These women have said no to motherhood.
Around the world, women who don’t procreate are often stigmatized, labeled “unusual,” “unfulfilled” and “unhappy.” A portrait series by the photographer Zoë Noble titled “We Are Childfree” aims to help upend some of those stereotypes by normalizing the stories of women who have chosen not to have children. Between lockdowns, Noble has interviewed over 40 women from around the world, aged 21 to 78, and she has 200 applicants in the wings.
“It’s as though a woman’s purpose in life is to have children,” Noble said, recounting a 2016 encounter with a taxi driver in Berlin, where he nearly drove off the road after he discovered that she was married without children. “Have one and by the second or third, you’ll like it,” he told her.
About four in 10 U.S. adults under 50 without children said they didn’t expect to become parents, according to a 2018 Pew Research survey. And plenty of research suggests that nonparents tend to be happier than parents — especially in the U.S. A 2018 study from the Institute for Family Studies, which looked at 40 years of data on children and happiness in America, found that married mothers were less happy than married women without kids.
Others have noted the environmental benefit of not having children. Even having just one fewer child per family can save an average of 65 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year (to put that into perspective, going car-free, the second-biggest carbon saving, conserves a total of 2.5 tons), according to a study published in Environmental Research Letters.
...New York Times
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