Unapologetically Childfree with Maggie Dickens

Childfree Chats: Shewta Rumkumar--Childfree, Woman of Color, Entrepreneur, and happy black sheep!

Episode Summary

Shweta Ramkumar talks about her life in the childfree community. As a woman from Indian culture, Shweta shares her unique perspective on navigating the pressures and expectations of her culture while embracing her decision to be childfree by choice.

Episode Notes

 Episode Highlights: 

 Societal Pressures and Stigma: We examine the societal pressures and stigma surrounding the decision to be childfree, shedding light on the challenges faced by individuals who defy traditional expectations. 

 Intersectionality of Identity: Discover how identity intersects with the childfree choice, particularly within cultural contexts like Indian society, and explore the complexities of navigating relationships and career choices. 

 Personal Experiences: Shweta shares personal anecdotes of navigating relationships, career decisions, and societal expectations as a childfree woman, offering valuable insights and perspectives. 

 Online Community Dynamics: Explore the dynamics of online childfree communities, including the challenges of tone policing, infighting, and setting boundaries within these spaces. 

 Embracing Autonomy and Self-Expression: Learn how embracing autonomy, freedom, and self-expression empowers individuals to live unapologetically childfree, despite societal pressures and misconceptions. 

 Addressing Misconceptions: We debunk common misconceptions and stereotypes about the childfree lifestyle, emphasizing the importance of setting boundaries and advocating for respect and understanding. 

 Share your experiences and insights in the comments section below, and let's continue the conversation! 

 Hit subscribe and notify so you don't miss out on valuable insights into creating a thriving childfree community. 

———  ep. 013—Timestamps 

00:00 Navigating Social Expectations and Embracing Childfree Life 

19:37 Unapologetically Childfree: Owning Your Identity 

20:45 Challenging Cultural Norms and Marriage Expectations 

21:12 The Joy and Challenges of Living Childfree 

24:21 Navigating Online Childfree Communities and Dealing with Conflict 

30:36 The Power of Being Unapologetically Childfree and Creative 

33:23 Closing Thoughts and Future Conversations 

 Links: 

 How to find Childfree Friends https://youtu.be/CJNEbcgatB4 

 Instagram: https://unapologeticallychildfree.com/instagram 

 All the Links: https://unapologeticallychildfree.com/links 

 Join my email list for additional Childfree Content: https://unapologeticallychildfree.com/emaillist 

 Childfree Woman’s Path: Friends not FOMO (My ebook and journal) https://unapologeticallychildfree.com/childfreepath 

 Connect with Shweta: 

Instagram: instagram.com/childfreesrbuddysmum 

 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shwetaramkumar Unapologetically Childfree! 

 Hey there, Maggie Dickens here, thrilled you’re part of the Unapologetically Childfree Community– your go-to spot for finding the childfree community you never knew existed and can no longer live without. We cover all things childfree, where we share laughs, explore, and embrace life without kids and without apologies. 

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 Why Subscribe? Whether proudly childfree, considering the lifestyle, or curious, we've got something for you. Expect laughs, empowerment, and genuine stories from real people navigating life without kids. 

 Important Notice: Please Read 

Hey, Amazing Unapologetically Childfree Community! I'm Maggie Dickens, your Childfree Hype Woman and licensed therapist. While I bring you valuable insights and tips based on my education and personal experiences, it's crucial to clarify a few things. 

 This Is Not Therapy: - Although I'm a therapist, this channel is NOT a substitute for mental health care or therapy. The content provided is for educational and entertainment purposes only. 

 Your Well-being Matters: - Your mental and physical health are top priorities. If you're in crisis, please reach out to local emergency services or a mental health helpline immediately. 

 Childfree Journey Insights: - Unapologetically Childfree is centered around embracing the childfree lifestyle, offering tips, tricks, and real-world examples. It's a space for community, celebration, and sharing experiences. Thank you for being a part of this incredible community! Let's continue to support and uplift one another on our childfree journeys. 🌈✨ 

Disclaimer: This description was created in collaboration between me and AI.

Episode Transcription

Shweta1

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Shweta: [00:00:00] I'm here to talk about my journey as a childfree woman, but also a childfree woman of color from a Southern Asian background, which is a sort of a different beast in and of itself.

 

Maggie: Welcome to Unapologetically Childfree, where you find that childfree community that you never knew existed and can no longer live without. I'm Maggie Dickens, licensed therapist, but most importantly, I'm your childfree hype woman. And today we have another wonderful guest!

 

Shweta: My name is Shweta Ramkumar. I've lived in Australia for the past 22 years.

 

Aside from what I do outside of work I'm a very proud dog mom. I love to travel. I, I'm a big foodie, so I love cooking and eating good food. Love my music, love listening to and singing and yeah, just being creative. It's not only the way

 

I'm making a living, it's quite therapeutic and it's a way for me to express myself.

 

Maggie: You first started with, I'm a dog mom, and I think your Instagram is childfree buddies. Dog mom, something like that. We'll have it linked. I'm wondering how, you [00:01:00] feel about people who say things like you're replacing kids with a dog.

 

Especially since people like me and you use the term dog mom, how do you, how do you kind of like navigate that or does it not even hit your radar?

 

Shweta: Well, the good thing is a lot of my friends now because of the community that I'm a part of a lot of my friends are not only childfree, they're also cat and dog moms.

 

So they don't find it unusual. Even my friends who have children, there's very few of them. They also don't find it unusual cause for me, I have zero maternal instincts towards babies, toddlers, anything.

 

Yeah, same.

 

It just comes out in, abundance with animals, particularly dogs. Since I was a little girl, that's how I've always been. Animals have always gravitated to me I'm able to relate to them. I take care of them. I'm very nurturing towards them. I also do a lot of dog sitting and the clients who I have, they don't want to leave their dog with anybody else but me because I'm very much like a dog mother for them.

 

Going back to your question. I generally hear of this divide [00:02:00] on social media where there are some people who are very offended by us being childfree, but then we call ourselves a mother and this happens within childfree groups too. Let me just put that out there to me personally, I don't care if you don't think of me as a mother.

 

It's fine. For me, I take a lot of pride in being a dog mom. It's a big part of my day. I think it's a privilege for me to be a dog mom. And I love every minute of it, even when he uses this toy to really drive me up the wall, even when he tests my patients, he is worth everything. I would take a bullet for him.

 

Maggie: Yeah. It's interesting that you're talking about taking a lot of pride and being a dog mom. I don't think I've ever thought about it that way. I know I get defensive, like me personally, when someone says something about me using the term dog mom but I get a lot of the like negative, "You're replacing a kid with a dog." "You actually do want kids and there's something wrong with you." All of those statements. And I get defensive because it's like, yeah, my dogs are my kids, but they're not kids.

 

Shweta: Well, [00:03:00] they're better than kids, aren't they?

 

Maggie: For me, for sure, you know, like, I mean, I've got one. She's back.

 

Shweta: Oh, yeah. Oh, she's asleep. Yeah.

 

Maggie: Yeah. She's just chilling.

 

I thought you had two.

 

I do. They don't really like hang together.

 

Yeah, I think they're definitely better than kids, in my opinion, it came into my head when you were talking about, like, the first thing out of the gate was, I'm a dog mom. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, we are, like, the people who identify in this way and, I don't know.

 

It feels empowering to not have this as a hashtag or a side note because so often in our community of being childfree, especially childfree by choice since what it feels like birth. It's, it's hard not to shrink yourself. It's hard not to continue to pretend that we're doing life the way that other people want.

 

I'm wondering if this kind of segues into that different beast you were talking about of being childfree by choice as a person of color and how there's all these expectations that are [00:04:00] just thrown on you all the time.

 

Shweta: So just a bit of background.

 

I obviously grew up in India and India, if you don't already know, is a very conservative, very patriarchy based, sexist, religious country where there are not only does religion play a very big part in people's day to day lives. The culture is has a lot of toxicity in the sense that of having very defined and strict gender roles.

 

And this is proliferated by Hindu mythology. Obviously, anything to do with religion is misogynistic and sexist at the best of times. It's proliferated by what you see in generations across different families where men do one thing and they just don't have to deal with you know, any sort of child rearing or taking care of the house.

 

That's not an expectation from them. And women have to shoulder everything. So it's not just that they have to be mothers. They also have to be a good wife. They have to take care of and serve the man, not only that, but also do the [00:05:00] same for his parents and his siblings and his side of the family.

 

For us, the women in our culture, the expectation is a lot, but they don't get the treatment or they don't get the respect that they deserve for the work they have to do or the expectations that's put on them. So growing up, this is what I really witnessed. As a young child, I was observant and I can sort of pick up on a lot of things.

 

And I was really witnessing that, you know except for my mom, who was the only one who was not a stay at home mother. She would, she was the only one she's very successful , very career driven. She was the only one who was different, but everyone else were housewives. Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with that, but they had just given everything of themselves up to make their husbands happy.

 

Yeah. To take care of their kids and to take care of, you know, the in-laws, that was really, their, their whole identity and their world just revolved around that. And I just saw that and I'm like, no, I don't wanna any part of this. Yeah, you're like, passed. I'm out. I just, I just thought it was very stifling and I just felt [00:06:00] like even when, when I would be listening to them, it would be like, oh.

 

I'm doing this because my husband wants it. I'm doing this because my kids want it. So it's, it's never about them. It's always about keeping other people happy. It's taking care of everybody else, but not you. That's when I knew from a very young age, I wanted my own independence.

 

I wanted my own identity. I wanted my autonomy. Through my mom, I was taught from a very young age that I have to be financially independent. Now that put different pressures on me that, but that calls for a different podcast interview. We'll be, we'll be here forever. I was raised from a very young age to stand on my own two feet and make my own money.

 

So and that is when I realized that, you know, I don't I want to live for myself. And I want to live, I want to do what's best for me. I want to keep myself happy. And I saw how much kids tie you down. And especially in the culture that I was raised in the amount of expectations that were placed on women and just anything, whatever you do, it's never good enough.

 

Despite everything, they will always be people are just never happy. And they were [00:07:00] always on the receiving end of, you know, passive aggression. And sometimes even more serious versions of abuse. And I'm like, no, I deserve better. From a young age, I was programmed into being childfree.

 

Shweta: That was the starting point, obviously that was that planted the seed and it evolved over a period of time for sure.

 

Maggie: Of course it's, Oh my gosh. So many of you already know that I, I work in the mental health field and what you're talking about of the society, the culture is

 

perpetuating the loss of identity for women, the living for other people, I don't really have a value aside from serving others. I'm a vessel for others. That is so problematic and in so many ways, because in two things that pop into my head immediately is: exactly what you said, you and other women, including myself, deserve a life where we get to be flipping happy.

 

We get to just have joy. And the idea of women having a preference and [00:08:00] putting joy as a priority has been poo pooed for so long. And even just like, I don't know, literally beaten out of us in some, in some cases. That is heartbreaking because we see it generation after generation of just how do I find joy, but also live this quote unquote purpose that I've been told that I'm here to do and that's what I keep hearing in your story is that there's this, you know, a little girl is born and she is being groomed, so to speak.

 

To be this vessel for others and not have any sort of life or identity of her own. They

 

Shweta: didn't succeed though. They couldn't groom me. Even now, I'm, I'm going to be 38 now. I'm a very difficult person to sway or manipulate.

 

I make my own decisions. I decide what's best for me and I've always been very clear about what I want and don't want from a very young age. Not just about being childfree, but everything else as

 

Maggie: well. I'm really interested in this because I'm the same age. I'll be 38 in, I don't know, like six months or so.

 

I am a follower. I like get [00:09:00] influenced like this. Now I get uninfluenced really easily as well and I'm like, pass.

 

Maggie: But I'm interested in how, from a very young age. You knew what you wanted and had that clarity. In the world that I live in, I call it my values. So it sounds like you knew what you valued and you knew what was a priority. Tell me how the heck you figure that out because I'm almost 38 and I'm still figuring it out some days.

 

Shweta: Look, I don't have the answers to everything, you know, even now in a lot of things, like now I've stepped into entrepreneurship. This is something I should have done seven or eight years ago, but I was too scared and I was too lazy and I had a million excuses. Now I regret not doing it, but I'm very new to this and I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and also because of.

 

What's out there on social media, when you see people talking about, I'll help you build six figures in six months. And you don't, you can't tell who's being genuine and who isn't. So a lot of the time I'm having to figure things out myself, [00:10:00] but at the same time, I have a community of people who I really trust and they really want the best for me.

 

Of course. But going back to it, like I never thought that I would Want to even consider working for myself because again, no one in my family has done that and the ones who have, it has not worked out for them. So whereas I'm the only one now who is, is now venturing towards becoming self employed.

 

So I am a trailblazer in the family in more ways than one. I was exposed to travel from a young age. So my parents used to love going on road trips, you know, so they would take time off, put me in the car.

 

They'll just drive off to places here and there in India. That's how my love for travel really started, you know, and up until now I've done close to 50 countries now. And I knew growing up that I wanted to travel. I grew up in a musical family.

 

I wanted to not necessarily pursue music as a career, but I wanted it to be a part of my life. And I actually have a tattoo on my right shoulder of a treble cleft. So music is a big part of my life. But then again, I'm different in the sense [00:11:00] that people in my family. Extended family. I mean, they think only there's only one type of right music and that is Indian classical.

 

Whereas I'm like, I don't care. Don't get me wrong when I learned that it gave me a very good foundation, but there was zero creativity. In that field of music. And I was just like, no, I don't want to do this. I was good at writing. I was an avid reader and I still am all those things. It is going back to that whole element of nature versus nurture. Now, for some people, if they grew up in a household where all of this was just not encouraged and obviously someone like you who works in mental health.

 

You would have heard this from a lot of your clients that, you know, I grew up in a home that was dysfunctional or abusive. Sure. And for them, that creativity becomes an escape for them. Whereas in my family, it was encouraged. Even if I wanted to become professional in that field, I would have got the full support of my parents.

 

But yeah, I never thought that I would ever even consider becoming self employed. But then a lot of factors led me to where I am currently. I knew deep down that I wanted to be a teacher because I was always good as a teacher from a [00:12:00] young age.

 

But I did my time in the school system. I was clear I would do it for five years I did it. Now I'm out of there. I am now stepping into it more of the coaching space now. So which sort of combines what I like to do and what I'm good at, so and so, something I have interest knowledge and yeah.

 

Maggie: I love that. I know so many teachers who just stopped teaching. These are all in the states where the education system is a little bit not great. Yeah. That's the way that I can say it. They're controlled a lot. And and they're also childfree. And they're like, yeah, I got my kid fix for those that enjoy kids.

 

Kind of indifferent.

 

Shweta: Totally. Totally. My reason for leaving teaching had nothing to do with the kids. The kids was what I enjoyed the most, believe it or not. And yeah Even now, like the students I work with are all adults, and I'm sure that if I had the chance, I could go back to a school, but it's just what you're talking about.

 

It's the whole, the bureaucracy, the lack of autonomy, the, all the administrative stuff and how much they scrutinize you and how much they micromanage you. It's like, nah, that's [00:13:00] not. What I'm about. And also I think the education system is outdated more than anything. Not equipping students to really live and thrive in a world that is the way it is at the moment.

 

So, yeah. It

 

Maggie: parallels what you're talking about with the culture that you grew up in, which to me feels outdated, to me feels full of bureaucracy, the religion. Of just, here's this list of rules that somebody somewhere created and we're still following them and not actually having deliberate, critical thought to say, is this a universal path?

 

Why do we have to put every single person into this one path and say, yes, it's going to work. And what you're talking about is being this trailblazer, which damn that's, that's hard to be a trailblazer in, in any circumstance, but to do it in multiple ways just sounds like, I don't know, you've been climbing mountain after mountain.

 

Does it feel that way or does it feel more fluid for you?

 

Shweta: [00:14:00] I think especially from the culture that I come from this is very hard. They just do not embrace it. Actually, interestingly, I was having a chat with my, I was having a session with my therapist and I told her about what had happened in the last.

 

Two weeks. And this is what she ,said to me, that, a lot of the times my parents when, in my early twenties especially because I thought so differently from what was normal because I wanted to do things very differently, but from what was normal, they always used to say that I have a twisted thinking.

 

That was their very, that was their very fancy way of saying that something is wrong with me without hurting my feelings. But that was bad enough that done that did the damage. Yeah.

 

Maggie: Twisted thinking that that

 

Shweta: hurts. Yeah. And and then what happened was because I was having this tug of war between what I wanted to do versus what they had expected from me that obviously manifested as anxiety and depression.

 

Mind you, 20 years ago, we didn't have the level of awareness that we had not have now. So they would take me to every psychologist, every a counselor, every psychiatrist to just literally [00:15:00] fix the depression and anxiety. But we all know, but it's only something that people have learned about recently, that those are symptoms.

 

Those are not. illnesses or problems in itself. There is a cause or a root behind it's usually trauma. It's a whole heap of other reasons for it. Obviously in my case, it was much more in depth. I had a lot of setbacks one after the other in early 2010, and my parents were really worried that I have autism or Asperger's. And even last year, a friend of mine, she's no longer my friend. She also told me, Oh, you might want to get yourself tested for autism or Asperger's.

 

I don't see it as a problem that needs to be fixed or I have an illness that needs to be medicated. I don't see it that way. There are so many people who are on the spectrum and they're so successful.

 

My therapist said to me you're not neurodivergent but you're highly intelligent. You are very perceptive.

 

You're very observant. You see things in a way that other people don't. Making your mark in a community like the one that you come from is very difficult because they will never ever accept the way that you live, the way that you think because everyone I know who was from my background, everyone is doing the same [00:16:00] thing.

 

Everyone is, has bought a house, they're married, they have 2. 5 kids. Everyone is working a corporate job. I'm the only one who's like really the black sheep, you know, who just does not want anything to do with that.

 

Maggie: And then the labels on top of it. Of just like, so this has got to be the reason. We've got to give you a label that says it's anxiety, depression, neurodivergency, something.

 

That's, that's why. That, man. That gets me fired up.

 

Shweta: Yeah, but even if I was neurodivergent, look, I'm not going to lie, I'm probably on the spectrum in some ways, because of how I communicate sometimes, because I'm just too honest, you know? I can't fake anything, and if I don't like someone, or if I don't like something, I'll just tell them.

 

So I have zero filter. So people think that that's why I'm neurodivergent. Fine! I'm going to be unapologetic about it, like you say in your podcast, unapologetically childfree. So yeah, that's just how it is.

 

Maggie: Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm neuro spicy, as they say, and it's, it's part of, it's just how my brain works.

 

It's not why I'm childfree. It's, [00:17:00] it's not why I chose to not have kids. It's not why I chose to leave my tiny little town that I went to high school in where nothing ever happens and everybody does the same thing. It's not why I chose to move to Portugal. It's kind of like what we're talking about, like nature versus nurture.

 

On some level, we get to nurture ourselves. And that's what I'm hearing from you is that your family, especially your nuclear family, your family at home supported you in your creativity and all of those things. And that allowed you to then nurture all the other aspects of who you are that said, Here's the life.

 

I want to lead. These are the things that I want to accomplish in my life. That's empowering. That's, hashtag goals right there. I think it's

 

Shweta: amazing. Yeah, I think, for my parents because I was always academically very strong. They just assumed that, you know, they won't have to worry about me, I'll just find a career and I will just, you know, so they thought that because I'm academically good, I'm going to be very good fit in the [00:18:00] corporate world, but that backfired very badly.

 

So but now I think for them. When I was telling them in my early days that, you know, I don't want to do this they would put a lot of fear in my head that if I don't do this, I will never be employed. I will never do this. Back then

 

everyone's knowledge was very limited but now they are completely on board with whatever it is that I'm doing, you know, whatever it is that I choose to do, because now it's becoming more popular, but also they've seen the damage the old life did to me. So we're like, no, we'd rather have you happy than be miserable doing something that you have to do just to keep us happy.

 

Honestly, I don't even know if my extended family really questions them because we're in Australia and they are all the way in India and other parts of the world, we're not in each other's pockets. So, which is very convenient, you know, there was actually a podcast episode that I did where I mentioned specifically why I have left the toxic Indian community.

 

And that's, these are the reasons for it. That episode goes into it in a lot of detail, but [00:19:00] it has elements of what I'm mentioning right now. And even if I go to one of their gatherings and I mentioned that, well, here's the deal, I'm actually, you know becoming self employed.

 

I have chosen not to have children. I'm living in a one bedroom apartment. My partner is Caucasian and we don't want to have kids. We are not interested in buying a big house. And They will look at me as if something is wrong with me. Yeah. And they will, even though they may not say it to my face, amongst each other, they'll be gossiping.

 

So, I'm like, nah, I don't want to put myself in that situation. No.

 

Maggie: No. Why? I think this is something that, it's just. Like I'm, I'm done. I'm not going to be a part of that. I, I feel that for sure. I talk a lot about being confident and leaning into what I, what I mean by unapologetically childfree is this is who I am.

 

This is, or part of who I am. I am all of these things. I'm neuro spicy. I'm childfree. I am a night owl, not a morning person. I am a. Very particular about how I like my house to look [00:20:00] and how I like to clean and Instead of feeling as if I need to apologize and say I'm so sorry or give give a defense I did that so much in my early 20s because it was me and one other person that I knew that were That was childfree.

 

And she was, I'm never going to get married and I'm never going to have kids. And I was like, I'm going to get married and we're never going to have kids. So it even felt like a little bit of a, she was completely shirking the tradition. And I am somebody who's like, I want half of it. I want the one half of the tradition.

 

And not the other, so it still felt like I had to defend myself of, you know, people asking why do you want to get married if you don't want to have kids and it's like, why are those things the same?

 

Shweta: I mean, for me personally, again, marriage doesn't interest me. And again, someone who's Southern Asian, you don't say that.

 

You don't say that because when you get to my age, especially by my age, you're, you're married at least for five or six years and you have, you're expected to pop out two and a half kids. [00:21:00] Yeah. And, but yeah, everyone knows that, you know, I'm with my partner, we're just happy living together. Yeah. Sharing space.

 

We have a, and being dog parents, that's, we do not need a piece of paper to validate or justify our relationship. And going back to what you said about, you know, having to justify your choices about why are childfree. Again, that is not a requirement.

 

Not many people have asked me why I don't want kids. It's, I'm very fortunate that way, at least people who are, who matter to me.

 

And the few that I have , I can actually tell the difference between if they're being nosy. Or if they're genuinely curious, if they are being nosy, I'm just going to say it's a personal choice and none of your business. I've said that a few times in the past. Yeah. I can tell that they're just shutting it down.

 

Yeah. So yeah, it's, you know, and I don't need to explain myself to you, you know, but for the people who are genuinely curious, yeah, I've told them what my reasons are. And surprisingly, every parent I've spoken to who knows my decision, they're like, You're very smart. It's a very smart choice that you've made something that they wish they could have.

 

They knew that it was an option and they could have [00:22:00] taken it if they knew better. That

 

Maggie: is the piece right there. The like, if I knew different. I would have at least considered being childfree. I hear that from some of the friends that I have that are parents or just parents that I have met in my life.

 

And I am hoping that with, you know, our presence online, yours and mine, all of our contemporaries that have these childfree platforms it's not about saying. At least for me, the whole world needs to stop having kids. It's more of let's, let's have the default. In my opinion, the default be we are childfree and then we actively make this conscious decision to bring kids into this world.

 

And I know that's an, I mean, that's a utopia. I don't think that's going to ever happen, but I'm hoping we move into that because, what you were talking about is. You have reasons why you're childfree. I have reasons why I'm childfree and many parents don't have [00:23:00] that, that process where they say I became a parent because I thought about this and I noodled through this and it's just, I

 

Shweta: did the thing.

 

It's just, that's just what you do. That's what they've, they've been told. And I've, I've been seeing like, you know, all of my, the friends from the Southern Asian community, just one after the other, that's what they're doing. They're just, they got married five years ago, four years ago. Every one of them now is popping out

 

two, some of them have one child and no one questions it. No one is like. Is this even something that is right for me, is this even something that I really want to do? Even with their careers is like, is this something that I want to do? Cause everyone is in the corporate world.

 

Sure. They're making good money, but how many of them are happy, you don't talk about that in our families. We don't have that in our culture. We don't openly share feelings. We don't openly express ourselves. And I think also that's why I am so big on self expression now.

 

When the content that I'm making for my business, you can actually see how expressive I am. And even when I show up on places like this, I really speak my mind because again, I was [00:24:00] not taught to to do that as a child. And I was taught to just be safe to not take risks, to, to not piss anybody off .

 

So you know, and even even from a young age. It was not just from my parents. It's from, it was from everybody. Even my friends, you know, they're like, look, I'm not a conflict. I don't go out and cause conflict or go out and confront people. Right. If something is, doesn't sit right with me, I will just tell them, And the problem now that I'm experiencing is that this is now also penetrated into childfree groups that I'm a part of.

 

Even including the ones in my city where we have this big community of about a thousand women. For me, that is very disheartening. What is really worse is that the place that you are as a group of people

 

that are marginalized, that are really misunderstood by mainstream society. You go to these communities to find the like minded people who, to support you, to uplift you, to validate you, who you can vent to, whatever. Yeah. You can't, now you have to walk on eggshells around those people as well. You have to do that to the rest of [00:25:00] society.

 

Yeah,

 

Maggie: I think, so there's two things, right? So, online communities, when they're just, Like comments or a Facebook group or, you know threads on threads. And those are hard because you don't know the person well enough. You don't know, understand their tone. And I think that there is a level of. Just passivity that we have come to an in our, in our kind of collective, universal, progressive culture, if you will, of just, you be you without any level of accountability.

 

One of the things that I tell people that I work with in my counseling business, and then I also tell my friends is no matter what's going on in your life, it doesn't give you permission to be a jerk. Oh, totally. And so whether you're going through depression and anxiety, I have chronic anxiety and I have had bouts of depression.

 

It never gave me a right to just be an a hole to people. I'd just be like, oh, [00:26:00] it's because I have anxiety. No. So I think that we have to, we have to like find that, that middle ground, that middle path between you get to do whatever you want and then being overly controlling of other people. And that's really hard, especially as communities get to be that like 300 plus, that's kind of this marker that I have found, especially with online communities, because I've been involved in childfree online communities since 2012.

 

And so a very long time. And every single time the group gets to be about like the main umbrella group gets to be about more than 300, it just starts getting, there's infighting. And some of that infighting is tone policing, and with just the language, childfree versus childless.

 

And are you childfree if you are a step parent? Like all of these things. And I have my thoughts and my opinions of, of the, what I think those words mean. But it's not my business, aside from, I guess it is, it's [00:27:00] literally my business. But it's not as my like emotional business to say, you know, you can't be here or you are you're not being childfree enough because you like kids.

 

You can't be childfree or you are being too mean to parents. So you can't. I hate that.

 

Shweta: I hate that. This group, our group is only for childfree people who cares what their parents think. They're not part of the group. It doesn't matter. One of my very recent Instagram posts, mentioned all this and the fact that these groups, some of them, you can't say anything negative about children or parents. Now, I admit some of them, that's all they do. Some groups, it's the other extreme. That's all they do. Every single post is about. I saw a kid do this. I saw, I saw a parent do that.

 

That brings the whole vibe down completely, but at the same time. The other extreme is you can't say anything negative about parents. I mean, we're not here. This group is not for parents.

 

We're not here to please parents. And these people who have [00:28:00] this superiority complex or the Stockholm syndrome, just because they worship parents and they love children and they put down the ones like us. I don't dislike children. There are certain like children under a certain age. I don't want to be around and some people will just retaliate, oh, you're just being mean to parents. So like, this group is full of child-free people who gives a sh*t about what parents want and don't want.

 

So yeah. Well it's

 

Maggie: So, there's actually a diagram for this and there's this place of where venting is really helpful. And so, I'm indifferent to kids. Of pretty much all ages until they get to be like college students. Oh man, I have, I have joked about this.

 

Like if I could have just like had a college student, like if that, that could have been my parenting journey that like a fully functional, like well adjusted college student could have like knocked on my door and been like, Hey mom, I would have been like, come on in. Let me make you something for dinner.

 

I probably would have embraced that because they're not a kid. They're an adult and then I can hang out with them. But I'm indifferent to kids. So some of the [00:29:00] conversations about like parents and kids, it's like this, this doesn't, this doesn't even cross my mind. And now here we are in this like huge thread of like.

 

Ripping apart something that I never want to be a part of like I don't want to get into the is this a good parenting practice or not, because I don't want to be a parent, right, like I don't want to say,

 

Shweta: I don't think that we, we even have a place to say anything because we're not parents. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Maggie: I mean, it's, there's common courtesy.

 

There's the like, you know in, in Southern Europe where I live, they have what I call free range kids. So like, I've

 

Shweta: traveled extensively, but I, and I have to say the kids in the, in Europe and I was recently in Japan, so much better behaved than anywhere or any like States or Australia or UK. Yes.

 

Yeah.

 

Maggie: And so the, the free range kids, sometimes cause I have my dogs and they want to come say hey to the dogs, or they just happen to like come into my space because they're not aware that I have a very large personal [00:30:00] bubble. And, and the thing is, is that that can be irritating to me, but that's not anything I'm going to like walk away from for the next 10 minutes and go, I'm so mad at.

 

Like it's, I moved out of the way of the kid and kept on walking, and I think in some of these groups we do find that that ends up being a thread that people talk about.

 

Shweta: Yes, a big topic of discussion, you know. Yeah, it's like, get

 

Maggie: on! Move on with your life, and like, we don't have time for it today, and hopefully you'll be able to come on again, but I, I think this even topic of. What does our life look like outside of this, this one piece of our identity of being childfree? How do we live it? You're talking about being creative and starting your own business and moving into the coaching space and to me That is that is like I get to do this because I'm childfree or in addition to being childfree I have this other this other venture this other idea and that is being unapologetically childfree It's saying I'm not I don't have to continue to talk about my choice.

 

I don't have to continue I mean, I do because this is what I [00:31:00] do, but the general population doesn't have to do that. And it's so much fun to just like live our life and not get caught up in what you're talking about when I'm talking about of our online communities, just the infighting with each other or the policing of how childfree are you and whatever else.

 

All of

 

Shweta: those things, it just it makes me, so yeah, we have better things to do. Yeah. And I think just a couple of things, you know, what you mentioned. So I think for me I'm able to take risks and be flexible and change careers and travel and whatever else that I'm doing because my choice has equipped me to do that.

 

I've made a conscious choice because I value all these things over. Being a mother. So, and I'm not saying that the parents cannot do it. My mom's fully established in her career till she was in her mid forties. So by that time I was like, almost a teenager. I'm not saying that parents cannot do it. It's just for people like you and I doing it with children will be very difficult [00:32:00] because of how we Are as individuals because we like our space.

 

We like our freedom. We take care of our mental health, all these things we place a lot of value on. And for us, we need that autonomy and that freedom to really explore and do what we want to do. And the other thing also about being unapologetic is, you know, what we talked about just a while ago that,

 

you are childfree, you will speak about it, you will express yourself, you'll be candid about it, and you do not care about whether it's going to upset someone, one of these childfree people who panders to parents, or some childfree people who, a person who loves children, or some parent who's probably looking at your content.

 

No, it doesn't matter. So there's a lot of those. No. And, you know, I did a tick tock recently and again, went completely viral. And there were a couple of trolls, and they were like, you know, your, what you're posting about is going to upset parents.

 

You know, you seem to have a hatred for, for the human race. And I'm like, this is, this post it's not for parents. If they look at it and get upset by it, it's not my problem. And if you are getting upset by this. It was actually targeted at you. [00:33:00] It's targeted at people like you who think that you are so morally superior because you worship parents and you worship children and the ones who don't are just pieces of sh*t.

 

So, and so I gave,

 

Maggie: I gave It doesn't pass the vibe check at all. Like those comments

 

Shweta: as good as I got. So yeah, so they've, seen themselves out. So let's just, let's just say

 

Maggie: there's so much more, there's so much more to talk about. And I'm just so happy that we were able to cover what we did.

 

Hopefully we can have you on in the future because this has just been a lovely conversation. This is just totally nice. Before we end, let's kind of just take a moment, remind everybody who you are and any ways that you would like them to find you. And then I will put all those links in the show notes so they can find you on social,

 

Shweta: I'm pretty active on Instagram and TikTok. I do TikToks almost every day. Most of them feature my dog. So if I have, if I've, if I'm too hesitant to show my face, I'll just put my dog in and that gets a lot of attention. Anyway, I should really call him, call it his TikTok, not mine. And then [00:34:00] obviously I've got my Instagram. I'm not as active there.

 

I do it mainly to participate with in all the childfree, you know, content creators and the forums and everything like that. Yeah. Professionally best place to find me would be on LinkedIn. So but yeah, and I also have a YouTube channel for my business. So you can obviously check that out and yes.

 

And yeah, I would love to connect with anyone and everyone.

 

Maggie: Oh, this has been so lovely. I'm gonna, I'm gonna definitely see if we can do this again soon, pop, because this has just been a pop too. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Sounds good. So fun. This has been so fun. And Oh, thank

 

Shweta: you again.

 

Just, yeah, thank you for having me. It's been a real privilege and honor and pleasure.