Legacy

What happens to our stuff when we die? How might we reimagine the family tree? Childlessness raises, among others, questions about legacy, inheritance, our relationship with future generations, our ability to shape the future, and the narratives we tell about the past and the future. The author examines several life stories to help readers begin to envision childlessness within a new paradigm of meaning. This chapter encourages readers to consider new metaphors for how they think about childlessness. It ends with considerations about the deep and necessary connections between the childless and the childful within the quest for human flourishing.

Interlude

During the baby boom, childlessness plummeted; at the same time, more couples planned and limited their family size. The baby boom included both an increase in the number of children born per woman and an increase in the percentage of women having children. Many women had children all at the same time. Women born around 1935 had the lowest levels of childlessness on record in Europe and America. In one respect, however, the baby boom provided continuity: these parents nurtured the belief that they could and should plan their families. This chapter details the history of childlessness during the years of the baby boom.

Whispers

In the nineteenth century, contraception and a willingness to use it led to more childlessness within marriage. More women—especially urban women—began to limit their childbearing within marriage, even if they wed during their fertile years. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, concern about childlessness and low fertility became an issue of national security. Childless women were accused of selfishness and race suicide. Demographers in the 1920s and 1930s believed they were witnessing a revolution whose outcome could not be predicted, in which subreplacement fertility was a structural piece of the puzzle. This chapter examines how married women of this time period considered childlessness by choice, a secret reality only discussed in whispered conversations.

A Better World

This chapter focuses on two proposals for how childlessness might benefit the greater good. The first are arguments against bearing children due to the unhappiness of human existence. The second are arguments for slowing population growth due to limitations on the world’s resources. Both of these arguments are controversial and some might say completely misguided. Malthus argued that going childless can help save the world, but his critics saw childlessness as a degrading punishment that was undeserved by the victims of industrial capitalism. The existence of childless individuals helps us to imagine dramatic answers to the persistent problems of human suffering and limited resources. Yet not having children isn’t a simple solution to climate change, poverty, inequality, or existential suffering.

Regret

Childless women often anticipate that they will regret not having children. How does regret play out in terms of childlessness? This chapter examines the feeling of regret through a variety of lenses: Do childless people experience fewer positive emotions and more negative emotions than parents? How does voluntary childlessness differ from involuntary childlessness? How do measures of life satisfaction differ from measures of positive feelings? What do studies of older women looking back on their lives reveal about their regrets? Do parents ever regret having had children? Finally, what are the limitations to allowing the fear of regret to drive our decisions?

Home and Hearth

The chapter considers the household’s many roles, not just as a market actor or as a container of goods, but also as a place for rest and reflection, for solitude and community, for performing rituals and for making plans, and for domestic labor. While we might be tempted to view the rise of the singleton household as evidence of atomization and social isolation, single women of the past and present remind us that we can flourish and grow while living alone in a home for one. The childless household might also be a place in which to experiment, to imagine, to hatch plans, and to carry them out.

Shouts

In the 1970s, after the baby boom hiatus, childlessness returned to prominence. By the 1970s, in contrast with previous centuries, the complex reasons that women ended up without children were openly reframed as the willful exercise of choice. The Pill, the rising importance of self-actualization, and economic opportunity costs all became explanations for the return of childlessness, although none of these are completely satisfactory. American child-free advocates began to argue that childlessness was not only an acceptable path but also a better choice than parenthood. Moral outrage characterized debates over childlessness in the 1970s.

Delay

Since the early modern period, women have postponed marriage and therefore, in many cases, remained childless. By putting off marriage and childrearing for a decade or longer, women could achieve other goals: a job, some savings, and the respect of their neighbors. To survive, these early modern women learned to take risks, make plans, and act responsibly. In the end, some women never married, and others waited so long that they turned out to be infertile by the time of marriage. These women risked poverty, dependency, and cruel mockery, yet a few articulated the preference for the single life. This chapter examines this early modern period and childlessness.

Old and Alone

Only recently do Western women expect that a third of their lives will unfold after menopause. Old age is a social and biological condition whose quality is shaped by physical and mental health, money, meaningful activities, independent living, someone to care for them, companionship, family, and a full and rich narrative about their lives. While childlessness more firmly places the vulnerability of aging in the forefront, old age comes to us all. Childless lives help illuminate the problems of old age and provide different ways to think about it. This chapter looks at the later years of childless living, highlighting how childless women encounter and engage with this period of their lives.

Flourishing

Discussions about childless should engage a conversation about the fundamental purpose of our lives and how we flourish. On the personal level, the question is, How can lifelong childlessness be part of a good life? On the societal level, the question is, How can it be good for the whole if some people remain childless? Childless women of the past remind us that a good life encompasses a range of experiences. This chapter presents a flexible framework for exploring the lives of childless individuals: how they might thrive, the lacunas that they might need to fill, and how their experiences can help all of us—parents and childless alike—to expand our range of possibilities for the good life.