What We Get Wrong About Women Who Don’t Have Kids – Refinery29

It must be said that, like many conversations about femaleness, discussions around being childfree have often centered around white, middle- or upper-class women. In the past, white women have been more likely to have access to contraception, to medical care, or to doctors who would perform abortions in secret when they were illegal otherwise. As Braelin E. Settle of Wayne State University notes in her 2014 dissertation, "Defying Mandatory Motherhood: The Social Experiences of Childfree Women," "Women of color were assimilated into dominant white culture to take advantage of their labor, leaving them with few or no policies to protect and preserve their families in comparison to white womens families. Women of color have performed the mothering work for white children, resulting in the neglect with their own children. Whereas women of color have always worked, white, middle-class women have often had the option to concentrate only on motherhood and other caregiving responsibilities." For her study, Settle surveyed a range of women about their decision to be childfree. Predominantly, it was white women who identified as "active" and certain, while Black and Latina women were more likely to say they were "passive" and ambivalent about their choices. In 2016, actress Joy Bryant wrote an essay for Lena Dunhams Lenny newsletter entitled "Stop Telling Me I Should Have Kids." Bryant addressed some of the most common sentiments lobbed her way namely, that her being pretty meant her kids would be pretty, or that she "owed" it to her husband to reproduce but race didnt appear to be among her reasons for or against parenthood.

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What We Get Wrong About Women Who Don't Have Kids - Refinery29