No Kidding: The Childfree Movement Hits Close To Home …

r/childfreeis one of the fastest growing communities on Reddit and it's for people who do NOT want children. They don't want to be told why they should have them, how much they'll regret it if they don't, and how "selfish" they are for not "contributing to society." This choice is becoming more common, yet it's still questioned ferociously. We hear from some of these people and explore how this Reddit community offers support when friends and family don't.Thanks to u/cabbagesandkings14 for this week's artwork. It's called "Willow & Roxas."

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This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.Lavina Howard: I am a 34 year old Caucasian female. I grew up in a rural town in the Pacific Northwest. At a very young age, I did decide that I did not want to have children.

Summer: Hi, my name is Summer. Im from Kenya. And I'm childfree, which is very odd for this society that Ive grown up in.

Lavina: Since I was 18, I've been trying to have my tubes tied to no avail.

Summer: Society will always judge you anyway. Just do whatever you want. That's what I say anyway.

Lavina: And watching all of my friends have children, now I can see how exhausted they are financially, emotionally, how depleted their relationships are, because it's so difficult for them to be able to be a part of a partnership as well as try to raise these tiny humans.

Airon: My name is Airon. I'm from Austin. I'm 33, single and I work in tech. My favorite never-have-I-ever answer is I've never changed a diaper and I plan on keeping it that way.

(music plays)

Ben Brock Johnson: My name is Ben, I live in Massachusetts, Im pretty old but I look amazing. I am married and I have twins who are two and a half years old. My favorite never-have-I-ever answer is that I never have calculated the number of diapers I have changed. And I planned on keeping it that way up until this episode but I couldnt resist. I have changed, Amory, I believe, in the ballpark of 3 to 4 thousand diapeys.

Amory Sivertson: Okay, my name is Amory, Im not as old as Ben, I also live in Massachusetts. I have changed some diapers, like anyone else who grew up babysitting. But I honestly dont know if there are more in my future, because I dont know for sure if kids are in my future. I might end up childfree.

(music plays)

Ben: Amory, do you remember when we first started talking about making an episode that involved the childfree community on Reddit?

Amory: Yeah and I specifically remember seeing that community for the first time. Because it felt like I had entered another dimension. Or like, I was walking into a speakeasy where people were doing things and talking about things that I didnt think you could talk about.

Ben: But you know I showed it to you, right? You remember that part of it?

Amory: Yes I remember.

Ben: And Im the dad!

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: So you know, I just want to say that.

Amory: Well, if you are a Redditor, whether you have kids now or not, you may have stumbled upon the childfree community yourself. Because it has been exploding on Reddit. In just the last year or so, the group has doubled in size, from 300-thousand members to more than 700-thousand.

Ben: There are a few reasons for this. People who might have considered having kids in the past are looking at climate change and thinking they dont want to subject their kids to environmental destruction or take part in environmental destruction by having kids.

News reporter: The UN warns we only have until 2030 to keep global warming below a point where entire ecosystems will be lost.

Amory: Also money. Some estimates put the cost of having and raising a kid in middle class America at a quarter of a million dollars, without money for college.

News reporter: When adjusted for inflation, the cost of raising a child born in 2012 is 23% higher than for a child born in 1960.

Ben: But theres also this kind of long arc of history thing happening, too where women in particular have more and more freedom, and interest, in pursuing things other than bearing and raising children.

Amory: And theres an awakening happening about the culture of pressure around having kids in our society. And childfree is a part of that awakening.

Ben: I want to say that I think were a good duo to tackle this one, Amory. Because Im sympathetic to people who dont want kids, and I respect their point of view. But Im also a dad who is maybe a little skeptical of some parts of the childfree thing. And you are a fence sitter.

Amory: Another piece of lingo around childfree. A person who is on the fence about having kids. But yeah, I think we got this.

Ben: We got this!

Amory: Todays episode

Ben and Amory: Free to be childfree!

Ben: I'm Ben Brock Johnson

Amory: I'm Amory Sivertson and your'e listening to Endless Thread.

Ben: The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit.

Amory: We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. We tapped into our own childlike energy when we greeted Amy.

Ben: Amy!

Amy Blackstone: Yes.

Ben: It's Benny!

Amy: Hello.

Ben: Its Ben Johnson and Amory.

Amory: And Amory. Hi!

Ben: How are you?

Amy: Im well, how are you guys?

Ben: We're good.

Ben: Amy was well, but hungry.

Amory: Im sorry you haven't had lunch yet. That sounds rough.

Amy: Oh, no, that's okay.

Ben: Maybe if you had progeny, they would have served you some lunch by now.

Amy: Right? I know, one of many reasons I made such a huge mistake.

Ben: For the record, part of why we appreciated talking with Amy is precisely because she can have a sense of humor and balance when it comes to this decision.

Amory: Amy Blackstone is a sociology professor at the University of Maine. And, shes childfree. But thats not how she thought things would turn out.

Amy: If you asked me, I had a plan. When I was 10 or 11, I knew that I was going to start having children when I was 20. I would have two kids, a boy and a girl, and I would be the cool mom who picked my kids up at school and, you know, showed up with Capri Suns and in my leg warmers and mini skirt, this was the 80 so. I had this real vision.

Ben: Fast-forward a decade and a half, from the kids drink era of Capri Sun to the 1990s, aka the brief but glorious rule of the drink Sunny Delight. Amy had married her high school sweetheart, she had a PhD, a fulfilling career, and no children. Yet?

Amy: By the time I hit my mid 30s and was still answering with the, I'm too young, I'm not interested yet. Maybe later, I realized maybe something else is going on. Maybe I don't want to have kids! And that was the point at which I really started thinking more deeply about parenthood as a choice.

Ben: So Amy did what you might expect a doctor of sociology to do, she started looking into the topic.

Amy: I went to find research to sort of answer that question? Of whats wrong with me? Why am I not feeling that maternal instinct? And I discovered there was less sociological work on the experience of being childfree and on the process by which people make this decision than I expected to find.

Amory: Amy started doing her own research. And she and her husband Lance started a blog called Were {not} having a baby! They share research, rants, memes, and stories including the one about how they came out as childfree to Amys family.

Ben: A lot of childfree people use that expression, by the way. Amy says its not intended to take away from the LGBTQ experience of coming out, its meant to draw parallels between the ways in which people push back against what mainstream society sees as normal and natural and appropriate. For Amy, her coming out, took even her by surprise.

Amy: Lance and I were, happened to be hosting my nephew's first year birthday. And at his birthday party, my sister asked, "So when are you and Lance going to give Josh a cousin?" And like I just had this very visceral reaction to that question. And, you know, had been thinking for a while at this point that I didn't want to be a mother and felt uncomfortable in that place. And so when my sister asked this question, I just blurted out Never! And the whole room just sort of went silent.

Ben: Amy says this was a really uncomfortable moment, and it felt like an outsized reaction. But it felt right. So it was freeing to declare loudly that she really was not going to have kids.

Amory: Amy declared her decision even louder this year when she published a book on the topic. Its called Childfree by Choice. And probably the first step in understanding what it means to be childfree, is understanding what the term childfree means.

Amy: I chose to use that term. And, you know, the other term that people talk about is childless or voluntarily childless. And for many childfree people, the term childless doesn't accurately or adequately represent their experience. It's putting the emphasis on a thing that we don't have because we've chosen not to have it.

Ben: Yeah it suggests incomplete.

Amy: Right! Right.

Ben: Opting out of having kids isn't new. But the concept of it being a movement or a political choice childfree, voluntarily childless, whatever you call it seems to be growing. And the conversation about it in more recent years can probably be traced back to a couple of movements in the 1960s and 70s. First up, the second-wave feminist movement, which is connected to the FDA approving the birth control pill in 1960. Also, Roe v. Wade which came 13 years later, legalizing abortion. These two landmark events that gave people more control than ever before in the decisions about parenthood.

Amy: We're all better off when women have equal access to health care, to the workplace, to education, when they're able to control and make their own decisions about their reproductive lives and their bodies.

Amory: Next up, something called the zero-population-growth movement, focusing on you guessed it our expanding population post baby boom.

Amy: And then the zero population growth movement really raised our awareness about humans impact on the environment, particularly in Western nations with, with you know, different consumption patterns than other nations around the world.

Amory: According to Pew Research data from 2015, about 15% of women in the U.S. reach their 40th birthday without having given birth. But Amy is quick to point out that the data is far from perfect.

Amy: A woman who doesn't have a child is not necessarily a childfree woman. I mean, we know what proportion of women end their lives without ever having children. But we don't have good data on

Ben: Why.

Amy: Right. Exactly. Among those women, which of them is childless? Which of them wanted to become parents but didn't or couldn't for any number of reasons? And which of them is childfree?

(music plays)

Amory: What demographers do know is that were in an extended era of declining fertility rates in this country. Which is strange because there are more women of child-bearing age these days than there were a decade ago. But we dont know how many of the people opting out or delaying parenthood are doing so because theyre choosing to be part of this childfree movement. And so we dont know how big the movement is.

Ben: While you cant currently measure the growth of the entire childfree movement, you can measure it, on Reddit, where theres a childfree community that recently has been going gangbusters.

Chris: Currently we're growing at more than 1,200 subscribers per day.

Amory: Ya heard that right. And you heard it, from Chris.

Chris: I'm a 35 year old German guy and I'm currently in Suzhou, China and I'm actually one of the moderators of the childfree forum.

Ben: These days, Chris lives in China, but before that he lived in Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Tanzania, Liberia, Norway, Luxembourg

Amory: Alright, we get it! Hes well-traveled. Guy makes Jason Bourne look like a homebody. Chris has worked in banking, tourism, transportation, medical device technology

Ben: Alright, we get it! Hes also a swiss-army man. And Chris says his career-hopping, globe-trotting lifestyle has become a bit of a joke between him and the friends of his who have kids.

Chris: When they see me posting on Facebook, on Instagram, I'm now in Thailand. I'm in Vietnam, I'm doing a coffee roasting workshop in Bali and stuff like that. And they're like, yeah, and I'm just taking the little one to the park and here I am with the little one going to the doctor, to the dentist and whatsoever.

Amory: Chris says theres always a boom in growth of the subreddit this time of year. Probably because the holidays mean family gatherings

Ben: And family gatherings mean an onslaught of unsolicited comments, questions, and opinions about your life choices.

Amory: Things like...

A waterfall of different voices ask the following questions:

What, you dont like kids? Well its different when its your own, you know.

Dont you want to give your parents grandchildren?

But who will take care of you when youre old?

Youre young youll change your mind

But you two would make such cute kids together!

Ben: And how about this one, straight from the Pope

Pope Francis: Non avere figli una scelta egoistica.

Amory: Translation: Not having children is a selfish choice.

Ben: The childfree have a term for these kinds of statements: Bingos.

(music plays)

Chris: Yeah. Well, a bingo is basically coming from the old bingo game where basically you have a square piece of paper and you have a couple of common expressions that that you're going to see or that you're going to hear over your lifetime. Simply meaning, you hear it so many times that you're bound to have five in a row someday and then you're going to win a prize.

(A bunch of different voices say "Bingo!")

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