Unpacking What it Means to be Childfree and Childless
In our current culture, the term "childfree" represents those individuals who have chosen not to have children. Many of these individuals report feeling a calling of sorts to opt out of parenthood.
Individuals who did want children but were unable to due to circumstances like not finding the right partner (also known as "social infertility"), work or career responsibilities, family obligations like caretaking an ailing parent or partner, or infertility identify as "childless" or "involuntarily childless."
For many, neither of these terms feel adequate. This speaks volumes to how much dialog is still needed around navigating these lived experiences.
Am I allowed to grieve if I identify as childless by choice?
Regardless of how we identify, rarely are our paths a straight line. Many childfree individuals stumble upon unexpected grief, which might feel confusing and scary. Just because childfree people feel loss does not mean they made the wrong decision to not have children. Sometimes childfree people collide with grief and loss when they experience another life transition, like menopause. Other losses can trigger grief around childlessness, like the death of a parent or partner.
It is also grievable to live in a world that does not value the experiences of those who choose to not have children. The dominant model is that we partner, start a family, and age within that traditional structure. For many childfree people, it is unmooring to age without children: they often feel confusion about who they are or who they are supposed to be--or who they are allowed to be. Childfree women and individuals who have a female reproductive system often feel judged for not wanting children. And when we witness legislation being enacted that takes away the rights of those bodies as they pertain to fertility and childbearing, it is hard to not feel targeted and marginalized as a result of our choices.
Many childfree people have never found spaces to talk about their identity--or their decision to not have children. That decision is often complex and doesn't normally come from one specific moment in one's life; rather, the story of one's childfree identity is rooted deeply in our lives as a whole. There are not many spaces in our communities where those rich, complex, complicated stories get to be heard. Not being heard or seen in our truth can be a good enough reason for feeling grief.
Also, the childfree story sometimes involves periods of ambivalence and possibly even regret. Our culture does not value ambivalence or regret: often, there is judgment placed on not being able to make up one's mind or wishing we had made a different decision in our past. This is further complicated by living in a pronatalist culture that values people having children over those who do not.
What if I am involuntarily childless? If I wanted children but never was able to have them, am I doomed to be stuck in my grief?
Many involuntarily childless individuals fear their grief will never end. They also feel pitied by those around them and then dismissed when they exceed the "expiration date" of their grief. Childless people often feel rushed by others to "move on" and "stop feeling sorry" for themselves. Their grief is also unseen and unheard. Grief therapist Francis Weller (2013) clarified that we get stuck in our grief when we are unable to be joined in it. Our ability to grieve is what makes us exquisitely human. But in a culture that prefers to rush us to some "closure" or "resolution," often we are made to feel ashamed of our grief. We stop trusting its natural rhythms and instead get swallowed by its surges.
Jody Day, psychotherapist and founder of Gateway Women, a worldwide collective for women who are childless due to infertility or circumstance, said this about her own grief journey:
"The children I was never able to have, and which I have grieved deeply, live on in my heart, and age with me as I do. . . . Even though my years of mourning have transformed my inner world to the point where I sense that I might be as at peace with my childlessness as if I had chosen it, when the wind howls in a certain direction, the scar of my childlessness can ache. And that’s okay. It means they are still with me." (You can read her full essay here.)
We need to move through our grief rather than around it. This is often perceived as counterintuitive by our dominant culture. We need a sense of community to help us navigate those choppy waters of grief. This can be harder to find for childless individuals who often feel isolated: neither in the world of having children nor in the world of not wanting to have children. I have been told that I have no rights to my family legacy since I do not have children. Is that true?
This concern is a common one that often gets amplified as we age without children. The concept of legacy and lineage are also rooted in pronatalist, patriarchal culture. This narrows what legacy means and who has the right to be a part of it. From a childfree-by-choice perspective, I reflect on this issue in my essay titled "The Reclamation of Legacy: Journeying Through Grief and Praise as a Childfree, Middle-Aged Woman." (If you cannot access this article, feel free to contact me for access.)
For those of us aging without children--whether by choice, circumstance, or infertility--we need to reclaim our rights to legacy. We too will one day be the ancestors of our future family members as well as the larger communities we live in. It can be rewarding to look back on our own lineages with a different lens that helps us spot others like us who were once part of our family tree or cultural lineages. This can make us feel less alone, and it also legitimizes our lived experiences and their value. Rethinking legacy-making holds the potential to deepen our connection to a larger world that surpasses our traditional family and reminds us that the medicine we offer to future generations can take many forms other than children: our offerings can be our grief, sorrow, joy, regrets, ambivalence, and fortitude, just to name a few.