These women said no to having kids - here's why

Image caption, Jess King, 32, has chosen to live a childfree life By Ella Kipling Published 1 minute ago Jess King always assumed she would have children. To her, it felt like a natural path all women eventually followed. But as she got older, she couldn't shake a persistent feeling that she wasn't ready. With time, her doubts deepened. "It turned into 'Am I not ready for this, or do I not want this?'" she recalls. Everyone she spoke to with children said they'd been really sure about it and they had a maternal urge. "I didn't have that and that made me start questioning it." Like Jess, more and more women in the UK are choosing not to have children. Research by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) suggests around three million women aged 16 to 45 are likely to stay childfree. If women in this age bracket were still having children at the same rate as their grandparents, 600,000 more of them would be having children. According to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), births in England and Wales fell for the fourth year in a row in 2025, to their lowest level in nearly half a century. Image caption, Jess says that telling her boyfriend she doesn't want kids was 'really scary' The CSJ's report cites "a range of social and economic pressures" as the reasons behind their figures. It found that rising housing costs, delayed financial independence, later marriage and growing uncertainty about careers all played a role. Financial pressures are also a consideration for Jess, who lives in west London with her partner, Ollie. Jess, a content creator, is self-employed, meaning her income is "up and down", which would be a worry for her if she chose to have children. "There are so many people struggling to get by. Some months, we are really scraping the pennies and it can be difficult." Several women I spoke to identified financial constraints as a limiting factor. But they also pointed to a broader set of considerations: anxieties about climate change, a strong commitment to their careers, an eagerness to travel, and a sense that today's world offers them greater freedom of choice. Both Jess and Chy, 33, say they found support in online communities of people who had built happy lives without children. The hashtag #childfree features over 127,900 videos on TikTok, while #childfreebychoice has more than 68,100. Scrolling through them, I can see there are thousands of women discussing their reasons for not wanting to become mothers. Jess says social media didn't influence her decision not to have children, but it "validated it" and made her feel more comfortable to share her thoughts on the subject. Image source, Chy Black Image caption, Chy Black, 33, says that having a child would restrict a lot of what she could do Chy, a 33-year-old account manager from the Midlands, has also found a community of like-minded women online. In real life, while her parents and close friends have been supportive of her being childfree, her wider family could not u