Beyond Becoming: Auto/biography in Motion and the Social Life of Non-Parenthood
This project (which I am currently developing) shows how lived experiences of ‘life without biological children’ become shared, accumulating knowledge. It then uses that insight to work with existing stories and conversations to reshape how such adulthoods are understood, taught, and researched in social science.
Over the past fifteen years, across many parts of the world, people who identify as childless not by choice, childless due to circumstance or unexpectedly childfree have worked across public platforms and international conversations to collectively develop new ways of defining and understanding adulthood. These resources thoughtfully engage with themes of loss, grief, adaptation, care, hope, joy, ageing, health and mental health, family/kinship and future planning. Taken together, this work forms a living archive – a growing vocabulary, a body of stories, reflections, conversations, and creative practices – of emerging standpoints in childless/childfree lives. Yet sociology and social policy have often been slow to recognise this work.
The project that I am developing builds on this. It starts from the view that something significant is already happening in public-facing spaces that has not yet been systematically engaged within social science (in contrast, there has been work on the childfree choice). This living archive does not simply recount ‘how it happened’ but reflects on what it means, practically and emotionally, for this growing demographic to live and age over decades without biological children.
Finding appropriate terminology to define the project is challenging. Although I use the term ‘social life of non-parenthood’ in the project title, I am really focussed on adulthoods which do not involve biological children, even though that was probably anticipated and/or planned for and/or worked towards. I recognise that such adulthoods are diverse, and that for some people parenthood is part of this life course, through step children and adopted children, for example.
My project Beyond Becoming aligns with the shifts that have happened in public-facing spaces. It engages with these emerging standpoints, and rather than centring how a life without biological children is arrived at, the project asks what follows: how responsibilities are negotiated, how care is imagined and enacted, and how futures are planned at a time of significant demographic change, yet in which so many social expectations still assume parenthood as the norm.
Given the generative work already underway amongst creators and communities, my role as a sociologist is to articulate the significance of this knowledge within social research and higher education – developing a clear case for its recognition as legitimate, timely, and consequential, and clarifying why it matters, for whom it matters and what is at stake.
Positioned within social science, I am able to take steps that will bring this work into dialogue with some of the research agendas and teaching that shape and impact childless/childfree lives. In other words, I can help this living archive travel by acting as a broker and translator between community knowledges and some of the institutional spaces where understandings of adulthood are formed and perpetuated.
How am I taking this forwards?
To take this forward I am developing an initial project that studies how lived experience is articulated, shared and taken up – how it accumulates and circulates across memoirs, podcasts, community spaces, and scholarship, becoming recognised as knowledge about contemporary adulthood and life course. For those who would like to be involved, I am aiming to undertake fifteen in-depth interviews with people who have published memoirs, created or hosted podcasts, contributed as podcast guests, or established online or offline community spaces focused on the lived experiences of ‘childless due to circumstance’, ‘childless not by choice’ or ‘unexpectedly childfree’ (see below on how to get in touch, if I have not yet reached out to you).
In addition, I would like to work with creators who wish to be involved, to assemble a modest, curated (and anonymised) dataset of selected publicly available materials (stories, memoirs, reflections, podcast conversations, other creative practices) that engage with life course questions beyond becoming ‘not a parent’. Through thematic analysis this corpus will enable themes, tensions and insights to be identified, providing a foundation for mapping the contours of a co-created research agenda in ‘life without biological children’ today.
Project stage and getting in touch
I’m currently in a phase of reaching out and starting conversations with people who are already shaping discussions, creating resources, building communities and opening up new ways of thinking related to adulthoods that are ‘childless due to circumstance’, ‘ childless not by choice’ and ‘unexpectedly childfree’.
Over the next two years (through to December 2027), the project will focus on conducting up to fifteen in depth interviews, building and analysing a curated thematic corpus of publicly available materials, and continuing conversations with communities in this space. This is a period of listening, analysis and mapping. Should dedicated funding become available, this work could move more quickly and possibly allow for deeper collaboration or wider dissemination.
I am gradually reaching out to individuals and communities, and the pace is shaped by available time and resources. If I have not yet contacted you, but you think I should have, or you would like me to, I would genuinely welcome hearing from you so please do get in touch.
There is no expectation to participate, and any interviews or involvement would be discussed individually.
This research project has received ethical approval, and care, consent, and respect for boundaries will guide all stages of the work.
I’m developing this project because I believe the work already being done in these communities to articulate a new standpoint deserves to shape how society and scholarship understands these lives.