Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother

by Peggy O'Donnell Heffington

A historian explores the complicated relationship between womanhood and motherhood  in this “timely, refreshingly open-hearted study of the choices women make and the cards they’re dealt” (Ada Calhoun, author of  Why We Can’t Sleep ).

In an era of falling births, it’s often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but never had them, and still others—the vast majority, then and now—who fell somewhere in between. Modern women considering how and if children fit into their lives are products of their political, ecological, and cultural moment. But history also tells them that they are not alone. 
  
Drawing on deep research and her own experience as a woman without children, historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington shows that many of the reasons women are not having children today are ones they share with women in the a lack of support, their jobs or finances, environmental concerns, infertility, and the desire to live different kinds of lives. Understanding this history—how normal it has always been to not have children, and how hard society has worked to make it seem abnormal—is key, she writes, to rebuilding kinship between mothers and non-mothers, and to building a better world for us all. 

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Sociology, Audiobook, Self Help, Womens

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 18, 2023

Reviews

[Elizabeth Boquet · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Stopped reading on p. 21: “For everyone I know, even those for whom not having children has made possible the lives they love and would not change, the decision (if it could be called a decision) involved some measure of anguish.”

Um, no. What a disappointment.

As other reviewers note, this is really a book about mothering and how the whole world needs “mothering” and how, even when we don’t have children, women can and are expected to still find ways to and people to mother which, wow, no kidding and also no, thank you.

[Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I'm just not the target audience of this. I went in expecting it to be more about how being childfree is ok (by choice or otherwise) and the good things about it. Instead it felt more like a lament of being childless and trying to let those who are childless (not by choice) less alone while also saying that kids are great and people can help mother other people's children. If seems like it missed out on a lot of aspects of childfree life that people *do* like.

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling. Declining birth rates it turns out are not so much about the choices women make as it is about the socioeconomic context in which those decisions are made.

The author writes about how before the American Revolution there was a greater sense of community that made it possible for children to live amid large extended families. This made it easier on biological parents while allowing those with no children a chance to mother.

But we lost this strength largely because of the myth of frontier individualism. We pulled away from community. So caregiving shrank to the size of today's nuclear family. Many today still view the nuclear family as the epitome of family. In truth, the author writes, the nuclear family actually represents a diminishment of the outsize child rearing capacities of far larger, now no longer extant community-based extended families.

With those extended families no longer in existence, the author believes we have to support women by way of government programs. The European Community already does some of these things. The failure of the U.S. Congress to extend the Child Tax Credit is a good example of our own national failure to do so.

"The child tax credit (CTC) was a monthly payment of $250 or $300 per child that was given to eligible families in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act. . . According to research by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, the CTC lifted 2.9 million children out of poverty in 2021, reducing the child poverty rate from 9.7% to 5.2%. . . [Conversely] without the CTC [when Congress failed to renew it] the child poverty rate rose sharply to 12.4% in 2022, an increase of 41% from December 2021 to January 2022. This means that 3.7 million more children fell below the poverty line." (Source: Conversation with Bing, 1/10/2024)

Add to this example our lack of daycare, Medicare cuts, food stamp cuts, school lunch programs cuts, afterschool programs cuts, etc. — and you begin to glimpse why the decision not to have children is being made by so many women. I pulled the following quote from today's NYT: "Note that more than eight million children will be left out of a new federal food assistance program for needy families . . . because they live in one of the 15 states [whose] governors . . . refuse to participate."

There is simply no support system such as existed when large, extended families were prominent. Right now we have only NGOs or states to provide relief. But as the author says.

"Over the past two centuries . . . we jettisoned expansive ideas of kinship, isolated parents, disinvested from communities, and replaced community care with a kind of care that individuals have to pay for. . . . [But] that's not to say we couldn't rebuild systems of community support if we wanted to, or that we lack examples of how we might do it." (p. 70)

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

As others have mentioned, there is a lot of interesting content here, but I could not get behind the overarching framing of "if we choose to not have biological children of our own, we owe it to society to parent other people's children."

I'd recommend Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids edited by Meghan Daum for more perspective on this topic.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I get asked a lot less than I used to be as to my marital, relationship, and motherhood status. Reading this felt like someone finally understood me. Highly informative too, based in researched history and science.

The book was really good, and I plan to reread it. I agree it's an unfair burden to expect all women to bear or raise children. It's no one's business as to why someone has or doesn't have children. It's a deeply personal choice, when choice is available and can be as deeply hurtful when it isn't. Society needs to keep its mouth shut and be accepting of all people as we are.

I knew since age 10 that I didn't want any children (I had really good reasons for this, which I shall keep to myself). When my doctor told me I could get an hysterectomy to address my fibroids, she then tried to talk me out of it because I might regret not giving myself the option to have children. I'm glad I insisted on it. Getting it relieved me of a lot of anxiety on multiple fronts, and after getting over the initial weirdness of missing an organ, I found a lot of personal freedom afterward.

Children are wonderful and beautiful and deserve really great parents. I'm honored to be godmother to several. But because motherhood was never something I wanted, I know I'm a far more effective godmother to my kids by not having any of my own.

[Katie Ringley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reviews here on this book frustrate the hell out of me. Yes, childfree by choice folks - this book isn’t just about the glories of being childfree. It seems as if everyone is irritated the book wasn’t about them without recognizing the immense amount of detailed research, the incredible writing on the level of which only a historian and an actual author/journalist could do, as well as the empathy for ALL women. Its almost like we just must put women against each other. Did you read the conclusion? She started this book with that goal- to show that childfree women needed to feel more seen, but when she dug into the data, it was deeper than that. And that as a collective society, we need to know the ENTIRE story, much of which is advocating for women who choose to not be mothers while also being polite to those that are childless not by choice.

Goodreads kills me sometimes. Everyone just feels so rude without actual digging into what the book is actually about and more about their expectation. You’re eating a protein bar and expecting a snickers then saying the protein bar sucks? Silly and foolish.

disclaimer: i’m child free by choice, but I don’t need every child free book to be about me.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

This feels more like a book for those wanting to be a mother but cannot for some reason. I was excepting a book about women choosing to not have children and the history behind all the women choosing that. Rather I got a book about how we should parent everyone's children and how child free by choice people are in the same boat as those who cannot have their own children. Just felt a bit off/wasn't what I wanted from it. But still a lot of interesting things in here and a lot of history it feels like we're about to repeat unfortunately...

[Margaret · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a childfree-by-choice woman, I wasn’t expecting this book to be incredibly offensive and obnoxious, but it was.

The author thinks that 94% of women without children actually really wish they had some? Sure, Jan.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author of this book looks back at historical reasons women have not had children either by choice or because they were unable to for various reasons comparing them to reasons why women today often do not have children. She aims to show that nothing is new and that there is been an artificial divide drawn between mothers and non-mothers. I get part of the argument she makes in her writing about needing to write about motherhood to talk about non-motherhood, but I often felt like I was reading more about being a mother than I was about women without children.

[Kendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-researched and interesting read about the many reasons people--particularly ciswomen and some transmen--do not have children--economic, physical, because of climate change, more. As a woman who is childfree by choice, it was a relief and even pleasant to read about other such women without judgement or negativity on the part of the author. I appreciated the author's personal honesty and tone throughout, and the book gave me a lot of think about in understanding the choices other people make and how they make/have made their decisions.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm having a hard time articulating how I felt about this book. There are a lot of things I agreed with and learned from this book. I do think that a more communal approach to raising kids is better and takes pressure off the parents and gives a more balanced perspective to the kids and provides a better outcome for everyone. I learned a lot about the child-free movement and history that I didn't know and I enjoyed that aspect of it.

However, I had some major issues with how the book was presented.

I didn't love how a huge portion of the book was centered on how not mothers in history had still been mothers in a way, or at least very involved in children's lives. That whole section was centered on mothers and children and not focused on the non mothers themselves, which is what I thought this book was going to be about. I didn't think a book about non mothers would still revolve SO HEAVILY on children.

And like I said, I do agree in a more communal approach, but it still seemed like the author was saying that we should return to that as it was. This was already a heavily gendered book, and as much as I don't actually think this would be the author's argument, the way that it was presented felt like unpaid female labor was framed as a good thing. It said nothing (or very little) of a community involving the men in the child's life, and having them take an active role. Women entering the workplace outside the home and how that affected motherhood was talked about at great length, but without any discussion of male responsibility, it felt so incredibly lopsided.

I also really resented the conclusion chapter. This is not a direct quote, but she said something along the lines of:

"I was going to write a book about non mothers and their accomplishments through history and use it to say 'just because I am a non mother doesn't mean I don't have stress in my life, too' but that would have been an unkind approach to this book and it would've chosen a side in the mother/non mother war."

And I just fundamentally disagree with this statement. 1, that is what I thought the book was described as and I do think I would've enjoyed that more. 2, that IS a thing that non mothers are hit with all the time, and I absolutely think that there is a way to be understanding and empathetic to the struggles that mothers face without abandoning that premise of a book so heavily. Both mother and non mothers are judged in their own ways and both are awful, but we CAN kindly dismantle one type of criticism without agreeing and worsening the other. I have to believe this.

[Ainsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very interesting read that I enjoyed overall, but I couldn't help but feel like it was less about being child-free by choice and the benefits of that choice, and more about convincing readers to still "Mother" even if they do not have their own children. Still becoming a parent to already born children so as not to add to any overpopulation, but in a way that allows these child-free adults to still experience the "natural happiness" of parenthood. Not what I was hoping to listen to, but still interesting enough to finish.

[Kristy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ultimately, I was disappointed in the overarching theme of this text being that of ‘mothering’. It seems less of a book discussing the nuances of being childfree and more of a lament over the way women and, particularly, mothers are failed by society, which although true, isn’t really what I expected going into this. The emphasis is so profoundly on finding other ways to ‘mother’ and support the ‘new/next generation’ that it ultimately did nothing for the argument of a women’s identity being separate to motherhood.

[Caroline Herbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presented a fascinating look at the history of not being a mother, exploring how common it has been throughout history for women to have roles other than that of a mother. This book shows that not having the identity of "mother" isn't a modern-day invention, invented by Millennials; in fact, women without biological children of their own often played a role in raising children in their community (yes, it takes a village), able to participate in the act of mothering.
The author describes how this started to change starting in the late 18th century, and especially in the 1800s, as the Industrial Revolution meant that people often moved away from their families to seek work, and the ideal of the "nuclear family" was created. The immediate family unit (parents and biological children) as the model and ideal is not traditional, but it has come to define "family" in Western societies.
The author explores many reasons why women don't have children, from the deliberately "childfree" to those struggling with infertility, respecting everyone's choices and acknowledging the fact that for many people in minority groups or facing other economic challenges, there is no choice. She examines the "non-parent" movements of the past century, and explores how they often flirted with eugenics or other dangerous philosophies. What I appreciated was the many stories of real women who have come to accept their choices (or lack of choice) and can embrace the role of not being a mother. As more women are postponing or deciding not to have children, there will be more of us in the generations to come. This book helped me feel like I was not alone in my thinking.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important read for all people, no matter your gender identity or parent status. Highly recommend! Heffinton highlights the epic history of women being defined by (and expectations placed on) the uterus across the intersection of social, political, colonialist, religious, class, race, and sex. I will call out that several of her statements and examples made me absolutely cringe due to their heteronormative judgments and language (did her editorial team not bias-check her work?!?) but am giving grace because even a writer who’s childfree-identified probably couldn’t undo the messaging we’re force-fed every day about how much “easier” life is for those who are childfree than those who are parents, and this notion that if we are childfree then we should aspire to engage in mothering in other ways…I’m sure she didn’t realize it and couldn’t help it, but it is part of the problem and I hope she revises if there’s a second edition. To this end, chapter 6 and the book’s conclusion are a disaster because all of the examples are pro-mothering and definitively make childfree people look like jerks or fools. I hope someone rectifies it soon with a book all about why more people aren’t questioning whether they’re actually equipped to be parents or, conversely, doing what they think they’re “supposed to do”, and a focus on how we as a society, our governments, etc. might start to work toward supporting instead of suppressing women by telling us what to do with our bodies and our lives. I’m glad she’s continuing a decades-long discussion with calls that women (irrespective of our identities) should support each other, and I hope that more academics and writers add productively to the conversation.

[Tara DuBose-Schmitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fully expected this to be a liberal volley in the culture war. It really isn’t. Heffington presents a well researched history of why some women have not birthed children and the cultural ramifications of that choice or circumstance. She emphasizes how community ties can benefit mothers, women without children and the children themselves.

[Maddi Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like this had some interesting information and history that I liked reading about but she completely ignored the point of the book, her forward was so intriguing and I was excited to hear women's stories of not wanting to be a mother, I was holding out the whole book for this part to appear and it just didn't. She wrote about all the ways women are still mother's if they don't have kids, or how they become mothers, which is not a bad thing to read about but it is not what was advertised.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know, as a woman of a certain age without children, I really thought I would enjoy this book much more than I did. Not having kids was not really a difficult choice for me, I didn’t anguish over it and I don’t regret it. What I have struggled a little bit with is what it means to not have children in a world that so strongly equates being a woman with being a mother (and it is also wild to me that as far as I can tell this is the same society that actively goes out of its way to make actually being a mother a downright difficult experience). So I think what I was expecting in this book was probably a sense of recognition and camaraderie and inspiration reading about other people who also were not mothers for whatever reason but who still found meaning in their lives. And that’s not what this book is.
Yes, there is history here and the author did a lot of research. Some of it is interesting (have you heard of the Temple of Prolific Hymen? I sure hadn’t and it’s effing weird). I wasn’t wild about the writing style, it could feel a little windy and clunky at times but the book is not riddled with errors. And I certainly don’t disagree with the idea that modern society has a problem with community support.
What I hadn’t been expecting was for this to feel so much like it was about…mothers. A key argument the author cannot seem to let go of is essentially that women who don’t have their own kids can now do all of this “other” mothering - taking care of other peoples kids, mothering their community, mothering their jobs, mothering the whole world. And then it kind of ends on a sour note for me - people (specifically women) without kids should do all of this “other” mothering with gladness in their heart because actual mothers have it so hard (and listen, they do have it hard, I’m not arguing that point). Not
only that but it is unkind and ungenerous to even think to yourself “wow, it really sucks that now my job is harder because so-and-so is out on maternity leave” (and listen, it is also true that it does suck when your job gets harder because somebody is on maternity leave but I do think parental leave is important and should be much longer than it is. Why can these things not exist simultaneously?).
So no. This was not what I was expecting or hoping for from this book. I rounded up to 3 stars because it is well researched and it is written well enough that I could finish it.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Women choosing not to have children is nothing new. As historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington describes in this book, it has been happening throughout history. Women were using a variety of herbal concoctions and crazy methods to keep sperm from meeting egg long before birth control pills became widely available in the 1970s. What is new is the way families have separated themselves up into mom-dad-children units each living in their own separate homes instead of the multi-generational communal living of earlier eras. In those times, mothers had grannies and aunties to help. Other things have changed, too. People worry more about overpopulation, climate change, and the financial challenges of parenting. Women delay parenting to pursue education and careers, then struggle with infertility when it’s almost too late. It’s much less of a scandal these days if a couple decides not to reproduce. This book takes a look at the various reasons for not having children, including wanting more out of life, concerns about our overcrowded planet, infertility, and simply choosing not to have them. In each, she goes into depth. We learn about early birth control, family organization, activists who fought for women’s right to control their own bodies, how fertility treatments work and the statistics on their effectiveness, and much more. The level of detail is incredible, but the facts never bog down the narrative. This book, coming out in April 2023, should be required reading for every young person trying to decide whether or not to have children as well as for the people who loved them. (The copy I read was a pre-publication copy provided by the publisher)

[Megan Stroup Tristao]

I thought this was going to be a book about the decision to not have children and why that should be normalized (because as the subtitle suggests ... there have always been women who have wanted to remain childfree and it is, in fact, normal). But, it ended up being a book about how women choose not to have children for societal reasons (which is true for some, not all) and how we should community parent more. It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't the book I wanted to (or thought I was going to) read.

Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for a free advance copy of this book.

[Stephanie D’Ulisse Lamar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am still very undecided about whether I want kids. This book was so comforting to me. There is so much precedent for not having kids and so much history that is simply never shared unless you seek it out. Parts of this got me so angry and also so sad. Loved the emphasis on coming together as a society to raise kids collectively instead of continuing this trend of severe isolation. The author’s self reflection at the end hit the nail on the head for me. So much food for thought here. Definitely feeling validated in my waffling.

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible. Don’t let the title fool you. I thought it would be about being child-free but it was actually about the importance of reproductive rights and community supports and bridging the divide between women with and without children. It discusses the many reasons that women decide or don’t decide to have children, and the historical activism of women without children. I never thought I’d be reading a book that compares Jennifer Aniston, nuns and radical lesbians as allies. Such an important book for people with and without children.

[Samantha Collier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well researched and interesting read! It’s focus wasn’t what i expected, but was definitely valuable and something I hadn’t considered before.

[Lacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting listen giving a lot of historical detail about women who have opted out of parenthood. I do think too many of the arguments were framed as "if the US better supported parents in our social infrastructure, more women would want to have kids." As though the only reason some women choose not to have kids is that this country does not have universal health care or universal paid maternity leave or subsidized daycare. And yeah, the economics of parenthood play a big role in why many people say no (these are definitely on my list of reasons, but they aren't my ONLY reasons), but there are also a lot of other reasons why people might pass on parenthood that aren't really given equal footing in this book. Passing time is given to environmental concerns, but the main focus is that women are opting out of having children just because society isn't as supportive as it should be.

I was also a little turned off by the conclusion when the author seems to bingo her own audience by seemingly flipping the script to say that people without children can never understand how hard parenthood is, and we should happily give up our free time to stay late at work or do extra work to help out parents who have to bounce to take care of child issues. A parent's time is not more valuable than my time.

Frankly, I don't want to wipe literal poop off someone's butt and I don't want to "view life through a child's eyes" by spending hours at the children's museum or the T-ball field. And those are valid reasons to just say no to parenthood.

[Rafaela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

I really enjoyed this book. I think it's very well researched and talks about topics which are very interesting and relevant. However, I really did not appreciate the conclusion. I don't have to have anything to do with other people's kids if I don't want to. Children present a huge amount of labour (both emotional and not) and taking care of them in whichever way must be a choice freely made.

[Claire]

DNF - i am so disappointed lol this is not what i thought it was. read the other reviews

[Elizabeth Fiala · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-researched look at how the lament against millennial women either choosing to have babies later in life or not at all is not a new phenomenon nor is it happening in a vacuum. I appreciated the historical context of why women have both chosen to be mothers and not chosen to be mothers, as well as the acknowledgment of the different factors that contribute to a woman's decision to have children or not. I think this look at the history of reproduction is important, particularly during this time in the country's history where we have seen Roe overturned (yes, abortion and birth control is discussed at length in this book) and where many of us millennial and Gen Z women are facing economic hardship in a system that doesn't support mothers as it is (lack of maternity leave, the cost of childcare, etc.). This book also touches upon the ecological--the people who don't want children due to climate change and the potential of bringing up children in a world that will be very harsh if not desperately dire for them--and the fact that women who want to have children either can't due to infertility or lack the wealth required to go through fertility treatments such as IVF or egg freezing. I liked that the book didn't focus on just one portion of childless or childfree--it's all of that and in between: the women who want to be mothers but it never panned out, the women who don't want to and just want to be not hated for it, and the women who are ambivalent and find other ways of mothering--whether it be through mentoring or supporting the children of friends. Anyway, this review is long enough, so just suffice it to say: it's a good read and an important one.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this quick non-fic read that delves into the history of non-motherhood. It breaks this down into 5 different buckets of “why” and provides background on how these reasons have developed and changed in the last few hundred years. I think some of the pages would have been better spent on societal norms rather than individual historical accounts, but all in all I enjoyed the book. Having read a fair amount of feminist takes on not wanting a traditional family, something that stood out as new and interesting to me was the coverage of the national pushback on these feminist decisions, particularly in the depression and Nixon eras. I felt this gave me a better comprehensive picture than I had before about what the choice to be childless meant at different points in history. (The author also covers the circumstances of being childless not by choice.)

I was skeptical from a few of the reviews I read, so to dispel a few of those points:
-this is a historical look at women’s childless existence, not primarily a modern exploration, although this does seep in at times. It is not intended to be a modern commentary on this experience.
-although the author suggests in the intro that “mothering” is something all women can do, this is not a primary point of the book, and if this does not sit well with you, do not let this dissuade you from reading it.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to an interesting interview with this author on NPR that inspired me to read her book. I don’t often choose to pick up nonfiction for fun, but this was very readable (and personally resonant, since I don’t and probably won’t have any kids). There’s a lot of great stuff in here — tons of research about the ways women have shaped their lives and families throughout history, thoughtful nuance about the very dark side of movements for reproductive freedom and population control, and explorations of all the many paths that women have chosen to take over centuries. I especially appreciated the historical context about how white western societies came to be obsessed with the concept of the nuclear family, which limits us in so many ways, and what a different vision of kinship networks and community care can look like.

[Stephanie Hatfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really interesting lens through which to view history with lots of anecdotes. Felt a little scattered due to the organization, but I enjoyed reading it and appreciated the author's concluding thoughts.