I was doomscrolling before bed when I came across a trending video of a content creator saying single people have no right to be tired because they don’t have kids. I blinked and wondered if I had missed the memo on who actually gets to be exhausted. Sadly, this isn’t the first time a take like this goes viral. Every few months, the same message pops up: if you’re single and childfree, you can’t possibly understand real exhaustion, and your life is framed as convenient, lightweight, and lacking any real responsibilities.

It’s such a confident opinion for something so wildly disconnected from reality.

Being single and childfree in this economy is not a permanent vacation. It’s not a curated highlight reel of spontaneous trips and uninterrupted sleep. For a lot of us, it’s managing an entire life solo while operating inside a system that already runs most people into the ground.

Burnout Does Not Require Children

Starting with the obvious: living under late-stage capitalism is exhausting. Corporate jobs expect output, enthusiasm, flexibility, and loyalty, often without offering stability in return. There’s the constant pressure to perform, to stay relevant, to answer the email, to hit the target, to be grateful you even have the job. Add in rising costs of living, financial anxiety, and the low hum of global chaos in the background, and you have a baseline level of stress that has nothing to do with whether you have kids.

Burnout does not check your parental status before it decides to settle in.

When you’re single, you are the sole infrastructure of your life. You pay the bills. You manage the logistics. You schedule the appointments. You fix the problems. If something goes wrong, there isn’t a default second adult to split the load. There’s no built-in financial cushion unless you created one yourself. That independence can feel empowering, as much as it can feel like it’s choking you.

It’s strange how often that gets dismissed.

The “must be nice” comments usually focus on freedom. Must be nice to sleep in. Must be nice to travel. Must be nice to only worry about yourself. But that ignorant framing conveniently ignores the other side of the equation. It ignores the emotional labor of building and sustaining a life on your own. It ignores the mental weight of being the only decision-maker. It ignores the pressure of knowing that your stability depends entirely on you.

You can love your autonomy and still feel exhausted by it.

Fulfillment Is Not a Parenting Trophy

The other piece of this conversation is fulfillment. There’s a persistent belief that having children is the ultimate, maybe even the only, path to a meaningful life. For many people, parenthood is deeply fulfilling. That’s real. But it’s not universal truth.

Fulfillment is not a single destination with one acceptable route.

Some people find purpose in raising children. Others find it in building careers they fought hard for. In creating art. In cultivating friendships that feel like chosen family. In mentoring. In travel. In activism. In financial independence. In healing generational patterns. In simply creating a peaceful life.

Being childfree does not mean you are unfulfilled. It means your fulfillment is sourced differently.

What’s frustrating is not that parents talk about being tired. Of course they are tired. As the oldest child in a military family, I know firsthand that raising children is demanding. I watched my mom do it many times when my dad was deployed. And even when he wasn’t away, my mother still managed the household and all that went with it. The issue is the assumption that exhaustion and meaning are exclusive to that experience. That without kids, your stress is superficial and your life is somehow less serious.

You Are Not in a Waiting Room

Everyone is navigating pressure. Parents are balancing work and childcare. Single adults are balancing work and the total weight of self-sufficiency. Couples without kids are managing careers, finances, relationships, and often extended family responsibilities. There isn’t a gold medal for who is most depleted, so if we could chill with the Oppression Olympics, that’d be great.

And if parenting is the most consuming, sacred, fulfilling experience imaginable, it shouldn’t require invalidating someone else’s life to feel legitimate. Fulfilled people don’t need to convince strangers that they’re fulfilled.

If you are single and childfree and thriving, that’s valid. If you are single and childfree and completely burnt out, that’s valid too. You don’t need to stack your responsibilities against someone else’s to earn the right to rest. You don’t need a child to legitimize your exhaustion. You don’t need to follow a traditional life script to prove that your life has depth.

Being single without children does not mean you are waiting for real life to begin. For many people, like myself, it means intentionally building a life that reflects who we actually are.

And that life can be meaningful. It can be full. It can be complicated. It can be tiring.

So let me say it one last time: You are allowed to be fulfilled on your own terms. You are allowed to be exhausted in a system that exhausts everyone. And you are allowed to reject the absurd idea that your adulthood only counts if it looks like someone else’s.