" to go through the "suffering every single month for a body function" she feels she does not need.
"I know that sterilisation doesn't solve periods but it does alleviate a lot of those major symptoms," she said.
But the 31-year-old said she has come up against hurdle after hurdle.
“The doctors would say ‘you're still a bit young’ or ‘you might change your mind’,” she said.
The furthest Megan got was when she was 29 and had an appointment with a surgeon.
"I'd prepared everything - my medical history, prepared all my line of reasoning. I'd even gone as far as to get a testimony from the therapist I was seeing. I'd gone the full mile," she said.
However, permission was not granted once the gynaecologist asked about her relationship status.
"At the time I'd been dating my now long-term partner for maybe three months," Megan said.
She told the doctor that her partner also definitely did not want children and he had already had a vasectomy.
'It's my body'
Megan said the doctor then told her that if her partner had a vasectomy, “then you don't need to have this done, do you?"
It was then that Megan said she realised it was "inescapable" and they were "just not going to do it".
"Why should what happens to my body be beholden to what he's done to his?" she said.
"It's got to the point now where I long for the menopause. That's what I'm looking forward to."
Caroline believes women without children may be “complicit” in keeping cultural expectations as they are.
"We don't talk about it - so there's still this thought that it's what everyone does," she said.
"Motherhood is just everywhere all the time, in your face."
She said it was hard not fitting in with the "norm of society" and at times, she had wished she was "different".
"My life would have been easier in some ways," she said.
Yet for many women, whatever choices they make, they seem to beat themselves up about it and "seem to be not very accepting of everyone's choice", Caroline added.
Fiona Powley said she knew she did not want to be a mother from the age of 12 after seeing her own mum struggle with motherhood.
“She didn't enjoy raising small children. She wouldn't have had the choices that we have today to opt out of that,” she said.
“I just thought motherhood didn't look like lot of fun and the best way to not be my mum was to not be one.”
Now 49, Fiona runs the Bristol Childfree Women group and while she is currently experiencing menopausal symptoms, she has "no panicking feeling" that she did not use her ability to reproduce.
"It feels very comfortable," she said.
'Selfish'
Ironically Fiona now looks at herself and thinks she could have actually done “quite a good job of parenting" but she "never really wanted it enough".
However, like Caroline and Megan she said new people she meets can react negatively when she tells them she chose not to have children.
“There's being told you'll regret it. What's your point of existing? If you don't have children you're not valid as a woman," Fiona said.
Fiona has even been called "selfish" and some have questioned who will look after her when she is old.
“It's almost like people feel uncomfortable," she said.
“It's probably because it never occurred to them that they also had a choice.”
Megan can sympathise.
In the past, the reaction to her not wanting children has been quite "visceral", she said.
She claims some people have painted her as "a child-hater, or a mean person” because of it.
"I think my not wanting kids is just an innate thing to who I am," she said.
Fiona said there were so many reasons people decide not to start a family.
Looking back, she thinks her own reasons were "probably quite unhealthy", but she knows that she is not going to "suddenly wake up as an old lady and feel bitter and regret".
'It's about choice'
Caroline said she would be a "resentful mother", adding there were a "huge amount of upsides" to not having children, like focusing her time on her relationship with her husband and her hobbies.
Megan agrees.
“There’s a lot of joy to be had in not having kids," she said.
“It isn't all about freedom and money. It's about choice."
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