Each generation has more childfree women than the one before. It also seems there are more and more books, social media accounts, podcasts and organisations targeted at this growing audience. Recent publications include Ruby Warrington’s Women Without Kids (2023), Peggy O’Donnell Heffington’s Without Children (2023) and a great edited collection: Childfree Across the Disciplines: Academic and Activist Perspectives on Not Choosing Children (2022). As well as my own book, Harpy: A Manifesto for Childfree Women (Icon Books), this spring will see Others Like Me: The Lives of Childless Women by Irish-based Brazilian writer Nicole Louie, published by Dialogue Books.
The organisation We Are Childfree does great working bringing people together online and in person, and Rachel Cargle’s Rich Auntie Supreme initiative celebrates different paths in life. This only scratches the surface of all the childfree creators and advocates making our case via every tool they have. In an age where reproductive rights are under threat across the world, it’s never been more important to hear these voices.
So, why has there been such a rise in interest in this topic? I confess that I was not a firebrand advocate for women without children for most of my life and I didn’t really think all that deeply about not having children. I wouldn’t even call it a decision, which suggests you make a little list of pros and cons, possibly in coloured pens. We don’t decide to fall in love, start writing a book or make a new friend when we click with someone. It just happens, decision by decision until what we have in front of us is our lives.
Often, women without children are asked to account for themselves. I was once asked if I had disappointed my mother, a woman entirely incapable of being anything other than supportive to her family. In your 30s, you are told that you’ll change your mind. You are not told that it’s okay if you change your mind or that you’ll be accepted no matter what. You will change your mind. You must change. You’re not okay. But that felt wrong to me, I felt basically grand.
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Childfree women are getting on with our days, paying our taxes, putting the bins out. We were educating other people’s children, working around parent colleagues before we book our holidays, trying to keep our heads down. But then the Pope called us bitter and lonely, or that relative at a wedding had a go, or that guy at a conference who thought his opinions on our bodies had merit. Perhaps we were refused life-changing medical treatment because we might have children. Or a friend, loosening the bond, told us we would never know real love. We saw female politicians’ lives picked apart for sport – whether they had kids or not. And something began to simmer inside.
For the longest time, I struggled over labels – I didn’t really call myself childfree or voluntarily childless or, God help us, nulliparous. It felt like I was centring the thing that I’m not rather than the things I am – a teacher, a writer, hideously competitive in my gym’s step challenge. But I soon recognised, in getting involved with organisations and finding out more, that people find these terms hugely empowering. But the simmering continued, and one word kept coming to me – harpy. I thought of Benedick’s words about Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing in my head, that he would rather go to “the world’s end . . . rather than hold three words’ conference with this harpy”.
That’s a kind of power that you must admire. Sometimes the harpy is presented as grotesque, as if being less than beautiful was a sin against humanity. Often with a female torso and head, but the claws and wings of a bird, she is the mythological harpy.
In painting, such as Gustave Dore’s illustrations for Dante’s Inferno or William Blake’s drawings, they are usually in packs, scaring someone or driving them to a nasty end. This figure features in Greek and Roman mythology as well as Islamic art – many cultures have hybrid bird bogeywomen. In Ireland, we have the figure of the Mór-Ríoghain or Mórrígan, a war goddess who is often seen in a trio of women or taking the form of a crow. I wanted to directly confront our stereotypes, look the crazy cat eye trope directly in the eye, in search of something less tired.
I want this to be a book to reflect the conversations we have in the pub, a coffee shop or on a long walk. I speak freely with my parent and carer friends, unless they look like they’re on the verge, in which case I’ll tone down mentioning that Sunday morning lie-in. I wanted to appreciate their struggles in the workplace, as the chapter “Harpies at Work” begins by setting out how we can advocate for the way institutions and companies disadvantage them. Anytime someone hears about the book, I can’t stop them telling me about themselves, or a favourite aunt, or a woman they work with. Childfree women live a variety of lives – for this book, I interviewed 55 women and some of them have been ostracised by friends, family and faith communities. Some were struggling to live on low-paying work or to afford to live alone into their 40s and 50s. Some had a great circle of friends, some had drifted away from long-established connections and some reported abject loneliness. But parents and carers often report isolation – loneliness is often a structural problem that people think of as a personal failure. More imaginative, creative ways of thinking about our futures together will help us all.
Childfree life is ordinary – there is work, friendships, communities, relationships – and few of us have the resources for a Sex and the City lifestyle. But many of us find ways to be happy with what we’ve got – Prof Paul Doran’s work found that “unmarried and childless women are the happiest subgroup in the population” and noted that the existing narrative that marriage and children were signs of success meant that the stigma could lead some single women to feel unhappy: “You see a single woman of 40, who has never had children – ‘Bless, that’s a shame, isn’t it? Maybe one day you’ll meet the right guy and that’ll change.’ No, maybe she’ll meet the wrong guy and that’ll change. Maybe she’ll meet a guy who makes her less happy and healthy, and die sooner.”
In writing this, I reconciled myself to being childfree – I went to meet-ups, I talked openly, I connected with other people. And it’s transformed how I see myself and others who, whatever their circumstances, have been so open to hearing more. I don’t have children, and I never will, and I wouldn’t change that for the world – I just hope we can be more decent to each other in the ways that we discuss our lives.
Dr Caroline Magennis is associate professor (reader) in contemporary literature at the University of Salford. Her book Harpy: a Manifesto for Childfree Women will be published by Icon Books on May 9th.
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