15.
“I’m in my mid-40s, and life is workable specifically because I’m childfree. I’m financially comfortable because I don’t have dependents. If I had dependents, I may or may not be able to make ends meet. I suffered a concussion some years ago, and I literally wouldn’t have been able to take care of a child for many months afterward. I don’t know what would have happened if I had a child. I’m currently going through a difficult perimenopause with extensive, unpredictable heavy bleeding. I don’t know how to balance taking care of a child with having to clean my own blood off the floor every 10 minutes. If I get long COVID, I will be unable to live independently.”
“My province removed COVID protections in schools at the peak of the Omicron wave, and literally every child I know got COVID that month, and most have had it multiple times since. If I had a child, I would almost certainly be unable to get out of bed at this point, but would still have a dependent child to take care of. Separately from all of that, I’m at the point in middle age where you really start feeling the weight of having to keep living for decades and decades and decades. I am so glad I don’t have to look a child in the eye and say, ‘Why yes, I thought it was worthwhile to inflict all these decades of existence upon you in our ever-enshittifying world!'”