It’s not just JD Vance and his “childless cat ladies” remarks. Making the choice to be childfree has been a hot topic. Recent (2023) articles, for example, have addressed the no-kids movement and its backlash (BBC), the decade-long trend in the U.S. toward being childfree by choice (CNN), and reasons 20 different adults say they don’t want to have kids (NPR).
Do we go around asking anyone why they did choose to have kids, by the way?
Callie Crossley, WGBH, is one who wonders why this childfree by choice issue is “suddenly so controversial.” Like me, she knew in high school she didn’t want kids. In social work grad school (1978) I felt compelled to do a number of research papers on voluntary childlessness. I wish I hadn’t eventually tossed them. Apparently, much to my chagrin, they’d still be timely.
I had already had a sterilization procedure by a doctor who supported both the Zero Population Growth movement (now known as Population Connection) and a thoughtful (and barely sexually active) adult’s right to choose. And then, irony of all ironies, I came out as a lesbian just a few years later. If people hadn’t yet really cared so much if I wanted kids or not, now many could just assume it wouldn’t happen. Just lucky to be a young lesbian in the 1980’s, I guess.
I must add, though, that when I met my partner in 1981 we each immediately established our desire to not be moms. My point being, we had already entered the era of lesbians finding ways to have kids. Thus, it was a potential deal-breaker issue.
Karin Arndt, PhD, Psychology Today, points out that “(t)he choice to forego motherhood is still a relatively rare one,” however. “Approximately 15% of women in the United States do not have children by age 50. This statistic includes both women who want children but can’t have them and women who’ve made the choice not to become mothers, making the percentage of women who are ‘childfree by choice’ significantly lower than 15%.”
Look for role models, Arndt advises, if you need some support. One resource I found while researching this topic today, by the way, is www.thenotmom.com, which has a whole page of famous not-moms.
A pertinent documentary is To Kid Or Not to Kid. As described by IMDB: “Tired of being made to feel like ‘a waste of a uterus,’ one woman fights back for her right to decide whether to live a life openly without having kids.” Tagline: Breaking the myth that if you live child-free you are weird, selfish or somehow wrong.
Update, 3/25/26: This is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. The trailer:
Jeanette Catsoulis, New York Times: “Her quest, playing out among family, friends and dedicated groups of happily childless men and women — including celebrities like Sarah Silverman and Ellen DeGeneres — will take her from New York to Louisiana, from Ohio to Wales. What she finds is an overwhelmingly pro-natal environment…”
Leslie Felperin, The Guardian: “…[The director and main subject] seems genuinely interested in other people’s experiences and is an empathetic interviewer, whether the subject is her own mother, a random stranger, or a young woman who, by the film’s end, still hasn’t found a doctor willing to perform the sterilisation procedure she wants after five appointments. This stands in stark contrast to one man’s experience in the film who seeks out a vasectomy and gets the surgery almost immediately.”
A spinoff of this film was the 2019 PBS series, Should We Kid or Not? “To kid or not to kid, that is the question. Reproductive choice is often a taboo subject, and in this web series, strangers from all walks of life tackle and debate hot-button topics like sterilization, adoption, and teen pregnancy.”
