This study is an autoethnography on childlessness as a journey as experienced by two middle class, highly educated, Muslim Indonesian women. We intend to describe our journey from involuntary childlessness to voluntarily embracing life without children. Methodologically, we exchanged our stories and experiences. And then we reflect on our struggle to live outside the idealised gender norms. In doing so, we expose the deeply rooted social construction of marriage as a social institution grounded in reproduction. We also highlight the hegemonic ideal femininity as still being primarily grounded on women’s reproductive capacity. We borrow Guzman and Parsmo’s term I’mOther (2021) to capture our social alienation for deciding to choose against the norm of ideal womanhood. We also introduce the concept of ‘pseudo parenting’ in explaining one of the common social responses to our caring for pets, younger siblings, nieces and nephews.