Earlier this year, one of my favorite podcasts (Culture Study – amazingly interesting conversations on every topic under the sun) released an episode on “childless freaks.” Anne Helen Petersen, who is childfree by choice, was joined by comedian Natasha Vaynblat for a conversation on what it’s like to be a childless adult — either by choice or not — in today’s society.

The conversation was hilarious, affirming, and timely. I wasn’t surprised they chose the topic for an episode given that more and more people from my own millennial generation and younger generations are either not having kids of their own or are delaying having children until much later in life (perhaps one of the reasons the fertility rate in the United States continues to drop). But it was still nice to listen to an episode devoted to talking openly about the experience of being childless in a society that still puts a lot of pressure on people, and especially on women, to have children.

I appreciated the way Petersen and Vaynblat left room for all sorts of experiences and paths to being childfree: actively choosing to not have children, wanting children but circumstances just never allowing it to happen, or being totally ambiguous about having or not having children and that ambiguity meaning you just never get around to having kids. As Petersen described her own situation and path to not having children, “It’s not like I don’t like kids. It’s that the life I wanted to have right now, in this country, with this reality, could not involve kids.”

I am one of those “childless freaks” and probably won’t have kids of my own, so the episode resonated. Like Petersen, it’s not that I don’t like kids. I love kids and think I would be a great parent. But having kids just hasn’t been in the cards for me, and I also have economic and ethical concerns at the thought of having kids. I live in one of the most expensive metro areas in the country, and our current situation with both politics broadly speaking and climate change doesn’t exactly make me super-eager to bring children into this world. 

But not having kids is not always a popular decision in many circles, especially for women. Discussing the pushback women frequently get when they decide not to have children, Vaynblat noted that women’s maternal instincts are frequently emphasized above all else: “We live in a culture where we are, as women, are told not to trust our choices and our instincts unless it’s our maternal instinct.” By default, we’re expected to want children, to want to mother, and questioned if we choose another path (or if life’s circumstances choose another path for us).

Haley Isbell wrote eloquently about similar themes and some of these same challenges last month here on RJ. It’s not always fun being a single woman with all these expectations surrounding our role in society. There is still a lot of pressure, both in religious circles and in society more broadly and particularly for women, to partner up and have a family. People can — intentionally and unintentionally — make you feel like there is something wrong with you for not having, and in some cases for not wanting, these things.

But when I think about the childfree women in my life growing up, I don’t remember thinking that anything was wrong with them. Rather, I remember what an important part of my life they were. How they made me feel so safe and seen and that they were able to be present with me in ways other adults couldn’t. Vaynblat and Petersen affirmed that feeling and my own recollection of my childhood. In the episode, Vaynblat described the unique roles childfree adults can play in the lives of children: “I think when you have an adult in your life who isn’t a parent, there’s just such a level of ease to that relationship because there’s less pressure.”

That reflection, in turn, reminded me how lucky I am to be childfree, even if a lot of people might not think of it that way. I get to have a full, rich life of my own, and I get to show up for my niece and nephew and my friends’ kids in ways that might not be possible if I were busy raising a family of my own. 

And that might be what’s at the heart of the episode. It’s not about pitting parents against non-parents or arguing that one path is better than another. The purpose of the episode and an accompanying ongoing series for Petersen’s newsletter (Big No-Kids Energy) is simply to bring visibility to people who choose another path and to “talk to people about their vibrant lives that they live without kids.” I’d argue it’s also to help all of us think about how we can support one another and foster community, regardless of what our lives look like, what our families look like, and whether we have children.