﻿Society still has a problem with the child free woman.
“I’m asking you to do something for me?” “Have a baby? / “I am saying no!”.
Despite all the advances that have been made in terms of
women’s rights, motherhood is still depicted as the idealized
end goal for all women. “You see the body of a woman,
a temple of creation and motherhood.”
to the point where depictions of childfree women in movies and
often feel reductive or even vilified.
She’s usually relegated to a few, unflattering character choices:
the career driven workaholic, “Doing what I do makes me unfit
for motherhood…” the lonely spinster, “and I'd finally die fat and alone…”
the basketcase, “I have a horrible feeling that I’m a greedy, perverted,
selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, morally bankrupt woman”
or the most insidious: the evil, femme fatale
“I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan.”
In real life, women without children have been classified
as undesirable, disobedient or “loose,” lonely and unfulfilled,
unfit for motherhood, or baby-hating monsters “some
people just aren’t made to be mothers…”. Our negative portrayal of the
childfree woman in what we watch reinforces these ugly stereotypes
and feeds back into a culture where childlessness is
already stigmatized.
“As though there's something missing.
As though I'm to be pitied for this choice.
As though we assume that it is the biological destiny of women,
all women, to bear children.
One of the most well-known childfree women in Hollywood,
Jennifer Aniston, just recently opened up about her struggles
with fertility – and how much more painful that experience was
while facing public scrutiny and speculation.
Meanwhile, the decision not to
become a parent may be more popular than people realize –
in fact, there’s an entire child-free movement happening.
R/childfree is one of the
fastest growing communities on Reddit and the hashtag
“childfree” ,
where people share their decision to skip parenthood has
over 400million views on TikTok.
“I love my nieces, I love my nephew, I love kids, I really do.
But I don't want to be a mother.”
And it’s not just a social media movement.
U.S. fertility rates have been trending downward and the
number of people who aren’t planning on having children
is on the rise.
We’ve seen a massive shift in what our idea of the traditional
“family” means.
Even the fact that we use the word “childfree” instead of
“childless” signals a shift in public perception…But film
and TV hasn’t seemed to catch up.
Don’t we deserve to see child free women who are
just…child free?
Here’s our take on the childfree woman, why she desperately needs an upgrade
to reflect society’s changing attitude towards the decision
to not be a parent, and how her continued, stigmatized
presence shows that culture still doesn’t fully
understand that choice.
The childfree woman character
has taken many forms throughout the years
Take the most famous spinster of all time: Great Expectations’ Miss Havisham
– “Look at me.
You aren't afraid of a woman who
has never seen the sun since you were born.”–
depicted as isolated, cruel,
and decaying after being left at the altar.
Or even the real life example of Queen Elizabeth I – she was given
the name “The Virgin Queen” for her refusal to be married
off or to bear children.
“I am married. To England.”
Despite the fact that her reign was known as “The Golden Age”
she is perhaps more well known for bucking the social norms of her time.
In fact, her incredible intelligence and extraordinary
leadership has conspiracy theorists –
quite misogynistically – go so far as to suggest
she must have been a man.
Then we have the evil, childless woman – which often has crossover
with the “femme fatale.”
One of the most famous examples is Shakespeare’s baby-hating
Lady Macbeth, “while it was
smiling in my face,have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums
and dash’d the brains out.”
Shakespeare makes her lack of maternal instincts inextricably
linked to both her being “unsexed” (denouncing her very womanhood)
and to her bloody ambitions, which ultimately lead to
her husband’s downfall.
There’s also been a problematic pattern of the childfree woman
being mentally unstable as a result of them not having
had a child.
We see this with murderous, baby-crazy Alex in
Fatal Attraction “I want this child.”
Sometimes their desire for a family is so severe that they
resort to stealing someone else’s child.
“You go right back up there and get me a toddler,
I need a baby Clive, they got more than
they can handle.”
Whether it’s as a comedic character, or as a psychopathic villain,
this character’s purpose seems to be to tell women, “hey,
you need a kid or you’ll lose your mind.”
More recently, this character
got a slight upgrade, to the conniving, evil mastermind of Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne
“...could give me real purpose.”
“A baby is not a hobby.”
Amy is cold, calculated, and childfree – until she eventually uses her
husband’s sperm without his knowledge to impregnate herself
and manipulate him into staying with her.
“You're delusional.
You're insane.”
Today, the childfree woman onscreen may have gotten a bit more nuanced,
but the trope has largely still
failed to address the complexity of the choice to skip motherhood.
Sure, maybe she stopped being solely
a sad spinster or a murderous psychopath, but a few more
sub-categories emerged that still painted motherhood
as the end all be all.
“I wanted a baby so bad.”
Enter: “the workaholic,” she’s career driven with the
single-minded pursuit of success – suggesting that you can be a
good mother or have a good career, but not both – “I seem to be
inept at everything except my work.
I'm goddamn good at my work and so I confine myself to that.”
doing a disservice to mothers and non-mothers alike.
One of the biggest social changes for women over the 21st century
has been the shift out of the home and into the workplace,
but this has created an environment where these workaholic,
childfree women are not only
against motherhood, but seem to be against children altogether.
“What’s that sound?” “Children.”
“Your life is gross.”
Even when successful, working women are shown in a positive light,
they’re still faced with the either/or problem.
Cristina Yang is one of the
most high profile of these kinds of characters.
Her decision to not have children is specifically linked to her
desire to be a world class surgeon.
She cannot conceive of a reality where her career ambitions won’t
be thwarted by starting a family, and while Owen feels very much
in the wrong in the way he treats Cristina, his reaction
feels in keeping with the cultural assumptions made
about women who don’t want kids.
“You’re gonna change your mind in three years or five, you’re gonna
change your mind about having a baby and then it’s gonna be too late.”
It’s interesting that Shonda Rhimes’ female protagonists often exist
with this same choice hanging over their heads.
In Scandal, Olivia Pope does get pregnant with Fitz’s child,
but gets an abortion.
And in How To Get Away With Murder, we learn that Annalise loses a
child in a car accident,
but predominantly her focus is on her career.
Each of these characters have a streak of ruthlessness in them
that is on some level incompatible
with our view of motherhood as soft and nurturing.
While it’s important these women all make a choice about their bodies,
it’s a choice that feels born from practical necessity.
“I’m choosing me.
I’m choosing Olivia.”
So, instead of showing us a character that would more accurately
reflect reality – where over 70% of mothers with children under the
age of 18 are working or looking for a job
– we tell women that they can choose one path: motherhood or a career.
And somewhere along the way
we got the polar opposite of the workaholic: “the basketcase.”
Characters like Fleabag and Young Adult portrayed childfree
women as unlucky in love, often sexually promiscuous,
and altogether just spiraling out.
“ It's obvious you're having
some mental sickness, some depression.”
You're very lonely and confused.”
The implication here is that
these childfree women are, at heart, damaged, broken, or unfit to be mothers.
That it’s better off for the world that they remain childfree.
Elaine’s desire not to have
kids in Seinfeld is born out of self interest.
Ironically, not only is she not particularly career driven,
she’s on the other end of the spectrum, moving between
multiple jobs and not successful at any of them.
So again, there’s an idea that her as a mother would be disastrous.
“Move to Long Island and have a baby already?”
“I really like the city.”
“I have pictures!” “Look at him, just look at him!”
Mary from 3rd Rock From The Sun is another who fits this mold.
While she may also seek career advancement,
the implication is she achieves this not through
extraordinary feats of competence, but from sleeping her way to the top.
She too is given a tragic backstory, with her own parents not loving her,
so again, this idea of her as an unfit mother feels a
result of this unresolved trauma.
“Dick I can’t have children.”
“Oh Mary, why not?” “Because I hate them!”
Even female characters who do want children but can’t have them are
left devastated, reinforcing the belief that the childless mother
is someone to be pitied.
“You still think you’re the only monster on the team?”.
We see this in Angelina Jolie’s character in By The Sea,
“You’re barren, and I love you anyway.”
or Girl On The Train’s tragic Rachel Watson, whose husband
left her for another, more fertile woman.
“He posted another picture of the baby.”
The idea that if a woman cannot or will not produce children for
her husband, he might leave her is a daunting threat we see both
onscreen and off – like with John Mulaney’s recent divorce
from Anna Marie Tendler and the
subsequent birth of his child with Olivia Munn.
Some of our “workaholic” characters
are not free from this narrative either.
We often see driven career women who secretly would like to become
wives and mothers, but their work precludes them from this.
“A lot of men proposed to me in my twenties.
I could be thrice divorced by now.”
She may be successful, but she’s deeply unsatisfied.
In ‘Baby Mama’, Tina Fey’s character has focused on her career for so
long that she never found love and when she finally decides to
have a baby at 37, she finds out she’ll have to resort to surrogacy.
“Okay. One in, in a million.
I just don't like your uterus…”
“Don't say that again.”
Not only are we reinforcing the either/or choice for these women,
but are we also maybe saying “hurry it up before you regret it” too?
We’ve seen very few happy, “normal,” childfree women
onscreen but there have been some that almost hit the mark.
Riding the second wave of feminism, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was
revolutionary for its time, portraying an upbeat,
ambitious, single woman without a child.
“A woman doesn’t have to have a baby if she doesn’t want to.”
She gave us a career-driven character without the more
negative connotations it often comes with.
And though the show retrospectively had its own issues,
Sex and the City had two proudly
childfree characters in Carrie and Samantha.
“I don't have a baby! Everybody drink!” Although Samantha was stigmatized as
an overly sexual, baby-hating individual, and Carrie was
career-focused, the show did successfully flesh out these
characters without making their
decision to be childfree the focal point.
“The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of
all is the one you have with yourself.”
But – both of these shows went off the air decades ago and featured
women who were privileged, wealthy, and white – which often makes
the decision to opt out of
motherhood a lot easier – a luxury that most don’t have.
Although more modern interpretations do mirror the conversations that
childfree women experience in their day-to-day,
“When you have kids…” “If I have kids.”
they continue to reinforce the idea of non-mothers being outcasts.
Culture seems to not know what to do with women whose child free
status doesn’t form the backbone of their identity – which doesn’t
exactly reflect the changing nature of society.
“You gotta have a baby!” “Why? Because I can?”
According to a Pew Research report, 44% of childless adults between
18 and 49 don’t want kids and aren’t planning on
having any in the future.
In 2018, the number of babies born in the U.S. fell to the lowest
level in 32 years, and that rate
has been steadily declining ever since.
“Guess what? I don't want to have a baby.”
The childfree movement is here – and the women who number among
their members are frustrated.
“Why is there so much hate toward child free women?” “What are you
gonna do when you’re old? Just wait, you'll change your mind…
how is your life gonna have purpose?
...We as women have been indoctrinated that children
are our only goal and purpose and worth
in this world.”
As Hollie Richardson writes in the aftermath of Roe v Wade
being overturned: “The US has just taken away a
woman’s right to have an abortion.
If you break that law, you are doing something “wrong” –
proof that a woman is still deemed bad if she chooses to
not have a baby in 2022.” “The world perceives child free
women in the most negative light possible.”
Even though women shouldn’t need any reason, many of those
in the childfree community have very valid ones.
It costs more than ever to raise a child in the U.S. Over 300,000
dollars per kid to be exact. With the climate crisis looming,
many wonder, why subject a
child to this future at all? “How could you want to raise
children in a city like this?” But critics of the childfree
movement not only bring up the potential economic impacts –
without babies we won’t have a future workforce –
they also say that it's unnecessarily nihilistic.
Both mothers and non-mothers shout that the other side seems miserable
and report a “holier than thou” attitude that makes them recoil.
Why is the childfree movement so aggressive to women?
Challenging these assumptions is the recent documentary
My So-Called Selfish Life,
which profiles different women who just chose never to have kids.
As well as showing that these women aren’t always career focused,
or child-hating, it posits that one of the reasons that
motherhood is continually
depicted as the end goal for women is economic.
Reproduction is viewed as essential to keeping society moving.
We saw that with Elon Musk’s comments this year, saying
“We should be much more worried about population collapse…USA
birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years.”
“This is the real solution to climate change.”
“Nations need childbirths.” “Babies are good for the economy.”
The irony is that there are plenty of high profile women
in culture who haven’t had their own children, and who
seem extremely content with that choice.
Today, a woman who doesn’t
have biological children is Vice President of the United States.
Betty White, one of the most prolific, comedic
actors of our time never felt any doubt about her decision.
“No, I've never regretted it…/ I didn't choose to have children
because I'm focused on my career.”
And I just don't think, as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both.”
Jennifer Aniston’s potential
motherhood was constantly speculated over in the tabloid press,
with her depicted as this tragic figure because she never had children.
But this clashes with her own words on the subject “We as women do a
lot of incredible things in this world other than just procreate.”
Compare someone like Jen to someone like Seth Rogen –
who has been very vocal
about his blissful childfree life, "I don't know anyone who
gets as much happiness out of their kids as we get out
of our non-kids." yet doesn’t face the same scrutiny –
highlighting the difference between how we view
childfree women versus childfree men.
To find characters in film
or TV who are similarly child free is tricky.
One refreshing example comes in Julie and Julia — and even
that is based on the true story of TV chef Julia Child.
Her child free status is never commented on, and never feels
like an obstacle to her relationship with husband Paul.
They’re very happy, very much in love, and don’t
feel like they need any further additions in
order to complete them “Wives don’t do anything here,
that’s not me.”
And in a more recent portrayal of the famous chef, HBO’s
‘Julia’ refreshingly addresses the subject of menopause –
a rarity for the screen – and goes even more in depth
into Julia and Paul’s loving relationship without
focusing on their lack of children.
“We’ll figure it out the way we always do. Together.”
In the movie Spinster, Gaby’s future plans of a husband and
a family are thrown off course when, at 39, her boyfriend moves out.
And while her age does make her question whether or not
she’s going to have children,
or whether or not she wants them, it feels a far less defining
conversation than society perhaps leads us to believe.
In talking to other childfree women, she realizes that you can have a happy,
fulfilled life without being a mother, and so she pursues that
“Did you ever want kids?” “A big part of me wanted kids,
but a bigger part of wanted something different.”
In ‘Bad Sisters’, Eva has fertility
issues, and in her backstory this did leave to a split with
her partner, who went on to marry a more fertile woman.
“We were going to have a family together and...
What happened? Uh.
Sad story.
Um, I'm not super fertile.
Didn't, um...
Didn't deal with it very well.”
But while Eva has pain associated with that chapter of her life,
she is able to move forward, find joy in her life, and
put more maternal love and care into her
relationships with her sisters.
In ‘Private Life’ – a brutally honest portrayal of what it’s
like for a 40-something-year-old couple struggling to get pregnant –
we see a difficult topic broached with both care and humor.
"Actually, we wanted to ask you about your eggs."
"Scrambled is good, but however you guys do them is fine with me."
These kinds of characters and storylines portray the
“motherhood problem” in a much more nuanced, realistic,
and less stigmatized way –
something we’d like to see more of.
In this post-roe world what seems most important is
that we encourage each other’s bodily autonomy.
The choice to become a mother or not should be equally celebrated.
“Can we give ourselves permission to live radical lives of
fulfillment and embrace a woman's right to choose
her own destiny?”
We’re overdue some representation of
childfree women who don’t
feel like stock tropes or tragic figures…who just are.
Because there’s no one size fits all journey to being a woman,
and trying to force that narrative erases so
many whose stories are worth telling.
“People can not want kids, it’s a thing.”