The 30s Freakout and Child Free by Choice
Freakout
I will not be having biological children unless it happens by accident. I, like many of my peers, experienced the Phenomenon of Grief when I turned 30. It snuck up on me, considering I was in my first year of grad school and marriage and kids were definitely not a priority. In fact, I worried I’d meet someone in school who might derail my plans.
(I still hadn’t gotten used to the idea that marriage was my choice. No one could make me get married against my will.)
The grief, accompanied by a mild depression, didn’t make sense. Until I heard from my friends that they experienced it too. Either a few months before they turned 30 or a few months after. Many childless women experience this, and I don’t believe it’s biological.
I believe it’s social conditioning. No matter how progressive our family of origin (and mine was nowhere close to progressive), women are defined by their relationships, mainly that of wife and mother. My friend Emily married at 29, and our community in the south sighed with relief. We were getting worried it would never happen. I moved away from the south a few months before her wedding and I remember rejoicing that I no longer lived in the south when I turned 30. My depression would have been astronomically worse.
Because 30 was the last milestone before you might officially don the title of Spinster.
Emma Watson spoke about the 30s Freakout in a 2019 interview with British Vogue, saying she suddenly felt anxious when she turned 29, based on “subliminal messages” that you were supposed to be married, have kids, build a home, and be at a stable place in your career.
Fundamentalism
The 30 Freakout is a thing. It’s even more of a thing when you were raised in Christian Fundamentalism and the only option for a life path you were given was one with marriage and children. There were no other doors to choose from.
So when I freaked out, I got a little upset about it because I was finally on a path I felt like I’d chosen for myself. I’d just returned to the states after working for a year in Mexico and hired a career coach to teach me how to make my resume reflect who I was and all I could do, rather than just my limited work experience. This career coach taught me how to do informational interviewing, which ended up being the reason I got an enviable job while in grad school and found a place to live that was only $80 a month and fifteen minutes from campus.
I was as close to being on top of the world as I’d ever been, so why did I hit the pavement when I turned 30?
I have since learned about trauma, how our body stores experiences that are detached from our cognitive brain. No matter how sure I was that I was exactly where I wanted to be at 30, my body still had 30 years of subtle and overt messages embedded into my bones, telling me I’d failed at my priorities as a woman. I was supposed to be married with a couple kids by now.
Naturally, my body had a reaction.
Eggs
I’ll turn 40 in a couple weeks. I wonder if the next decade will surprise me with a new grief. Unlike many of my peers, I did not pass through the waters of grief as I watched my biological clock tick down. I made a deal with God when I was 33. If they wanted me to have kids (as so many had told me they did) then I needed to be married by 34. Otherwise, no kids.
I figured my bargaining chip was legitimately strong.
34 came and went, so I told God, “That’s it. No kids.” And I have not regretted that decision. I considered donating my eggs until I realized my eggs were too old (34 was the cutoff when I last checked).
Still, I sometimes feel sorry for my kids that will never exist. I would have been a great mom. I was a great mom. I was a mother to my younger siblings; I was a mother as a nanny; I was a mother to my students in youth group for nearly a decade.
I think one of the reasons I can let the option of having children go is because I’ve already traveled that path. I’ve had the experience of being a mother outside of biological children. I have succeeded. I genuinely chose a child free life because I wanted to.
I am happy with this choice.
Katherine Spearing MA, CTRC is the founder of Tears of Eden, a nonprofit supporting survivors of spiritual abuse and is a Certified Trauma Recovery Practitioner working primarily with clients who have survived cults, high-control environments, spiritual abuse, and sexual abuse. She also provides specialized trauma informed career coaching, as folks with trauma often need extra support for interviewing and networking.
Katherine is the author of a historical romantic comedy, Hartfords, a novel that challenges gender roles in a patriarchal society that will appeal to fans of Jane Austen. Her next book on Spiritual Abuse addresses the survivor’s recovery journey, coming in 2025.
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