Childless or children-free: from (un) voluntary life without young people

Anna and Emilie have a few things in common. You can both assume when you want to book vacations outside the high season and sit undisturbed with a book. Because: None of them have children.

Anna has always wanted it, but Emilie would give everything to have to do her life after her own offspring. « I have always imagined starting my own family, » says 42-year-old Emilie. « But I never hit the right partner. Now I have to find that I can never become a mother. I shouldn’t think too much about it because it hurts too much. »

In 2023, more than 6,200 babies were born in Luxembourg – three percent less than in 2022, as data from the Statec Statistics Office show. The number of children per woman has been as low as it has not been for several decades. According to Eurostat, the number of births has decreased all over Europe since 2008.

The main reasons for the decline are lifestyle decisions: people want less or no children at all, more women strive for a career and will later live in the mother, and the high living expenses also keep people from starting or expanding a family, according to an investigation by the National Library of Medicine.

Looking for a like -minded partner

Anna, in my early 40s and married, always knew that she never wanted to be a mother, and was therefore looking for a partner who also wants to stay childless.

« As soon as it got serious to me with a friend, I asked him if he wanted children, » she says. « I always said openly that I didn’t want children because I was tired of this that this became so often on the subject, and people tried to find out what my rejection was towards young people. »

The reason for her strict attitude was the fact that she never felt the slightest affection for children. Friends who became parents did not envy them and she couldn’t imagine ever raising her own children.

« I really don’t find children cute at all, » she added. « I don’t even know what people find in them. I always knew that I don’t want to and have never regretted it. People often say to me, I don’t know what I would miss. It is almost as if they were on a mission to dissuade me from my opinion. »

While Anna says that she cannot do anything to friends who talk about her educational problems, Emilie switches off from self -protection when others complain about her sleepless nights and morning fights with her sons or daughters.

« Many parents feel entitled to complain, and sometimes I have the feeling that they have lost their empathy, » says Emilie. « You don’t see that I am suffering that I desperately want what you have. I don’t say that it is easy to have children or you should gloss over your fights, but I wish people would choose her words more carefully, » she adds.

« I often hear: ‘You are so lucky that you can go on vacation outside of school holidays, then it’s cheaper.’ But I don’t consider it luck at all. « 

Get a baby alone

Emilie may not think of Mother’s Day. She stays away from social media so as not to constantly remind you that, unlike most of her friends and work colleagues, she could not become a mother.

As a single woman, she would have the opportunity to become a biodegrading mother through a sperm donation, as well as homosexual women or heterosexual couples with fertility problems. Luxembourg does not have its own sperm donation bench, but uses the donation seeds of an international sperm bank in Denmark, Cryos International.

According to information on the bank’s website, about half of the women who have become pregnant internationally with donor seeds of Cryos are voluntary. The website provides basic information about the donor, such as hair and eye color and ethnicity.

For single men, surrogacy, on the other hand, offers the only way to become a biological father without a partner. It is much more expensive than a sperm donation – the costs are estimated to be between 30,000 and 180,000 euros – and is illegal in Luxembourg. In some countries such as neighboring Belgium, only the so -called altruistic surrogacy is allowed, in which the surrogate mother does not receive any money, but only pregnancy -related expenses such as medical treatments and maternity clothing.

« I know that there are other ways to become a mother these days, » says Emilie. « It is a very personal decision and I thought about it, but I’m not sure if I was ready. I had imagined my life differently and it is not easy to break away from it. »

This article appeared in Original at « Luxembourg Times ». German processing: Nathalie Roden.