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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Mother's Day is coming up on Sunday. In this year of motherhood being even more intense than usual, we'll do three Mother's Day-related segments. We'll actually talk about women who are not becoming mothers today, because new stats show more women are making that choice. We will have a call in tomorrow to thank your mother for a specific thing. We'll reveal tomorrow what that thing is and invite you to call in and say your mom's name and conjunction with it, if you'd like.

That's tomorrow. On Monday, some of the very serious challenges around being a mother these days. Right now, we want to invite your calls if, in the past year, you've made a decision that you won't be having children, that you've decided to forgo parenthood all together for financial reasons or lifestyle reasons, or watching your parent friends struggle this year and that was enough to scare you off the prospect of child rearing for good. I know somebody who's deciding whether or not she ever wants to have kids because of the climate. Do I want to bring children into this world?

Have you recently decided to go child-free by choice, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Yes, I asked this question now because new federal data out this week reveals that the birth rate has declined for the sixth straight year in a row. It's not just a pandemic thing, down 4% in 2020 from the previous year and down 19% from its recent peak in 2007, the birth rate, that is births per 100,000 women, I think is the official stat. That's actually a surprise to researchers who initially expected a baby bump during the pandemic with so many couples stuck at home in close quarters. Apparently, more chose to delay their pregnancies, and some to take children out of their life plans all together.

Does that sound like you, and how did you come to that decision? Have you always thought you might not have kids, or did you always assume that one day you'd start a family and then that gradually changed for you? 646-435-7280, if you fairly recently come to the decision that you're going to be childless by choice. Did the pandemic make parenting seem way too hard when those challenges come up, did it reveal how little help mothers can expect from their government or even their spouses too often, with so much of the care burden falling on women in the past year as has been widely discussed?

Not that it doesn't always, but we know the pandemic intensified it, or did you lose your job and you think you might never be financially secure enough to really raise kids and be okay, or does the world just generally seem too uncertain? I mentioned climate or politically to bring a whole new generation into it. 646-435-7280. By the way, our lines will already fall. Joining us now to talk about this and help take your calls is Amy Blackstone, Professor of Sociology at the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine and author of the book Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence. Professor Blackstone, thanks for coming on, welcome to WNYC.

Amy Blackstone: Thank you, happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Like I said in my intro, some sociologists expected that the pandemic would lead to a baby bump and not a baby slump, with couples stuck home so much of the time. Did you expect something similar, or does your area of research- did it make you think differently all along about this?

Amy Blackstone: I'm glad you asked that, because I did not expect that to happen at all, nor did any of my fellow sociologists, who I spoke with, who study the child-free choice. I was really surprised when I heard this prediction. I think it overlooked many of the realities that you've already described. It also overlooked the reality that we have this amazing scientific thing called birth control that people can use.

Brian Lehrer: I've heard of it.

Amy Blackstone: Even if they are stuck at home and happened to be heterosexual and happened to be coupled with a person of the other sex, there are ways that they can prevent pregnancy. No, I really did not expect to see a baby bump, and lo and behold, that has borne out to be true.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, I noticed that you devote a chapter in your book to debunking, what some people have called maternal instinct. I suppose the power that kicks in some time after a woman gives birth, allowing them to know when their children are sick or need something specific. You don't believe that's a thing?

Amy Blackstone: It's not just that I don't believe that that's the thing, it's that we don't have any scientific evidence to show that it is a thing. While it is true that there is a thing called oxytocin that kicks in after a woman becomes pregnant and after she gives birth, that appears to drive the desire to nurture that new being, there isn't anything that kicks in, that drives a woman to want to become pregnant. Yes, we have a sex drive, but that's different from the drive to nurture and rear a child for 18 years.

Brian Lehrer: For women who've decided not to have children, which is the real topic of your book, the idea is moot, so I'm just curious why devote time to debunking the science behind the maternal instinct-

Amy Blackstone: Oh, got it.

Brian Lehrer: -in that context?

Amy Blackstone: Sure. Because womanhood and motherhood are so intertwined that we almost think of them as one and the same. I think that in order to talk about the child-free choice, we have to disentangle those two concepts. In order to disentangle those two concepts, we have to talk about maternal instinct and what it is and what it is not.

Brian Lehrer: Before we go to some calls, just the basic terminology, and I know this is not new, people have been making this distinction for decades, but child-free versus childless. Right?

Amy Blackstone: Right, yes. When I use those terms and when most folks who research this topic use those terms, child-free is used to refer to people who have opted out of parenthood. They've made a very intentional choice not to become parents. Childless is typically used to refer to people who are not parents, but not by choice. They may have wanted to become parents and didn't, or couldn't for any number of reasons. While we share the status as non-parents, our experiences are very different.

Brian Lehrer: Jasmine in the Catskills, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jasmine.

Jasmine: Hi, thanks so much for taking my call. I am so down with this topic, it goes through my head all the time as a 41-year-old woman who has had to make different choices in my life because I'm a lesbian, I'm married, and so it wouldn't be as easy for me to just get pregnant. I have to make a very intentional choice to do so. I think, in the pandemic especially, it has become very clear to me that having a child, having a biological child is a choice I don't want to make because of the climate catastrophe.

The fact that a child is really going to be another human taking up space on the planet when there are so many who are in the system and need us to choose to adopt them. I want to make clear that this was not an easy decision for me, that a lot of people who choose to not have kids never wanted them, but I did, and this is a choice I'm making anyway, in order to hopefully remove myself a little bit from the equation.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Professor Blackstone. You want to talk to Jasmine?

Amy Blackstone: Yes. Thank you so much for raising that point, Jasmine. I think, more and more I'm hearing that from people, that they have opted out, but then it has to do with reasons for the greater good really and concerns around the environmental impacts of overpopulation and the high consumption rates of American babies in particular, the high carbon footprints of babies in particular who are born here. I think what you're describing, Jasmine, is totally aligned with what we're hearing more and more from people.

Maybe this is the thing that will drive policymakers to think differently about how we support parents or how, frankly, we don't support parents today. If we want people to opt into parenthood, we need to think differently about the supports we provide for them and about the impact of the people that we bring into the world. Maybe we think differently about immigration and adoption to your point, Jasmine.

Brian Lehrer: Jasmine.

Jasmine: I totally agree with that. I'm really glad for that to be on the table. I feel so often the conversation is about whether or not we should have children and we completely ignore the kids that are up for adoption. I realized that that is a complicated system, but the world is complicated. I think we need to be making choices that are in more alignment with the world we want to be a part of, not necessarily the world that society has dictated we should create.

Brian Lehrer: Jasmine, thank you so much. Jason in Greenpoint, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jason.

Jason: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. My girlfriend and I have gone through this pandemic and really felt as though there's no way that we could ever possibly support a family with children. We've seen pretty much all of our friends make the opposite decision, where most of them have had their kids within a year already.

It's very ostracizing to see my network growing away from us. It feels very similar when I read the newspaper about the American Families Plan and talking so much about family and children. They very rarely talk about individuals. It's a very touchy subject for us, but we see that there's no way for us in the future, at least in the very near-term future, to be able to support ourselves, let alone our children.

Brian Lehrer: That's a financial decision it sounds like, but it also sounds like- among other things, but it also sounds like you've made that decision, the two of you as a couple, as something you want to stick to permanently. What if you both got great jobs next week and your income went up 300%.

Jason: It depends on if we'd be happy with those jobs. We're very much interested in doing what we want to do with our lives, and that doesn't necessarily making me making hundreds of thousands of dollars. It means being busy with the things we want to be busy with, and that's not necessarily having children.

Brian Lehrer: Are you getting judged?

Jason: Am I getting judged? I don't think so, maybe for other things, but not for that. We're definitely supported by that, our friends don't want us to go away. Even though, all they talked about is babies, and we don't have much to contribute to that conversation.

Brian Lehrer: Jason, thank you very much. Dr. Blackstone, I know somebody who is a senior citizen now, but but many moons ago says she didn't want kids and felt pressured to have kids. She and her husband had kids. I guess it seems to have worked out fine. It seems to be half a family, grown kids now, but what surprised this person was that so many of her friends turned out not to have kids either. She thought that the reason to have kids or a big pressure that she experienced at the time, she says, was, "We're going to be the only ones, everybody else has kids." Then, consistent with these stats that are coming out, it's just becoming more and more common not to.

Amy Blackstone: Yes. I so relate to Jason's story and to that experience of watching your friend group change because others in the group, many in the group are opting into parenthood and you yourself are not, really interesting to hear about the flip of that as well. I think that one thing to keep in mind is that, we are talking as though more people are opting out of parenthood today than ever before. I think the jury, honestly, is still out on that question.

Birth rates fluctuate, we've been below the replacement rate, or mostly below it, since the 1970s. If you look beyond the '70s, even beyond the '50s, which seems to be this magical decade that we all refer to as though that the birth rates were always what they were in the '50s, in 1920, 25% of women reached their 40s without ever having given birth. That figure today is 15%. It's not that the things don't change. We're not in this unprecedented arena in the way that, I think, we tend to think we are.

Brian Lehrer: Lynette in Ridgewood. You're on WNYC, Hi, Lynette.

Lynette: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I was telling your screener, I've known for a long time I did not want to be a mother, and I have a really strong belief that motherhood is a calling, or parenthood is a calling. I think that people who really feel that work in their heart-- Most of the people that I know that have kids were always really sure that they wanted to have kids regardless of their circumstance, financially, if they were in a relationship, that didn't matter, they just were like, "Where's my family? I want to have a kid."

I never had that feeling. Then, as I get older, I know that I should trust that because I don't regret it. Another thing is just being a Black woman in America. I am terrified of what having a child and having to constantly worry about their safety, that just is not something I'm interested in doing.

Brian Lehrer: Lynette, thank you very much. Does your research, Professor Blackstone, indicate that that is common in the African-American community?

Amy Blackstone: Yes. I confess that my research really is, in my own study, limited to my own social network. I am a white woman in her late 40s. I don't have as strong representation of women of color or people of color in my own sample that I wish I did. There's a great researcher by the name of Kimya Dennis, who studies child-free women and men of the African diaspora, and her research really is so important and needed because much of the work on this question of what drives people to make the decision to opt out of parenthood is limited in terms of the diversity of participants in the study. I really appreciate hearing the call, and then also the point about parenthood as a calling.

I would argue that that comes from our socialization and that we're told from almost the moment we're born, that that is our destiny. Of course, we grew up believing that that is true. I agree that if you're not feeling that pull, if you don't feel the call to parenthood, it doesn't make sense to do it. It's a hard enough job as it is. Let's leave it to the folks who really feel compelled to do it and stop pushing the people who don't want to do it, to opt in.

Brian Lehrer: One more. Arusha in Bushwick, you're on WNYC. Hi, Arusha, we've got about a minute for you.

Arusha: Hey, thanks for taking my call. I think I'm going to echo a lot of what's been said here, I'm past the child-bearing age. I've never wanted to have kids because of climate, because of finances. I always doubted myself for years, and then, God forbid, being single as a woman. What are you if you don't have kids? It's an interesting topic, and it's like, I guess I just wanted a voice, that some of us are here. We've never wanted children. We might even, God forbid, these single women on our own, but we're still worthy and we're here to help the planet and we're here to be friends and be companions and have relationships. That's all I wanted to say.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds like you've had to deal with stigma. Is there a way that you've dealt with it?

Arusha: I started to examine. I'm like, "Why do I feel like I need to walk with the scarlet letter A down the street?" I constantly feel like I need to say, "I'm sorry." I started to examine, like, "who am I apologizing for?" Then I just started to accept myself.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much.

Arusha: It's just nice to hear what you're talking about, especially your guest today. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Arusha, thank you. In our last 30 seconds, Dr. Blackstone, in addition to your own book, Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence, are there resources that you refer people to, if they're on the fence, really don't know one way or another for themselves and are trying to weigh the pros and cons?

Amy Blackstone: Yes. I would say, definitely check out books on parenting as well to have a better sense of what you might be getting into, and talk with folks who have opted out, to learn more about their experiences. There's a great memoir written by Marcia Drut Davis, who is a child-free woman in her 70s called Confessions of a Childfree Woman. There are a couple of great documentaries that have either recently come out or about to come out on the child-free choice. More and more people are speaking out about their choice and their experience. I think it's a great opportunity to learn from others about what their experiences are like.

Brian Lehrer: Amy Blackstone, Sociology Professor at the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine and author of Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence. Thank you so much, Dr. Blackstone.

Amy Blackstone: Thank you.

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