In this study I qualitatively explore how women who choose not to have children account for this choice in the South African context. I consider the reasons for women to remain childfree and the changing discourses of femininity that enable women to make the choice not to have children. I am also concerned with the possible implications of this choice for women’s interpersonal relationships. This study is conducted from a feminist social constructionist framework. Dominant discourses of femininity revolve around motherhood, which is considered to be the most important role. Motherhood is believed to be a “natural” identity. Mothers are highly regarded in most societies; they are perceived to be devoted to the care of others and to be self-sacrificing. Although most societies consider motherhood to be an essential feature of femininity, it can also cause ambivalent feelings and not all women wish to take on the role of motherhood. The number of women who choose to remain childfree is growing in various societies. Women increasingly have the power to choose whether they want to remain childfree. Through resisting discourses that meld femininity with motherhood, childfree women create alternative discourses that have the potential to change constructions of femininity. I used feminist social constructionism to endeavour to understand the ways in which women’s realities inform their decision not to have children. I also explore how society serves to either problematise or promote this decision. Finally, I attempt to gain a deeper understanding of how being female and childfree impacts on women’s beliefs about themselves. Interview data from semi-structured interviews conducted with women who choose to remain childfree are analysed using thematic analysis. The women interviewed were white and middle class and were found via convenience and snowball sampling. The women participating in the study report various reasons for remaining childfree. Freedom from childcare responsibility and the resulting greater opportunity for self3 fulfilment is shown to be one of the strongest reasons for remaining childfree. Other important reasons include unequal labour division in the family, concerns about the physical aspects of childbirth and recovery, life partners’ acceptance of the choice to remain childfree as well as early socialising experiences. Other reasons cited less frequently include the negative impact of childrearing on women’s emotional well-being, concerns regarding the overpopulation of the planet and a general dislike of children. Two of the themes identified in the text are not evident in the existing literature. The first of these relates to the fact that the women participating in the study do not regard motherhood as the central feature of femininity. Instead, they tend to associate femininity with the act of nurturing, rather than with the act of mothering. These women are able to strongly identify with the female role, as they do not believe that choosing to remain childfree conflicts with their female gender role. The second theme relates to the belief that the world is an evil or unsafe place and that it is therefore better to remain childfree. This belief appears to be context dependent and is based on the women’s perceptions of the crime situation in South Africa. This study contributes to the expansion of the existing literature concerning childfree women, specifically within the South African context. The findings of the research support the findings of previous studies and offer a fresh perspective through the identification of new themes. By exploring reasons women cite for remaining childfree, I argue that some women refute motherhood. The challenging of the dominant discourse that “all women are mothers” is aimed at changing the dialogue about women and thus altering existing dominant discourses. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Psychology / unrestricted

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This thesis maps Czech social and expert discussions on the theme of child-free people childnessness. It is directed on those aspect with implicit ethical content. Subsequently it chooses the most often argument, what are discussed in the ethical reflection. To be child-free is more and more becoming phenomenon, in the Czech Republic especially in the last thirty years. In spite of that it is considered to be rather as alternative life style, what is often exposed to moral evaluation, with mostly negative tone. The criticism of the child-free people can be sumarized into two main streams, when the first one directs on the social impact of the declining birth rates, the second one focuses on personal features of the child-free people, to whom it reprehends either defective hierarchy of values or unnaturalness of their behavior. These two groups of arguments are confronted with the philosophical concept of inclinationes naturales (natural tendencies) of Thomas Aquinas.

This thesis is a study in attitudes towards voluntary childlessness. The specific aim is to investigate attitudes towards voluntary childlessness in a society with pronatalist values: how are they structured and how can the structure be interpreted in the Swedish context? As inspiration and theoretical framework the theory of “the value of children”, that was developed by Lois W. Hoffman and Martin L. Hoffman in the 1970’s USA, was used. In order to fulfill the aim a quantitative survey was conducted on the Internet with 2,283 respondents. The data were factor-analyzed and three main factors were interpreted. These factors were named “The natural parenthood”, “Freedom” and “The personal experience”. They were interpreted as three collective dimensions of thinking about parenthood and voluntary childlessness. The study contributes to our knowledge of pronatalist norms as well as the ways in which attitudes towards voluntary childlessness are shaped. The thesis proposes that pronatalist norms can hide under a supposedly individualistic discourse or under internalized beliefs about naturalness. Positive attitudes towards voluntary childlessness seems to contain, above all, beliefs about freedom.

<p>  </p> <p>An increasing number of working age adults are choosing to delay or forego parenthood entirely, but little research has explored how voluntarily childfree adults are perceived and treated in the workplace. While a large body of research has examined the impacts of motherhood on working women, little work has been done to understand the experiences of voluntarily childfree women. This study explored perceptions of working women based on their reproductive choices and whether these perceptions relate to differences in promotion decisions. Based on social backlash theory, I hypothesized that voluntarily childfree (VCF) women would be penalized in promotion decisions, and that perceptions of agentic-dominance and communality would explain this relationship. Using a sample of 220 participants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, I tested my proposed mediation model and found no support for my hypotheses. Counter to expectations, no evidence of the motherhood penalty emerged either. Despite the lack of significant findings in this study, future work should consider assessing the relationships proposed with different experimental design.</p>

Uppsatsen bygger på intervjuer med unga akademiska kvinnor vars inställning är att inte ha barn. Totalt genomfördes sju intervjuer som har analyserats med hjälp av en tematisk analys. Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka unga akademiska kvinnors resonemang kring att de inte vill ha barn med frågeställningarna: Vilka möjligheter och hinder ser kvinnorna med att skaffa barn? Samt: Hur ser kvinnorna på ett liv som förälder?Kvinnornas berättelser har blivit analyserade utifrån ett sociologiskt perspektiv gällande hur samhällets utformning och dess normer, möjlighet till självförverkligande och karriär har för samband med den trend med minskande barnafödslar som vi kan se idag. Resultatet visar att kvinnornas huvudsakliga orsaker till ett barnfritt liv berodde på att moderskapet sågs som krävande, där den tid som ett barn hade tagit skulle hellre skulle läggas på en själv. Karriär hade också ett tydligt samband för det barnfria livet, eftersom ansvarsfördelningen av barnet skiljer sig åt mellan könen där kvinnan tar det större ansvaret, vilket medförde att kvinnorna ville vara barnfria för att möjliggöra en karriär. Frihet och självförverkligande var ytterligare aspekter för att ha ett barnfritt liv. Frihet för kvinnorna kunde handla om spontanitet, resor, sova hur de vill, äta hur de vill och att inte behöva ta hänsyntill någon annan än sig själv. Vidare urskildes hur individualiseringsprocesser påverkade kvinnorna i deras val, eftersom den tidsmässiga aspekten var central som anledning till att inte skaffa barn. Vissa kvinnor uttryckte att om de bott i en drömvärld, där andra vuxna tog ett kollektivt ansvar, hade deras inställning varit annorlunda. Risker i det moderna samhället visade sig vara ett hinder för att skaffa barn, där kvinnorna uttryckte en oro inför framtiden. Krig i världen, miljö och politik blev således aspekter som påverkat deras livsval.

Det finns en skillnad mellan att vara barnlös och barnfri, nämligen att inte kunna få och att välja bort barn. Enligt tidigare forskning beskrivs frivilligt barnfria ofta som avvikande och stigmatiseras av samhället. Att detta även är fallet i Sverige kan ses som förvånande då landets befolkning överlag har starkt individualistiska attityder som står i kontrast till traditionella värderingar, till exempel barnfamiljens starka ställning.   Denna kvantitativa studie avser att mäta implicita attityder till frivilligt barnfria individer och individer med barn med hjälp av ett implicita associationstest. Åttio respondenter med olika ålder, kön, utbildningsnivå, civilstatus och boendesituation genomförde testet. Vi undersöker deras implicita attityder till barnlöshet generellt, samt huruvida dessa attityder varierar mellan olika grupper bland respondenterna. Vi undersöker också om det finns någon korrelation mellan implicita och explicita attityder till barnfrihet.   Studien är sociologisk och resultaten analyseras genom en sociologisk socialpsykologisk ansats. Detta är ett relativt nytt sätt att hantera data från ett implicit associationstest. / There is a difference between childlessness and being childfree, namely to not be able and to voluntarily choose not to have children. According to previous research, childfree individuals are often described as deviant and are stigmatised in society. It may be surprising however to find that this is the case also in Sweden, a country where population generally has strong individualistic attitudes, in contrast to holding traditional values such as the value of the nuclear family.   This quantitative study measures implicit attitudes to voluntarily childfree individuals and individuals with children respectively, using an implicit association test. Eighty respondents with different genders, ages, levels of education, civil status and living conditions, took the test. We investigate their implicit attitudes to being childfree, as well as whether those attitudes vary between different groups of respondents. We also investigate if there are any correlations between implicit and explicit attitudes to being childfree.   The study is sociological and the results are analysed using a sociological social psychological approach. This is a relatively new way to process data from an implicit association test.

Le processus menant à la stérilisation irréversible chez les femmes nullipares comporte plusieurs enjeux sur le plan individuel et social. L’objectif de cette recherche est de comprendre de quelle façon est vécue cette expérience par ces femmes au sein du système de santé québécois en portant attention aux difficultés administratives et émotionnelles du processus et aux moyens utilisés pour surmonter ces difficultés et parvenir à réaliser l’opération de stérilisation. Cette recherche a été concrétisée grâce à la participation de treize femmes qui n’ont pas d’enfant et qui souhaitent se faire ligaturer les trompes de Fallope. Les entrevues semi-dirigées réalisées auprès de ces participantes qui composent le corpus de données de cette recherche ont été effectuées sur les plateformes de visioconférence Zoom et Facetime. L’analyse des résultats de l’étude a permis de démontrer qu’une identité liée à la biosocialité émerge au fil du processus, que l’expérience de ces femmes témoigne d’une forme d’agentivité à la fois active et passive et enfin que la relation que ses femmes établissent avec les médecins au sein du système de santé peut être problématisée en termes de biopouvoir. Cette recherche permet d’une part d’offrir un regard anthropologique sur l’expérience des femmes sans enfant par choix tout au long du processus menant à la ligature des trompes de Fallope. D’autre part, elle contribue à cerner les enjeux qui sont en lien avec la reproduction et ceux qui concernent l’hégémonie de la biomédecine au sein du système de santé québécois. / The process leading to irreversible sterilization for nulliparous women involves several individual and social issues. The objective of this research is to understand how this experience is lived by these women within the Quebec healthcare system by paying attention to the administrative and emotional difficulties of the process and to the means used to overcome these difficulties and achieve the sterilization operation. This research was carried out by the participation of thirteen women who do not have children and who wish to undergo tubal ligation. The semi-structured interviews conducted with these participants make up the corpus of datas for this research. They were conducted on Zoom videoconferencing platforms as well as on Facetime. The analysis of the results of the study allowed to demonstrate that an identity linked to biosociality emerges throughout the process, that the experience of these women testifies to a form of agency that is both active and passive, and finally that a form of biopower emerges from their relationship with the physicians within the health system. On the one hand, this research provides an anthropological look at the experience of women who are childfree by choice throughout the process leading to tubal ligation. On the other hand, it contributes to identify issues related to reproduction and those concerning the hegemony of biomedicine within the Quebec health system.

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