More women like me are choosing to be childfree. Is this the age(10)

Instead, I think of how, for as long as I can remember, I’ve softened my refusal to be a parent. The times I’ve said, “Not yet,” the parties at which I’ve smiled when a stranger informs me I’ll change my mind, as if he’s more familiar with my body than I am. The talk of ostriches. It occurs to me that this is yet another way I force myself to take up less space: I badly don’t want my private refusal to sound like an affront to anyone else’s desires. 
But one grows tired of extending courtesies that are too often not reciprocated, and maybe, for once, I’ll say it plain: I don’t want children, I never have, and it doesn’t feel like any kind of lack. To me, it just feels like being alive.

Additional reporting by Adrienne Matei