Childless by choice

From the President of the New Zealand Federation of Graduate Women - Charlene Lutes
May 2007 newsletter excerpt

Not all motherhood and apple pie?

In yesterday’s (2/5/07) New Zealand Herald I read an article entitled ‘Motherhood—a career with vacancies’. A longitudinal study in the UK of people born in 1970 found that 40 percent of graduate women are childless at 35 and that a third of female university graduates will never have children. Several reasons were cited: the need to concentrate on or get established in a career, economic pressures, such as student debt and the high cost of establishing a home, the lack of a suitable partner who wants to have children, unequal sharing of household responsibilities, and the lack of a desire for children. It is a sign of progress that women who have no desire for children can now have a fulfilling and interesting life without them, a situation very different from the 19th century. Some women, who would otherwise have enjoyed a family, feel more committed to a career, for example, in politics and choose to remain childless.

Over the past decade there have been an increasing number of journalistic essays of this kind, which focus on negative personal and social consequences of women’s increasing economic and professional status. Alison Wolf, Professor of Management and Professional Development, King's College London, whose article Working Girls inspired and partially named a resolution adopted by the recent NZFGW Conference, deplores a perceived loss of female solidarity and altruism that is attributed to women’s desire for career success. Articles like the one in the Herald focus on the decreased birth rate among educated women. Politicians and economists worry about the consequences of negative population growth. Sometimes I fear that we may be in the early stages of a backlash against women’s workforce participation similar to that after World War II.

In an overpopulated world, is it a bad thing for women to have fewer children? While pundits worry at length about who will provide pensions for our ageing population, few talk about the economic and environmental costs of an ever-increasing population. Although some economic and social adjustments will be necessary as the age structure of populations change, those adjustments are minor compared with the changes that we will have to make in our lives if the experts on climate change are right. To the extent that we can stem population growth, the task of preserving on our planet an environment in which humans can live is made less difficult. Educated women who have freedom of reproductive choice tend, on average, to have fewer children than those who are not free to choose. Educating and empowering women is, therefore, one way toward sustainable lifestyles.

What we need to work towards is real choice for women. As far as biology permits, women should have the same opportunities for meaningful participation in all aspects of society, including paid work and family life, as men do. That means publicising and recognising women who combine successful careers and family life, including some studies of how they manage to do it.