Central European Time

Malka Ceh on Facebook
Malka Ceh on Instagram
Malka Ceh on LinkedIn

Malka Ceh, PhD, MSc, cNPA

Tag: childfree

  • DINK Couples: Two Incomes and Everyone Else’s Opinion

    DINK Couples: Two Incomes and Everyone Else’s Opinion

    “When are you going to start a family?” is quite an assessment of two people who already share a home, pay the bills, and have spent years looking after each other. Apparently, all of this is preliminary. Until a child arrives to lend the arrangement the real credibility, you’re just two adults with a joint electricity account. And if you explain that you quite like your life together and intend to keep it this way, the conversation can become an investigation. Enjoying your partner’s company is an excellent reason to get married, but a suspicious reason to stop there.

    DINK stands for “dual income, no kids.” It describes a household arrangement, although it is often used to describe couples who have chosen to remain childfree. That is the group we are interested in today: two people who earn an income and want a shared life without becoming parents. A couple can build a satisfying life together, with parenthood as one possibility they may or may not want to pursue. Having children and remaining childfree are alternatives, each to be considered on its own merits, with the choice depending on what both people actually want. We manage to understand this perfectly well with goldfish: some people want them, others don’t, and we generally trust a couple to decide whether their shared future involves an aquarium.

    But let’s face it. Parenthood is treated as the default, and couples who choose otherwise are often viewed as a psychological puzzle. What sort of people are they? Why would two adults agree to live together and then carry on doing exactly that? Well, I looked into that.

    And you will not believe this, but there is no single DINK personality. Some recurring priorities emerge, though. DINK and childfree couples often emphasize autonomy, personal development, leisure, careers, and financial freedom. For some, remaining childfree is a way of preserving the relationship and the life they want together; a choice entirely compatible with valuing commitment and family [1,2,3,4]. I know, shocker. Furthermore, childfree adults report similar, and sometimes higher, life satisfaction than parents, with few consistent differences in broad personality traits [5,6,7]. Couples without children also tend to report higher marital satisfaction, although remaining childfree provides no immunity against relationship problems [8,9,10]. One recurring finding concerns how others treat them: childfree adults are often perceived as less fulfilled and receive less warmth from people with pronatalist expectations [11,12]. Here, we can dive a little deeper.

    Lifestyle and Values

    DINK couples often describe a life organized around their relationship, autonomy, enjoyment, and personal development. Accounts from Colombia and India include pursuing personal goals, spending time on leisure, looking after themselves, and enjoying things their income can buy. Time and money provide room for both individual interests and the relationship [1,13]. Earlier work from China similarly discusses DINK life in terms of self-development and fulfillment beyond basic material needs [14]. These are recurring themes rather than a compulsory personality package. You can be childfree without having a five-year plan for self-actualization.

    Togetherness and equality also matter. Childfree couples in Turkey described wanting marriages in which they could sustain companionship and autonomy without taking on the expectations attached to parenthood [15]. That gives some substance to the familiar wish to “keep our life as it is.” A couple may value the way they divide their time, support each other’s work, and retain interests outside the relationship. Wanting to preserve those arrangements is a comprehensible preference. It does not require a tragic backstory.

    Financial freedom deserves a little clarification, too. Two incomes do not automatically make a couple wealthy. A US analysis found that DINK households had higher median incomes than dual-income households with children, but lower accumulated wealth; they were also younger and less likely to own a home [16]. Income and wealth are different things, and the acronym tells us neither what the jobs pay nor what the mortgage costs. For some couples, the benefit may be more travel or earlier retirement. For others, it may be enough financial breathing room to enjoy an ordinary week.

    Well-Being and Personality

    Childfree adults do not appear to need parenthood to achieve a satisfying life. Findings from Michigan showed no difference in life satisfaction between childfree adults and parents, and few personality differences across the groups. The exception was lower agreeableness among childfree adults compared with people who planned to become parents (not compared with existing parents) [5]. That difference makes intuitive sense: agreeableness includes a tendency toward cooperation and accommodation, which may make resisting family and peer pressure more difficult. People who are less concerned with keeping everyone happy may find it easier to choose childfreedom despite cultural expectations.

    The broader picture is similar. Reviews link childfreedom with generally positive life satisfaction, while findings from Israel showed similar well-being among childfree women and mothers [6,7]. More recent findings from Turkey likewise showed no significant difference in life or marital satisfaction between employed married women who were childfree and those who were mothers. What differed was how they described fulfillment: childfree women emphasized autonomy and equality in their relationships, while mothers found satisfaction in a maternal role that their society recognized and valued [17]. People can be satisfied with quite different lives. This should be an unremarkable observation, but apparently we still need to make it.

    Of course, “childfree” does not describe everything that determines how someone feels about their life. Whether the arrangement reflects their own wishes, how much financial security they have, and the social environment in which they live all matter [7]. Choosing a life you want and being prevented from having a life you want are very different experiences. Research that groups people who choose not to have children together with those who want children but cannot have them can obscure important differences in well-being.

    Relationships and Social Context

    Some of the clearest differences concern relationships and everyday pressures. Parents tend to report lower marital satisfaction than nonparents, and childfree couples are also sometimes perceived as having more positive, less conflictual relationships [8,18]. Perceptions and lived experience are separate matters, but both complicate the assumption that children necessarily complete or strengthen a couple’s relationship. Becoming parents can introduce an abrupt change. Across the early years of marriage, couples who had their first child showed a sudden deterioration in several aspects of relationship functioning after the birth. Couples who remained without children experienced more gradual changes, without the same sudden decline [19]. This gives some weight to a concern that is easily dismissed as selfish: having a child may substantially change a relationship that both partners value. A couple is allowed to take that prospect seriously.

    Parenthood often increases conflict between work and family demands and can make leisure less equally available, with mothers particularly exposed to the costs. Support and positive experiences at work can also affect both partners’ satisfaction, because what happens in one person’s day rarely stays confined to that person [20,21,22,23]. Avoiding the demands of childcare can leave DINK couples with more flexibility, although they still have jobs, domestic responsibilities, and other people who need them. “No kids” is not the same thing as “nothing to do.”

    There is also the question of how partners reach their decision. Childfree couples arrive at a shared position through different conversational paths; there is no single sequence in which both people know exactly what they want and announce it before the second date [24]. Some couples describe their decision as settled, while others retain a degree of openness about the future [15]. What matters for their relationship is whether the arrangement reflects what both people want. An agreement to remain childfree is rather different from one partner privately waiting for the other to change their mind.

    Social connections extend beyond the couple, too. People without children often have networks more centered on friends and extended family. The support available through those networks varies, and maintaining it can become especially important with age [25]. That is a practical consideration worth taking seriously. It does not make having children a reliable substitute for building and maintaining relationships with other adults.

    What the Findings Add Up To

    The recurring picture is of people with broadly familiar personalities and levels of life satisfaction, organizing their lives around a different set of priorities. Autonomy, careers, leisure, and the relationship itself often receive more deliberate attention [1,2,3,5,6]. Those priorities do not tell us everything about a person, but do help explain why a couple might look at the life they have built and feel no desire to add parenthood to it. There can be relational advantages to avoiding the pressures of raising children, especially where those pressures would fall unequally on women [8,21,26,27].

    Even so, satisfaction can decline in relationships without children, too [9,10]. DINK couples can become distant, resentful, or thoroughly fed up with each other. More time together, greater flexibility, and fewer demands on your income can make life easier, but they don’t automatically make a relationship work. You still need to pay attention to each other, work through disagreements, and deal with problems rather than hoping another uninterrupted weekend will sort them out.

    When the Stigma Comes Into Therapy

    One of the most consistent findings is that people who choose not to have children are judged for that choice. Childfree adults may be regarded as less fulfilled and treated with less warmth, even when their own accounts of their lives provide no grounds for that assessment [11,12,25]. Women may face particularly persistent questioning [15]. Some of the distress around being childfree can therefore come from the exhausting business of having a choice repeatedly challenged. Other people’s disapproval is capable of causing problems all by itself.

    That matters when a DINK couple comes to therapy. They may want help with conflict, loss of intimacy, or a difficult change in their lives. A therapist who privately assumes that parenthood gives a relationship its meaning is imposing their own preferences. An ordinary disagreement can be taken as evidence of an allegedly empty life, or a wish for autonomy can be interpreted as immaturity. Once such assumptions start directing the conversation, the couple risks spending their sessions defending a decision they were perfectly comfortable with.

    Whether to have children can, of course, be discussed when one or both partners want to discuss it. Genuine disagreement deserves attention, as does a change of mind. But a therapist needs to be able to examine what is happening without treating parenthood as the desirable outcome or childfreedom as a symptom to be interpreted. A childfree couple does not need a therapist campaigning for the addition of a child.

    Sources

    [1] Bernal-Vélez, I. C., García-Villa, S., Tabares-David, A., & David-Salas, J. (2019). Consumer society, hedonism and healthy selfishness on DINK—double income no kids—couples in the city of Medellin, Colombia. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios de Familia, 11(2), 157–170. https://doi.org/10.17151/rlef.2019.11.2.8
    [2] Cervantes, M. V. Y., Casipit, L. B. P., Jacob, S. M. D., Obispo, S. Y. C., & Cortez, M. V. N. (2025). “Kailan ka magkakaanak?” Understanding the rise of the dual income and no kids (DINK) families in the Philippines. Sinaya: A Philippine Journal for Senior High School Teachers and Students, 3(2), 114–132. https://doi.org/10.59588/3027-9283.1256
    [3] Korb, A. H. (2012). Passing through Dink—A closer look at how couples in the United States make the decision to have children [Thesis, Georgia State University]. ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. https://doi.org/10.57709/2728379
    [4] Ching, D. W. C., Teoh, G. K., In, S., & Munusamy, S. (2026). A preliminary qualitative study: Exploring the lived experiences of Malaysian Chinese dual-earner married couples who choose to be childfree. Journal of Family Issues. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X261432573
    [5] Neal, J. W., & Neal, Z. P. (2021). Prevalence and characteristics of childfree adults in Michigan (USA). PLOS ONE, 16(6), Article e0252528. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252528
    [6] Stahnke, B., Cooley, M. E., & Blackstone, A. (2023). A systematic review of life satisfaction experiences among childfree adults. The Family Journal, 31(1), 60–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/10664807221104795
    [7] Shenaar-Golan, V., & Lans, O. (2023). Measuring differentiation of self to evaluate subjective well-being in women who are childfree by choice. The Family Journal, 31(2), 278–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/10664807221123552
    [8] Twenge, J. M., Campbell, W. K., & Foster, C. A. (2003). Parenthood and marital satisfaction: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Marriage and Family, 65(3), 574–583. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00574.x
    [9] Mitnick, D. M., Heyman, R. E., & Smith Slep, A. M. (2009). Changes in relationship satisfaction across the transition to parenthood: A meta-analysis. Journal of Family Psychology, 23(6), 848–852. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017004
    [10] Bogdan, I., Turliuc, M. N., & Candel, O. S. (2022). Transition to parenthood and marital satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 901362. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.901362
    [11] Ashburn-Nardo, L. (2017). Parenthood as a moral imperative? Moral outrage and the stigmatization of voluntarily childfree women and men. Sex Roles, 76(5–6), 393–401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0606-1
    [12] Neal, Z. P., & Neal, J. W. (2022). Prevalence, age of decision, and interpersonal warmth judgements of childfree adults. Scientific Reports, 12, Article 11907. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-15728-z
    [13] Yeole, S., Rele, D. K., & Lele, S. (2023). An exploratory study on the spending pattern of DINK (double income no kids) community from India. Journal of Informatics Education and Research, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.52783/jier.v3i2.226
    [14] Ye, Y. (2007). To explore the physiological resources of DINK family. Journal of Hunan First Normal College. Unverified reference: bibliographic details supplied in the original draft; no reliable record located.
    [15] Erkaya, M., & Ustunel, A. O. (2024). A qualitative study on the marital experiences of childfree couples in Turkey. International Journal of Systemic Therapy, 35(1), 80–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/2692398X.2023.2240680
    [16] Hays, J. (2025, November 3). Dual income, no kids: What we know about ‘DINKs’ in the U.S. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/11/03/dual-income-no-kids-what-we-know-about-dinks-in-the-us/
    [17] Uğur, S. B., Yasan-Ak, N., Çiçekli, A., & Tan, S. (2026). How mothers and childfree women redefine fulfillment: A comparative study of life and marital satisfaction in a pronatalist society. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 23(3), Article 349. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph23030349
    [18] Koropeckyj-Cox, T., Çopur, Z., Romano, V., & Cody-Rydzewski, S. (2018). University students’ perceptions of parents and childless or childfree couples. Journal of Family Issues, 39(1), 155–179. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X15618993
    [19] Doss, B. D., Rhoades, G. K., Stanley, S. M., & Markman, H. J. (2009). The effect of the transition to parenthood on relationship quality: An 8-year prospective study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 601–619. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013969
    [20] Shockley, K. M., Clark, M. A., Dodd, H., & King, E. B. (2021). Work-family strategies during COVID-19: Examining gender dynamics among dual-earner couples with young children. Journal of Applied Psychology, 106(1), 15–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000857
    [21] Kamp Dush, C. M., Yavorsky, J. E., & Schoppe-Sullivan, S. J. (2018). What are men doing while women perform extra unpaid labor? Leisure and specialization at the transitions to parenthood. Sex Roles, 78(11–12), 715–730. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0841-0
    [22] Orellana, L., Schnettler, B., Miranda-Zapata, E., Lobos, G., Lapo, M., Adasme-Berríos, C., & Hueche, C. (2021). Resource transmission is not reciprocal: A dyadic analysis of family support, work-life balance, and life satisfaction in dual-earner parents with adolescent children. Sex Roles, 85(1–2), 88–99. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-020-01207-0
    [23] Orellana, L., Garcia, R., Miranda-Zapata, E., & Schnettler, B. (2022). Effects of work-to-family enrichment on psychological distress and family satisfaction: A dyadic analysis in dual-earner parents. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 63(6), 634–647. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12850
    [24] Durham, W., & Braithwaite, D. O. (2009). Communication privacy management within the family planning trajectories of voluntarily child-free couples. Journal of Family Communication, 9(1), 43–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/15267430802561600
    [25] Crawford, O., McKenna-Plumley, P. E., Millar, R., & Gerlach, T. M. (2026). The social life of non-parents: A systematic review of social networks and social support among adults without children. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 43(7), 2049–2080. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075261420845
    [26] Glass, J., Simon, R. W., & Andersson, M. A. (2016). Parenthood and happiness: Effects of work-family reconciliation policies in 22 OECD countries. American Journal of Sociology, 122(3), 886–929. https://doi.org/10.1086/688892
    [27] Shockley, K. M., & Allen, T. D. (2018). It’s not what I expected: The association between dual-earner couples’ met expectations for the division of paid and family labor and well-being. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 104, 240–260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2017.11.009

  • Having Children Is Becoming a Question. Good.

    Having Children Is Becoming a Question. Good.


    Having children is a fairly enormous commitment to make because it seems to be what comes next. Some of us have looked at the job description and decided we’re happy without it. More people are choosing not to have children, although that choice is only part of the wider rise in childlessness. Others postpone parenthood until it no longer happens, struggle to find a suitable partner, or face economic insecurity and the difficulty of combining paid work with care. Worries about climate and the future add another reason to hesitate [1–6]. Across many high-income countries, people are having their first child later, and more people in successive generations remain childless. In some countries, falling birth rates are driven especially by adults without children continuing without them [1,3,5,7–9].

    The broadest agreement in the research is that parenthood now feels more costly and less compulsory. Effective contraception has made it more possible to decide whether and when to have children. Women’s education and employment, urbanization, and changing values have also altered the conditions in which that decision gets made. Individual choice carries more weight, and voluntarily remaining childless has become more acceptable [1,6,10–12]. Ask people why they don’t want children and the answers are often perfectly straightforward: they like their freedom, don’t want the work of caregiving, or can’t afford it. Some doubt they would be good parents. Others simply don’t see children fitting into the life they want [13–17]. How much more mysterious does that need to be?

    To understand the change, we can look at what prevents people from becoming parents as well as what makes some of us prefer a childfree life. Postponement and practical barriers explain part of it; differences between generations and the motives of deliberately childfree adults explain more [1,3,17]. Uncertainty about the future, climate concerns, and changing ideas about what a good life includes now also shape whether people without children intend to have a first child [5,18,19]. There is quite a lot going on behind a birth rate.

    First, can you actually make parenthood work?

    For many people, the conditions they would need to become parents feel out of reach. They may want children very much and still be unable to make the decision work. Unstable employment, difficulty finding suitable housing, changes in relationships, and weak support for families all contribute to postponing a first birth [1]. “We’ll do it when things settle down” is an understandable plan. It also depends on things eventually settling down.

    Which obstacle matters most varies between countries. In Spain and Italy, partnership instability and postponement are particularly prominent [4,20,21]. In East Asia, the expectations attached to marriage can be a problem in themselves. Young adults may avoid marriage because they see married life as incompatible with work and autonomy, while having children remains closely tied to being married [22,23]. If becoming a parent means signing up for a version of married life you don’t want, that is a considerable extra demand. In Finland, the most commonly reported reasons for not having children concern finances, relationships, and work or studies [24]. In Britain and Sweden, lacking a suitable partner is among the most prominent reasons people remain childless at later ages [7,25].

    All in all, people seem to become more responsible about whether they are fit to bring a being into their life. Stable employment increases intentions to have children, and access to housing has a strong influence too [26]. A missing partner remains a leading barrier; wanting a child doesn’t conveniently produce someone you want to raise one with [25,27]. Weak policy support encourages further delay [1,28]. Meanwhile, postponement raises the risk of eventually being unable to have children despite wanting them [29]. Waiting can be a sensible response to your circumstances and still have consequences you never chose.

    Some of us like our lives without children

    Then there are those of us who prefer being childfree. Studies of different sizes repeatedly identify freedom, autonomy, preserving a desired lifestyle, and reluctance to take on intensive caregiving as central reasons [13,14,30–32]. The word “lifestyle” can make this sound rather frivolous, as though we’re discussing a preference for a particular brand of sneakers. We’re talking about how you spend your days and how much say you have over them. That is your life, and you’re allowed to care about it.

    Money is part of the calculation, alongside the time and energy parenting takes, the sacrifices involved, and what becoming a parent would mean for your sense of yourself [15,16,21,32]. You can understand the commitment perfectly well and decide you don’t want it. Must every available responsibility be accepted? Some of us would quite like to finish the ones we already have. Women often describe motherhood as especially draining because childcare remains unequally divided even where people strongly endorse gender equality [26,33,34]. Equality sounds lovely. Who is actually doing the work? That helps explain why access to abortion and childcare, along with men’s participation in domestic work, matters more for women’s intentions to have children than for men’s [26,35]. If you expect to do more of the work, you have good reason to pay attention to the arrangements.

    Ideas about obligation are changing too. Postmaterialist values, which give greater weight to self-expression and quality of life, and individualist values are associated with weaker beliefs that people have a duty to reproduce [12,36]. Recent Finnish generations report lower ideal numbers of children, with much of that decline coming from more people who are still childless saying their ideal number is zero [37]. Zero is a perfectly intelligible answer. It doesn’t require a tragic backstory.

    And what kind of future are we offering?

    Economic insecurity now comes with broader doubts about where things are heading. People who expect the next generation to have a worse future than the present one are less likely to become parents [18]. In Sweden, declining intentions to have children since 2012 have coincided with rising uncertainty and a shift from “definitely yes” toward “probably not,” especially among younger adults and people without children [5]. When the decision concerns another person’s entire life, wondering what awaits them seems fairly reasonable.

    Climate concerns contribute to that hesitation, although they are not the main reason for most people. Some cite overpopulation and ecological strain, or worry about the quality of life a future child would have, when explaining why they want fewer children or none [38–40]. Representative research from Finland, Estonia, and Sweden finds that highly climate-concerned adults without children are less likely to intend to have them. The difference comes more from choosing no children than from wanting a smaller family [19].

    The influence of climate concerns remains moderate compared with the familiar practical obstacles. In Poland, employment and housing matter more overall, although climate prospects and abortion rights influence women’s intentions in particular groups [26]. You can be worried about the planet and unable to afford a suitable home at the same time. The concerns don’t have to take turns..

    “Choice” can be a messy word

    Historical and cross-national research consistently finds rising childlessness across recent generations [3,8,41–43]. There is strong support for several explanations operating together. In a number of countries, most adults still see parenthood as ideal, and a substantial share of childlessness follows postponement, missed timing, insecure partnerships, or other constraints [2,21,27,44]. We can welcome greater freedom to remain childfree while recognizing that some people never got the parenthood they wanted. Treating every childless person as though they made the same decision would erase quite a lot of their lives.

    Economic and partnership barriers have stronger evidence behind them than any single cultural explanation. Large reviews, national surveys, and studies following generations repeatedly identify employment, housing, partner availability, and conflict between work and family life as robust factors associated with becoming a parent [1,20,24,26,43]. Evidence for climate concerns is growing and credible, especially among people without children, but it is newer and more mixed than the evidence concerning costs, gender inequality, and postponement [19,26,45,46].

    Even the categories get awkward. Research cannot always neatly separate people who have chosen a childfree life from those who are undecided, delaying parenthood, or prevented by their circumstances from having children [10,15,47,48]. The boundary between choice and constraint can be unclear, and it can move over a lifetime [15,41,49]. “I don’t want children under these conditions” leaves room for both. It is still an answer worth taking seriously.

    The findings also differ in how firmly they are established. The rise in childlessness across generations is well supported [2,3,42,43]. There is strong evidence that economic and partnership barriers reduce entry into parenthood, and that protecting autonomy and a preferred way of life are common motives among childfree adults [13,14,16,32]. Evidence that unequal parenting burdens discourage parenthood, especially for women, is moderate [26,28,33,34]. Evidence for climate concern as a growing reason to remain childfree is somewhat weaker [19,26,38,39]. Those differences matter if we want to explain what is happening rather than pick whichever explanation makes the liveliest headline.

    Across these findings, parenthood is becoming something people assess more closely and take for granted less. Whether it happens depends increasingly on a secure relationship and financial stability, as well as whether it fits the life someone actually wants. More people are choosing against it as the costs of parenting rise and opting out becomes more legitimate. Uncertainty about the future further widens the distance between wanting children, putting them off, and deciding not to have them [5,6,41]. Having children deserves that level of consideration. So does choosing a life without them.

    And whatever your reasons for not having children, you have zero obligation to explain them to your shrink. You don’t owe us a discussion of why you didn’t get a cat, a dog, a hamster, a snake, a bird, or a giraffe either. I do hope you didn’t get all of those. If you did, please schedule a session.

    References

    [1] Mills, M., Rindfuss, R. R., McDonald, P., te Velde, E., & ESHRE Reproduction and Society Task Force. (2011). Why do people postpone parenthood? Reasons and social policy incentives. Human Reproduction Update, 17(6), 848–860. https://doi.org/10.1093/humupd/dmr026

    [2] Beaujouan, E., & Berghammer, C. (2019). The gap between lifetime fertility intentions and completed fertility in Europe and the United States: A cohort approach. Population Research and Policy Review, 38(4), 507–535. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09516-3

    [3] Rowland, D. T. (2007). Historical trends in childlessness. Journal of Family Issues, 28(10), 1311–1337. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X07303823

    [4] Fiori, F., Rinesi, F., & Graham, E. (2017). Choosing to remain childless? A comparative study of fertility intentions among women and men in Italy and Britain. European Journal of Population, 33(3), 319–350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-016-9404-2

    [5] Lai, W., Neyer, G., & Andersson, G. (2026). Not only births, but also intentions: The decline of fertility intentions and increasing uncertainties in Sweden, 2012–2021. Comparative Population Studies, 51, 73–90. https://doi.org/10.12765/CPoS-2026-04

    [6] Aitken, R. J. (2024). Population decline: Where demography, social science, and biology intersect. Reproduction, 168(1), Article e240070. https://doi.org/10.1530/REP-24-0070

    [7] Berrington, A. (2017). Childlessness in the UK. In M. Kreyenfeld & D. Konietzka (Eds.), Childlessness in Europe: Contexts, causes, and consequences (pp. 57–76). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44667-7_3

    [8] Wang, Y., Teerawichitchainan, B., & Ho, C. (2024). Diverse pathways to permanent childlessness in Singapore: A latent class analysis. Advances in Life Course Research, 61, Article 100628. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2024.100628

    [9] Rybińska, A. (2021). Trends in intentions to remain childless in the United States. Population Research and Policy Review, 40(4), 661–672. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-020-09604-9

    [10] Kelly, M. (2010). Women’s voluntary childlessness: A radical rejection of motherhood? Women’s Studies Quarterly, 37(3/4), 157–172. https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.0.0164

    [11] Gillespie, R. (2003). Childfree and feminine: Understanding the gender identity of voluntarily childless women. Gender & Society, 17(1), 122–136. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243202238982

    [12] Anisin, A. (2025). Postmaterialism and voluntary childlessness. Journal of Family Studies, 31(3), 464–484. https://doi.org/10.1080/13229400.2025.2450030

    [13] Glass, S., & Fraley, R. C. (2026). Attachment orientations predict the likelihood of choosing to be childfree and the reasons for not wanting children. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 52(7), 1766–1780. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251322842

    [14] Miettinen, A. (2010). Voluntary or involuntary childlessness? Socio-demographic factors and childlessness intentions among childless Finnish men and women aged 25–44. Finnish Yearbook of Population Research, 45, 5–24. https://doi.org/10.23979/fypr.45051

    [15] Mynarska, M., & Rytel, J. (2020). Fertility desires of childless Poles: Which childbearing motives matter for men and women? Journal of Family Issues, 41(1), 7–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X19868257

    [16] Parlak, S., & Tekin, I. (2020). A phenomenological study on voluntarily childless women. Psikoloji Çalışmaları / Studies in Psychology, 40(1), 161–186. https://doi.org/10.26650/SP2019-0034

    [17] Park, K. (2005). Choosing childlessness: Weber’s typology of action and motives of the voluntarily childless. Sociological Inquiry, 75(3), 372–402. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2005.00127.x

    [18] Ivanova, K., & Balbo, N. (2024). Societal pessimism and the transition to parenthood: A future too bleak to have children? Population and Development Review, 50(2), 323–342. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12620

    [19] Bastianelli, E. (2025). Climate change worries and fertility intentions: Insights from three EU countries. Journal of Marriage and Family, 87(2), 659–675. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.13048

    [20] Lozano, M., Vidal, S., & Adserà, A. (2026). Pathways to childlessness in Spain: Exploring the intersection of partnership and employment trajectories. Population Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2026.2682465

    [21] Tanturri, M. L., & Mencarini, L. (2008). Childless or childfree? Paths to voluntary childlessness in Italy. Population and Development Review, 34(1), 51–77. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2008.00205.x

    [22] Bumpass, L. L., Rindfuss, R. R., Choe, M. K., & Tsuya, N. O. (2009). The institutional context of low fertility: The case of Japan. Asian Population Studies, 5(3), 215–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441730903351479

    [23] Choi, K. H., & Qian, Y. (2023). The rise of the childless single in South Korea. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 15(3), 526–541. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12507

    [24] Lehtoranta, L., Klemetti, R., Majlander, S., Heino, A., Gissler, M., & Lundqvist, A. (2023). Wishes and obstacles to having children – Results from the nationwide Healthy Finland survey [Conference abstract]. European Journal of Public Health, 33(Suppl. 2), Article ckad160.1538. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckad160.1538

    [25] Schytt, E., Nilsen, A. B. V., & Bernhardt, E. (2014). Still childless at the age of 28 to 40 years: A cross-sectional study of Swedish women’s and men’s reproductive intentions. Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare, 5(1), 23–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.srhc.2013.11.001

    [26] Kurowska, A., Matysiak, A., & Grabowska, M. (2026). Beyond usual suspects: Revisiting barriers to childbearing decisions in a low fertility setting. Population and Development Review, 52(1), 94–134. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.70046

    [27] Rotkirch, A., & Miettinen, A. (2017). Childlessness in Finland. In M. Kreyenfeld & D. Konietzka (Eds.), Childlessness in Europe: Contexts, causes, and consequences (pp. 139–158). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44667-7_7

    [28] Minello, A., & Russo, C. (2025). The good parent: Emerging themes and gender convergence in narrating fertility choices. Family Relations, 74(4), 1747–1766. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.13185

    [29] Schmidt, L., Sobotka, T., Bentzen, J. G., Nyboe Andersen, A., & ESHRE Reproduction and Society Task Force. (2012). Demographic and medical consequences of the postponement of parenthood. Human Reproduction Update, 18(1), 29–43. https://doi.org/10.1093/humupd/dmr040

    [30] Carmichael, G. A., & Whittaker, A. (2007). Choice and circumstance: Qualitative insights into contemporary childlessness in Australia. European Journal of Population, 23(2), 111–143. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-006-9112-4

    [31] Smith, I., Knight, T., Fletcher, R., & Macdonald, J. A. (2020). When men choose to be childless: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 37(1), 325–344. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407519864444

    [32] Ciesielski, P., & Bakiera, L. (2024). Childfreeness in Poland – group description and reasons behind not wanting to have children. Current Psychology, 43(39), 30644–30654. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06461-z

    [33] Símonardóttir, S. (2024). “Unless I could be like the typical dad”: Exploring parenthood through the perspective of the voluntarily childfree. Acta Sociologica, 67(4), 463–477. https://doi.org/10.1177/00016993241260608

    [34] Erkaya, M., & Ustunel, A. O. (2024). A qualitative study on the marital experiences of childfree couples in Turkey. International Journal of Systemic Therapy, 35(1), 80–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/2692398X.2023.2240680

    [35] Rezaei, Z., Sharif-Nia, H., Gholamnia-Shirvani, Z., Behmanesh, F., & Ahmadzadeh Tori, N. (2026). Personal, social, and economic determinants of voluntary single-childedness and childlessness among urban couples in Babol, Iran: A cross-sectional study. International Journal of Reproductive BioMedicine, 24(2), 145–156. https://doi.org/10.18502/ijrm.v24i2.21054

    [36] Erfani, A., Jahanbakhsh, R., & Kalantari, A. (2020). Fardgerāyi va niyāt-e bārvari [Individualism and fertility intentions]. Journal of Population Association of Iran, 15(29), 239–264. https://doi.org/10.22034/jpai.2020.243925

    [37] Savelieva, K., Nitsche, N., Berg, V., Miettinen, A., Rotkirch, A., & Jokela, M. (2021). Birth cohort changes in fertility ideals: Evidence from repeated cross-sectional surveys in Finland (MPIDR Working Paper No. WP 2021-010). Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. https://doi.org/10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2021-010

    [38] Helm, S., Kemper, J. A., & White, S. K. (2021). No future, no kids–no kids, no future? An exploration of motivations to remain childfree in times of climate change. Population and Environment, 43(1), 108–129. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-021-00379-5

    [39] Blanton, N. (2025). “It’s all up in the air”: Reproductive decision-making in a changing climate. Sociological Spectrum, 45(5), 274–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/02732173.2025.2507363

    [40] Miller, A., Ernst, E., Curry, M., & Valdez, A. (2025). In-conceivable futures: Climate change and reproductive decision making among childfree North Americans. Social Currents, 12(3), 231–250. https://doi.org/10.1177/23294965241300718

    [41] Albertini, M., & Brini, E. (2021). I’ve changed my mind. The intentions to be childless, their stability and realisation. European Societies, 23(1), 119–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2020.1764997

    [42] Leocádio, V. A., Verona, A. P., & de Miranda-Ribeiro, A. (2022). Contributions of sociodemographic changes to the increase in permanent childlessness in Brazil: A cohort decomposition analysis. Population Research and Policy Review, 41(5), 1951–1973. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-022-09725-3

    [43] Hayford, S. R. (2013). Marriage (still) matters: The contribution of demographic change to trends in childlessness in the United States. Demography, 50(5), 1641–1661. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-013-0215-3

    [44] Ravanera, Z. R., & Beaujot, R. (2014). Childlessness of men in Canada: Result of a waiting game in a changing family context. Canadian Studies in Population, 41(1–2), 38–60. https://doi.org/10.25336/P6J02Q

    [45] Whyman, T. (2024). Natalism, natality, and the climate crisis: An Arendtian argument against ‘green’ anti-natalism. The Journal of Value Inquiry. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-024-09994-5

    [46] Szalma, I., & Szczuka, B. J. (2025). Reproductive choices and climate change in a pronatalist context. East European Politics and Societies, 39(2), 332–352. https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254241229728

    [47] Gouni, O., Jarašiūnaitė-Fedosejeva, G., Kömürcü Akik, B., Holopainen, A., & Calleja-Agius, J. (2022). Childlessness: Concept analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(3), Article 1464. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031464

    [48] Neal, J. W., & Neal, Z. P. (2025). Tracking types of non-parents in the United States. Journal of Marriage and Family, 87(4), 1747–1762. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.13097

    [49] Graham, M., Hill, E., Shelly, J., & Taket, A. (2013). Why are childless women childless? Findings from an exploratory study in Victoria, Australia. Journal of Social Inclusion, 4(1), 70–89. https://doi.org/10.36251/josi63

  • When Your Therapist Thinks Being Childfree Is the Problem

    When Your Therapist Thinks Being Childfree Is the Problem

    Imagine booking an appointment because you’re starting to feel like shit after almost every conversation with your partner. They make jokes at your expense and accuse you of being oversensitive when you object; lately, you’ve caught yourself rehearsing perfectly ordinary sentences before saying them. Somewhere in the first session, your therapist asks about children, and when you explain that you’re childfree, and a new possibility suddenly interests them: perhaps your relationship has lacked the shared purpose that a family would provide. By the end of the hour, you’re defending your decision against parenthood while your partner’s behavior has disappeared from the discussion. Quite a result for someone who didn’t even attend.

    And you might entertain their suggestion for longer than you should. The person offering it has qualifications, presumably knows something you don’t, and has met you at a moment when your confidence in your own judgment is hardly magnificent. Perhaps there really is something you’ve overlooked. Asking about children is ordinary enough, after all, although the route from “I don’t want any” to “that explains why your relationship is miserable” deserves a few questions of its own. The fact that you need help doesn’t make every theory offered about you worth considering.

    When an assumption becomes an interpretation

    The unexamined assumption underneath the leap is that a complete adult life eventually includes parenthood, and anyone who declines must have misunderstood the assignment. You’ve probably met the person who assures you that you’ll understand real love once you have children, apparently writing off every attachment you’ve managed so far. The term for this is pronatalism and can enter the consulting room through theories that treat parenthood as a developmental achievement. As psychotherapist Emma Palmer discusses, some older accounts of women’s development gave motherhood a central place in psychological maturity. A therapist working from those assumptions may start wondering what went wrong before asking what went right.

    In psychology, parenthood has traditionally been treated as a normal stage of development, leaving the choice not to have children open to interpretations of unresolved conflict or damage from the past. When those assumptions enter the consulting room, your choice can become something a clinician mistakenly thinks you need to work on.

    You can see how judgments about a proper life become judgments about happiness in an experiment by psychologist Leslie Ashburn-Nardo. In the study, 197 university students evaluated a fictional married adult who had chosen to have either no children or two. The childfree adults were judged less psychologically fulfilled and elicited greater moral outrage. Nobody had measured these fictional people’s happiness, obviously; what the experiment captured was how observers imagined it. When someone confidently predicts that you’re unfulfilled, then, it’s worth asking how much they know about your experience and how much they’re supplying from their expectations.

    What happens when you ask childfree people?

    Researchers who ask childfree people about their lives have rather more relevant information. In a 2021 study of 981 Michigan adults, Jennifer Watling Neal and Zachary Neal found no statistically significant differences in life satisfaction between childfree adults and the other parental-status groups after accounting for demographic differences. Their study also did something that sounds elementary but matters enormously: it distinguished people who didn’t want children from people who had wanted them but couldn’t have them. Counting everybody with zero children together obscures whether that situation represents a disappointment, a temporary arrangement, or exactly the life someone wants.

    Of course, you’re entitled to be childfree and unhappy. You can make a reproductive decision that suits you beautifully and still have a dreadful relationship, which is why arriving at therapy shouldn’t require a preliminary demonstration that your life choices have produced uninterrupted contentment. If having no children feels like a loss, there’s something to explore; if it doesn’t, an assumption of reproductive grief supplies you with an imaginary disappointment while the actual difficulty waits. The therapist still needs to establish what is troubling you and why their proposed explanation fits. You shouldn’t have to bring a happiness study to get back to your partner’s habit of humiliating you over dinner.

    Whose wishes is the treatment serving?

    There is another distinction worth keeping clear: being unhappy about your life and being worn down by other people’s objections to it. Suppose your parent keeps calling you selfish for refusing to give them grandchildren. You love them, so their disapproval hurts, even though your decision is settled. You may dread visiting because you know the subject will return before you’ve finished your coffee. By the time you bring this to therapy, there’s plenty to discuss about the relationship and what happens to you in it. A suppressed wish for parenthood would need evidence beyond the fact that these encounters upset you.

    If the therapist responds by encouraging you to reconsider having children, your parent’s campaign has acquired a professional ally. You came looking for help with a painful demand and find yourself discussing whether you should satisfy it, perhaps because the therapist finds your parent’s wish so understandable that your refusal begins to seem like the problem. Understanding another person’s expectations doesn’t require fulfilling them, and being upset by criticism doesn’t mean the criticism has uncovered a truth you were avoiding. Producing another person is a fairly substantial concession to make for a calmerThanksgiving.

    The interpretation you’re not allowed to disagree with

    The conversation becomes especially difficult when every attempt to clarify your position confirms the therapist’s interpretation. You explain that you’ve considered parenthood carefully and don’t want it, which is described as rigidity; when you object, the objection becomes resistance. You could spend the hour examining yourself with almost indecent thoroughness and still fail to qualify as reflective, because the only acceptable discovery is that the therapist was right. Under those conditions, you have very little room and even the possibility that you know something about yourself becomes suspicious.

    I’m a psychoanalyst, so I’m interested in the possibility that people misunderstand their own motives. That includes the person offering the interpretation. A claim about your unconscious needs support. Sometimes an interpretation hurts because you recognize something you’ve been avoiding. But other times it hurts because a person you hoped would understand you is insisting on an account that feels alien. The discomfort itself settles nothing. You should be able to ask how the therapist reached their conclusion and receive an explanation grounded in what you’ve said or done, with room to consider what might make that explanation mistaken.

    Eventually, you may begin editing what you say. You don’t mention that lonely evening because you can already imagine where that will lead, and you become careful about admitting doubts in your relationship lest they reappear as evidence of your inability to commit. You may even catch yourself presenting a suspiciously cheerful account of being childfree, despite having booked the appointment precisely because you wanted somewhere to speak honestly. Now you’re managing the therapist’s impression of you as well as whatever brought you into treatment. It’s exhausting enough doing this with relatives; paying someone for the opportunity adds a particular insult.

    A basic requirement of the job

    A therapist’s understanding of a healthy adult life should accommodate parenthood and childfreedom on equal terms, without awarding extra points for reproduction. They can ask whether you want children, since having none doesn’t tell them whether that is a choice; once you’ve explained that you’re childfree, however, they have their answer. You owe no explanation of how you arrived at that decision, and you shouldn’t have to request that it stop being treated as unfinished business. Unless you choose to discuss it, the subject is closed. You have already supplied the information; persuading your therapist to accept it should never become part of your treatment.

    If a therapist makes a pronatalist assumption, the mistake has already happened; you don’t have to object repeatedly before it qualifies as one. They should acknowledge it and correct it immediately. Examining the bias that produced it is their professional responsibility, and you have no obligation to spend your sessions helping them develop a less provincial understanding of adulthood, or to give them further chances to get this right. You came for help with a relationship in which you’re being belittled. That already provides plenty to discuss, and your therapist should be able to get on with the work without adding a baby to the mess.

  • Why I Work With Childfree Freethinkers

    Why I Work With Childfree Freethinkers

    You’ve probably noticed how an ordinary conversation can acquire a surprising number of participants when you mention that you don’t have children. Some want your reasons, others predict your future, and someone who met you eleven minutes ago has already established that you would make a wonderful parent. Mention that you’re also an atheist, with zero interest in astrology or messages from the universe, and you’ll find yourself defending a second ordinary aspect of your life. You’ll end up spending the evening explaining yourself, all because of something you mentioned in passing between ordering dinner and asking for the wine. But over dinner, you can roll your eyes and eventually change the subject. In a consulting room, the same bullshit can become your treatment plan.

    You might reasonably expect never to have that conversation with a psychotherapist at all. But people before you have been advised to trust the universe or Jesus. Worse, your decision to remain childfree may get that solemn nod, complete with a tilted head and widened eyes, and get promoted to your most urgent symptom. Now you’re defending the parts of your life you were perfectly happy with, while the problem you came to discuss is put on hold.

    Being childfree and nonbelieving is a particularly inconvenient combination for anyone convinced that a proper life requires children and a higher power. Parenthood and religion supply comforting answers to questions about life and death. When neither applies to you, people can become remarkably concerned about where you’re supposed to find meaning, how you’ll be dying, and how you’ll live. The problem becomes especially unsettling when someone else’s inability to imagine your life becomes a professional opinion about your mental health. Being childfree and atheist can come with a peculiar requirement to remain relentlessly delighted or these choices become the universal suspects for every one of your difficulties. I’ve chosen to specialize in psychoanalysis for childfree freethinkers because you should be able to get help with what troubles you without being gaslit toward parenthood or a spiritual awakening.

    When childfreedom explains everything

    The underlying problem is the assumption that parenthood is the standard against which an adult life should be judged. Psychoanalysis has some history to answer for here. Some of our traditions treated motherhood as the destination of healthy female development, which meant that a woman who didn’t want children presented an awkward problem for the theory. Conveniently, the theory could be preserved by deciding that the problem was with her. Once you accept that explanation, any difficulty she brings can become further evidence of what she is missing, while the possibility that her childfreedom has nothing to do with it unnoticeably disappears.

    In a 2006 study, Debra Mollen documented experiences of women having their normality questioned, including by therapists. Her recommendations included accepting childfree women as normal; apparently, that needed putting in print. You can see why it matters when wanting children is allowed to stand as a preference while not wanting them requires supporting documentation. An unhappy childhood becomes an explanation, and a reasonably happy one can be searched until a sufficiently unfortunate memory turns up. Your past influences your preferences, just as it influences a parent’s. Having a history doesn’t turn a preference into a disease.

    The same assumption distorts how the rest of your life is understood. Being childfree can matter to a difficulty without being the difficulty itself: it may affect the expectations placed on you or the relationships through which you receive support. If a friendship changes after your friend has children, for example, you may miss the ease of being available to each other. Having a baby yourself would be a remarkably elaborate solution to wanting dinner with someone you love. The useful question concerns the loss you are describing and what it means in your circumstances, rather than whether parenthood would bring you back into line.

    That distinction applies just as much when childfreedom has no apparent bearing on what brings you to therapy. A period of depression doesn’t prove that you need children, any more than a parent’s depression proves they should never have had them. You can have made choices that suit you and still be struggling. Nor do you owe anyone an extraordinary life as compensation: there is no requirement to leave a masterpiece where a family tree might otherwise have been, or to become impressive enough that the relatives finally shut up. Your difficulties deserve attention, and the pleasures of your life deserve to count without first proving that you were right not to become a parent.

    The assumption that you need spirituality

    Secular clients have their own reasons to wonder what assumptions they’ll encounter. A 2025 U.S. study of 120 nonreligious therapy clients found that 45 percent reported at least one instance of what the researchers classified as a microaggression against nonreligious people, including assumptions that they held religious beliefs. I personally share this experience. It weakens the therapeutic relationship at least. It is difficult to speak candidly when you’re busy calculating what your therapist might make of your nonbelief, or whether mentioning it will send the conversation somewhere you’d rather not go. Wanting to know where your therapist stands is a reasonable response to that uncertainty.

    I’m an atheist, and I have no wish to smuggle the supernatural back into the room under a more fashionable name. Replacing god with the universe doesn’t make a supernatural explanation any more convincing. If someone tells you that your suffering was sent to teach you a lesson, you are entitled to wonder who approved the curriculum, and whether you can withdraw. You can want explanations grounded in biological laws of life without having your skepticism interpreted as a failure to be open. An approach can take your feelings seriously while remaining entirely uninterested in what the cosmos or e deity might be trying to tell you.

    When someone dies, the same need for wishful thinking becomes even less amusing. You may find the finality unbearable while remaining quite certain that an afterlife is a fantasy. Telling you that you’ll meet again asks you to accept a claim you don’t believe in order to receive the comfort being offered. You are entitled to someone who can acknowledge the loss on the terms in which you experience it, including the unfinished conversation for which you don’t expect another chance. Having to explain that position becomes an absolutely excessive burden at a time when life already requires considerable effort.

    The point of specializing

    My reason for specializing is to make this understanding part of the starting point. It lets me approach your difficulties in the context of the life you’re actually living, with some familiarity with the pressures you may face and no expectation that becoming a parent or acquiring a faith would put things right. Those difficulties may be closely connected to your childfreedom and nonbelief, or have nothing to do with them. Either way, you should be able to seek help without having to demonstrate that your entire life is justified before we can take its particular problems seriously.

    In regular online psychoanalytic sessions, we work on the concerns that bring you and the patterns that keep them going. We pay attention to what you say and what becomes difficult to say, including reactions you may not yet understand, and consider how your experiences have shaped the way you respond now. Questions and interpretations help us examine what keeps happening, with the aim of making changes possible. Your childfreedom and nonbelief provide some of the context; the work concerns the difficulties you want help with and the life you want to lead.

  • Childfree, Apparently a Cause for Concern

    Childfree, Apparently a Cause for Concern

    Tell someone you don’t want children and you may accidentally have requested a psychological assessment. Perhaps you’re afraid of responsibility. Perhaps your childhood needs investigating. Perhaps you haven’t met the right person, whose reproductive enthusiasm will apparently overwrite your personality. Somewhere in this conversation, someone who has known you for eleven minutes becomes very confident about what will make you happy at sixty. You were discussing your plans for the weekend and suddenly they are supervising your life.

    Underneath these exchanges sits the persistent assumption that wanting children is self-explanatory and not wanting them requires an explanation, preferably one that reveals something wrong with you. You might even get gaslit into wanting to know what research on childfree adults has to say about it. Do people who don’t want children differ psychologically from people who do? Are we looking at a distinctive personality, a different set of priorities, or a collection of perfectly ordinary people whose reproductive decisions have upset the seating plan? The findings give considerably less reason for concern than the unsolicited advice would suggest.

    First, Are We Even Studying the Same People?

    Before getting into them, though, we need to distinguish people who don’t want children from people who wanted them and couldn’t have them. Both may appear under “no children” on a questionnaire, but that shared answer tells us very little about their experience. Someone grieving a hoped-for family and someone delighted never to attend a school parents’ evening are not describing the same life. Research that combines them can blur precisely the difference we need to understand: whether someone’s circumstances correspond to what they wanted. The literature repeatedly identifies this distinction as essential to interpreting findings about well-being [1,2].

    Once we make that distinction, the fantastic story of the secretly miserable childfree adult becomes harder to sustain. Studies find no meaningful differences in life satisfaction between childfree adults and parents, or other groups of nonparents [3]. Treating eventual misery as the predictable consequence of declining parenthood is far of, just like establishing that childfree people are happier, wiser, or better at being alive. You can be thoroughly pleased about not having children and thoroughly displeased with your job, your relationship, or your own behavior last Monday. A reproductive decision cannot organize the rest of your psychology for you. Equally, a miserable week doesn’t expose your childfree life as a terrible mistake. Parents are generally allowed to have a bad days without someone suggesting that the existence of their children explains it. The same courtesy would be lovely.

    A Personality Type? Hold the Matching Jackets

    Personality findings are more mixed than a neat “childfree personality” profile would suggest. Research shows that childfree respondents score higher on independence and lower on agreeableness and extraversion than parents or people who wanted children [4]. That is interesting, although it leaves the direction of the relationship unresolved: these results don’t show that choosing a childfree life makes you independent, or that independence necessarily leads you away from parenthood. After demographic adjustments, no significant personality differences between childfree adults and parents remain, though; the only difference persisting is the slightly lower agreeableness among childfree adults compared with people planning to become parents. So sadly, however convenient that would be for writing a punchy article, sharing a decision about parenthood does not give us a shared personality. We could nevertheless commission matching jackets for the fiercely independent, gloriously disagreeable childfree population [3].

    Your Decision, Their Moral Outrage

    Where the research does get more revealing is in how people respond to that decision. If you ask people to evaluate a married adult described as having chosen either no children or two children, the childfree adults elicits moral outrage and are judged less fulfilled. This applies to both male and female targets [5]. Notice what is being measured: other people’s judgments about someone’s fulfillment. Nobody needs to establish that these fictional childfree people are spending their evenings weeping into decorative cushions, it’s simply assumed that childfree adults are less fulfilled. The moral outrage is unfounded: disliking someone’s preference is one thing; responding as though they have failed an obligation is another. Research shows that parenthood can function as a moral expectation, making refusal look like a breach of duty. It offers an confirmation of the experience in which your explanation is heard and rejected because you are apparently not entitled to want that.

    Apparently, Your Future Has Already Been Decided

    Then comes the future: You’ll regret it. You’ll be lonely. Who will look after you? Research on regret makes an important distinction between people who chose not to have children and those who wanted them. Voluntarily childless women report greater well-being, more autonomy, and a stronger sense of being able to manage their lives than involuntarily childless women. They were also not likely to report child-related regret [1]. The social setting also matters. A study of 24,195 adults over forty across 24 European countries found that the association between childlessness and poorer psychological well-being varied between countries, particularly among women. The disadvantage was smaller in countries where attitudes toward childlessness were more accepting and social contact was more common [6]. This study examined childlessness broadly, however, so its findings cannot be attributed specifically to childfree people.

    A Final Note: You also Don’t Owe Anyone an Extraordinary Life

    The research gives us little reason to treat a childfree life as inherently less fulfilling. My additional note is that you also shouldn’t have to prove its value by becoming exceptionally accomplished, permanently available to your friends, or impressively useful to society. You can care for people without becoming a parent, but you shouldn’t have to submit a portfolio of alternative caring activities before your decision is accepted. The same goes for enjoyment. You do not owe anyone evidence of a sufficiently fabulous life. If you spend a Saturday doing laundry and watching something mediocre, you have not squandered your freedom. You are allowed an ordinary life, including its less photogenic uses of an afternoon.

    That freedom from having to justify yourself matters in psychoanalysis, too. Your decision about children can be explored, but only with the same neutrality as other consequential choices and zero quiet appointments of parenthood as the correct outcome. You may have mixed feelings about having children, feel pressure from your family, or want to understand how you approach commitment and independence in other parts of your life. Or you may be perfectly fine about not wanting children and prefer to discuss something else. You don’t want children. It would be lovely if that could occasionally be the least interesting thing about you.

    Sources

    [1] Jeffries, S., & Konnert, C. (2002). Regret and psychological well-being among voluntarily and involuntarily childless women and mothers. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 54, 89–106. https://doi.org/10.2190/J08N-VBVG-6PXM-0TTN

    [2] Stahnke, B., Cooley, M. E., & Blackstone, A. (2022). A systematic review of life satisfaction experiences among childfree adults. The Family Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/10664807221104795

    [3] Watling Neal, J., & Neal, Z. P. (2021). Prevalence and characteristics of childfree adults in Michigan (USA). PLOS ONE, 16(6), e0252528. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252528

    [4] Avison, M., & Furnham, A. (2015). Personality and voluntary childlessness. Journal of Population Research, 32, 45–67. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-014-9140-6

    [5] Ashburn-Nardo, L. (2017). Parenthood as a moral imperative? Moral outrage and the stigmatization of voluntarily childfree women and men. Sex Roles, 76, 393–401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0606-1

    [6] Huijts, T., Kraaykamp, G., & Subramanian, S. V. (2013). Childlessness and psychological well-being in context: A multilevel study on 24 European countries. European Sociological Review, 29, 32–47. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcr037

    [7] Teerawichitchainan, B., Kim, D., & Ho, C. (2024). Childlessness, social network profiles in midlife and late adulthood, and their implications for subjective well-being. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 79. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbae055

Powered by CookieAdmin