Hey i'm Hannah the wife without kids this channel is all about building a positive community to
support you in your child-free life i want to talk about the way we talk to and treat women
who make the choice not to have children both at all or even just biologically she clearly
put more effort into her hair today than i did with mine but you know what the old pony
it's never gonna go out of style at least not in my world so i am someone who definitely
feels a strong sense that i am not meant to be a biological mother as of right now my husband
and i live a child free by choice lifestyle completely agree i totally get what she's saying
there and that may continue indefinitely or we may eventually choose to bring children into our lives
through fostering adoption etc so i hesitate to fully align myself with the child free community
but in the child free umbrella especially in online communities you'll often find a little
bit of everything it's true and you know what you can be part of our child-free community until you
decide to have kids and it's a topic that i feel very personally passionately about i moved to a
foreign country and lived there for several years i speak more than one language i made a career as
a writer and had my first book published when i was 23 years old i founded my own company which
now employs eight women that is so fantastic that she employs eight people through her company now
that's living the dream right just getting to pursue what you're passionate about and then
creating a career out of it and i did this all without any kind of college degree or inherited
wealth which is probably the thing that makes it the most statistically unusual she's a very
accomplished lady good for her that's amazing and i don't say any of this stuff to be braggadocious
about myself because for the most part i think that i'm a product of privilege like most other
people who have entered that level of professional or personal success so i don't necessarily think
that my trajectory inherently says something deeply impressive about who i am as a person
however as a woman who is 32 years old as of recently and married i often hear pretty explicit
levels of disappointment from people in my life because my husband and i are currently on the
child free path yes yes that is a common one it almost doesn't matter what you've done with your
life if you aren't a parent then it kind of almost doesn't really count or anything that you have
managed to accomplish it just pales in comparison to being a parent which i just don't understand
and this can totally vary i will absolutely not be calling out anyone individually because i want
their right to privacy but people in my social circles in my own family and my husband's family
have expressed all kinds of sentiments some of them think that even for example if we
were to adopt a child that that would not at all be comparable to having our own children
i think that's just such a sad thing to say there are so many kids who would love to have a loving
and stable home and i think when individuals open up their homes to kids who have been abandoned or
orphaned that is such a selfless and giving act if anything sometimes there is more risk
in adopting a child because they come from a genetic code or a family that you maybe don't
know that much about and they may face struggles that your own biological child might never have
so i think it's actually very selfless some expressed that i'm essentially setting myself
up for a very empty life because i'm not choosing to have children some of them have
almost explicitly never asked me any questions about any of the things that i do in my day-to-day
life but frequently ask me about children in a way that's more than a little passive-aggressive
because it's almost like all of those things don't really matter if you're not having a child
then who cares about the rest of your life i don't know it's so strange because i just
cannot understand why people get so bent out of shape and worked up when individuals decide not
to have kids i don't really understand why it's such a big deal to people we're not stopping
anybody else from having children we're just making the choice not to have our own
i've had people break down in tears to me about the fact that me not having children is robbing
them of something and i try as much as possible to approach this all with a great deal of empathy
because i do understand that for most people it is a life choice that is a difficult to understand
but also be if you really love the person who is making a child free choice you maybe on a personal
level deeply want them to be a parent you think they are meant to be parents that they would be
good parents and therefore it can be acutely disappointing for them not to take that path
i think that is very true i think that there can be parents who are upset that they may not get
grandkids from you or your siblings who don't get to be aunties and uncles to your children and i
guess for some people that's very problematic and they're very offended hurt upset by your choice to
not have children but the reality of it is they get to make their own choice to have kids once
you're an adult we each individually get to make those choices for ourselves we are not dependent
on someone else to make our life's choices for us thank goodness the reality is that even academic
research shows that our treatment of women in particular who choose not to have children
is still extremely stigmatizing and othering one researcher highlights the
fact that although there is a growing number of women who are choosing not to have children
these women are still heavily stigmatized that is 100 true and just go to any of my youtube videos
and scroll long enough and you'll see some sort of comment that plays very much into this statement
as she further explains the terms women and mother have become synonymous she further states
that reasons not to have children are complex and child free women are likely largely influenced by
gender role expectations but the research on childless stigma suggests that women who choose
not to have children are still considered to be deviant greedy not fully women and even
sub-human what is a sub-human half a human also deviant if you don't want kids you're deviant
mullen interviewed 24 child free men and women and found that the majority of these participants
responded that others often viewed them as cold peculiar materialistic and egotistical birth rates
also fell for women in their 20s and early 30s in 2019 but rose for women in their early 40s do you
guys remember when it was like really popular for teens to get pregnant i know they have like
that pregnant teen show i don't know what it's called i've never watched it suddenly every single
teenage girl wanted to get pregnant and be a mom and have a baby and be on a reality show because
i guess that was just the thing that you were supposed to do because when i was a teen
i only know of like one or two girls that got pregnant and it was like not something that
you were proud of it was just sort of like oh yeah i'm pregnant but it wasn't something that
was really celebrated or you know shouted from the rooftops but despite this normalization the
refrain the child free women often hear is pretty consistent probably the most popular one is that
we're missing out on something that will never be the same without or is essential to our happiness
or even our fulfillment as women some of the other greatest hits include you don't know what you're
missing don't be so selfish why even get married if you don't want kids that one makes me crazy i
just had someone say that to me the other day why are you even married if you don't have kids or if
you're not going to be a mom what does being married have anything to do with having kids
just because you're married doesn't mean you have to have kids and there are lots of women who have
children that don't get married like i understand traditionally people got married and they had kids
but you know we live in the 21st century a lot of people aren't even choosing to get married anymore
so i'm not really sure why marriage equates to well you're automatically going to become a mother
what are you gonna do when you're old are you just afraid you'll mess up your body i've heard
basically all of those in some form or others and i have to say that even though i've made a kind
of piece with it on a human level it still more bothers me sociologically that this is continued
to be considered socially acceptable both from working on the internet for over a decade now and
also because i genuinely view my life with a very very high level of fulfillment and actualization
i'm able to sort of take some of this commentary in stride and not really take it too seriously i
think you just sort of have to take it in stride i mean if every time someone left a nasty comment
or said something that mean to you i mean we would be so like wrapped up in this like oh
people hate me because i'm child free and i feel like you couldn't even live your child of your
life because you're so worried about what other people are thinking so yeah you just sort of have
to take it in stride but that doesn't mean that it still doesn't like sting a little bit or that it's
strange that these things are still socially acceptable and that people continue to say them
and it's almost like people are just saying something without really thinking about it
but you don't even really know why you're saying them you're just saying them because that's what
you say to child free people but there are millions of other women every day who are
hearing the same kind of feedback who may not have the tools in their mental health toolbox
to deal with it in a productive way and frankly it should not be socially acceptable to make this
kind of judgment on people's choices obviously the most socially risky element of all of this is that
just because a couple happens to be child free does not necessarily mean that this is by choice
and raising questions about it can obviously bring up many painful serious issues and i feel like
this is an area where people just lack sensitivity they don't realize that when you see someone who
doesn't have kids it doesn't always mean they're choosing that and that would be really awkward and
really hurtful but beyond that even if the couple is openly child free by choice the idea that you
as a stranger or even as a family member should have a right to impose your judgment or influence
on that is really ridiculous there are many other life choices that we do not consider
at all as up for debate and discussion as the idea of having children i feel like this is the one
that is plucked out of all the choices and made to be like the example or made to be a big deal when
there are people who are doing all sorts of things that maybe aren't traditional they're living life
in a way that is completely not traditional but nobody says anything about those choices and so
i wonder why it is that the child free life choice is the one that sort of seems to get
stomped on but perhaps the most frustrating thing about this demonization of people and particularly
women who choose not to have children is that it completely misses the point even though having
children is objectively necessary to sustain humanity and for many people is a miraculous
and wonderful life choice we are also objectively creating a society which is making it increasingly
difficult for people to make the choice to have children in fact the us is the only country among
41 nations that does not mandate any paid leave for new parents i mean obviously there are some
exceptions but for the most part women can get a very decent matt leave here in canada the jobs
that i've had when girls have gotten pregnant they all take a year off and it's paid mad leave like i
said there are exceptions not every single job is like that and this is why it's so frustrating that
we continue to put the same narratives on women who make the choice not to have children because
in many cases if we were creating a situation that was much more supportive of that choice and giving
them the resources in order to make it comfortably and to not have to choose between a career and
having a child or staying at home to raise the child many more women might be likely to make
that choice that's very interesting i actually haven't thought about that but you're right some
people just choose not to have kids because they can't financially afford it and so the choice is
by default okay well i guess i'm not going to be a mom so hard to ignore that a lot of this dichotomy
that pits child free people and parents against each other stems from a kind of latent resentment
the truth is that having children is extremely hard and seeing people opt out of that choice
and still come across as fulfilled and happy can feel almost unfair because why then should certain
people take on the burden of having to raise the next generation when other people can happily
escape that reality and not feel like they're missing anything i think that's where a lot of
the negative comments can come from yes parents have absolutely made that choice to be parents
but i think nobody really knows what they're in for until you're in the trenches and you're doing
the parenting thing and it can be relentless i'm sure and you're tired and you're exhausted and
it's hard work and so when you see other people just out living life and having flexibility and
maybe being financially a little bit freer and you realize okay i have to live a little bit
differently it can be a little bothersome to people and it can maybe irritate them because
maybe they didn't even realize they actually did have a choice in being a parent or not being a
parent i do understand on a human level how that could feel unfair and also maybe to some extent an
indictment of the choice to have children as if maybe it really isn't worth it to have children
but the answer to that is not to stigmatize people who choose not to be parents the real question we
need to be asking ourselves as a society is how do we support mothers and people who want to become
mothers and i would say the same is true for all parents of both genders it's a good point
and not something that i've really talked about before maybe as a society we should be a bit more
supportive of parents one of the nastier comments that women who choose not to have children will
often hear is something along the lines of what are you going to do when you're older
who's going to come see you who are you going to spend your holidays with i'm pretty much going to
be spending them with my husband and my two cats because my cats are gonna live forever
and not to be a humongous downer but actually the statistics show that even people who
do have children don't necessarily guarantee that they're going to be surrounded by family
members when they're older for example though we'll often ask what child free people will
do when we're older around half of all seniors in assisted living homes do not have a single
visitor on an average year and over half of them report feeling isolated can you imagine
not having a single visitor in like a year that's really depressing and i'm an introvert
but part of that breakdown is because we've become increasingly atomized as a society
in america we tend to imagine the family unit as what we refer to as a nuclear family meaning
parents and children living in a home by themselves it's important to remember that
throughout much of human history and even to this day and many cultures that are not america
this nuclear family model is pretty much unheard of families live intergenerationally communities
support each other much more actively between families people stay close to their extended
relatives and help one another in raising those children and taking care of elder family members
as they get older in your own home is considered part of the natural life cycle rather than
shuttling them off to a home where they're really never interacting with their other family members
i do think there is a huge plus to making sure that you take care of your family and i think
maybe our culture has gotten a bit away from that for some reason i'm not really sure why that is
maybe we just like the idea of being more independent and kind of doing our own thing
families used to live together and there are certain cultures that still very much live that
way but it is a little bit hard to imagine because i just grew up knowing that when i
got to a certain age i just moved out and became independent and i think maybe we favor individual
independence more than we favor staying together as a family unit there is a fantastic long-form
article on the subject of the nuclear family in the atlantic but here's just one quick quote
if you want to summarize the changes in the family structure over the past century the truest thing
to say is this we have made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families
we've made life better for adults but worse for children shift from bigger and interconnected
extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system which
liberates the rich and ravages the working class and the poor i've literally never thought of that
before that's an interesting quote i guess when you're not living with so many people you get to
be more individualistic and pursue the things that are important to you so yeah that sort of comes at
a cost i suppose if we were to broaden our idea of what families and communities can look like
where different extended members of the family or even social unit could include close friends who
themselves do not have children are still a very important part of rearing and educating that child
we may not feel such a distance between parents and those who are not parents we would see those
child free people as having an integral role to play in society i know it doesn't work like this
in every single family but i think for my family we are actually quite a close family we spend a
lot of time together in general my family is very inclusive of each other and we help each other out
because frankly those who do not have their own children have more energy and more time to support
the rest of their communities but all of that assumes of course that the child free person does
want to be a part of children's lives which is very much my case i love children but there
are also probably some child free people who want essentially no contact with children and certainly
don't want to be a part of raising anyone else's that's very true i get comments sometimes from
people and they're like i hate children i don't want to be anywhere near them so you obviously
don't have to spend time with children if you don't like them but here's the thing even if you
think that that is a morally wrong choice and okay i'm not gonna debate that but like philosophically
seem shaky it's important to remember that shaming as a tactic empirically does not work shaming and
ostracizing someone because you don't like a life choice really in its best case scenario will just
result in them not really wanting to be around you when you shame someone or make them feel negative
about not wanting to have kids guess what they are not going to want to hang out with you at
all and if that's the point of the person who's criticizing your child free choice then i guess
they've achieved what they set out to do but i think maybe most people aren't trying to drive
people away they're just trying to understand how can you do this or why are you doing this