“Never Say Never?” Heterosexual, Bisexual, and Lesbian Women’s Accounts of Being Childfree

Abstract

Feminist scholars have identified a “motherhood imperative” in Western cultures, when heterosexual women are understood to both want and to have children. However, social shifts have resulted in a decrease in pronatalism as well as an increase in social recognition of the parenting desires of same-sex parents. Despite a resurgence of interest in childfree identities, research to date has predominantly focused on heterosexual women’s explanations for being childfree and their experiences of marginalization. Our aim in the current study was to explore how childfree heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and queer women negotiate their childfree lives and identities in the context of their personal and social relationships within changing cultural contexts. Data from 23 interviews with women in the United Kingdom, who responded to a call for childfree participants, were thematically analyzed. We constructed two themes: (1) Never say never? Negotiating being childfree as ever precarious, which shows how women constructed being childfree as requiring constant revisiting and renegotiating to maintain and (2) An ordinary life: Constructing being childfree as rational and reasonable, in which we identify the rhetorical efforts of participants to establish their being childfree as an ordinary, reasonable, and rational position. We conclude that for these women, childfreedom was constantly in flux and that maintaining a positive childfree identity required considerable identity work in order to manage intimate personal relationships and wider friendships. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index

Lived Experiences of Childfree Lesbians in the United Kingdom: A Qualitative Exploration

“…It appears not to be socially acceptable, even stigmatized, to express dislike for children; this can only be done through comedy, self-parody, and exaggeration, and through taking ownership of the label “selfish” (see also Terry & Braun, 2012). This tension in the women’s accounts also perhaps reflects that fact that the lesbian women, like many of the heterosexual women in the wider study (Hayfield, Terry, Clarke, & Ellis, in press), viewed themselves as rejecting motherhood in a patriarchal society, and dominant notions of womanhood and femininity, rather than rejecting children, and often framed this in terms of a feminist critique of patriarchy. The lesbian women also saw themselves as rejecting the idea of being a (man’s) wife: “I never wanted to be a wife for obvious reasons” (Debbie).…”

“…Being lesbian and childfree is in many ways different from being heterosexual and childfree—childfreedom afforded the women the freedom to spend time and form relationships with other lesbians (similarly to Bartlett, 1994). Furthermore, from our perspective as researchers, overall, the impression we developed of our lesbian participants is that they were far less isolated in their childfreedom than the heterosexual woman in the wider study (Hayfield, Terry, Clarke, & Ellis, in press). Friends (especially lesbian friends) having children did not prompt questioning of their decision and feelings of loss (of the friendship) in the same way that it did for the heterosexual women in the wider study.…”

“…The data for this analysis were drawn from a wider qualitative study of the experiences of childfree women living in the United Kingdom (see Hayfield, Terry, Clarke, & Ellis, in press). The research received ethical approval from the first and second authors’ Faculty Research Ethics Committee.…”

Desire for Parenthood and Associated Trends in Czech Lesbian Women

“…30 In the present study, the number of women who do not want to have children has decreased since 2009, but the current percentage still corresponds with the prevalence in Western Europe (decrease from 23% to 16%). 31 , 32 , 33 The decreasing percentage of single lesbians and lesbian couples who do not have a child or do not wish to have a child corresponds with the contemporary trend that has started in the CR since the so-called Velvet Revolution of 1989. 5 This positive trend follows a model long time accepted in Western countries as a natural manifestation of societal normalization and acceptance of lesbian and other sexual minority families.…”

Potential of students’ project work using the example of childfree phenomenon analysis

“…In general, it is worth noting that traditionally researches in the field of "childfree" usually related to married, white and heterosexual middle-class women [30,31]. But today the problem of "childfree" is analyzed for heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual, queer women [32][33][34] and African women [35]. There is the difference in verbal rationalizations and visual content on the topic of "childfree".…”