Women's Voluntary Childlessness: A Radical Rejection of Motherhood?

Abstract

In a culture in which motherhood is central to feminine identity, what are the experiences of women who decide not to have children? How might their experiences inform feminist scholarship on mothering? In this review I will focus on scholarly books and articles on women's written in the past twenty years. Studies on have employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the predictors, explanations, and the experiences of being childless. In this overview of the literature, I will address four themes: how voluntary childlessness has been defined, why women choose childlessness, as a deviant identity, and a consideration of as a radical rejection of mothering. DEFINING VOLUNTARY CHILDLESSNESS Scholars have operationalized voluntarily women as women of childb earing age who are fertile and state that they do not intend to have children, women of childbearing age who have chosen sterilization, or women past childbearing age who were fertile but chose not to have children. People who are childless are categorized in opposition to those who state that they do not currendy have children but want children in the future (temporarily childless) and those who want (or wanted) children but are (were) unable to have them because of fertility problems (involuntarily childless). One study estimated that 20 percent of women were childless near the end of their childbearing years (Dye 2008) . Another estimated that 7 percent of U.S. women aged thirty-five to forty-four were childless in 2002, up from 5 percent in 1982 (Ab ma and Martinez 2006). Trends suggest that younger cohorts of women are more likely to remain childless (Abma and Martinez 2006; Dye 2008). The demographic shift toward increasing reflects a variety of social trends; these include access to contraception and abortion, women's increased opportunity for education and labor force participation, and changing attitudes toward mothering. An important factor in defining is that many people's perceptions of their as or circumstance is complex and subjective. One study found that the researchers' definitions of and involuntary were inconsistent with participants' self-definitions in one-third of the cases (Jeffries and Konnert 2002). In semistructured interviews, Ingrid Arnet Connidis and JuUe Ann McMuIUn (1996) attempted to understand how adults without children defined their childless state. They found that 28 percent said that they were childless by choice and 72 percent said they were childless by circumstance; however, there was a 60 percent overlap in reasons for between the two groups. Another factor in defining in terms of intent is that the desire to have children may change over time. Tim Heaton, CardeU Jacobson, and Kimberlee HoUand (1999) found that one-fifth of their sample changed dieir minds about wanting children between waves of the survey. Thirteen percent wanted children at wave 1 but did not want children six years later at wave 2; 6 percent did not want children at wave 1 but either had a child or stated they wanted a child at wave 2. FinaUy, as noted above, voluntarily is often operationaUzed as a category defining fertile women who do not intend to have children; however, studies demonstrate that some women experiencing infertility issues also identify as childless (Connidis and McMuIUn 1996; Jeffries and Konnert 2002). Qualitative studies have sought to take into account the complexity of perceptions of choice and circumstances. Women described as transitional, postponers, ambivalent, or passive decision makers might have had children had circumstances been different (GiUespie 1999; Ireland 1993; McAUister and Clarke 1998). …