are you open to children?

Written by Leah Mooney

Perusing a dating app recently, I noticed a strange status relating to wanting children or not.  It said ‘open to children’.  I thought this was odd because, surely, you know, as a person roughly my age – I’m 41 – if you want children or not.  Being ‘open to children’ suggests you’re open to the suggestion.  It makes it sound like it’s a small thing like being ‘open to dinner dates’ or ‘open to tequila shots’ rather than something enormous that will change your life forever.  As someone who has never, not even for a minute at any point in my life, wanted children, I can’t help but feel the ‘have children or not’ question not one people should be avoiding answering definitively.

dating in your 20’s

When I was younger, and with my penchant for dating younger men, it was rarely an issue.  Young men were either too young to start worrying about whether they wanted children or not or thought they could change my mind.  It rarely, if ever, came up in conversation early in the relation and certainly not from the outset.  Even with relationships that lasted up to 3 years, I’d not had anyone break up with me or not wanted to date me because I didn’t want children until I was at least 35.  Now in my 40s, it has started being a first date deal breaker.

the stats

According to statistically research, a third of people in the UK claim to not want children.  If this is really the case, why is being clear about not wanting them such an issue that even dating apps are enabling people to be cagey about it?  Too many people are afraid of that first date deal breaker and are so keen to date they are making their preferences unclear.  However, the fact people are calling it off this early on is actually a very good thing indeed.

you just haven’t met the right person

In this situation, no longer am I having to deal with that awful ‘you just need to meet the right man’ thing.  No longer am I dating men who assume they’ll change my mind only to find, months or even years into the relationship, that it’s not going to happen.  Thankfully, men around my age are getting into these conversations earlier, it seems, even when it’s with seemingly flippant remarks like ‘so, was it being a teacher that put you off having children?’ on a first date recently which lead to no second one.

It's definitely a good thing that fewer people are wasting time with this sort of thing but I think it would be helpful if people on dating apps were clear about these issues.  It’s all well and good being ‘open to children’ when you’re 21 but, by the time you’re in your 40s, you should definitely either want children or not.  

There’s even more good news though because we child-free would-be daters are not as alone as it sometimes feels like we are.  Some like-minded folk have even created a dating app especially for people who don’t want children so no vague statuses or sneaky child related questions there.  

Let’s hope this is the beginning of a revolution in child-free dating.

To subscribe to the Secret Alchemy newsletter, click below.