The childfree 'choice'

An online ethnographic study in South Africa, India, and Poland.

Project Leader

This unfunded project was part of the 2012 International Congress of Psychology's Emerging Psychologists Programme*

This qualitative study is focused on reproductive decision-making and specifically on the experiences of individuals who choose to remain childfree/voluntarily childless. This online ethnography explores how childfree identities are constructed by individuals who describe themselves as childfree.

Publications

Lynch, I., Morison, T., et al. (2018). From deviant choice to feminist issue: An historical analysis of scholarship on voluntary childlessness (1920 to 2013). In N. Sappleton (Ed.) Voluntary and involuntary childlessness: The joys of Otherhood? Emerald Publishing. [Pre-Print Version]
Morison, T., et al. (2015). Stigma resistance in online childfree communities: The limitations of choice rhetoric. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40(2), 184 - 198.

Other

Blog

Facebook Community

Uptake/impact

• The findings from our Voluntary childlessness study have been reported on by several international media outlets

Women's Health (2013); Radio702 (2015); WIRED (2019), NZ Herald (2019) and North & South Magazine (2020). Our work was most recently featured on the international podcast Unladylike (ep 144: Childfree by choice).

*The annual programme aims to enhance communication between Emerging Psychologists (selected newly graduated scholars) from different countries and diverse cultural backgrounds and to promote knowledge exchange between established and younger researchers in psychology.