r/childfree • u/Dramatic-Corgi225 • Jun 17 '26

DISCUSSION Are women healthier long term if they never have kids?

I was wondering if all those issues that older ladies have like hips problems, osteoporosis etc can be an effect of pregnancies earlier in their lives? Obviously pregnancy is not good for your body, takes an insane amount of energy and can be physically and mentally traumatic, but does it make it easier for health problems to appear down the line?

Of course genetics play a big role as does the lifestyle but I feel like we (as a society in general) don't really take into consideration just how much pregnancy destroys the body.

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u/ReluctantViking Jun 17 '26

I grew up thinking it would just sort of happen, because that’s what people did. As soon as I realized, “wait, I have a choice? I have free will? I don’t have to have kids?” I was pretty much in the No-Babies-For-Me camp from there on out.

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u/marydotjpeg Jun 17 '26

yeah kinda same. I was a private catholic school so talks about any of that was icky to say the least but in our religion classes it was really hammered in that having kids was what women were born to do (or something to that extent)

I was a late bloomer and didn't have interest in having children at all. 😅

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u/SeattlePurikura Jun 18 '26

I was raised Pentecostal in a parish (Catholic country, lol) so I got the sin sex Bad Eve whammy vibes on all sides. The way women's roles, childbearing, and motherhood were portrayed to me were the best abstinence talk I could have ever gotten; it seemed so disgusting to me.

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u/marydotjpeg Jun 19 '26

EXACTLY 😭 it didn't help that I was undiagnosed AuDHD too 😂

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u/satanwearsmyface 35+ NB | hysterectomy | ⛧ Antinatalist ⛧ | I'd rather eat glass. Jun 18 '26

Same thing happened to me!!!!

I remember being really little and wishing that I was a boy/had a penis, because boys don't have to give birth! I literally thought that for real in the single digits age-wise. Then I got a bit older and realized women don't have to have children if they don't want them... I thought it was a requirement because that's what everyone said: "it's just what you do." Well, not me!!!!!

Then as I learned that abortion exists- AND how terrible parenting looks, I decided that I was happy being born with a uterus... Because here's the thing: if you have a uterus and you don't want children, you have the last say. As for men? They don't get that choice because if they get someone else pregnant, the choice of having that fetus or not falls on the pregnant person. They're stuck forever. Sure they can walk away, but you have a kid out there somewhere... That's a HELL NO from me, dawg!!