- The curiosity is pretty much killing me.

- Yeah, same.

(upbeat music) - My name is Sarah, I am married.

I do not have children and I identify as childless-not-by-choice.

- My name is Cameron I have a long-term partner.

I don't have any children.

And I now consider myself child-free.

- Hi, I'm Sarah.

- I'm Cameron.

(upbeat music) - I think for me it boiled down to connection.

To my relationship with my husband.

I always wanted to be a slightly older, more experienced mom.

I think I also, there was just a lot that I wanted to share with my children and a lot that I wanted to teach my children.

- The idea of me having a child and raising it from birth, would always bring me into a reality of my life is over, to a point because everything I would like to do might have to get put on hold.

And then my ex-girlfriend, we were together for six years and we weren't as safe as we should have been.

Part of me was thinking, "Maybe we should like get a pregnancy test".

And I remember getting the phone call from her, she said, "I had a miscarriage".

And I kind of had this like reaction of, almost like a panic attack saying, "What if this didn't happen and I had a child?

"Like, I'm not ready for it."

I couldn't handle it.

I have a lot of fears.

I couldn't talk to people that wanted to have kids, because, to me I'm like, I'm feeling a little bit of relief.

And to them they kind of would look at it kind of judgmentally.

- Yeah.

- And then... - Yeah, kind of like they'd be a little horrified.

- Kind of was this earth shattering moment of my life.

Just figuring things out and figuring that I need to, take a look inward and figure everything out.

And just, yeah, I cried a lot about that.

That was like a long week of crying too.

So it was tough.

- I was 38 when we started trying to conceive and we got to IVF a little bit before I turned 41.

The fertility industry is great at kind of touting its successes but veiling and glossing over its failures.

Miracle baby stories abound.

I would say our last couple treatments, the chances were pretty slim.

And it's just, it's just brutal.

Living on the notion of slim chances.

It's no way to live.

- Wow, did you ever feel pressure to keep trying?

- The pressure mostly came from the fertility industry and from the friends that I had made in a small support group.

Sometimes people in the infertile world can actually be the most sort of pressureful and judgemental... - Wow.

- of people when it comes to this kind of thing.

There's this mentality that you will go to the ends of the earth to try to have a child and my husband and I wanted it very, very badly.

But we weren't willing to destroy ourselves.

And that's why we eventually ended up stopping.

- Yes actually.

A lot of my life I thought I was supposed to have kids, I was raised that way.

I came from a very religious background so my parents taught us, kind of like, you know, once you find the right person, get married and have kids.

Start a family, and just kind of rinse and repeat over each generation in a way.

I've seen the pressure.

I've seen the worst of it actually.

- How so?

- When I was younger I had a friend, we worked together for a couple of years.

She wound up marrying one of my close friends.

She was very adamant about she wanted to have a career.

She didn't want to be a mother.

The church pressured her a lot and she wound up getting married young and having a kid.

She started being really depressed.

She's had a lot of issues, she never seemed the same.

She tried to medicate, but the church didn't believe in medicating.

- Oh boy.

- And she wound up killing herself because she wasn't happy with where she was in her life.

It was a very, very tough thing to kind of witness because I completely believe everyone has a choice to live their lives the way they want to.

- Sure.

- But to see this pressure from society going on to this young woman, I feel like it's a cautionary tale in a way.

- Yeah.

- Oh goodness.

I think the experiences that I've gone through.

You know, I came out knowing that multiple failed fertility treatments are in fact a trauma.

And that you can really love something in a devoted way that you'll never get to meet.

You know, I fell in love with my children.

When you've stopped and you know that it's not happening, - Yeah.

- people don't believe you.

They, so, like I'll say, "It's over", or whatever and they will say, "Well, when it happens".

And the whole miracle thing comes up and what they're saying is, "Just keep putting yourself in harm's way, you know.

"Who cares about your mental health".

It's important to try to talk and share with people because loss needs to be culturally acknowledged.

And with my loss you don't get that.

- Yeah, I can't imagine what you go through with that.

I think for me, dealing with depression and anxiety, it's like, I saw what it did to my friends who grew up in households with that.

And I didn't want to put a child through that.

My one good friend, she was abandoned by her mother because her mom just had an emotional breakdown and couldn't be there anymore, so she left.

What if I'm that parent that abandons their child?

So I didn't want to take the risk because I think going into something uncertain, not when there's another life on the line.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So I decided that I couldn't do this.

For the love of myself and the love of a potential child, I wouldn't do it.

Do you ever feel like some of those pressures, if there's a way to educate people more in society?

Or do you think there's a way to help other women that are going through it too?

- Yeah, I tend to think about these things every day and as far as societally we live in a very pronatalist culture.

- Yeah, very true - With the ideology or mentality that sort of presumes that the lives of parents are more valuable than the lives of non-parents.

And that needs to change.

I think we really need to recognize and value culturally other forms of adulthood besides parenthood.

I don't have less of an emotional capacity or less potent emotions because I couldn't conceive and give birth.

It's interesting that the pressure seems to manifest whether it's by choice or not by choice.

That those pressures really, really trickle down.

- They do, they definitely do.

- Yeah, I am curious about one more thing.

Socializing, do you have trouble finding people you want to socialize with?

Because you know, - Yeah, yeah.

- there's a smaller pool of us.

- It's true.

- You know, we're not the dominant social norm.

- I remember when I started coming out to some of the church group I used to be a part of, that I was child-free.

I was completely ostracized.

Like, I did not fit in anymore.

- I'm sorry to hear that.

- No one invited me.

There's people out there that have this idea that, no, this really, I can't have a relationship with you if you don't want kids.

That's it.

- Yeah, you know the childless-not-by-choice, we don't have any external identifying factors, so socializing, can be.

- Yeah, it can be difficult some days.

- Quite challenging.

And there's such a relief, right?

When you're in a group of like-minded people.

And there's not this constant, you know, kind of hamster wheel - Yes.

- of having to explain yourself.

Because it gets really tiring and kind fruitless.

And I know for me on the rare occasion that happens, it's really freeing.

- It's so relieving.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So good to talk to you.

- It really moved me.

To come face to face with someone that was child-free-not-by-choice.

I choose to be child-free, but now that I understand that it's increasingly tougher when you don't make this decision.

- I think I kind of learned, you know if people are centered in themselves and they're coming from a place that's authentic, there's no reason to not be accepting.

- People kept pushing her to continue on even though she reached that point where she said she can't go on.

Just going through that process, I can't fathom it.

This is something I'll probably remember the rest of my life actually.