I respect my kids’ decision not to have children. Now, I need to accept it means I won’t be a grandmother.

The author’s kids don’t want to have their own children.

I will never be a grandmother.

I’m not being dramatic, this is just a fact. I’m 45 years old, and I have two children, ages 25 and 18. Neither child plans on having any kids of their own. In fact, the older one is so sure about not having kids that she scheduled herself for surgical sterilization.

I know many of their friends also have similar feelings about being a parent. And who can blame the younger generations for not wanting kids? With the climate crisis, divisive politics, and school shootings, I often wonder why anyone would want to bring a child into the world right now.

Birth rates are down, and I understand why

In the United States, the birth rate has been decreasing fairly consistently over the last decade and has recently reached a historic low. But it’s not just here — the birth rate is down in Japan, France, Italy, South Korea, and many other places, too.

By 2030, it’s projected that at least one in five US residents will be 65 or older. As US Census Bureau demographer Jonathan Vespa stated in a press release, that would be the first time in US history that older people would outnumber children. In light of those statistics, it seems many others may be joining me over here on the grandchildless side of the demographics.

I actually never gave much thought to the idea of being — or not being — a grandmother in the past. Though I wasn’t pining away for my future grandchildren, it also always seemed like a given. The natural order of things, if you will. I thought I’d grow up, have kids, be a grandma, then die.

I thought it was simple, but it isn’t.

My kids would be great parents, but I respect their choice to remain child-free

My kids are awesome; they are such cool people with unique outlooks on the world, and I think they both would have made amazing parents. However, I am 100% on board with their reasons for not wanting any offspring.

When they told me they may not want to have kids, it wasn’t a shocking revelation. They’ve pretty much always said they didn’t want to be parents. When they were younger, I assumed they would change their minds as they aged. And mostly, I didn’t have any major feelings about it. As it became clear it was not a phase, that neither of them would be having kids in the future, I still didn’t have strong feelings. I know they are making reasonable, logical conclusions.

My future looks different from how I thought it would

However, there are still times when I see the elderly version of myself hanging out on my front porch, yelling at a gaggle of grandchildren to get out of my flowerbeds. (Note: I don’t have any flowerbeds, either.)

Each time I see that version of myself, I’m reminded that she will never be me. But It isn’t grief exactly, more like a jarring type of confusion. My brain has to revise the list of things I thought I’d do: Grow up —check. Have kids — check. Be a grandma — nope.

It’s like my brain is buffering, trying to compute the data. There’s still part of me that thinks that checklist is the way it’s “supposed to be.” But my life won’t turn out that way. A lot of our lives won’t.

Maybe we’ll all collectively mourn, or maybe all of us grandchildless old women will find that we actually like not having to spend our waning years entertaining toddlers again. Maybe we’ll all handle it differently. Who knows? Just because it’s a milestone we thought we’d reach when we were younger doesn’t mean we can’t reimagine what our lives can be.

Instead of grandparenting, perhaps, we will spend our 50s, 60s, and 70s traveling the world, learning to paint, or overthrowing the patriarchy. It sounds like we’ll have a lot of free time on our hands to do whatever we want to do.