Feisty and childfree : voluntary childlessness as an alternative to mothering

I want to start with a prose poem I wrote several years ago. I wrote it to challenge the silence that surrounds voluntary childlessness in heterosexual relationships, both in the wider community and in poetry and fiction. I created the poem by cutting and pasting the voices of childfree women gleaned mainly from online forums and newspaper articles. Rather than simply expressing my own feelings and opinions as a childfree woman, the cut-and-paste technique allowed me to show the conflicting emotions and thoughts of non-mothers more broadly, and to use humour to negotiate a sensitive topic. The resulting prose poem, ‘Feisty and Childless’, has been published (with slightly different subtitles) online and in print, but it is also quite performative. I enjoy reading it at public poetry readings, where women often come up to me afterwards to say it reflects their own experience. Voluntary childlessness is a growing phenomenon in industrialised countries, including Australia. On current trends the Australian Bureau of Statistics predicts that by 2031 couples without children will account for 43 per cent of families, overtaking those with children by 5 per cent. The reasons for deciding not to mother are numerous, contextual, and in any one case can involve multiple factors. They can include having a partner who does not want to parent, desire for freedom and personal growth, a lifestyle choice, or a wish to find fulfilment in other ways. Childfree women, numerous surveys have shown, do have a distinct profile despite their differences because they tend to be: “More highly educated, have little or no religious affiliation, hold nontraditional sex roles, report a higher commitment to their careers, and are more likely to live in urban areas than women with children.”