“The sex-role patterns of voluntarily childless women are reported from the results of an in-depth interview study that compared 30 childless, 29 delay (subjects who are currently childless, but plan to have children in the future), and 24 parent (subjects with their first child under the age of 2) wives and husbands, chosen on a purposive basis. Sex role is conceptualized as a complex variable composed of behavior, attitudes, and self-image, and as the interface between psychological and situational phenomena. The hypothesis tested is that the childless women are less traditional in sex-role orientation than either the delays or parents, indicating that psychological factors are more important than situational factors in distinguishing the groups. The data confirm the hypothesis.”
Bram, Susan. “Voluntarily childless women: Traditional or nontraditional?.” Sex roles 10.3-4 (1984): 195-206.
“There has been little in-depth theoretical study in sociology of the motives of women and men who are childless by choice. This article begins to remedy this deficiency by analyzing the motives articulated by twenty-three childless women and men using Weber’s typology of social action and distinction between primary and end motives. In-depth interview and focus group data reveal that, compared to men, women more often were affected by the parenting models of significant others, saw parenting as conflicting with career and leisured identities, and claimed the lack of a “maternal instinct” or disinterest in children as dominant influences. Men more explicitly than women rejected parenthood because of its perceived sacrifices, including financial expense. Both women and men were motivated by personality traits that they deemed incongruent with good parenting. Declared motives especially demonstrated instrumentally rational action in Weber’s schema, although affectual and value-rational actions also were present. Respondent motives are compared to those that they, and empirical studies, have attributed to parents.”
Park, Kristin. “Choosing Childlessness: Weber’s Typology of Action and Motives of the Voluntarily Childless*.” Sociological Inquiry 75.3 (2005): 372-402.
“This study examined the potential implications of religious affiliation on perceptions of voluntarily childless couples. Undergraduate students were given a vignette about an adult couple that either had children or that was childless, and were subsequently asked to complete questionnaires that rated the couple on a variety of personality dimensions. It was predicted that individuals who identify with pronatalist religious sects have more negative perceptions of those who are childless. There was a significant contrast in the views that Christian individuals held toward couples that were voluntarily childless versus those that had two children, suggesting that this religious affiliation is associated with perceptions of those who stray from the standards of the pronatalist society.”
Hook, Alyssa N. “Perceptions of the Voluntarily Childless: The Negative Stigma of an Unconventional Ideal.” (2012).
“We examine double standards in norms on voluntary childlessness. Whether choosing childlessness is more accepted for men or for women is not a priori clear; we formulate arguments in both directions. Multilevel analyses are conducted, including individual and societal-level variables. Our sample consists of 44,055 individuals nested in 25 European countries, obtained from Wave 3 of the European Social Survey (2006). Subjective norms were measured with a split ballot design, with half of the respondents randomly assigned questions regarding women choosing not to have children, and half assigned items regarding men. Findings indicate that men are more disapproved of when choosing not to have children than are women. Overall, this double standard is endorsed by women, not by men. Clear cross-national variation in the double standard exists, which is partly explained by the level of gender equality (GEM). Surprisingly, the higher the gender equality, the stronger the double standard.”
Rijken, Arieke J., and E-M. Merz. “Double standards: a cross-European study on differences in norms on voluntary childlessness for men and women. Paper presentation.” 2011 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA), Washington, March 31-April 2, 2011. 2011.
“Widowed childless older women had lower psychological well-being than did widowed mothers. However, among married women childlessness had no significant effects on well-being. Results also show that physical capacity, religiosity, quality of social interaction, and strength of social support are all positively associated with well-being among older women. Jewish women reported lower well-being than did catholic women who, in turn, evidenced lower well-being than did protestant women.”
Beckman, Linda J., and Betsy Bosak Houser. “The consequences of childlessness on the social-psychological well-being of older women.” Journal of Gerontology 37.2 (1982): 243-250.
“Negative attitudes toward childlessness still remain, and most people hold strong beliefs about parenthood as a vital mode of fulfillment. Research findings, however, tend to show that people are better off not having children, particularly women, singles, lower socioeconomic strata, and people residing in less pronatalist societies—especially when these characteristics act in combination. The reasons empirical findings do not map onto beliefs may be because parents are exposed to different stressors that cancel out or exceed the emotional rewards; because childlessness has a number of advantages that promote wellbeing; and because of effective adaptation and compensation by involuntary childless persons. The reason why the beliefs do not map onto the findings may be attributable to cognitive biases and that people mistake the rewards of parenting for happiness, when they have more to do with meaning. The current review reveals an interesting paradox: It appears that a familistic culture and strong pronatalist values and attitudes go together with low fertility rates and marked negative emotional effects of having children, whereas fertility rates are higher and parents derive greater happiness in more individualistic cultures where people hold less pronatalist beliefs (see also Bernhardt and Fratczak 2005). The rosy views or myths about parenthood thus are the strongest in countries where they are the most likely to be false, and vice versa.
This paper clarifies and debunks some of the myths about parental status and wellbeing, an illumination is important as commentators and policymakers are trying the curb and understand the consequences of the rapid growth in childlessness across Western nations. Indeed, final childlessness among women born after 1970 is likely to range between 15 and 25% in industrialized countries (Sobotka 2004).”
Hansen, Thomas. “Parenthood and happiness: A review of folk theories versus empirical evidence.” Social Indicators Research 108.1 (2012): 29-64.
“Marciano (1978) also investigated male pressure in the decision to remain childfree, collecting data from a total of 100 married couples from the National Organization for Non-Parents and finding that if it was the husband’s decision to remain childfree and not the wife’s at first, she was likely to come into agreement with him. On the other hand, if it was the wife’s decision to remain childfree, only very rarely would the husband consent. The more likely result, if she remained adamant, was divorce.”
“Today we know that childless couples have a variety of reasons for their decision. Such families may belong to the voluntarily childless (also called childfree), involuntarily childless (as in case of fecundity impaired) or temporarily childfree (people who have no children but expect to have them later).”
“Nonetheless, the difficulty of distinguishing the childfree from the childless in demographic data is also worth noting, with the consequent risk of overestimating the phenomenon. Again, we should be aware of the need to disentangle the permanently childfree from the temporarily childfree. This is a very important issue and one that is essential to achieving a clearer understanding of the phenomenon. Questionnaires and other psychological investigations may help quantify the percentage of childfree couples and document their intentions for the future; however, it is not at all easy to determine what percentage of people who consider themselves childfree forever will subsequently change their minds. People may be absolutely sure of their desire to be childfree at the moment in which they answer questionnaires, but may later change their minds. Heaton et al. (1999) for example, observed the data from a sample of 13,017 respondents of the US population aged 19 years and older. Six years later, nearly half of the sample had not yet carried out their intentions to have a child, and a fifth of the respondents had changed their minds. This would suggest the instability of childbearing intentions and the difficulty of determining a clear border between those who are permanently and temporarily childfree.”
Agrillo, Christian, and Cristian Nelini. “Childfree by choice: A review.” Journal of Cultural Geography 25.3 (2008): 347-363.
“Although the majority of women in Europe and the United States continue to become mothers at some point in their lives, both reproductive choice and greater autonomy have created the possibility for women to choose to remain childfree, in ways not possible for previous generations of women. Other studies have highlighted social change, affluence, higher levels of education, and the support of partners as key factors in enabling women who desire to do so to remain childfree (Burgwyn 1983; Campbell 1985; Joshi 1989; McAllister and Clarke 1998; Morell 1994; Safer 1996; Veevers 1983; Walby 1997). Although I found childfree women located within a wide range of social groups, I did find a relationship between being childfree and higher social class.
While I found the existence of a pull toward the perceived freedoms and opportunities associated with the lifestyle of childfree women, as have other authors, what my findings establish that is new is the existence of a more radical rejection or push away from motherhood as a normative female gender marker. These women reflect a radical departure from hegemonic understandings that to be a woman is inextricably bound to motherhood. Indeed, an increasing number of women reject and resist pronatalist cultural imperatives of femininity that conflate woman with mother, highlighting the emergence of a positive feminine identity separate from motherhood.
It may be that there have always been women who preferred to remain childfree. The choices of women in the past have remained hidden. Being childfree has always been socially sanctioned for some groups, such as spinsters, widows, nuns, and nannies (Weigle 1982). Although these roles may have provided legitimacy for those who eschewed motherhood, they were defined by loss, self-sacrifice, and/or the nurturing of others’ children. They failed to challenge, and even served to bolster, pronatalist cultural discourses that fused hegemonic femininity with motherhood. As Di Lapi (1987) has observed, poor, single, and lesbian women have generally been framed by others as unfit mothers and expected to remain childless. Campbell (1999, 72) has argued there have always been individual women who sought to prevent conception, aborted unwanted fetuses, and abandoned or killed a newborn child. What is new is both the increasing numbers of women who eschew motherhood and that increasingly they are able to articulate their rejection in ways not generally available to previous generations of women.
Giddens (1991) argued that late modernity has given rise to fundamental transformations, which have had a profound effect on the nature of the self. Modernity has created new possibilities for being a woman that exclude motherhood. In describing the pull of remaining childfree and a more radical push away from motherhood, and by articulating a rejection of motherhood as central to their sense of femininity and identity, childfree women highlight the transformative effects of agency. Unapologetic, childfree women underscore how meanings of femininity and identity are highly complex and individual and cannot adequately be explained through essentialist notions of the convergence of woman with mother. Their rejection of motherhood exemplifies how modernity has given rise to wider possibilities for women to shape a fulfilling gender identity that is separate and uncoupled from the hegemonic ideal of motherhood.
I suggest that a trend to remain childfree and an articulation of the lack of desire for motherhood create new possibilities to forge a childfree femininity. Indeed, future research could explore the ways cultural discourses associated with motherhood may never have adequately explained women’s subjective experiences. For example, Benn (1998) and Adams (1998) have shown that the public face of motherhood fails to account for the private experiences of women who are mothers. It is possible that my respondents rejected motherhood because they did not experience the maternal desire that hegemonic femininity suggests exists. Instead, they seem to have experienced a sense of female gender identity unshackled from motherhood, a childfree femininity. Although the findings of this study cannot be used to generalize, they can usefully inform debate and highlight the need for further research into the subjective experiences of identity both in women who are mothers and those who are childfree, among white women and women of color. Further research might also inform a fuller understanding of masculinity by contrasting.”
Gillespie, Rosemary. “Childfree And Feminine Understanding the Gender Identity of Voluntarily Childless Women.” Gender & Society 17.1 (2003): 122-136.
And another:
Kelly, Maura. “Women’s Voluntary Childlessness: A Radical Rejection of Motherhood?.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 37.2 (2009): 157-172.
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