An advocate for child-free spaces has taken to TikTok to vent about a bad parenting experience that she suggests vindicates her decision to remain childless.
Thirty-one-year-old Dominique Bird, going by the TikTok handle Aussiedomxo, claimed that she had her day ruined while she and friends stopped over at a bakery for tea.
A group walked into the store with a child that she estimated to be between 2 and 2.5 years old, who threw up twice during the short period they were in the venue.
The TikTokker took issue with the fact that the child’s parents did not clean up after her
“We’re sitting there…we’re having a great time,” Bird explained.
“A family walks in with probably a 2 or 2.5-year-old child and within seconds of walking in, she [the toddler] vomits everywhere.”
“Instead of picking her up to take her outside, the mom slowly leads her by the hand towards the door, and the girl spews vomit all over the door, the floor,” the irate woman explained. “Then they left. No, they didn’t clean up first.”
Bird claims she opted for sterilization when the new Trump administration took office
Bird’s video has since scooped up over 40,000 likes. She has also granted an interview to Newsweek, whom she told she worked in childcare from a young age.
She claimed that if she had children she would have been a competent mother but a miserable one.
To ensure that she never goes down that road, she had both her fallopian tubes removed in an operation called a bilateral salpingectomy, sterilizing her permanently.
She took the step after America’s 2025 change of administration for the fear she might one day need healthcare for her offspring and not be able to afford it.
“No one wants their child to be sick, but at the same time, no one wants to eat food in the vicinity of vomit, regardless of where it came from,” the outlet reported her saying.
“Anyway, I just thought it was gross.”
One netizen says that parents should “stay locked in your house until your child can behave.”
Her video posted to TikTok has since drawn some agreement.
To the commonly asked question: “Are parents not supposed to do anything fun then,” one user wrote: “Stay locked in your house until your child can behave.”
One user mirrored the sentiment when she said that she lives near breweries that are “overrun with children.” Her observation was that their parents were too busy drinking to pay attention to their offspring while they were “running wild” and spoiling everyone else’s experience.
Another argued for all child-free advocates and wrote: “We need more child-free places that aren’t alcohol related.”
Bird’s attitude drew the criticism: “You made the right choice by not having children”
But not everyone was pleased with Bird’s stance. “Exactly how did you expect her to clean up an establishment that is not hers while also trying to care for a sick child?”
“Do you want her to travel with a mop and bucket,” they asked, before pointing out that “no establishment” would allow their patrons to clean up such a scenario anyways.
“You made the right choice by not having children,” they concluded. “You’re entitled to a child free life, not a child free world” another shot back.
Around 700,000 women get sterilized every year—half of them almost immediately after giving birth
America’s National Institute of Health (NIH) reports that Bird is part of a growing demographic of sterilized American women.
The organization says that 700,000 women opt out of reproducing every year, 50 percent of whom make the decision within 48 hours of giving birth.
But the number of women choosing not to sire children was not always this high.
A study carried out by Michigan State University (MSU) shows that the rate is double what it was two decades ago.
Professor Jennifer Watling Neal explained:
“We found that the percentage of nonparents who don’t want any children rose from 14% in 2002 to 29% in 2023.”
“During the same period, the percent of nonparents who plan to have children in the future fell from 79% to 59%,” she said.
Some say parents who live by the adage “kids will be kids,” are lazy
