A woman whose childfree writing and tweets (Xes?) I’ve been following for a few years has written/posted things recently that have caught my attention. Though childfree, myself, what she was expressing didn’t resonate with me. It didn’t need to—not everything must be relatable or resonate—but it did make me want to learn more, to understand why she was saying what she was saying.
There’s still a lot I’m ignorant about when it comes to other people’s childfree perspectives. We don’t all arrive at “childfree” the same way, don’t have the same feelings about our place in the world, etc., and this interview with Ali Hall is my attempt to learn more about why she feels and thinks the way she does about certain childfree matters. I’ve since discovered that those thoughts and feelings have as much to do with the broader childfree experience as they do with her, personally.
About Ali: Ali Hall is a kindness advocate and shapeshifter of life. Trail runner, nature bather, and dog lover. You can find her writing on Medium or through her Abnormally Normal substack. She is also the face behind the Childfree by Choice Twitter account.
ME: You wrote in a tweet, “I don’t feel I’m allowed to talk about being childfree in standard circles as it seems to agitate and offend my parent friends and they hear my words as a criticism of their choices.”
I’ve heard people complain about this happening in the world (the same way people will say they have “haters”), but it can seem like an imagined conflict until you come across someone whose claims you trust saying they’ve received a specific reaction.
What signs of agitation have your parent friends exhibited/what responses have you received from them when you have tried to talk about being childfree?
ALI: Great question. I can compare this to being vegan. Talking about being vegan to those who eat meat or dairy often induces a defensiveness. As if me talking about something I am passionate about is actually about them. When it’s not. Is it human nature that we all make every conversation about us?
I would like to caveat this slightly and say that around 80% of my friends don’t have children. And it’s a non-issue. When I say “standard circles,” I mean more acquaintances, not so much friends. So places like workplaces, or group events such as weddings.
Signs of agitation would simply be parents getting defensive when they hear I chose not to have children and coming out with any sort of ridiculous bingo:
- you will regret that when you are older
- but what do you do with all your time
- sure, you’ll change your mind
You know, all the standard ones, but perhaps the most hurtful is when they find out you don’t have children, so they lose interest and turn to the person on their other side. There is very little engagement about me being childfree and a lack of curiosity. Many people don’t understand what they don’t know and run away from it instead of learning about it.
I recently put a post up on my Instagram about it, which I rarely do, and while many people reached out to me, which was amazing—some incredible messages from people who told me they were childfree or childless—the post in general gets skimmed over by parents as opposed to it being a learning opportunity for everyone.
How would you describe the health of your friendships with your parent friends?
The health of my friendships with my parent friends is amazing. While most of my friends don’t have children, I have a few incredible friends who are parents. We have a very open and honest dialogue, we listen to each other and validate each others place in the world along with our choices.
BUT - It has taken me a long time to get to this place. I lost a lot of my parent friends over the years. Maybe I could have done more to keep the friendships alive, and they certainly could have. I don’t necessarily think children caused the end of the friendships, but I think they expedited the end. I experienced a bit of a friendship hiatus when my friends had children, it seemed they lost interest in me or my life, and even when their kid was a few years old, I still had to do all the running and serving in these friendships. I eventually just stopped. Some friendships survived this change; some didn’t.
The parent friendships I have today are healthy because we each make an effort. There is reciprocity and no one-upmanship or competition. They never dismiss my feelings or invalidate my life experiences because I am not a parent. There is none of this “you don’t know the meaning of the word tired.” BS. Nor do I ever criticize their choices.
You’ve been tweeting for some time about Storyhousechildless, which you recently attended. Many childfree people—and by “childfree” in this case I mean people who never wanted, and never had, children—would not attend a weekend event targeted toward the childless, or those who wanted but never had children, because while both the childfree and the childless receive pressure and judgment for not being parents, the feelings about those judgments are as different as are the experiences of not wanting, and wanting, children.
What drew you, someone who identifies as childfree, to the event?
While Storyhousechildless was originally set up as a childless-focused event for its first two years, this year, it opened up to the childfree.
I feel the childfree and the childless have more similarities than differences. We are all non-parents. Sure our path to becoming non-parents differs, but our experience in the world with pronataslim—being othered, dismissed, excluded, experiencing bingos, and being made to feel less than—is very similar.
There is a huge crossover between childfree and childless, and for some people, there’s even a transition from identifying as childless to childfree, and maybe on occasion the other way round.
There is already enough division in the world. While I prefer to refer to myself as childfree, not childless, I feel we can all learn from each other.
I’d be lying if said I wasn’t a little wary initially about attending such an event as a childfree person, but I can honestly say I have never felt so validated and safe in a large group of people. And there were several childfree people there.
I don’t know what it is like to yearn for a child and not have one. But I know what it is like to feel grief, isolation, hurt, suffering, and loneliness.
I’m a bridge builder. I consider myself a childless ally, and my current motto is that compassion is never found in comparison. Ultimately, if we want to be validated and recognised by parents and the childless, we must also give such respect and recognition.
Can you explain what you mean by “validated” and/or “recognized” and why validation/recognition is important to you?
For me, being validated is being treated with respect and that my choices and the way I live my life is ok. It is a recognition and acceptance of who I am as a person without any attempt to change me or tell me I’m wrong somehow.
Many parents think non-parents have an easy life with no stress, worry, etc. It was incredible to be in a group of non-parents and recognized as fully human, someone who experiences the whole spectrum of being human and not infantilized or made to feel less than.
What I could have said in answer to the first question is that three people in my extended family have said to me “I think you are being sensitive” when I explained the lived experience of pronatliasm and being childfree. It’s dismissive. Whereas, in this group, my experiences were both recognised, understood and validated.
In response to a Storyhousechildless presentation you attended called “Aging Without Children,” you tweeted, “A topic I struggle with. I feel I’m not allowed to talk about this since I’m without children by choice. But it’s such an essential subject! I want my voice in this.”
What are your personal concerns about aging without children? What do you struggle with?
At the moment, I don’t actually personally have any concerns about aging without children. Maybe I should. But I know it is a crucial conversation. Given that I try and be a good engager of conversations on the non-parent experience, I like to initiate conversations on all topics.
What I struggle with is how I open a dialogue around this. On the one hand, I am talking about my choice not to have children, and on the other, I would be saying, “I don’t have children. Who is going to advocate for me when I’m older?”
I feel it would attract a lot of criticism if I were to then put my hand out and ask who was going to look out for me as I age. I feel I would attract a “Well, you should have had children.” Or a “You made your bed, lie in it.”
I feel those who are childless can hold these discussions as they wanted children. Most people wouldn’t be so cruel as to reply with a tough shit sort of answer. They are listened to and validated.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully recognise that having someone to look out for you when you are older is not a reason to have a child. Nor does having a child guarantee someone will be looking out for you in later life, for many reasons. I am one of 4, and I suspect I will be the only one looking out for my mum due to geographical constraints and family estrangements. And I will have nothing to do with being there for my father, for personal reasons.
It’s a complex area, isn’t it.
I believe in the power of community and intergenerational friendships. So this is what I am pinning my hat on.
Enough people will question why anyone bothers to talk about their choice to not become parents. “No one cares,” they say. “Just go on and don’t have kids and live your life and shut up about it.” But you’ve been on the receiving end of a rude comment about your choice to not have kids, and you tweeted/Xed about it: “Just been told I'm ‘too ugly’ to have children and that my lack of children is clearly not by choice. Ok then ...”
In addition to that schoolyard, “how to insult a girl if you’re not too bright” fruit, though, you’ve expressed in one way or another frustration with other kinds of judgments people make of the childfree.
Do you feel judged as a childfree person? By this I mean, even if you’re not on the receiving end of direct judgments, do you still feel somehow looked down on, or at least sideways at, as a childfree person?
Yes, absolutely I feel judged.
I feel some women don’t really know how to relate to me. What is a woman if she doesn’t have or even want kids? I don’t so much mind the ridiculous comments on Twitter. If I join a debate or something like that and someone says something ridiculous—I think that's where the ugly comment came from—I just roll my eyes. I don’t have an image of myself up on Twitter, so they were just being an obnoxious idiot. (I actually scrub up ok :-) ha ha ha)
It’s the sly little comments that grate me, and then the assumptions. I recall an ex-friend came out with a lot of “that must be nice” sort of comments, super passive-aggressive comments about how I lived my life. She resented my freedom. Along with, “I don’t care what anyone says; lockdown is much harder when you have a kid.” She went on to have another kid during lockdown. Make of that what you will. This is judgment, but also deeply inaccurate and uncompassionate. As we know, the difficulties people experienced during lockdown were not limited to children.
In my running world, I’ve heard some mothers commenting about how they are delighted at beating certain women in races who aren’t mothers. With the assumption that the only way to have “emotional baggage” or “superpowers,” as they described, is through having children. A grotesquely unnecessary comment that pits parents and non-parents against each other and pushes non-parents down to raise parents up.
You tweeted once that you wish you wanted children. And you’ve characterized yourself in your writing on Medium as having monachopsis—which I’d never heard of before and had to Google. The Practical Psychologist defines it as “the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.”
I’m intrigued by the desire to want something you don’t want. Is that connected in any way to your monachopsis?
Another great question. Actually, I’m starting to feel a lot more comfortable within my skin and that I belong. It’s taken a lot of therapy and personal growth work. I’m not so sure if my feeling of monachopsis is linked to children. I think it’s more linked to being the scapegoat child of a narcissistic father and having quite a complex upbringing.
In terms of wishing I wanted children, yes. I stand by this. For a long time, I longed to long for children. And if it hadn’t been for my tokophobia I wonder whether I would have just had them.
I saw everyone around me having kids. I thought I was abnormal by not wanting them. I was very alone and isolated. I wanted to want children so I could fit in and conform to society. I still wonder if it would have made life a little easier in some respects. But I certainly would not have been happier, and I definitely wouldn’t have been living authentically.
I liken this to the LGBTQIA+ community. It takes courage to follow your own path. Many of my gay friends say their life would be easier if they were heteronormative, and I fully understand this. It probably would be easier, but they wouldn’t be any happier.
We have to fight for our authenticity and listen to our instincts. I’m grateful that I followed my own knowing. I think many people ignore this and this is how there are so many parents that regret having children.
What do you feel if you’re asked to imagine a future in which you’re a parent?
Shudders, ugh! Straight away, I feel frustrated, trapped, irritated, and inconvenienced. The idea of it sends me into a panic.
Luckily I live in a country with adequate medical care, and if I were to fall pregnant, I wouldn’t hesitate to have an abortion.
I take all the precautions necessary to avoid such a catastrophe. But, I do not say this lightly - if my worst nightmare - falling pregnant - were to happen, and an abortion was not an option, I would be a risk to myself.
Thank you, Ali.
A reminder: if you want to read more of Ali, you can find her on Medium, through her Abnormally Normal substack, or on Twitter.
If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy my novel The Age of the Child, in which an overturn of Roe v. Wade forces a woman who never wanted children to continue with an unplanned pregnancy, and whose unwanted daughter becomes responsible for a surprising new change in reproductive laws.
“You will most definitely get a rise out of your book club.”—Amazon reader
“This book lingered with me long after reading it, and I'm going to read it again.”—Amazon reader
“The Handmaid’s Tale and The Farm, to name a couple, have opened the dystopian genre to questions about reproduction; however, The Age of the Child is one of the first I’ve read to really consider the issue of reproductive rights and attitudes so deeply.” — Goodreads Review
“Scathing social commentary.” — Goodreads Review
Thank you for the insightful questions and for delving into the childfree world. I was thinking about this today. I think everyone without children has a story. One of an intentional choice or a life of infliction and grief.