Morison's research has found mounting hostility between parents and the childfree—especially mothers and childfree women.
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The childfree movement rejects one of life's basic drives with reason and thoughtfulness, asking fundamental questions about the worlds childfree people live in.
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And our happy childfree life doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't.
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"Cribsheet" tackles the next step in the journey from childfree person to parent.
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Being childfree—they first want you to know—is hardly a millennial idea.
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And contrary to certain hypotheses, voluntarily childfree people seem to rarely regret their choice.
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"I wish there was something like [r/childfree] 30 years ago," writes one redditor.
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"There have always been people who have made the choice not to have children, but we've never noticed them in that way," says Amy Blackstone, a (childfree) sociologist at the University of Maine and author of the forthcoming book Childfree by Choice.
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But the childfree aren't just delaying, and that's started to show in the data too.
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Childfree and childless have just one syllable's difference, but they are a huge chasm apart.
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Childfree-by-choice women do not have children because they simply have decided not to.
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What the childfree-by-choice movement does is include "whether" in that list of choices.
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Researchers have found similar negative judgements of childfree adults everywhere from India to Italy to Israel.
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Morison found that childfree individuals were often expected to work overtime because they had no children.
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To parse this, let's think in slightly longer phrases: childless (by circumstance) and childfree (by choice).
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And it was a sign that childfree people were interested in buying more than just books.
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The moment doesn't come off as a clarification, like Carole is being called out for going childfree.
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Others took a little more time to conclude that being childfree is the right choice for them.
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Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall does not like the word "childfree," and neither do we.
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By now, some of you might be forming a hard nugget of disapproval for the snarky childfree redditors.
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The feelings the childfree have learned to articulate within their own spaces are often grounded in deep reflection.
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For childfree people, the animus comes from a lifetime of judgement, invasive questions, and, at times, real disadvantage.
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This story is part of a week-long series on reproduction, from preventing premature births to childfree Reddit.
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In conclusion, childfree booze is the best kind of booze, and you cannot be blamed for wanting it.
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For the childfree, the reasons to consider childfreedom extend beyond baby hatred, questions of bodily autonomy, or suboptimal finances.
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Still, asking non-parents what would convince them to procreate is, in the childfree people's view, the wrong question.
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Most childfree people are deeply concerned about the state of the future—and procreating isn't the only way to contribute.
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But, let's hope the women of New York figure out that childfree shaming is just as bad as mommy shaming.
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And although Daum has become a major face of the childfree movement, she isn't a fan of the word itself.
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You get to rest, your kid gets to play, and you have a fun story to tell your childfree coworker tomorrow.
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Unlike Carole, who's happy in her modern-with-a-capital-M relationship with a much younger man, Tinsley isn't comfortable being childfree.
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"We basically have 12 years until the planet is an apocalyptic hellscape," says Justine, a longtime r/childfree member in her early thirties.
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Despite more and more women choosing to remain childfree, the expectation remains that we pop out babies as soon as we have the chance.
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It must be said that, like many conversations about femaleness, discussions around being childfree have often centered around white, middle- or upper-class women.
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Referring to somebody as a spinster or "confirmed bachelor" was a coy implication of queerness, but it's also a signpost for the childfree of yesteryear.
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Living as they do in a stridently pro-reproduction climate, it's difficult for childfree people to publicly express the sentiments behind the downward-trending data.
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Will we see middle-aged, morally conflicted, childfree women dressing in the drab, brown robes of the Aunts to make some sort of feminist statement?
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The following are books I found that I thought provided special insight and guidance into the process of trying to conceive, adopt, or live childfree after infertility.
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Part of the reason that fatherhood is so synonymous with maturity may be due to the lack of a widely accepted roadmap for being a childfree adult.
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According to Blackstone, the economic boom-time of the 1980s, along with its focus on women "having it all," re-hushed the childfree—though it didn't extinguish them.
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That false dichotomy went back to Daum's initial issue with the word "childfree" — it created a division that felt politicized, rather than simply identifying a group by name.
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There are all kinds of systemic things that make life, including married and family life and childfree life, dramatically more challenging and difficult for low-income women and men.
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The difficulties and stigma surrounding sterilization have even led to the creation of a Reddit forum of "childfree-friendly" providers who may be more open to performing the procedure.
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" Tonic talked to five partnered individuals about their choice to remain childfree, the stigmas they face, and what they are doing, if anything, to push back against the "moral outrage.
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While I can at least see why Tinsley wrongly tried to shame Carole's life choices, Ramona's childfree shaming is much weirder and unexplainable, like many of her antics this season.
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As I continued to call doctors around the country, my online research introduced me to the "childfree movement," whose members, like me, are resolute in their desire not to have children.
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While the woman's right to decide should always supersede the biases of the doctor, our malpractice system shares part of the blame for the limited Reddit forum of "childfree-friendly" providers.
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They know they're working against ingrained biases: The childfree are keenly aware that they are prefigured in the eyes of most as a band of entitled, disrespectful millennials, trading tradition for self-interest.
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Not only did participants perceive the voluntarily childfree male and female subjects to be "significantly less psychologically fulfilled than targets with two children," Ashburn-Nardo notes, they also reported "significantly greater moral outrage" toward them.
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If you do have kids and you've said anything like the above, the childfree community would like to let you know that you're not being as thoughtful and caring as you (maybe) mean to be.
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"Participants from a range of places told us how they felt 'like a freak' until they went online," says Tracy Morison, a lecturer at Massey University of New Zealand who has studied online childfree communities.
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In some states, like Iowa, the government will take a larger percentage of your estate if you leave your possession to someone other than a biological heir—something some childfree Iowans feel unduly penalized by.
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Love and childfree booze, Because I Said So Read These Next: What To Do When Your Kid Says Something Wildly Offensive In PublicAm I Selfish For Wanting To Have Kids In This Sick, Sad World?
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We're sorting one another into these identity groups based on breast or bottle, C-section or "natural," working or staying home, childless, childfree, child-averse, meanwhile forgetting we're still just people continuing to be who we are, before, during, after, and to the left of having kids.
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No matter what name it goes by — childfree, childless by choice, barrenness — it is a major sign of forward movement that more and more women around the world have the ability to make their own decisions about their bodies and, by association, the shape of their lives.
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Childfree individuals do not necessarily share a unified political or economic philosophy, and most prominent childfree organizations tend to be social in nature. Childfree social groups first emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, most notable among them the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood and No Kidding! in North America where numerous books have been written about childfree people and where a range of social positions related to childfree interests have developed along with political and social activism in support of these interests. The term "childfree" was used in a July 3, 1972 Time article on the creation of the National Organization for Non-Parents.
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It was revived in the 1990s when Leslie Lafayette formed a later childfree group, the Childfree Network. The National Organization for Non-Parents (N.O.N.) was established in Palo Alto, California by Ellen Peck and Shirley Radl in 1972. N.O.N. was formed to advance the notion that men and women could choose not to have children—to be childfree.
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Just as people with children come from all shades of the political spectrum and temper their beliefs accordingly, so do the childfree. For example, while some childfree people think of government welfare to parents as "lifestyle subsidies," others accept the need to assist such individuals but think that their lifestyle should be equally compensated. Still others accept the need to help out such individuals and also do not ask for subsidies of their own. There are suggestions of an emergence of political cohesion, for example an Australian Childfree Party (ACFP) proposed in Australia as a childfree political party, promoting the childfree lifestyle as opposed to the family lifestyle.
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Ellen Remsburg Peck (August 24, 1942 – March 15, 1995) was an American feminist, writer, and childfree activist.
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Most societies place a high value on parenthood in adult life, so that people who remain childfree are sometimes stereotyped as being "individualistic" people who avoid social responsibility and are less prepared to commit themselves to helping others. However, certain groups believe that being childfree is beneficial. With the advent of environmentalism and concerns for stewardship, those choosing to not have children are also sometimes recognized as helping reduce our impact, such as members of the voluntary human extinction movement. Some childfree are sometimes lauded on moral grounds, such as members of philosophical or religious groups, like the Shakers.
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International Childfree Day is celebrated annually on 1 August.Kevin O'Connor, Insights into Uganda, 2006, page 56 It was created in 1973 in the United States by the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood, at the time the National Organisation for Non-Parents (N.O.N.), under the name of Non-Parents' Day. The day is aimed at celebrating people who voluntarily choose not to have children and to foster acceptance of the childfree choice.
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He is childfree and antinatalist. In April 2018, Stallman was criticized for electing to keep a joke about American federal policies toward abortion in the documentation for glibc.
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It has also been described as "a day of celebration worldwide for those couples who have faced criticism, ridicule, and rejection because they chose to be Childless by Choice." The initiative, resurrected in 2013 by author Laura Carroll, also bestows annual Non Parent of the Year Award, which initially consisted of a male and a female. As of 2018, the 'male' and 'female' categories were replaced by Childfree Person of the Year (a person of any gender identification) and Childfree Group of the Year (a couple, duo, trio, or a group, whether childfree romantic partners, social media groups, forum leaders, or website founders). Winners include Belgian writer Théophile de Giraud and American author Jennifer Thorpe-Moscon in 2013.
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People, especially women, who express the fact that they have voluntarily chosen to remain childless, are frequently subjected to several different forms of discrimination. The decision not to have children has been variously attributed to insanity or derided as "unnatural", and frequently childfree people are subjected to unsolicited questioning by friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances and even strangers who attempt to force them to justify and change their decision. Some consciouslessly childless women have been told that their purpose in life was to get children based on the fact that they were born with a womb (created by God). Some British childfree women have compared their experiences of coming out as childfree to coming out as gay in the mid-20th century.
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Voluntary childlessness, also described by some as being childfree, is the voluntary choice not to have children. In most societies and for most of human history, choosing not to have children was both difficult and undesirable. The availability of reliable contraception along with support provided in old age by one's government rather than one's family has made childlessness an option for people in some, though they may be looked down upon in certain communities. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word "childfree" first appeared sometime before 1901,Child-free.
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S. graduate (13.5%), H.S. graduate (14.3%), Some College no degree (24.7%), Associate Degree (11.4%), Bachelor's degree (18.2%) and Graduate or Professional degree (27.6%). While younger women are more likely to be childfree, older women are more likely to state that they intend to remain childfree in the future. It has also been suggested through research that married individuals who were concerned about the stability of their marriages were more likely to remain childless. However, some women report that lack of financial resources was a reason why they decided to remain childless.
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Women are having children at a later age, and most notably, an increasing number of women are choosing not to bear children at all.Gillespie, Rosemary. 2003. "Childfree and Feminine: Understanding the Gender Identity of Voluntary Childless Women". Gender and Society.
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Many early books were grounded in feminist theory and largely sought to dispel the idea that womanhood and motherhood were necessarily the same thing, arguing, for example, that childfree people face not only social discrimination but political discrimination as well.
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Being a childfree, American adult was considered unusual in the 1950s. However, the proportion of childfree adults in the population has increased significantly since then. A 2006 study by Abma and Martinez found that American women aged 35 to 44 who were voluntarily childless constituted 5% of all U.S. women in 1982, 8% in 1988, 9% in 1995 and 7% in 2002. These women had the highest income, prior work experience and the lowest religiosity compared to other women. The National Center of Health Statistics confirms that the percentage of American women of childbearing age who define themselves as childfree (or voluntarily childless) rose sharply in the 1990s—from 2.4 percent in 1982 to 4.3 percent in 1990 to 6.6 percent in 1995. From 2007 to 2011 the fertility rate in the U.S. declined 9%, the Pew Research Center reporting in 2010 that the birth rate was the lowest in U.S. history and that childlessness rose across all racial and ethnic groups to about 1 in 5 versus 1 in 10 in the 1970s; it did not say which percentage of childless Americans were so voluntarily, but Time claimed that, despite persisting discrimination against especially women who chose to remain childless, acceptance of being childfree was gradually increasing.
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Abrahamic religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Hinduism place a high value on children and their central place in marriage. In numerous works, including an Apostolic letter written in 1988, Pope John Paul II has set forth the Roman Catholic emphasis on the role of children in family life. However, the Catholic Church also stresses the value of chastity in the non-married state of life and so approves of nominally childfree ways of life for the single. There are, however, some debates within religious groups about whether a childfree lifestyle is acceptable.
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Some childfree people are accused of hating all children instead of just not wanting any themselves and still being able to help people who do have children with things like babysitting. It has also been claimed that there is a taboo on discussing the negative aspects of pregnancy, and a taboo on parents to express regret that they chose to have children, which makes it harder for childfree people to defend their decision not to have them. Social attitudes about voluntarily childlessness have been slowly changing from condemnation and pathologisation in the 1970s towards more acceptance by the 2010s.
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Childfree couples choose to not have children. These include young couples, who plan to have children later, as well as those who do not plan to have any children. Involuntary childlessness may be caused by infertility, medical problems, death of a child, or other factors.
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Jerry Steinberg is the "Founding Non-Father" of No Kidding! International, a social club for childfree and childless singles and couples. He founded the organization in his home city of Vancouver, BC, Canada in 1984. Since then, the organization has grown to include numerous chapters in several countries.
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Brian Tomasik cites ethical reasons for people to remain childfree. Also, they will have more time to focus on themselves, which will allow for greater creativity and the exploration of personal ambitions. In this way, they may benefit themselves and society more than if they had a child.
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Increasing politicization and media interest has led to the emergence of a second wave of childfree organizations that are openly political in their raisons d'être, with a number of attempts to mobilize political pressure groups in the U.S. The first organization to emerge was British, known as Kidding Aside.
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In 2018, she called on the Philippine > Senate to pass the SOGIE Equality Bill. In 2017, Wurtzbach was named a > UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador for Asia and the Pacific. Wurtzbach has tweeted > that she intends to remain unmarried and childfree. In June 2020, she > confirmed her relationship with Scottish entrepreneur Jeremy Jauncey.
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She is an advocate for comprehensive sex education and media criticism to combat misinformation about sex for teens and young people. She is currently directing her documentary My So-Called Selfish Life, about the childfree movement, and has written about such issues for Self, Real Simple, Topic, and other publications. Her production company, Trixie Films, is based in Brooklyn.
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The song and video became the subject of a scandal. The Moscow lawyer Sergei Afanasyev wrote to the prosecutor's office to check "Childfree" for legal violations, claiming that the lyrics promoted teen suicide. In 2017, Monetochka began to collaborate with the alternative R&B; musician and producer Viktor "BTsKh" Isaev. Their first collaboration, the single "Poslednyaya diskoteka" (), was released on 31 October 2017.
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Letov's older brother is the famous free jazz saxophonist Sergey Letov. In the late 1980s, Letov was close with Yanka Dyagileva, though it's not clear whether they were partners or not. He was married to Anna Volkova in the 1990s and to Natalia Chumakova from 1998 until his death. Letov had no children, as he and Chumakova both had childfree views.
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The album was posted in one of the popular social network communities and quickly went viral. By the end of February, she had over 20,000 followers on her VKontakte page and received offers to give concerts and interviews. In January 2017, Monetochka released the video for the song "Ushla k realistu" (). On 1 June 2017 the video for the song "Childfree" (), recorded with Noize MC, was released.
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According to research by Statistics Netherlands from 2004, 6 in 10 childless women are voluntarily childless. It showed a correlation between higher levels of education of women and the choice to be childfree, and the fact that women had been receiving better education in the preceding decades was a factor why an increasing number of women chose childfreedom. The two most important reasons for choosing not to have children were that it would infringe on their freedom and that raising children takes too much time and energy; many women who gave the second reason also gave the first. A 2016 report from Statistics Netherlands confirmed those numbers: 20% of Dutch women was childless, of whom 60% voluntarily, so that 12% of all Dutch women could be considered childfree. In March 2017, Trouw reported that new a Statistics Netherlands report showed that 22% of higher educated 45-year-old men were childless and 33% of lower educated 45-year-old men were childless.
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In 2016, Shechter began her current documentary film, My So-Called Selfish Life. The film will explore the concept of being "childfree by choice" by documenting the lives of women and men who are "choosing not to have kids in a culture where motherhood feels mandatory." Subjects of the film will include poet and biographer Molly Peacock, author of Paradise, Piece by Piece, and journalist Anne Kingston, who wrote about maternal regret for Maclean's Magazine.
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If women take long parental leaves, the neoclassical model would predict that their lifetime earnings and opportunities for promotion will be less than their male or childfree counterparts—the "motherhood penalty". Women may seek out employment sectors that are "family- friendly" (i.e., with generous parental leave policies), resulting in occupational sex segregation. Nielsen, Simonsen, and Verner examine what the different outcomes for women in Denmark are between the "family-friendly" and the "non-family-friendly" sector.
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Economic incentives and career reasons also motivate women to choose sterilization. With regard to women who are voluntarily childless, studies show that there are higher "opportunity costs" for women of higher socioeconomic status because women are more likely than men to forfeit labor force participation once they have children. Some women stated the lack of financial resources as a reason why they remained childfree. Combined with the costliness of raising children, having children was viewed as a negative impact on financial resources.
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A figure of the antinatalism and childfree movement, De Giraud is one of the co-creators of Non-Parents Day, celebrated between 2009 and 2011, alternately in Brussels and Paris. In 2008, he covered a statue of Leopold II in Brussels with red paint, to denounce the public valorisation of the king who established the colonial system of the Belgian Congo. In 2012, he organised a "denatalist" event in Paris to bring attention to the overpopulation taboo and to the value of refusing to give birth for ecological reasons.
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According to a 2019 study amongst 191 Swedish men aged 20 to 50, 39 were not fathers and did not want to have children in the future either (20.4%). Desire to have (more) children was not related to level of education, country of birth, sexual orientation or relationship status. Some Swedish men 'passively' choose not to have children as they feel their life is already good as it is, adding children is not necessary, and they do not have to counter the same amount of social pressure to have children as childfree women do.
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"DINK" is an acronym that stands for "double income, no kids". It describes a childfree couple living together while both partners are receiving an income; because both of their wages are coming into the same household, they are free to live more comfortably than couples who live together and spend their money on raising their children. The term was coined at the height of yuppie culture in the 1980s. The Great Recession solidified this social trend, as more couples waited longer to have children or chose not to have children at all.
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Some Canadian women preferred not to express their decision to remain childless for fear of encountering social pressure to change their decision. Some women are told to first have a child before being able to properly decide that they don't want one. Some parents try to pressure their children into producing grandchildren and threaten to or actually disown them if they don't. Some childfree women are told they would make good mothers, or just "haven't met the right man yet", are assumed to be infertile rather than having made a conscious decision not to make use of their fertility (whether applicable or not).
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July 26, 2018. The meaning of the term "childfree" extends to encompass the children of others (in addition to one's own children) and this distinguishes it further from the more usual term "childless", which is traditionally used to express the idea of having no children, whether by choice or by circumstance.The obsolete term "childerless", meaning "without children" is given, for example in The term "child free" has been cited in Australian literature to refer to parents who are without children at the current time. This may be due to them living elsewhere on a permanent basis or a short-term solution such as childcare.
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Proponents of childfreedom posit that choosing not to have children is no more or less selfish than choosing to have children. Choosing to have children may be the more selfish choice, especially when poor parenting risks creating many long term problems for both the children themselves and society at large. As philosopher David Benatar explains, at the heart of the decision to bring a child into the world often lies the parents' own desires (to enjoy child- rearing or perpetuate one's legacy/genes), rather than the potential person's interests. At the very least, Benatar believes this illustrates why a childfree person may be just as altruistic as any parent.
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It is not known exactly when it was first discovered that women have predictable periods of fertility and infertility. It is already clearly stated in the Talmud tractate Niddah, that a woman only becomes pregnant in specific periods in the month, which seemingly refers to ovulation. St. Augustine wrote about periodic abstinence to avoid pregnancy in the year 388 (the Manichaeans attempted to use this method to remain childfree, and Augustine condemned their use of periodic abstinence). One book states that periodic abstinence was recommended "by a few secular thinkers since the mid-nineteenth century," but the dominant force in the twentieth century popularization of fertility awareness-based methods was the Roman Catholic Church.
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Changing its name to the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood, it continued into the early 1980s both as a support group for those making the decision to be childfree and an advocacy group fighting pronatalism (attitudes/advertising/etc. promoting or glorifying parenthood). According to its bylaws, the purpose of the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood was to educate the public on non-parenthood as a valid lifestyle option, support those who choose not to have children, promote awareness of the overpopulation problem, and assist other groups that advanced the goals of the organization. N.O.N.'s offices were located in Reisterstown, Maryland; then Baltimore; and ultimately in Washington, D.C. N.O.N. designated August 1 as Non-Parents' Day.
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Reduction of one's carbon footprint for various actions. Some believe that overpopulation is a serious problem and some question the fairness of what they feel amount to subsidies for having children, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (US), free K–12 education paid for by all taxpayers, family medical leave, and other such programs. Others, however, do not believe overpopulation to be a problem in itself; regarding such problems as overcrowding, global warming, and straining food supplies to be problems of public policy and/or technology. Some have argued that this sort of conscientiousness is self-eliminating (assuming it is heritable), so by avoiding reproduction for ethical reasons the childfree will only aid deterioration of concern for the environment and future generations.
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Some opponents of the childfree choice consider such a choice to be selfish. The rationale of this position is the assertion that raising children is a very important activity and so not engaging in this activity must therefore mean living one's life in service to one's self. The value judgment behind this idea is that individuals should endeavor to make some kind of meaningful contribution to the world, but also that the best way to make such a contribution is to have children. For some people, one or both of these assumptions may be true, but others prefer to direct their time, energy, and talents elsewhere, in many cases toward improving the world that today's children occupy (and that future generations will inherit).
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Blau was born in Bnei Brak (a religious city which appears frequently in her work), the oldest daughter of a Religious Zionist family. She is considered a prominent voice in religious Israeli literature, and identifies herself as ‘religious-lite.’ She served as editor and presenter on various television and radio shows that focus on Jewish topics from an original, feminist perspective and also hosted a weekly TV show in which she discussed biblical figures with children. Single and childfree, she was quoted as saying, “I wrote an entire thriller to understand why it works for me.” As part of her Sherut Leumi (National service) she volunteered in The Hedva Ibshitz Centre for the Study of the Holocaust, where she worked as a guide and documented Holocaust survivors.
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Some regard governmental or employer-based incentives offered only to parents—such as a per-child income tax credit, preferential absence planning, employment legislation, or special facilities—as intrinsically discriminatory, arguing for their removal, reduction, or the formation of a corresponding system of matching incentives for other categories of social relationships. Childfree advocates argue that other forms of caregiving have historically not been considered equal—that "only babies count"—and that this is an outdated idea that is in need of revision. Caring for sick, disabled, or elderly dependents entails significant financial and emotional costs but is not currently subsidized in the same manner. This commitment has traditionally and increasingly fallen largely on women, contributing to the feminization of poverty in the U.S. The focus on personal acceptance is mirrored in much of the literature surrounding choosing not to reproduce.
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Feminist author Daphne DeMarneffe links larger feminist issues to both the devaluation of motherhood in contemporary society, as well as the delegitimization of "maternal desire" and pleasure in motherhood. In third- wave handbook Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, authors Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards explore the concept of third-wave feminists reclaiming "girlie" culture, along with reasons why women of Baby Boomer and Generation X ages may reject motherhood because, at a young and impressionable age, they witnessed their own mothers being devalued by society and family. On the other hand, in "The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order" and in Utne Reader magazine, third-wave feminist writer Tiffany Lee Brown described the joys and freedoms of childfree living, freedoms such as travel previously associated with males in Western culture. In "Motherhood Lite," she celebrates being an aunt, co-parent, or family friend over the idea of being a mother.
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