International Childfree Day

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The Winners! The 2020 Childfree Person & Group of the Year!

Happy International Childfree Day!

To celebrate this day, the winners of the Childfree Person of the Year and Childfree Group of the Year are announced! First, the Selection Panel gives a big thanks to all who nominated such great nominees. Every year, amazing childfree people are nominated, and the Panel faces tough decisions!

Here are the 2020 childfree winners and their nomination submissions:

2020 Childfree Person of the Year: Elizabeth Hintz

Self-nomination, USA

Elizabeth Hintz is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of South Florida. She is a childfree academic who has dedicated her professional career to understanding and normalizing childfree experiences. As a scholar, she studies interpersonal, family, and health communication. Her research examines how we talk about childfreedom and with what consequences, spanning topics such as: (a) the stigma and paradoxical dilemmas encountered by the childfree in medical consultations in which they request voluntary sterilization, (b) shifts in and characteristics of media coverage of voluntary childlessness over the past 40 years, and (c) childfree experiences of being “bingoed” when discussing childfreedom with others not sharing our views.

She uses her status as a childfree person to augment the rigor and depth of her analyses, rather than approaching her research projects under the guise of objectivity. Elizabeth aims to promote social justice for the childfree community through her research efforts. By understanding how the childfree express our views to others and how others respond to those expressions, the issues facing our community can be better and more broadly understood, and we can work to advocate for positive social change in these relations.

Elizabeth’s research helps others to see what an amazing childfree life can look like. Rather than viewing childfreedom as the most important part of participants’ identities, her research normalizes childfreedom by studying the issues which childfree people encounter in daily life, such as discussing childfreedom with others, navigating the workplace, and negotiating difficult conversations about reproduction and contraception with medical providers. Her research also highlights the benefits of childfreedom, including the ways that the childfree community act as sources of information and support for managing difficult conversations and provide tools for re-storying our lives.

She has advocated for the acceptance of the childfree choice in both professional and personal capacities. Professionally, in 2019, her manuscript about childfree bingos received the Donald P. Cushman Award from the National Communication Association, the highest national award given to a graduate student, for authoring the top ranked manuscript in the field. This same manuscript was published in Communication Monographs, a top-ranked national journal, and has now been read in communication seminars across the country.

Although early in her career, Elizabeth’s work has greatly increased the visibility of childfree families as being equally fulfilling and legitimate alternative familial forms by questioning otherwise taken-for-granted assumptions about what constitutes a “family” and pushing research about families into new directions. Her work was selected for dissemination by Communication Currents, a national newsletter circulated to scholars of communication, and she has also discussed her research about the issues faced in patient-provider interactions when childfree individuals request sterilization for an upcoming episode of the social justice podcast Well That’s A Problem.

Personally, she and her husband live a childfree life and openly discuss their experiences and views with others.

2020 Childfree Group of the Year: Childfree Internet Community, Overheard by Childfree

This is an abbreviation for ‘childfree’ in Russian. The word, ‘Childfree’ in Russian is: ЧайлдФри (Ch = Ч, i = ай, l = л, d = д, f = ф, r = р, ee = и)  

Nominated by Stefan, Russia

I want to nominate the Russian childfree internet community: Overheard by Childfree https://vk.com/overhear_childfree, (VK is an online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg) and its group creator, Alex Crown.

I’d like to nominate this community because it has helped so many people to find a point of support in so pro-child, so patriarchal Russian society.

Russian society is even more pro-birth and more patriarchal if you head to the inner areas of the country away from the capital.

So many people in inner areas who feel inner opposition to giving birth or decide to stay non-parents often can find support only online in such groups.

The example of group support is in its growth. It now has more than 60k subscribers.

This is an internet support group. Everyday people share feelings and ideas about being childfree and get support in tough life situations.

This Group helps dozens of people every day, with just the fact it exists. Because sometimes young people in Russia can find support and acceptance in being childfree only over the internet. Over the years it has done so much to spread the idea that “childfree = normal” in Russia!

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Many thanks to all of the stellar nominees, those who nominated them, and all who have been part of and celebrate International Childfree Day, an annual, formal recognition of amazing childfree people and their lives!

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Childfree Representation: Film, TV, and Celebrity

by Laura LaVoie

I have spent the better part of the last three years writing and revising a novel. People know I’m a writer, but most of my work is made up of essays, blogs, or non-fiction. After a lifetime of concern that there weren’t enough truly childfree characters represented in film, TV, or books, I figured the only way to make it happen was to create it.

A Labor of Love

This book is entirely a labor of love. It follows two sisters, one childfree by choice and one childless by circumstance. They both struggle with what it means to be women without children in a society that makes them feel incomplete or defective. I’m in the process of querying the story now and I am hopeful that an agent will see its value, understand the audience, and take a chance on it.

I can assure you: the childfree character at no point changes her mind to have a child.

Many childfree people get frustrated by the constant narrative that young women without children will change their mind in the future or face a life full of regret. Pervasive storylines in shows like The Big Bang Theory that take away the agency of not one but two characters who had previously declared that they never wanted children are disappointing at best. And there are so many examples like this.

Heads up: There are spoilers ahead.

In the last two years, a show called A Million Little Things has woven the stories of friends torn apart by secrets. The wife in one couple declares she is proudly childfree and not interested in having a child. Her husband convinces her that it will be the best thing for them to have children and pushes her toward adoption. When the adoption falls through, she is heartbroken but also angry that he pushed her toward wanting to be a mother. It remains to be seen how this storyline will play out.

Freeform’s The Bold Type follows three young professionals who try to find their way in the world of publishing, social media, and fashion. A recent storyline for one character, a newlywed, shows her getting pregnant, having a miscarriage, and realizing that she never wants kids. The revelation is a blow to her new husband, so I’m curious how this will play out. I’m hopeful, but not necessarily optimistic, that there will finally be a truly childfree character on TV.

There are not a ton of examples of childfree women on TV or in movies. There are some on-screen roles in which the main female character isn’t a mother and isn’t defined by her relationship to a child, now or in the future. And that’s a start. But childfree people long to see themselves positively reflected on screen, much like other underrepresented groups.

We do see true examples of celebrities who have made the childfree choice in their personal lives. Golden age of cinema star Tallulah Bankhead was public about her abortions and a hysterectomy at age 31. Today, Dolly Parton and Betty White are amazing examples of women who chose not to have children and who bust the myth that childfree people are selfish and self-absorbed.  

We also crave seeing the childfree choice celebrated in the real-life people we admire, which International Childfree Day sets out to do. It’s my sincere hope that with celebrations like International Childfree Day and the annual Childfree Person and Group of the Year awards that we can continue to bring childfree voices to the table.

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Time to Celebrate Our Unsung Childfree Heroes

by Nina Jervis

“People who do nothing must make people, and the rest of us must fill their lives with happiness and enlightenment.”

I read this quote years ago in a Tolstoy novel. While I don’t believe that people-makers “do nothing,” these words offer a refreshing perspective on the way I’ve chosen to live my life. Usually it’s childfree people who are depicted as doing nothing – or at least, doing nothing to help society. You know – we’re the selfish ones who take long holidays, stay in bed until noon on the weekend, go on expensive shopping sprees, and live only for today, aren’t we?

We also only tend to hear about inspirational childfree people when they’ve done something remarkable. Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron are childfree world leaders. Jane Austen, Hilary Mantel, and the Brontë sisters are all celebrated authors who didn’t have kids.

But what about all those unsung childfree heroes – the ones who commit caring and selfless acts all the time that we don’t hear about?

I spent a year collecting these childfree stories for my light-hearted book that celebrates women who decided not to procreate. In doing this, I met childfree women who care deeply about the future by not wanting to overpopulate a crowded world.

I also met childfree women who care for other people’s children, without (gasp!) any biological attachment to them whatsoever. Some of them taught in schools, while others had stepped in to care for children who, for different reasons, were lacking in parental guidance and support. One worked a police officer who dedicated her working life to protecting abused children. Another worked as the voluntary daily carer for her 99-year-old next-door neighbour.

According to “In Defence of the Childless”, a 2017 leader article published in The Economist, “the mere fact of not having children raises the amount a person leaves to charity by a little over $10,000”. In addition to donating more, the article also indicates that non-parents are more likely to set up charitable foundations than people with children.

Stories and articles like these shine light on the fact that not having children can be as useful for the future and our environment as having them. There are many other ways to leave a lasting, caring legacy than by simply having children.

I’m not criticising parents – far from it – and neither am I trying to promote my lifestyle as the ‘best’ choice (though for me, it is). I just believe that there’s a place in the world for all of us, parents and non-parents alike, and that we should celebrate the everyday achievements of parents and childfree people.

That’s what makes International Childfree Day such a fantastic event. Who are unsung childfree heroes in your life? Celebrate him/her/them (or you!) by nominating for the Childfree Person/Group of the Year!

Nina Jervis is a freelance writer and a non-mother from Essex, England. Her most recent book, I’d Rather Get a Cat and Save the Planet: Conversations with Child-Free Women was published in March 2020.

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The Winners! The 2019 Childfree Person & Group of the Year!

Happy International Childfree Day!

To celebrate this day, the winners of the Childfree Person of the Year and Childfree Group of the Year are announced! First, the Selection Panel gives a big thanks to all who nominated such great nominees. Every year, amazing childfree people are nominated, and as in past years, this year the Panel faced tough decisions!

Here are the 2019 childfree winners and their nomination submissions:

[Read more…] about The Winners! The 2019 Childfree Person & Group of the Year!