Childless Women in the News
We've been in the news lately!
Make no mistake: those of us who are childless are becoming more visible in society. It can feel exhilarating, healing, and redemptive to emerge from the margins of dominant society in such a way, especially if we have felt shunned, misunderstood, pitied, or disempowered around our life circumstances and choices. Becoming visible can also feel vulnerable and threatening, and it may trigger painful emotions associated with the circumstances of one’s childlessness and/or the lived experiences of being a woman without kids in a nonunderstanding—and sometimes non-curious—culture. A 2008 article in the Times titled “Facing Life Without Children When It Isn’t by Choice” explained, “The stigma attached to infertility and living without children pressures many women to remain silent about their struggles.” A more recent article on childlessness by choice quoted Fox News commentator Ashley St. Clair on her view of the women in this category: “They just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyoncé concerts. It’s this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family.” This newfound attention and interest in our childless lives can feel disorienting and even daunting, especially as others’ judgements of us surface in cultural conversation.
But we are not going anywhere. Childlessness is on the rise for many reasons, including infertility, and efforts to limit access to treatments like IVF threaten to add more to those numbers. Childless-by-choice women and individuals are doubling down on the current rhetoric, grasping the opportunity to expand the notion of reproductive rights and justice to include opting out of motherhood.
I am sure you agree that this surge will not quickly fade into the ether. It turns out there are a whole lot of us out there. A 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center found that out of approximately 2,500 people surveyed over the age of 50 without kids, 32% claimed they never wanted them, and 25% reported they were undecided. Approximately 4 in 10—38%--claimed that at one time they did want to have children but did not become parents. The survey provided a chart breaking this last statistic down a bit. Notable statistics of why 50+-year-old childless people did not have children included social infertility (i.e., not finding the right partner), being coupled with a partner or spouse who did not want kids, and experiences with infertility.
The number of people under 50 who do not have children is increasing as well, with a large percentage reporting a lack of desire to be a parent.
Another big takeaway from the survey was again from the 50+-year-old sample. Although the majority of participants surveyed claimed many benefits to not having children (financial, creative freedom, etc.), they also identified concerns around aging without kids. Fears about running out of money, not having anyone to care for them, and loneliness as they age loomed large. The survey found that “A smaller share (11%) say they frequently worry about having someone who will carry on their values and traditions when they’re gone.” I wrote about this from my own 50-year-old childless-by-choice perspective in the article titled “The Reclamation of Legacy: Journeying Through Grief and Praise as a Childfree, Middle-Aged Woman” (email me if you run into a paywall, and I will send you a PDF!). I invite you to read it, regardless of whether you identify as childless by choice or not by choice. This invitation reveals my intention with this Substack, which is a part of my overall vision to create a collective of childless women: Despite our very different circumstances, involuntarily childless and childless-by-choice individuals share a lot of common ground. Those of us who are post-menopausal childless individuals and women must navigate the pronatalist and ageist terrain of our culture, which does not value eldercare, regardless of whether we chose to not be parents or deeply desired children and were unable to fulfill that dream for one reason or another. We ALL live in a country that does not invest sufficiently in the healthcare of its elders, and thus the findings of the Pew study should not be surprising when it comes to our concerns. More, we live within a misogynist culture that drains older women—specifically older childless women—of their relevance, often rendering us invisible and depotentiated.
Many of us who are childless feel the “deal is sealed” after menopause. This is a time when that shared ground becomes vast. We are now entering a new phase of our lives developmentally, and we all face similar challenges without children. And hang on to your hats (or should I say cats?): if we were to unite in this potent life phase rather than see ourselves as different because of being involuntarily childless or childless by choice, we might even be able to find a way to sow the seeds of joy together in this new, fertile terrain. We just might co-create a space where we get to grieve together, celebrate together, reclaim ourselves together, and remind each other of the importance of our unique stories. We just might weave together the most fascinating tapestry of stories, joined together by unbreakable threads of gold, each panel different from the next, the whole representing the achingly beautiful complexity of being a woman without children in this world. We just might help each other learn to wield this unique wisdom as medicine for the larger world.
Make sure to read what this Substack is all about and who it is for. I hope you will join me in this vision and one day find community with others who are walking this path of childlessness into middle age and beyond. Read on and stay tuned to learn about my upcoming workshop series in 2025. Perhaps we will meet there, together, with our golden threads and our stories.