The term ‘childfree’

The term childfree describes women and men who have made a personal decision not to have children. Childfree people define themselves as:

As we will see later on, the choice to remain childfree is growing: more and more women and men are choosing not to bear or rear children. In recent years, the declining birth rate in developed countries, including the US and many EU countries, has been attributed to couples, or at least women of child-bearing age, postponing and/or even eventually deciding against having children. In almost all European countries, total fertility rates (ie the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime) are below replacement levels (the 2.1 that is needed to maintain a stable population). Clearly, the increase in the number of couples remaining voluntarily childless is directly related to the long-term fertility decline in developed economies. But demographers and sociologists now predict that in the near future, around 20% of women in Europe and other relatively affluent countries will remain childless.

Childlessness itself is not a new phenomenon. However, if we compare the past to the present, significant differences emerge. As Hakim (2000) notes, childlessness in the past was due primarily to extreme poverty and poor nutrition, or to low marriage rates resulting from wars or emigration. That correlation is no longer relevant for Europe or the US. Although the trend towards lower fertility in Western nations began in the late 18th century (Degler, 1980), it fell steeply after the Baby Boom, ‘second-wave’ feminism and the economic recession of the 1970s. The cultural revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s (which was itself fuelled by a post-war prosperity that allowed people to give greater attention to non-material concerns; see Inglehart, 1977) played a key role in reconfiguring men's and women's views of marriage and family life.