Interview with Ashley Ackley on Deciding Not to Have Kids

I interviewed my dear friend Ashley Ackley this week about her decision not to have kids. Ashley is one of the most caretaking and thoughtful people I know. Not only is she the kind of friend who reaches out on every important date and finds perfect birthday gifts, but she also focuses her caretaking energy on an often-overlooked space—animals, and particularly senior animals who need homes. (She currently has three of them living with her!)

Ashley is a big deal in the Colorado veterinary community, although she would never tell anyone that. So let me tell you for her. She has practiced as a small-animal vet since 2011, and she has served as President of the Colorado Veterinary Medicine Association. In her spare time, she has spent hundreds of hours performing volunteer vet work in underserved areas in Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Kenya, and Arizona. 

Stay tuned next week for my reflections on our interview.

Q.  Tell me about your feelings on having kids sitting here today.

I feel very confident that I do not want children. Most people don’t do enough talking about whether and why to have kids. It’s so ingrained in our society that it’s just what you do. We need to be having more thoughtful discussions about this.

I think my profession is part of the reason I’ve struggled for so long with the idea of having kids. There are so many homeless animals in the world who don’t get the care they need. I see suffering and neglect every day, and humans are often a big reason for that. That’s why I try to adopt special-needs animals. But adopting or having a human is not for me.

I also may have seen too many reproductive complications in the animal world, including really sad things, like animals who are bred to have litter after litter. Puppy mills are still very real. This can do terrible things to dogs’ bodies, especially for frenchies and bulldogs that can’t have natural births (because of how humans have bred them!). After seeing all this, I have a big mental block around the thought of carrying a baby of my own. I just want to spay and neuter everything.

Q.  Does any particular vet experience stand out?

One particular case stands out to me. During my internship, I had to do a pro bono c-section for a dog whose owner bred the dog to sell puppies but didn’t have enough money for the c-section the dog ended up needing. I wanted to help the dog—who ended up having twelve puppies!—but I was so mad at the lady and the situation. My interpretation of it was that she was clearly in it for the money and didn’t care about her dog or its health. All I could think was that even though I spayed the mom, those puppies would probably go on to reproduce in similar poor circumstances. Thinking back on it, this may have been a catalyst to my decision not to have kids.

Q.  Were you ever uncertain about wanting to be a parent?

At some point growing up, I had to write my life goals for a class in school, and I wrote that I wanted one or three kids—not two. All I knew back then was that I didn’t want two kids like we had in my family!

Then, as I went through college, I was so focused on becoming a vet that I didn’t think much about kids. I never had that feeling of, “oh, and then I’ll have a family.” Even after becoming a vet, being married, and watching others have kids, that feeling never came. I think the more that people told me I would change and want kids some day, the more adamant I became that I did not.

I really enjoy watching my sister’s and close friends’ kids grow up, and every once in a while, I have an inkling that this could be me. But that inkling is really infrequent and quickly overcome by being thankful that it’s not me. I’m glad to enjoy the kids that my friends and family have brought into the world, but I personally don’t have those feelings.

Q.  What is the most helpful thing anyone has said to you about this decision?

My partner Jacob accepting my decision has been the most helpful thing. When we started dating back in 2011, I was a no on kids, but he thought he might have them one day. I never felt pressured by him. He never tried to talk me into it. Maybe I’ve rubbed off on him over the years!

I’ve also never felt pressured by my parents. Watching them with my sister’s kids is so sweet, it makes me want to cry. It’s definitely keeping them young. But I’m grateful they’ve never pressured me. They are accepting of their animal grandchildren, as we like to joke.

Q.  One of the things I often heard about the decision not to have kids when I was in the “no” camp was, “Who will take care of you when you are old”?  How do you think about that?

It’s funny because I was super close with my grandma, and I have made really wonderful elderly friends, mostly from being a veterinarian. What has struck me is that older people can be the loneliest people I know, even when they have children. My grandma lived with my uncle, but she would still say she was lonely and sad.

Loneliness in older people seems to be a pretty common feeling to me whether you have family around or not. Maybe that’s just part of being human. I don’t think having kids of your own is the solution necessarily.

In other cultures, they do a much better job of taking care of their elderly; Americans are more individualistic. Not that I want to live in a big house with my family! But I don’t see kids as the thing that will fill me up when I get older. I have my friends and animals for that.

Q.  You are one of the most caretaking people I know. Do you think of any of your caretaking of friends and animals as mothering?

I feel like I would not be as motherly to my own child as I am to other people in this world! I think I would be over the top and the biggest helicopter mom ever. Taking care of animals and other people is easier for me, and I feel complete in it. I do call myself a mom to my animals though.

I am my most empathetic with animals and friends. Just ask Jacob.