I’m A Surgeon. I’m Also Child-Free — And 6 Words From A Colleague About My Life Left Me Stunned.

The author, left, in the operating room. “When a woman can’t have kids she is often portrayed as sad and damaged, but if she simply won’t, she is either deluded, destined to regret it, or written off as a cold hearted, narcissistic, and career obsessed,” Ruby Warrington writes in her book, “Women without Kids.” Though I have an advanced educational degree, a house and a life partner, I have often felt the need to minimize or defend my life choices to mere acquaintances. I have been given multiple warnings that my career will never be as fulfilling as motherhood — that my life, in general, could never be “full” without children. “I’m really sorry that I talk about my kids so much,” one friend responded after I tried to explain the static I heard from others when stating that I would not have kids. While I was attempting to detail the blanket judgment by society on women without children — and how much I have struggled to overcome other people’s assumptions that I must be distraught about the life I so enjoy or the idea that my freedom is somehow conditional and temporary — the conversation with my friend had apparently only aroused guilt in her for the many times she shared sweet memories or minor complaints with me about her kids.