I am a 31-year-old woman. I am married. I am an academic and a writer in active pursuit of my professional ambitions. I have a wonderful family who would walk through fire to come to my rescue if I were to run into trouble. 

I am also well-traveled. I have lived in three different continents and learned several languages along the way while visiting around 30 countries in four continents.

By all accounts, I have lived an eventful life. In the eyes of a society where family comes first, I have no excuse to delay the inevitable motherhood. Or so I am told.

I met my husband at the age of 26. At 26, turning 30 was a long way ahead and as we discussed the future to come, we talked about starting a family one day. But first, we wanted to travel extensively together and I wanted to educate myself.

We got married in 2007 and moved to Iceland in the spring that year. The Icelandic economy blossomed under false pretenses and we hoped to make enough money to travel extensively by the age of 30 and then start a family at the age of 32.

That was then. But one and a half years later the economic recession struck and all our travel plans were put on hold. And as we face the difficulties of making ends meet in an unstable economy, having a child is the last thing on our minds.

People have different ways to respond to an economic collapse.

In Iceland, the answer was procreation. In 2009, the annual birth rate rose substantially from previous years and the trend continued to spiral upwards.

So much in fact that children born the following year had to be waitlisted for the few available places in daycare centers.

Apparently, people figured there wasn’t much else to do than have babies.

My husband and I, however, responded a little differently to the crisis. The growing unemployment led us to believe that the best investment for the time being was education. So far, the plan is proving to be successful.

Until I turned 30, the pressure to procreate was minimal.

However, as soon as I lost my twenty-something status, all of a sudden I was on the verge of infertility and the only solution was to procreate immediately.

My excuses were no longer valid. So what if I wanted to backpack around the globe with my husband. I had to give up one or the other.

The irony is that although my family is relatively conservative and would love to see us produce an heir, they respect my choice to wait. They know how much traveling means to me and how much I want to write for a living.

My philosophy is certainly not out of the ordinary among well-educated women in the western world. But for some reason, the Icelandic way is and always has been somewhat unorthodox.

Teen pregnancy for instance is relatively high in Iceland, although in recent years the numbers have decreased.

Young mothers in Iceland receive a great deal of support from the community and the state, and therefore most teenage moms choose to keep their child.

The primary goal is to help the young mother complete her education and preferably the father as well. Matrimony is a secondary issue.

Traditionally, most Icelanders enter marriage long after the birth of their first child. A good friend of my sister’s married her childhood fiancé after having two children in the 20 years they’d been together.

It is my estimation that first-time parents in Iceland are more often than not in their mid-twenties.

I know a few professional women who waited until their late twenties but most of the people I went to high school with have two or three, if not four children by now.

I discovered that at a high school reunion I attended last year.

As can be expected, I was bombarded with questions about my life. I left the small town in which I grew up at a young age and didn’t stay in touch with 99 percent of my former classmates.

One guy even actively encouraged me to get started, as having children was the best thing that ever happened to him.

I am very happy for him but to be honest, I’d rather join the small percentage of women in Iceland who choose to “defy the borders of infertility.”

Most of us have spent quite a lot of time living overseas and some simply have no interest in pursuing motherhood.

Of course, to admit that would be a crime.

What sparked this column is a debate I came across on one Icelandic discussion forum where a young woman was attacked for admitting she had no interest in conceiving a child of her own but rather adopting an older child.

She said she was aware of the difficulties parents of adopted children often must overcome and argued her case well.

She was accused of being selfish for wanting to take away babies from couples that could not conceive a child of their own.

She was also told to get over her fear of pregnancy and just have a baby of her own since that was clearly what her husband wanted.

From what I gathered in the discussion forum, the rules are quite straightforward:

1. A devoted wife will fulfill her womanly duty and have a child.

2. Adoption is only for those who cannot have children of their own.

3. Strangers should feel free to tell women when and how to have children.

Lately, it seems my stubbornness to conceive is a growing concern in a society where children are a mandatory blessing. I can’t tell you how many times I have been bombarded with the same arguments over and over:

1. Once you have a child of your own, you’ll wonder why you waited so long.

2. If you don’t get started now, you won’t be able to have any.

3. There’s no right time to have a child.

And it’s not just me. My younger sister, who is single and plans to further her education in the near future, also constantly gets the question on when she intends to have a child.

Since when did it become compulsory to be a mother?

Whatever the source of this obsession may be, my sister and I both agree that the decision to have a child is an extremely personal one, and the curious Georges and Georginas should mind their own business.

Júlíana Björnsdóttir – julianabjornsdottir@gmail.com