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Key points
- The label "childless" may invoke pity while "childfree" can imply giddiness that sparks a negative reaction in others.
- Moms can be negatively labeled if they have "too many" or "too few" kids.
- Abandoning labels gives people a chance to chance to create a more inclusive, mutually supportive community.
Labels stick, but life is dynamic. We learn and grow based on life experiences, so why is it so difficult to shake off the labels we get saddled with earlier in our lives?
Take the labels childless and childfree, for example. One label—childless—suggests a certain sorrow that elicits pity for empty wombs. The other—childfree—conjures up a slaphappy giddiness that gives rise to both envy and disdain.
These labels are applied during our fertile years when we don’t have kids. We even stick them on ourselves. Truth is, perspectives shift over the course of our lifetimes, particularly when we integrate our parenthood status with life’s current conditions and realities.
In a recent fireside chat hosted by Jody Day of Gateway Women, 9 women ranging in age from their mid-50s to 80 from across the globe talked about the harm created by segregating ourselves into polarities fueled by pronatalism and sexism.
While taking on labels in our early years may help create a sense of identity, everyone in the conversation agreed we’d learned more from those coming from a different perspective, blurring the childless-childfree polarity into a cohesive narrative of wholeness. The shift happens gradually and only when we include experiences different than our own.
Over time, we all have found our commonalities eclipse our differences. Like matters involving our aging. We don’t rely on burdening the kids we don’t have with caring for us. Instead, we ask for help from people who love us and are delighted when they accept. We tend to be pragmatic and proactive about managing our care as we age.
Our friends with kids reach out when their nests empty out. That’s great, and we’re glad to see you again. But it hurts when we get shuffled back to the periphery as grandkids arrive, even as we understand the allure of new arrivals.
I must confess, I’m growing impatient over the self-imposed barriers we create for ourselves about why we don’t have kids. Whether we identified as childless or childfree, we need each other’s support as we navigate life’s joys and challenges.
In addition to marginalizing the childless and childfree, I’ve learned many moms slap labels on each other, too. While it’s considered “normal” to have two or three kids, some say four or more are excessive. And what kind of mother would deny their child a sibling?
Why do we do this to one another? And why does any of this matter? We keep cutting the pie of womanhood into smaller and smaller slices. In doing so, we dilute the whole and distance those who aren’t just like us into the margins of otherhood.
When we label and separate one another, we lose the opportunity to learn the life lessons we’ve all worked so hard to gain. Instead, we have a chance to create a more inclusive, mutually supportive community of intergenerational connection and acceptance.
