By Jocelyn Eikenburg
Pressure on couples to have children as soon as possible can be high in China. Here, a woman carries her daughter in a park in Beijing.
 
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

When I stepped into our muggy kitchen the other night to start dinner, I never guessed my husband, Jun, a native of the Hangzhou, China, region where we live, would turn up the unbearable summer heat with one simple statement.
“The other day, my aunt asked me when we’re going to have a baby.”
Suddenly, I felt my blood pressure rising like steam from the sizzling wok before me. “Why are you telling me this?” I snapped back.
“I just want to prepare you, so you’ll have a thicker skin. My relatives are all waiting for us to have a child.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “As if I needed another reminder.”
In China, “Are you married?” and “Do you have children?” can be the equivalent of asking, “How are you?” An American who met my husband while working at an Internet company in China, I never cared what his family said about us when we lived in the U.S. – oceans and time zones away. But since we moved back to China in 2013, I have gradually collected all these “reminders” until they accumulated painfully in my mind.

More In Children

The hardest part is constantly feeling misunderstood. My husband and I have perfectly good reasons – personal ones – for not having children. But unless we’re around close friends, we don’t bother explaining. In China, where pregnancy and birth is a must for every married couple, there’s not much room for explanation.
My mother-in-law has told me I am getting “too old,” hoping to scare me into baby-making ASAP. My husband’s godfather has grumbled to us about his advanced age and how he might soon pass away – his morbid way of nudging us into parenthood. My husband’s second-oldest brother raised his glass during Chinese New Year last year and, while staring at me, declared his hope that “a new person” would join our dinner table the following year. But the most blatant pronouncement came from one of Jun’s uncles during a holiday lunch: “Now that you’re back in China, you should remember to have children soon. Your in-laws are getting older, and they want to see your child.” I lost my appetite after that, abruptly leaving the table with the excuse that I was full.
In fact, I was full. Full of, and tired of, every family suggestion that what I do with my uterus is their business. Sometimes I have imagined yelling at everyone to mind their own lives – a tactic that Jun assured me would never go over well. Not in a country where you’re supposed to respect your elders. Not in China, where people can’t understand how we have been married for more than 10 years without any children.
It’s funny that I’ve never believed in doing something just because everyone else does, yet I’ve married into a country where social conformity is so pervasive, especially for childbearing.
When I’m especially aggravated, sometimes I wonder, could people ever understand that I came from a country where people don’t always do parenthood? Will we ever be able to enjoy Chinese New Year with Jun’s family without the onslaught of questions and nagging? Will it ever be OK for us to be childless in China?
But now I realize there’s a more important question. Can we cope with going against the status quo in a country where there’s enormous pressure to conform?
I understand what Jun meant when spoke of his desire to prepare me on that summer evening. He wants to prepare us to survive the constant scrutiny from relatives and anyone else who thinks our childlessness is their business. We can’t change his family — or an entire society. But we can decide how to live our own lives and, for that matter, how to respond.
My husband loves to say “God is fair” and, as much as this makes me giggle, I believe it. I recognize the pressure to have children will never go away, since we plan to stay in China. But I count myself as simply lucky to be married to a man I love. He still has me laughing in the face of these questions, understands me better than anyone, and brings me remarkable happiness in even the most ordinary moments.
Yes, this is more than enough for me — for the rest of my life.
Jocelyn Eikenburg is a China-based writer, blogger and the creator of the Speaking of China blog about love, family and relationships in China. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, she has been interviewed by the BBC about her blog and cross-cultural marriage. You can also find her writing in The Huffington Post as well as the expat anthologies “How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit?” and “Unsavory Elements.”