For those of us that remember life before the internet all we had was newspapers and magazines
and books and encyclopedias and typically those sources did not mention child free
hashtags like child free by choice and not having kids have gotten popular on the tick tock over
the past year so do you think this helps combat this stigma around being child free by choice
i think it helps i think it gets the conversation started which is really important yes absolutely
i love this so much especially as someone who is child free by choice you know it does feel like
it's decision that you have to defend all of the time well you know i've never really wanted to be
a mom that's strange how could you not want to be a mom and it's like the default is you have kids
and if you don't there's a lot of shame and stigma so the more people the more women who stand up and
say no every choice is valid i'm allowed to make this choice and that should be celebrated just as
much as celebrating women who do have kids it's a choice parents don't defend their choice to
have kids we shouldn't have to defend our choice to not have children being able to use a social
media to talk about the child free choice i think it's getting attention it's great that people are
just out there being proud about it you know you go exactly i'm a supporter i'm an ally
you're an ally i i mean i and i do have two children i have a four-year-old and a two-year-old
i've written about this a lot about the like overly effusive attention that mothers get
in our world and on social media the instagram algorithm loves mothers they love pregnant
bellies that is so true the world seems very obsessed with pregnancy and babies and i know
that there was a time when youtube channels were just like taking off like crazy if you
had a channel about being pregnant and having a baby and like people doing videos of like live
births and everything i don't know that's like so over the top for me but i guess to each their own
i guess we're just boring compared to that too many of the stories that have always been told
have ended with marriage and babies for women i mean like almost every sitcom ever ends with
marriage and babies like everyone on friends got married and had a baby at the end of it i made
a whole video about this i'm like where are the child free people in movies and tv shows i mean
there's a few of them and you guys were awesome you guys sent me a list of a few of them that you
knew because i'm not much of a tv watcher but by the far majority a woman is seen as being
like super fulfilled if she gets married and then she's pregnant and you know then that's like sort
of that happy ending and let's be honest there's a lot of happy endings that don't include either
of those things now that we're finally seeing narratives of another way for a woman to live in
in the world it's incredible yeah it's so refreshing i think these are younger women
too right that that's not the only way to be so if you're 20 and seeing these tick tock videos then
you feel like you have more options out there you know that and so if you see other women doing it
and feeling good about it then you know it opens the world to you and maybe a lot of these kids
have never even realized that they have an option so being able to use social media platforms and
talk about the fact that hey yes there's an option besides being a parent which was the
only narrative that most of us probably heard growing up is incredibly refreshing i'm child
free by choice as well but it's not like my partner and i are sitting around the dining
room table every night like high fiving being like don't do my joints like we don't really celebrate
it and here's why because i'm not too sure i've entirely felt the stigma of it as you wow
that is interesting when people don't feel the stigma of the child free life i'm always amazed
when some of you have sent me messages and you're like no one has ever said anything negative to
me about the fact i did not want to have kids and i'm like you're either surrounded by people
who are very open-minded or i don't know maybe you never talk to anyone about your choice but
i guess maybe because i tend to talk about it very openly and i have a channel about it you
know people unload on me a lot when i make that choice and so i probably get a lot more comments
than the average person which whatever i'm fine with i can't remember the last time where i felt
sort of confronted with someone saying that like you're gonna regret it and the few occasions where
someone has sort of suggested like you should have kids you know it's gonna change your life
i'm always just flattered that they think i'm that young you know what i mean
oh that's true i guess as you start to age you are a little more flattered when people think
you're young it is funny how that works when you're older and people think you're younger
you're like yes and then when you're younger you always want to be older because there tend
to be more privileges that come along with being older no i i think i agree with you jess i mean in
i think 15 years ago i'm also child free by choice and 15 years ago i did get those questions
like you're gonna change your mind or why won't you change your mind or whatever i agree with
everything that's been said i certainly understand like that um i like her boots they're super cute
okay moving on that was just distracting for a moment and i had to say it there it's it's it's so
uh irritating that in stories that we tell women only have one choice and one path i just
don't know that it has to be a movement i i don't know that we have to be out there like crusading
on like there are other movements and this is a movement and interesting i guess i don't really
think about it as a movement i did get this question a couple of weeks ago someone said like
do you feel like you're part of a movement my choice has just been to be child free
and i started a youtube channel where i talk about it and i talk about it on instagram i don't think
about it as a movement i just think this is my lifestyle choice and i'm going to share it with
people because i didn't have anyone to tell me that this was an option when i was young and for
people who are making that choice i want to be a support system for them i want to have a community
where they feel that they're accepted and that they're understood and they can talk about child
free stuff and i love having you guys as part of this community the reason why is because people
who are child free by choice are pretty happy it's a momentary like for me in my experience it's
a momentary irritation when some idiot is like you're gonna change your mind um and the moment
passes and then i'm back to my awesome child free life you know like i'm not being held back from
opportunities that require a movement for me to go out on social media with these hashtags like
you know i'm not being denied entry into rooms because of this choice okay i can see what she's
saying i think that's why i said i approach this more like i want to build a community of people
a group of people that just gets it where i do want to apply more sensitivity though are people
who are child free not by choice i think that that is a real pain and a real trauma and i know
people who have been through that situation are going through that situation and those questions
aren't a momentary irritation when somebody says why don't you have kids they don't get to go home
and high-five somebody and be like child-free by choice they go home realizing that there's
a real loss in their life that's very true that's why those comments are so insensitive and people
shouldn't say them to anybody because someone might be saying oh i'm child free by choice but
they may not actually be child free by choice and maybe they're just saying that because they
don't feel comfortable being like hey i'm having struggles getting pregnant or having a baby and at
the end of the day it's just not people's business and words can affect someone so negatively if
you're already in a place where you're struggling in life with this topic and so i think that if
there's a movement that we need to have the i prefer that the movement and the placards and
the hashtags be on their behalf rather than on behalf of someone like me because again
i'm okay i think it's good to support each other but i also think that we as a child free community
do need to speak out about the fact that there's a choice to be had there are a lot of people and
a lot of cultures where it's not seen as a choice where it's just the default women have to do this
thing and if we're not speaking out about it i think that's just going to be lost like how it's
been lost in past generations where people are having kids because they think they have to and
because of the pressure not because they actually want to do the thing there needs to be community
for everyone that is in this place that is trying to figure out and navigate through a child free
life and that includes when people change their minds because it definitely does happen