The Voluntarily Childless Heroine: A Postfeminist Television Oddity

Abstract

In a neoliberal and postfeminist context, this article undertakes an analysis of the atypical instances of voluntarily childless heroines on contemporary U.S. network television from 2010 to 2015. Drawing mainly from Diane Negra’s and Angela McRobbie’s work on postfeminist popular culture, and specifically McRobbie’s concept of “double entanglement,” I argue that network television, with rare exceptions, not only avoids representations of female childlessness but also promotes pronatalism, which it associates with neoliberal principles of the market (as illustrated in everything from the booming surrogacy industry to the quest to enroll children at the best private schools, etc.).