LC
I’m so happy that this is one of the World Childless Week themes for 2023. It’s a topic that I have often felt is extremely under-represented or worse yet, completely incorrectly depicted.
In the media, portrayal of the childless community falls under the banners of:
People who have been too focused on your career (especially women)
Being too fussy to find a partner to have a child with (again, often directed at women)
Too busy enjoying life in our child-bearing years
We didn’t want to sacrifice our youth and freedom
We didn’t choose to “just adopt” so that makes us selfish for not wanting to give a child in need a home. Newsflash – adoption is not akin to shopping online!
I don’t have a single positive experience about childless people in the media. We are either pitied or envied or somehow both!?
A woman in the public eye (e.g. a politician) who doesn’t have children is often portrayed as being unable to show compassion for the public because that trait is apparently the domain of parents. Amazing female leaders in Australia such as Julia Gillard were openly mocked for (choosing) not having children and apparently being “one-dimensional”. The current Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, has been also treated poorly when being open about being childless not by choice. When Kamala Harris became the US Vice-President, she was such an “anomaly” as she was both a woman of colour and had no children of her own. It even became a hot topic on Google searches!
In terms of how the childless are portrayed in movies, television, books, news, magazines, advertisements, politics and social media, there is nothing much that’s positive or correct.
People without children are either selfish (if they are childfree by choice) or sad (if they are childless not by choice especially if they are going through failure in infertility treatments).
Considering how much soap operas can stretch out a storyline, suffering from infertility is minimised. If someone does have to go through IVF, it’s a total miracle (and generally incorrect) that it takes just one round of treatment and ta-da, success! Everything is rounded out with a fabulous pregnancy and a healthy birth. No reality of “sorry, there’s no heartbeat” or “It looks like your pregnancy is not viable” or “You have a hostile womb”.
Or there’s the sad desperate couple trying for a child and have some miracle option present itself…..such as “Private Life” or “What we wanted”.
Or there are movies such as “The Back Up Plan” where a woman chooses to have a child by herself and miraculously finds love on the transfer day! What a bonus!
Or the busy career woman who got her dream of motherhood through placing an ad “Baby Mama” – did you know that paid surrogacy is illegal in Australia?
And don’t even get me started on the celebrities who boast about having children in their late 40s or early 50s, typically using donor eggs or surrogacy. I found an article about 54 celebrities who were successful having a child after 40.
An Australian TV personality, Sonia Kruger, was open about using donor eggs to have a child at 49. But now she wants to try for another child at 51!I often wonder if they have given any thought to how old they’ll be when their kids finish high school!
Conversely, while there are celebrities who are open about their infertility or choosing not to have children, perhaps the biggest breakthrough for women in their forties was Jennifer Aniston who did an empowering interview in Allure in December 2022 about being childless not by choice and her infertility journey. I can only hope that more people, celebrities or otherwise, can feel free to talk openly and positively about being childless rather than just being “less”.
I can say that there are some authors who write about women who don’t have children whether by choice or not, such as Alexandra Potter, Emily Henry, Carole Matthews, Jane Green. I found a great article today about contemporary authors who write about life without children so I’m keen to check out their books.
Overall, I am hoping that in time, there will be more factual portrayal of the childless in the media. We do learn to find ways to make the most out of life and still contribute to society.
Yes, we do experience heartbreak and there will always be feelings of grief and loss.
You may see us looking longingly as you play with your kids at the playground or worse, not notice us at all except ensuring that we’ll keep our dogs on their leads near a playground.
So please change the narrative and get information from actually childless people to write fiction rather than depicting it to be all easy miracles or abject sadness.
