I was a child when I decided to be childfree. I distinctly remember telling my mum — at the mighty age of four years old — ‘mummy, I want to be just like you when I grow up, but I don’t want to be a mummy’. I already knew I didn’t like children. My peers all seemed really stupid and annoying to me. I had a few friends because they were on my level intellectually. But largely, I didn’t care for other children. When my parents went to dinner parties, I avoided the kids of the hosts as I found them too irritating; I would bury myself in a book instead. I preferred the company of books over children.
Now I’m in my 30s, nothing has changed. In fact, every month or year that passes, the more concrete I am in my decision to be childfree.
For years, I yearned to see myself represented in the media. But inevitably, women who were childfree are always shown to change their mind and cave into the pressure to have children, even if it goes against every fibre of their being.
And then I met her.
Dr Cristina Yang.
She burst onto the screen as one of the most iconic characters to ever exist. Typically, Asians are classed as a model minority, and in some ways, Cristina Yang fits this — she is an extremely intelligent and successful woman in STEM. But the one thing that made her different from everyone else? Her adamant insistence on being childfree.
In the early seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, Cristina is in a relationship with her idol and mentor, cardio God, Dr Preston Burke. She accidentally gets pregnant, which ends up almost killing her; an ectopic pregnancy. From the word go, she is not upset about losing the pregnancy; if anything, it’s a relief. Burke’s feelings aren’t shown; he seems to be ambivalent about having children and is only concerned about Cristina’s health. If only she always had a partner who was more supportive of her reproductive decisions. (It is later revealed that Burke eventually married and had children, but judging by the way he framed it, it was his wife who very much wanted to be a mother and he didn’t want to deny her that.)
Burke and Cristina don’t last long; he leaves her at the altar. Even though this is a devastating decision, it’s ultimately the best — Cristina isn’t the marrying type and was essentially doing it because it’s what he wanted. How many of us women have been in the same predicament, simply doing what the man in our life wanted? She wasn’t against marriage, but she had to cut parts of herself off in order to be the perfect bride for Burke and his family.
If anything, this sets her free. She is seen crying from relief after being left at the altar, realising just how much she sacrificed herself…for nothing. She temporarily gives up on dating and dedicates herself to her one true love: cardio.
In season five, we’re introduced to rough and rugged Dr Owen Hunt, with whom Cristina shares an instant attraction. What’s not to love? A ginger GI Joe steps into the hospital having trached a patient with a pen, staples his own wound together without any anaesthesia, sticks two fingers up to the jocks of the hospital a.k.a Dr Derek Shepherd and Dr Mark Sloan, and leaves having kissed Cristina and rocked out like a badass. Of course anyone would fancy him!
Eventually, he returns as the Head of Trauma and begins a relationship with Cristina. They have a lot of bumps along the way, including a love triangle, a hospital shooting, a plane crash, and some other crazy stuff that could only ever happen in the Grey’s Anatomy world. All roads point to marriage.
There is a significant episode where both of them are operating in the OR and the question of having children comes up. Cristina voices her blatant disgust, saying that she will never have children and will not change her mind; it’s simply not an avenue she ever wants to venture down. Owen is dismissive, arguing that Cristina will change her mind and she’s only thinking that way because she is a young resident. Bear in mind, Cristina is around 30 at this point, potentially older as she is the only resident to have also completed a PhD. A woman of that age certainly knows her own mind, especially about something as life-changing as having children. Women in or around their 30s are never questioned when they are pregnant. They are never told, ‘what if you change your mind/are you sure/you’re too young to know what you really want’. But suddenly, when a woman actively chooses to be childfree, she is invalidated at every turn. She is suddenly too young to decide to be childfree, yet not too young to know she wants a child.
The two get married after the hospital shooting. They have a brief engagement of 12 hours and before you know it, they’ve tied the knot. Everyone is happy.
That is until Cristina accidentally falls pregnant.
This obviously causes a rift. Cristina is adamant about getting an abortion. Owen says that having a baby would be beautiful, he would take a step back in his career to raise their child so Cristina can still work as hard as she is etc. He doesn’t listen to her. One of the many reasons women are childfree is not just because of the knock on their livelihood and lifestyle, but the physical and mental burden of carrying a baby. Men don’t get pregnant. They don’t have a parasite sucking the life out of them. They don’t have to go through the hard part. They don’t have their bodies ripped in half. They don’t have permanent physical damage from having a child. So a man saying he wants a child is pretty easy, because they don’t go through the brutality of it.
Cristina pushes ahead and goes through with the abortion. Surprisingly, Owen attends the appointment with her, holds her hand and supports her. All seems well…until Meredith and Derek throw a party and Owen yells that Cristina ‘killed’ their baby, to the shock of everyone in the house.
You can’t kill something that couldn’t live without a host.
Following this betrayal, Cristina and Owen have an on/off relationship. There’s no future, but they’re addicted to each other. They get divorced. They move on…and yet they don’t.
One of Grey’s Anatomy’s most impactful and thoughtful episodes is season 10 episode 17. It had such a profound effect on me and my decision to be childfree that I got the numbers tattooed on my arm so that I am constantly reminded that I made the right choice for myself and my life.
In this episode, Cristina has a fever dream. In one alternate reality, she decides to give in and have children with Owen. In this alternate universe, Cristina tells Meredith she made a mistake while giving birth. Owen hears this; Meredith says all women say this. We then see the shocking reality of Cristina being a mother — she is exhausted and unfulfilled. She neglects her work, handing over her groundbreaking cardio project to her subordinate. She gets pregnant with another child and tells Meredith that she’s tired of being a doctor and a mother as both feel like full-time jobs, but ‘at least Owen is happy’. Having taken over Cristina’s revolutionary project, her subordinate wins the prestigious Harper Avery award instead of her. She breaks down at this, regretting ever having made the decisions she did.
In the opposite fever dream, she ends it with Owen. Then they start sleeping together. Rinse and repeat. He says he’s fine and has gotten over the idea of having children, but the fact that he becomes an alcoholic says otherwise. He ends up losing his job while Cristina wins her fourth consecutive Harper Avery.
In both scenarios, one person in the relationship suffers. In the end, Cristina decides to stay with Owen in reality before she goes off to take the job of a lifetime in Switzerland. He loves her and wants her to stay, but lets her go, knowing that the relationship is inevitably doomed. As an audience, we get the best character send-off ever: Cristina becomes the Chief Medical Officer of the Klein Institute, where she can achieve everything she has ever wanted. She becomes the cardio God she once worshipped.
The reason I love Cristina Yang so much is because she never once doubted her decision to be childfree. She doubled down on it several times. In a couple’s therapy session with Owen, she stands up for childfree people, saying there’s nothing wrong with being childfree and some people simply don’t want children; they’re not traumatised or ‘broken’ and it’s a perfectly valid choice. She could have destroyed her life to make the man in her life happy, but she refused. She chose herself. And in a world where women are told that their value relies on their ability to reproduce, Cristina was a breath of fresh air. She validated me. She showed me that me being childfree wasn’t wrong; I was just being true to myself. She taught me it was okay to go against the grain, to do the opposite of what society expects of a woman.
Cristina resonates with me because I had an extremely similar relationship. After four years, he told me he absolutely has to be a father one day. So it ended there. I broke up with the man I thought I was going to marry. Despite how heartbroken I was, I now know it was the best decision for both of us.
I will always be Cristina, and he will always be Owen.
