"Could you do me a favor?"

"Uh... no"

This will make me look like a grumpy old lady or even an evil witch, but it’s part of my personal I-don’t-care-about-other-people’s-judgment program. So here we go.

"I need a favor"

“Guys, can anyone help this afternoon?”

“Damn, school is closed tomorrow, and I have to go to work. WHAT COULD I POSSIBLY DO?"

Not to be dramatic, but that’s how a nightmare starts.

To give you some context, I have a group chat with some friends and another with family, and this is the kind of messages that made my blood run cold more than once, because I knew without needing to ask what was going to happen. One thing that caused me an equal dose of terror, anxiety and dismay was when my phone rang and the number on the display belonged to some specific people, the ones who never called, except when they were in desperate need. Of what, I think you've already guessed. Those same people wouldn’t take no for an answer and not taking the call was not an option either. They always found me.

I'm pretty sure that, single or not, if you are a childfree woman you have also been recruited a time or ten to babysit for free. And that when, reaching the eleventh time, you said no, you felt guilty for not having helped a friend in need.

I actually never reached request n°11. I said yes more or less a couple of times to each mom, because I actually like helping friends, but then I started saying no, for the same reason many other peole would say no.

-I have work to do, I already have plans, I'm tired. And despite my efforts, entertaining children is not my best talent.

These explanations, despite being 100% true, were always acceptable when coming from others, but a little less valid when coming from me and I had a vague feeling I was being taken advantage of. Just a little and possibly unwittingly. Still, not a good vibe.

Also, nobody purposefully made me feel guilty about this. If my friends thought I was a selfish bitch they didn’t say it to my face, and/or they were good at hiding their feelings. However, they always insisted a little more with me, and I always had to give more explanations because apparently — by default — I have more free time. On some days this may even be true, I am a freelance so it actually happens that I have a free Monday morning, but other times my days are so full (though not with diapers and pacifiers) that I'm exhausted. I fill my time with other things that aren't motherhood, but my days last 24 hours like those of everyone else.

Nevertheless, it still happened that I felt guilty because the stereotype of the selfish childless woman is so embedded in our mentality that very often we end up internalizing it. So basically not only I wasn’t contributing to perpetuate the species, I didn’t even support those who did. At least, not often enough. Being this particular stereotype quite hard to deconstruct, sometimes I go straight to plan B: I accept my selfishness and choose to coexist with it peacefully. Now, more often than not, when people tell me I'm selfish because I don't have children, my answer is YES, you're right. The conversation ends immediately due to the other person's inability to respond, so I am free to go sneering evilly, internally or even externally.

Yes, I am an evil evil woman, and maybe I should be moved by the trust that friends, sisters-in-law, etc. place in me, a woman with no experience with children except the afternoons spent playing with her nephews. Personally, I don't know if I would leave children alone with me.

By the way, only very recently it occurred to me to research the topic a bit, this is how I found out something that’s probably nothing new at all. It’s just me, being late to the party. Apparently, the life choice of a childfree woman is so unnatural that actual studies were conducted on a sample of X subjects. The study in question concerns Australian women but I’m not sure nationality matters, I haven't finished reading the document yet. The funny thing is that such a study exists in the first place.

Needless to say, there are dozens of articles and blog posts explaining why childless women are not selfish. Apart from the fact that it is absurd that there is a need to justify such a personal life choice, are we really a speciment to be studied? Are we laboratory mice whose behavior must be observed?

One could almost be offended.

Oh, and I also discovered that we have a dedicated day, all of us, the childfree and the childless, the men and the women, the married and the single.

I would like to point out that it is absolutely not my intention to ridicule or belittle any of this initiative, be it academic studies, blogs or international days. If they exist, it's because someone felt the need for them, and I don't want to judge anyone. It's just that when I say we're outcasts, some people think I'm overreacting...