A Case For Auntie Awareness
The entrepreneur redefines what it means to be a mother. Without children of her own, community is her family.
Published
My wife and I are big theme park people. We fly to Disney parks around the world. And with every trip, there are a minimum of three moments where we think: Thank f we don’t have kids.
That thought comes from an innate understanding of what brings us joy and what doesn’t. For me, the answer has been clear for quite a while that I love children and that I also have no desire to create or parent one full time. Two things can be true at once.
When I was in first grade, I invented a job at recess: class therapist. I’d sit on the swings while my friends poured out whatever felt heavy, offering advice in the language of a six-year-old and reassuring them that things would be okay. That desire to nurture has never left. I now channel that empathy into the role of the cool aunt, one that allows me to distribute my care across the community I have built with purpose, layer upon layer.
“On an as-needed basis” sounds detached on paper. In reality, it means I can appear precisely where I’m required: to pick up a friend’s child from daycare when she’s stuck at work, to cook dinner for someone unraveling in the middle of a divorce, to sit cross-legged on the floor with a toddler, stacking blocks until they tumble. This role has been—and will continue to be—one of deep satisfaction. For me, who gets to retain their independence, and for my friends, many of whom are mothers, many of whom need an extra hand.
And yet, whenever I talk about not having children, the same question rises to the surface. Won’t you be lonely?
The question itself reveals how stubborn the stereotype remains: that a life without children must inevitably collapse into silence and empty evenings. But villages are not, and never should be, made of biological mothers alone. That oversight has warped the way we imagine family. It has created the assumption that those who step off the traditional path will be left behind.
The irony is that I am less likely to struggle with loneliness. If anything, I am more immune to it. Without the demands of a nuclear family, I have time and energy to pour into relationships beyond biology. I get to cultivate depth: friendships that span decades, mentorships with younger people, chosen family stitched together not by blood but by choice. I can be an aunt to one, two, 10 children.
The idea of chosen family is not abstract for me; it is the very architecture of my life as a queer person. Many of us know the sting of strained ties with parents, siblings, or extended relatives. We learn to cultivate in the spaces created by blood-related rejection. Our friends, our neighbors, our community become our family. My friends are my sisters. And to call someone family, not because you must but because you choose to, unlocks a kind of love that defies biology and expectation. That is the beauty of a true village: its ability to activate different people, at different times, for different needs.
And while I have welcomed the cool aunt role with open arms, its satisfaction blooms from an even deeper truth: I don’t think I would thrive as a mother. I crave solitude in order to recharge, sometimes whole stretches of time alone. Children can’t understand that. They can’t be told, “I need to disappear for a day because I feel unsteady.” They would only feel rejection, and I would only feel guilt. I know myself well enough to know I’d overextend, bending past my limits to protect them from that hurt, and in the process, I would lose the parts of me I value most. The version of myself that might emerge—the depleted, resentful, fractured one—is not a version I want to meet, much less raise a child alongside. I am not a mother in the traditional sense. And I still mother within my community.
Sometimes, at 11:30 pm, my wife and I will eat ice cream for dinner while watching our favorite horror movies. We’ll pause, spoons suspended in midair, and laugh: Could you imagine if we had kids right now? Instead of midnight fevers or tantrums, it’s just us, eating pints of ice cream in bed. That is a fullness that fills my cup.
So no, I won’t regret not having children. And if regret ever did appear at my doorstep, I’d take that as a sign to spend more time nurturing my community, get another pet, or open my doors to a parentless child already stuck on this planet. But right now, my life is expansive. Joyful. Intentional. And entirely mine.
