Daily Archives: July 29, 2022

EAST LANSING, Mich. Are families about to find themselves on the endangered species list? Researchers from Michigan State University find that over one in five adults dont want children. Interestingly, the survey also indicates that Americans are deciding against being a parent quite early in life, most often in their teens or early twenties.

We found that 21.6% of adults, or about 1.7 million people, in Michigan do not want children and therefore are childfree. Thats more than the population of Michigans nine largest cities, says study co-author Zachary Neal, an associate professor in MSUs psychology department, in a university release.

Study authors used just three questions to separate childfree individuals from parents and other varieties of non-parents. The analyzed data comes from a representative sample of 1,500 adults who completed MSUs State of the State Survey, conducted by the universitys Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.

According to Prof. Neal, its impossible to distinguish between different types of non-parents using official statistics. So, this research project is among the first to focus specifically on counting adults who choose not to have children (childfree).

People especially women who say they dont want children are often told theyll change their mind, but the study found otherwise, explains study co-author Jennifer Watling Neal, an associate professor in the psychology department at MSU. People are making the decision to be childfree early in life, most often in their teens and twenties. And, its not just young people claiming they dont want children. Women who decided in their teens to be childfree are now, on average, nearly 40 and still do not have children.

While this study only included Michigan residents, researchers point out that Michigan is actually quite demographically similar to the United States as a whole according to the 2021 U.S. census. If the trend in this survey holds up across the entire nation, that would mean roughly 50 to 60 million Americans want to stay childfree.

Following the U.S. Supreme Courts overturning of Roe v. Wade, a large number of Americans are now at risk of being forced to have children despite not wanting them, Prof. Watling Neal concludes.

Study authors add that if the courts overturn further precedents and birth control measures become harder to access across the U.S. it could result in more hurdles for many young women deciding to be childfree.

In conclusion, the research team believe childfree Americans deserve more attention as a growing demographic. They are hopeful that future research projects will do more to better understand why so many Americans are choosing to avoid parenthood, as well as the repercussions of choosing such a lifestyle.

The findings appear in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Living a 'childfree' life: 1 in 5 adults don't want to have kids - Study Finds

After watching thousands of films, Ive concluded that the world must think women without children, like me, sob through breakfast, bed three men after lunch, or pulverize lives for fun like Faye Dunaway does in Network. But, fortunately or unfortunately, real life doesnt imitate artand art doesnt imitate life, even as the cultural and now governmental response to women choosing to be mothers or not is rapidly evolving.

During my long tenure working at Netflix, I often thought about the chasm between reality and fiction in relation to my not wanting kids. And then I encountered Networks Diana, a character whos represented so many of us selfish little rapscallions since 1976. She produced TV, not kids; reimagined workplace gender balance; and predicted the American working womans experience: having to answer to everyone about where her kids are. I didnt think Id ever write about not having kids because I dont care about not having kids, not even when I was married for 17 years. But conflating the choice to skip motherhood with some type of corruption intrigued me enough to write about itspecifically the conflations endurance.

Of course, not being a parent is influenced by socioeconomic, sociopolitical, racial, ethnographic, and religious factors, and is bound to health, age, sexuality, and market mechanisms. Its long been associated with deficiency; innumerable are the films wherein an aging husband leaves his aging wife for a younger (fertile, aka desirable) woman, such as in An Unmarried Woman or The First Wives Club.

The family imperative is oftentimes centered on exclusion and contributes to significant stigma: in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, childless Peyton (Rebecca De Mornay) raids a mothers life, and while cinematically thrilling, we are led to believe that murdering to get a family is better than being alone. In By the Sea, Vanessa (Angelina Jolie) is nearly catatonic in response to her infertility; no alternative possibilities appear to exist for her life. Her pain shouldnt be discountedthese stories are important to tellbut in the serration, the portrait reinforces that she is serrated, singularly, because of her inability to bear children. The most problematic line comes from her husband: Youre barren, and I love you anyway.

We can declare infertility as ultimate failure a yesteryear mentality, but we have scant films today representing women who are unable to have children andnot butliving full lives. Such representation is culturally significant: in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, literary critic Lee Edelman writes that a major influence upon that social construction of infertility and art is the ideology of pronatalism that imbues contemporary American culture with an inherent drive to view childbearing as of utmost importance in all realms of life. He adds, Analysis of representations [in film and television] is essential not because these images are authentic or factual depictions of the infertility experience, but because they are not.

Globally, women without children have been reductively associated with disobedience, ennui and loneliness, baby hating, incompetence, the demimonde, and more. Film reinforces these myths and even creates them. Weve seen countless onscreen non-mothers where the topic of procreation doesnt arise, from Lady Lou (Mae West) in She Done Him Wrong to Kate (Jennifer Lawrence) in Dont Look Up; however, when the lack of children is addressed, its usually done so pejoratively and with seemingly endless tropes. I dont want a kidwith or without an explanationis rarely said on screen by a woman. Millennials say it all the time.

Networks Diana is emblematic of the modern childfree woman emerging in mainstream cinema, and her domestic status is purposely made inseparable from her diabolical portrayal. The story begins with anchorman Howard (Peter Finch) discovering hes on the outs at UBS Television. He freaks out on live television, and without flinching, Diana convinces producer Max (William Holden) to ramp up intense programming that exploits Howards failing mental health.

Married to the stereotypical Frigid Wife, Max is enamored with younger Dianas freedom and self-possession, but their inevitable affair fails to fulfill his fantasies of converting her passion for ascendency into passion for him (You need me badly! Im your last contact with human reality!), nor does it cure her self-identified father complex, her rationale for being so spiky. The simple fact is youre a family man, Max, Diana says. You like a home and kids, and thats beautiful. But Im incapable of any such commitment. Max, in a moment of anagnorisis, responds, You areindifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. Diana never presents herself as the marrying kind or the motherly kind, and while this is absolutely why Max fell for her, he ultimately uses it against her.

Dianas power-maneuvering, childfree woman as evil trope fulfillment can also be explained simply as confidence. While the emotional carnage she inflicts is part of the films intended satire, shes venerated for her anomalous entitlement and applauded for besting a bunch of men. Internal grisliness juxtaposes external beauty. Director Sidney Lumet knew exactly what he was doing: his Oscar-winning film is parody as prophesy, with a main character who contextualizes a different kind of womens labor.

In life, the childfree woman has historically courted various reactions to her state, from curiosity (is she planning to have children, and when, where, with whom?), sympathy (what happened?), and pity (my children thank me for not having them), to fear (shell never have meaning, what then? guess Ill go die in a ditch), concern (what does her family think?), envy (imagine all that sleep and extra money), and clairvoyance (youll change your mind). Childfree tropes in films abound: the Gold Digger in The Gold Diggers, the Must Get Married in Every Girl Should Get Married, the Nitwit in The Seven Year Itch, and the Call Girl in BUtterfield 8.

The mainstream Western cineplex has always made pictures for white, cisgender audiences, and debasement of women without children is discernible in clichd portraits that increased in the 1970s and beyond, including but not limited to the Defensive Headcase in Images, the Inept Widow in Private Benjamin, the Femme Fatale in Basic Instinct, the Lonely Lunatic in Misery, the Walking Biological Clock Emergency in My Cousin Vinny, the Self-Absorbed Writer in Let Them All Talk alongside the Tearful Left Behind, the Drunk in Young Adultnot to be confused with the Mess in Blue Jasmineand the Abandoned Wife Whose Life Falls Apart When the Ex Has a Baby With the New Wife in The Girl on the Train. Much of the time, we see scripts entrenched in binary thinking. Which is it: ingnues or wrecked ingnues?

Filmmaker Therese Shechter charts the childfree experience in her 2021 documentary My So-Called Selfish Life. In a recent conversation, we discuss Knocked Up and how writer/director Judd Apatow never allows Alison (Katherine Heigl) to seriously consider, or even say, abortion. Instead, shes given a logic-defying happily ever after with a stoner she doesnt know. The insidious message is that deep down, what a woman wants most is to become a mother, Shechter tells me. And itll be her greatest joy.

In my own life, Ive known several mothers who, feeling pressured, had children when they didnt fully want them. One expressed resentment for oversold and underdelivered fulfillment and wished, with her eyes squeezed shut, exhausted, that she never had a family despite all her lovea rarely explored crux in film, which makes the pathos of Maggie Gyllenhaals The Lost Daughter feel forbidden in its honesty. For mothers, the expectations of self-sacrifice are reinforced by film, oftentimes within an irresoluble angel-versus-devil construct. The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is already shifting consciousness of motherhood preparedness; in the future, could we see films about compulsory births or women forced to ultimately sacrifice their lives?

In the name of entertainment, women of color frequently see their fictional representations of motherhood alongside stereotyped drug use, violence, and poverty (Moonlight, The Place Beyond the Pines). Queer mothers have barely any representation in film (The Kids Are All Right remains rare). Speciously screened tropes become distorted narratives about womens psychosexual lives; historically, theyve been written within a patriarchal framework designed and disseminated by men: male producers, male screenwriters, male directors. The majority of stories about women are not even by women. Cinema has been one long, fictive Men Explain Things to Me.

The tropes are only amplified when the possibility for a child has diminished or ended. Consider that Maude (Ruth Gordon) in Harold and Maude is one of only a few depictions in film history of a happy childfree older woman. For older Roberta (Candice Bergen) in Let Them All Talk, money substitutes for a child. Stay-at-home mom Jackie (Susan Sarandon) is positioned against childfree photographer Isabel (Julia Roberts) in Stepmom. Audiences are constantly conditioned to assess the quality of a womans mothering or potential-to-mother skills, and to judge how she balances family and career.

So, too, is a childfree womans sensuality relentlessly evaluated, and against arbitrary standards. Male heroes arent confined to overstating or suppressing an essential part of themselves as it relates to fatherhood. (Were too busy swooning over Robert Redfords brain in All the Presidents Men to ask where his kids are.) This is where the childfree woman as slut trope plays on the archaic view that female sexual desire is linked to sin, weaponry, and motherhood fitness, la the apogee of desperation, Alex (Glenn Close), in Fatal Attraction. Promiscuity is a convenient go-to as a child replacement.

Were it women directing 85 percent of Hollywood films today, how might that change the global perception of power, and even power itself? We know who benefits from owning a womans image. In the year Network premiered, Simone de Beauvoir said that its not for women to take power out of mens hands; its about destroying the notion of power. How might women benefit if onscreen representation catches up to whats actually going on out here?

Of all the films Ive watched, one did change the trajectory of my life, and it wasnt Network; it was Revolutionary Road. Based on Richard Yates 1961 novel, it tells of April Wheeler (Kate Winslet), who attempts to live out the ideals of others to devastating effect. I was in my early thirties when it debuted, and when the theater had emptied, I was holding both a gasp and a premonition because I believed my life could easily unfurl like Aprils. Perhaps my maternal instinct told me to not be a mother. I dont sob through breakfast because I dont have a child, but I probably would if I did.

In Revolutionary Road, as in life, we see the harrowing consequences of shaming abortion. More than half a century ago, what Yates got right in deconstructing happiness was that connecting identity solely to a prescribed life is dangerousyet women sometimes have no alternative, despite the undeniable desire for something, anything, different.

Today, a woman of color who doesnt have biological children is vice president of the United States. More women than ever are doing whatever they want with their lives, like Diana, including finding joy and satisfaction in motherhood. Theyre also having difficult motherhood experiences, forced motherhood experiences, or none at all. Rethinking family en masse has taken a sharp cultural turn, and film isnt there yet. While the lack of diversity, equity, and inclusivity in Hollywood inhibits arts ability to shift folkways and mores, we know the chasm between fiction and reality can change. Its not selfish to desire this, to desire more.

*

This essay is an excerpt from a cited longform essay written for Columbia University.

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The Childfree Effigy: On Network's Diana and the Tropes That Betray Women - Literary Hub

I was 12 years old when I realized that motherhood was my destinyor, at least, that it was supposed to be.

It was the mid-1990s, the heyday of the so-called purity movement, when the True Love Waits campaign arrived at our small, Catholic parish in the suburbs of Chicago. A pious child who wanted to please God, I dutifully signed a pledge to my "future mate"and strangely my "future children" toothat I would wait to have sex until I was married.

This prescribed only two good scripts for my life: Mother or Mother Superior. Either I married a man and mothered my own children, or I remained celibate, as a nun or a spinster, and mothered the world's children.

My views changed when we moved to the progressive enclave of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

At high school, the idea of romantic love loomed large in my teenage heart. But when it came to the question of children, the fervor faded. Not to mention I was a terrible babysitter, easily drained and often bored. I began to entertain a third option for a life well-lived: marriage without motherhood.

I met my husband during my freshman year of college, in the Bible Belt no less. He was a lifelong Methodist, I was still Christian but no longer a practicing Catholic.

After three years of dating, he agreed to marry me on the condition I gave him; that I probably never wanted children. He wasn't sold either, as he worked with children in his job as a youth pastor. He adored the curiosity of young minds but preferred a quieter home life. I felt similarly. Being childless meant I had more energy and attention to give to my emerging writing career and to our local community.

We wed in a Protestant church ceremony on a blistering summer day in July, 2006. We were what we would later describe as "childfree for the common good" and what my Catholic grandmother would call "interesting."

Nobody in the polite, southern town where we got married openly criticized our decision to be childless. The shame tactics were more subtle. "Motherhood is the toughest job in the world," neighbors would assert, as if I was lazy not to take it on. "But you'd make a great mom," friends would insist, as if my lack of confidence was the problem.

Even strangers thought they knew me better than I knew myself when they'd swoon, "You don't know love until you become a mother." How dismissive, I thought, of all other kinds of love. And yet it still stung.

Even though we didn't want children of our own, we got certified as foster parents after 10 years of marriage. We had devoted our twenties to being available to our friends and their first children. But on the cusp of 30, a little bit lonely and with capacity to spare, we felt called to help children with less systemic support. We didn't expect that six months into our first placementthree school-aged sisterswe'd be asked to consider adoption.

It's hard, even now, to explain why we said yes. We initially thought it would be temporary. We were hoping they'd be able to return home to be with their biological family. They hoped so, too. But circumstances didn't allow that.

Maybe it's enough to say that we saw a need and we knew we were capable. But it's also true that we thought they'd be good for usan interruption into our carefully thought-out lives. And we thought we'd be good for themanother set of adults who didn't need to birth them to love them.

After the adoption, our community rallied around us with an outpouring of casseroles and back-pats that had long been missing when we weren't parents. The goodwill felt nice at first. But when the shock wore off, the sadness set in. Most people, I think, assumed that the adoption was an about-face from our childfree decisionthat this was me finally stepping into my role as a mother.

This wasn't how I felt, so I did what writers do. I wrote a book to make sense of my storyand to help other women rewrite the scripts of motherhood, too.

Our girls are now teenagers. They are beautiful, defiant, exhausting. On days where parental resentment creeps in, we remind ourselves that this is what we signed-up for. We had a choice. And I want the same for my girls. I want them to know motherhood is better discerned than destined.

Erin S. Lane is the author of Someone Other Than a Mother, which is available to order now. She is on Twitter at @heyerinlane

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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'I'm a Mother of Three, But I Never Wanted Children' - Newsweek

The Left's reaction to the Dobbs decision, handed down last month, exceeded expectations. Some loudly claimed religion was invading the public square, while others declared that "women will die" as a result of the high court's opinion. The Nation even published an article titled "With Dobbs, Women Are No Longer Full Citizens. We Must Fight Back." The hysteria hasn't waned. And with midterm elections on the horizon, it will only get worse.

It is a decadent American society that is horrified at the thought of voters using the democratic process to restrict and ban access to a procedure that kills an unborn life. And make no mistake: that's exactly what abortion is. It's not just a routine medical procedure, which is what much of the public seems to believe thanks to nearly five decades of Roe, Casey, and a predatory and celebrated abortion industry. Abortion has been completely normalized in our culture and, as a result, is seen as a necessary good in too many people's eyes.

A recent study by Michigan State University is an extension of the post-Dobbs fearmongering. In it, researchers found that "over one in five Michigan adults do not want children." This is not exactly surprising given the fertility rate in the United States, which has been steadily declining for years. Last November, a Pew Research Center survey indicated an increase in the number of U.S. adults who remain uninterested in having children for a variety of reasons. But the Michigan State University release went further, stating, "Following the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, a large number of Americans are now at risk of being forced to have children despite not wanting them. If further precedents are overturned and birth control becomes harder to access, many young women who have decided to be childfree may also have difficulty avoiding pregnancy."

The language from Michigan State University and abortion proponents treats pregnancy as a virus that can be caught. Clearly, the opposite is true. Whether an individual is for or against abortion, there is no mystery about how pregnancy occurs. Sex brings with it both physical and emotional consequences. Conceiving a child is possible whether a couple wants to or not. Claiming that any number of people "are now at risk of being forced to have children" is to discard personal responsibility from the equation entirely. And that is both harmful and severely misguided.

But framing pregnancy as something that is forced on women and couples is the entire goal of the abortion industry. Take agency away from supposedly "helpless" adults, and the real perpetrator is the innocent child in the womb who dares to exist. It is the unborn child who is unwelcome and disposable, so long as the mother's "bodily autonomy" and convenience is at stake.

Whether it's a product of academia or the legacy media, this narrative is no less foolish or appalling. It is a deliberate distortion of motherhood and the female nature to pretend like women do not have a responsibility to their children inside and outside the womb. And it is a denial of human nature itself to pretend that capable and rational adults can shirk the consequences of their actions at no cost to themselves.

It doesn't really matter whether a couple wants to remain child-free or not. What matters is what couples do when faced with a new, growing human life for which they are responsible. As the pro-life movement has preached for years, abortion is morally wrong because life is a human right. In the wake of the Dobbs decision, that message is needed as much, and maybe more so than ever before.

Decades of lies from Planned Parenthood and elsewhere have created a callousness within our culture, one that justifies abortion and the destruction of a human being so long as the child is unwanted or unexpected. Dobbs and the reactions to it have exposed this cruelty for what it is: a blatant disregard for life and sexual responsibility.

Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog and a columnist at Arc Digital.

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Disregard for human life and sexual responsibility is at the core of the pro-abortion movement - Washington Examiner