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

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 voluntary childlessness written in the past twenty years. Studies on voluntary childlessness have employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the predictors, explanations, and the experiences of being voluntarily childless. In this overview of the literature, I will address four themes: how "voluntary childlessness" has been defined, why women choose childlessness, voluntary childlessness as a deviant identity, and a consideration of voluntary childlessness as a radical rejection of mothering.

Defining Voluntary Childlessness

Scholars have operationalized "voluntarily childless" women as women of childbearing 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 voluntarily childless are categorized in opposition to those who state that they do not currently 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 voluntarily childless in 2002, up from 5 percent in 1982 (Abma 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 childlessness 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 childlessness is that many people's perceptions of their childlessness as "choice" or "circumstance" is complex and subjective. One study found that the researchers' definitions of voluntary and involuntary childlessness were inconsistent with participants' self-definitions in one-third of the cases (Jeffries and Konnert 2002). In semistructured interviews, Ingrid Arnet Connidis and Julie Ann McMullin (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 childlessness between the two groups. Another factor in defining voluntary childlessness in terms of intent is that the desire to have children may change over time. Tim Heaton, Cardell Jacobson, and Kimberlee Holland (1999) found that one-fifth of their sample changed their 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. Finally, as noted above, "voluntarily childless" is often operationalized 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 voluntarily childless (Connidis and McMullin 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 (Gillespie 1999; Ireland 1993; McAllister and Clarke 1998). Many women reported reconsidering at various points in their lives or leaving the option open until the end of their childbearing years. As one woman stated, "With me it was just one actual step leading to another. That's why I don't think it was consciously saying, 'We are not going to have children.' It was more just a natural part of our way of life and the way things unfolded for us" (Morell 1994, 49). Women described as "transformative," "early articulators," or "active decision makers...