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Chapter 3 Tubes Tied, Child-Free by Choice Aaronette M. White The term child-free has been reclaimed by people like me who contend that not having children can be an active, positive, and fulfilling choice. I am a child-free and voluntarily sterilized African American woman.1 I had my tubes tied, despite the horrific history of sterilization in this country and persistent misconceptions about child-free women. Although I believe, as an adult, that I share some responsibility for looking after and caring for children (it does take a village to raise a child), I have never wanted to be a child’s mother. I have never wanted to have children—meaning, to bear my own, adopt, or foster another human being as a parent. However, people have always told me that I would change my mind. I have always felt that as an African American woman, I had enough to deal with alone. Having a child would only complicate the injustices I was already experiencing and fighting against in my everyday life, my academic profession, and the political activism in which I am engaged, nationally and internationally. The racial, gender, and class inequalities embedded in our society’s institutions offer very limited definitions of family, work, healthcare, social security, and public education; as a result, I gradually disengaged myself from other people’s expectations for my personal life. Having a tubal ligation, to me, meant no children—not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Writing about the decision not to have a child makes me visible to women who may not even see childbearing as something you decide to do or not. Additionally , I want to challenge certain books about child-free women that say only White women make this choice. I write to demonstrate what it means to have clarity and a heart strong enough to live with my decision, despite negative stereotypes and judgments about it. Of course I respect mothers’ experiences and honor mothers in general. However, women can have awe-inspiring and 51 52 Aaronette M. White satisfying lives in addition to, and even instead of, bearing and raising children. We can address feelings of emptiness and/or establish our authenticity as women without the experience of pregnancy or giving birth, and the experiences of child-free women should be equally respected and honored. My initial reasons for not wanting children have multiplied as a result of the ongoing pressures I have had to contend with regarding my decision. Women who choose to remain child-free are expected to justify themselves in ways that women who have children are not, because women are expected to have children. Motherhood is still considered to be women’s primary role; and most societies, regardless of economic, political, or cultural systems, value childbearing over childlessness.2 Voluntarily child-free women challenge (and threaten) cultural expectations because in addition to the fact that they do not have children, they do not want them. Voluntarily childless women have been criticized as selfish, immature, and irresponsible. In contrast, the involuntarily childless woman is considered worthy of sympathy, resources, and support. It is assumed that “no children” means “can’t have children” or “hasn’t found the right mate.”3 To my mind, we need to understand both childlessness and sterilization in new ways that respect the choice and life of a woman who refuses to have a child and who acts with self-determination to protect that choice. That calls for the development of alternative vocabularies for the issues involved. Scholarly research on women who are intentionally childless consistently demonstrates that child-free women do not constitute a homogeneous group.4 Explanations and motivations for remaining child-free are multiple, complex, and sometimes as contradictory as the reasons women give for having children. Most important, empirical research has found that both women with and women without children are oppressed, albeit in different ways, by male-dominant societies . One group is not automatically more marginalized than the other, and I reject the view that the interests of mothers and child-free women are at odds. Despite our different choices, we as women have to negotiate the meaning of our experiences in ways that focus on the connections between us. We all need to work together for common solutions. Finally, I do not mean to devalue women who choose to be mothers part-time, full-time, or every time they become pregnant. I am not rejecting mothers. I am critiquing the notion that...

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