3. Cody Hetzel on building a unified community

Today Laura sits down with Cody Hetzel from Childfree Media to better understand the landscape and complexities of the childfree community. Cody shares his personable narrative on choosing a childfree life, shedding light on the societal influences that often steer these critical life decisions.

The discussion opens with quick overview of the lexicon of the childfree world. Terms such as pronatalism, anti-natalism, 'dinks', 'dinkwads', 'bingoing' and the aggressively childfree, are decoded, offering an enlightening perspective on this lifestyle. Cody introduces us to some of his initiatives that aim to foster connections within the childfree community, including a micro networking site, a merchandise website, a childfree convention, and his co-founding venture, Childfree Media.

We wrap things up by delving into societal stereotypes and misconceptions attached to being childfree, particularly for men. The fear that prevents many from engaging in the childfree community is examined, and we talk candidly about the pressures exerted by societal expectations on personal life choices. Settle in for a discussion that promises to broaden your understanding of the childfree lifestyle, whether you're part of this community, contemplating it, or simply curious. This episode guarantees an enriching journey into an often misunderstood and misrepresented community.

Click here to the listen to the Dinky episode Antinatalism: Debating The Ethics of Procreation

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

It's hard for a lot of people to come to understanding with because it goes back against everything that we're taught Go to school, get a job, get married, have kids. It's beat into us and so you know society is going to tell you what's best for society, not necessarily what's best for you. You're going to get challenged, but men, over the most part, I would say that we are not nearly challenged compared to women.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Welcome back to another episode of Child Free Me, a show where we examine the choice to be child free and what it's like to navigate that decision in today's world. I'm your host, laura Allen, and today's guest is Cody Hetzel of Child Free Media. Among many other things which we talk about in the episode, I was especially excited to speak with Cody, not only because he obviously brings a male perspective to the decision to be child free, but also because he's extremely immersed in the child free community, which is a whole world that I didn't even know existed before I started doing research for this podcast. So while we do discuss his own personal journey to choosing to be child free, most of this conversation actually focuses on the child free community and some of the challenges it faces and really his vision and how he wants to support the community moving forward. There are a couple terms that we reference throughout the conversation that are really specific to the child free community, so I wanted just to give a little overview of what those terms are for anyone who might not be familiar with them, since I certainly wasn't, before starting this podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:36

So the first one is pronatalism, which is the policy or practice of encouraging the bearing of children and can even involve a government support of a higher birth rate. Really, it's the belief that societal well-being depends on our willingness to procreate and that the traditional family unit should be valued above all else. On the flip side of that is a philosophy called anti-natalism, which is the belief that it's morally wrong or unjustifiable for people to have children. At its core, anti-natalism believes that life is so difficult and so painful that human beings should stop having children out of compassion. I know it sounds harsh and I think it's because of the word anti in it, and most people assume that anti-natalists hate babies, but based on the articles I've read, it's actually the desire to avoid suffering of potential children and the adults that they would become. For anyone interested in exploring the topic more, there's a really fantastic podcast called Dinky by two women who identifies anti-natalists. Their names are Erika and Kristen and I'll link in the show notes to a really interesting and educational episode that they do on the topic, debunking myths around it.

Speaker 2: 2:50

The next term is dink, which is more mainstream. I think most people are familiar with it at this point, but for anyone who hasn't heard it, it's an acronym that stands for dual income no kids. I really view dink as more of a lifestyle phase than a lifestyle choice. Obviously, child-free couples have chosen to be dinks permanently, but there are a lot of couples who talk about living the dink lifestyle prior to having children. So again, just a life stage. There's also my personal favorite, dink wad, which stands for dual income no kids with a dog. Cody also references a group that call themselves the aggressively child-free, which I'm admittedly less familiar with, but my understanding is that there's an especially outspoken population of the child-free community that are openly critical of parents and children.

Speaker 2: 3:37

And then the final term I'm going to talk about. We don't actually mention in the episode, but it's one of my favorites from this new child-free world that I've discovered and it's called being bing-o'd, or you can just say bing-o'd, and basically it refers to the cliche phrases people say in an effort to convince child-free people that their decision is wrong or that they're really shirking their societal duty by not reproducing. It's the classic phrases we've all heard, which is your biological clock is ticking or you'll change your mind eventually. Or kids are the deepest kind of love, or the most precious kind of love, or who's going to take care of you when you're old, or even how can you be so selfish?

Speaker 2: 4:21

I really view bingoing as basically pro-natalism, manifesting itself at family gatherings or around the dinner table. So for anyone who's child-free or even putting off having children and they're just not ready yet, you know what I mean. I think we've all been bingo'd at some point. Okay, so thank you for tuning in to my mini-overview of some child-free terms. Hopefully you're not asleep, and this helps to give some context around the conversation with Cody, and with that let's jump in. So, cody Hetzel, welcome to the Child-Free Me podcast.

Speaker 1: 4:54

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 4:55

I'm particularly excited because you are the first male that I have on our podcast to be interviewed which is great and you're also actively involved in the child-free space, so I was doing research leading up to this. You have started a micro networking site called the Child-Free Family. You also have a merchandise website called Buy Child-Free Buy Child-Free. You've also started a Child-Free convention and you are part of Child-Free Media and co-founded that. So can you just talk a little bit about all?

Speaker 1: 5:28

of those things and what you do. Yeah, so it all started just discovering what Child-Free even was Like. The first time I even heard the term was probably like 2014. Give or take, somewhere right around there, Just a Facebook group that a friend of mine had joined. That was for Child-Free people, and this is back when Facebook was way more vanilla and it actually would tell you when your friends joined groups which I guess got creepy so they stopped doing that. But it would tell you when your friends joined a group.

Speaker 1: 5:52

And I saw one of my friends joined a Child-Free group and I was like, wait a minute, we don't have kids. My wife and I I'm married, we're Child-Free. That's a cool term, fine, let's see what that's all about. So I joined the group and, you know, kind of spread out from there and then over the years, this consuming the content more of a lurker than an active participant like I just kind of would just enjoy what people were saying. I didn't really join the conversation very much and around 2019, it was looking for like kind of the next thing to get involved with, like a passion project, something that I would enjoy doing, and I kept seeing the same question come up over and over and over again.

Speaker 1: 6:26

You can probably relate to this when are the Child-Free people? Where are they near me? Where are they anywhere? I can't find them, other than you're in a group as a name. Where are you, like, actually located? And I kept seeing that come up over and over, and so I just kind of came up with the idea of I'm just gonna create a website, is literally gonna have a map on it. That's where childfreefamilycom came from. Is I just wanted to create a very basic micro social network where you join it. It's free, you make a little profile, your pick, and then it brings up a little map ping and it's global. I've got people all over the planet that have map pings everywhere If you go look at the map, except for Russia and China, surprisingly, but then maybe not surprisingly.

Speaker 2: 7:02

Those are the only places I don't have someone located.

Speaker 1: 7:04

Other than that, there's pretty much people everywhere, and that was kind of where I started to step my foot into the realm of being more active in the childfree community and being more vocal about it. I started to put myself out there and sharing the link and that, whatever I was able to, I would ask for permission first in the groups before sharing it. From there it just kind of grew where I saw the next step is this childfree merchandise. Some people are asking like where can I get the child for a t-shirt? And at the time there was really only one place, and this is not like a Etsy conglomerate or Amazon or something, but an actual website dedicated for childfree merchandise, and that was hashtag no kids.

Speaker 1: 7:39

I hooked up with Lucas, who was running that website, and I said look, I've started my own little merch line. I've got t-shirts and designs and all that fun stuff. You do too. We're not really competitors in this realm. The market's so small. This is joined forces. And so we did and we formed buy childfree, buy childfree, which is B-U-Y childfree, B-Y childfree. So we just wanted to put a stake in the ground and say, look, these are designed by people who are childfree for our childfree community. It's not some anonymous person on Etsy or Amazon who made this shirt. Are they just trying to get money out of our community and plaster shirt out there? Keep it in the family? From there we started bringing other brands as well. So it's an open marketplace for childfree merchandise that has been vetted and if you see a shirt that means a person behind it is childfree, that's made that design. So open invitation to anyone that's got childfree t-shirt or stickers or mug ideas, whatever.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Just let us know and we'll hook you up and get you going and it takes out a lot of legwork of trying to run a merchandising shop. So from there Jared Hansen runs Best Child for Life possible Facebook group. He and I just started chatting and then one day he just shot me a message and he says I want to start a childfree convention, something where we can have people get together and talk about the topic. I'm like sure.

Speaker 2: 8:45

I'm in, let's do it. And before this there was no convention or gathering of childfree people.

Speaker 1: 8:51

There was the Not Mom Summit, which was actually in person. It lasted a couple of years and there was an actual physical meeting place. It was primarily for women childfree women, I guess you could say we were the first, that was everybody included in the childfree sphere. And so we roped in Lenora Fay, who is from the Childfree Girls podcast, and so Lenora came on board really just to help us develop a logo, and somehow we suckered her into being a co-founder of the conventions. The three of us put on the first convention and we just finished our third one this year in 23. So we've done three of them and they get bigger and more awesome every time.

Speaker 2: 9:26

When are you gonna have?

Speaker 1: 9:26

Chelsea Handler. We discussed that this last year and they went on strike so no one could speak if it wanted them to. You know what's it? John Cena, seth Rogen, all these people that are circling the childfree space. Maybe they wanna come say something or just give us a recorded clip, so that's out there.

Speaker 1: 9:42

Chelsea's a little bit different because she's capitalizing on being child-free, which I really don't have a problem with because it gets us out there. But the rest of the people they kind of beat around the bush like oh yeah, we don't have kids and there's no benefit for them to come out and alienate their fan base. Chelsea Haller is like putting her arms around the child-free fan base and, like the parents and people that follow her as well, they know her humor and they accept it anyway. Yeah, she's going all in on child-free. Not many people are doing that Jennifer Aniston this last year came out with. She had struggles with fertility, so that was a big bomb to drop on the child-free community is that she was not technically child-free by most definitions. She was trying to have a child. So she's technically childless, which was a nice boon for the childless community. But for the child-free community we lost the golden child for child-free people for a long time.

Speaker 2: 10:28

I actually didn't know that, and I love Jennifer Aniston, but I didn't know that she came out with that Again.

Speaker 1: 10:32

We have a new panel this last year called Child-Free Icon. What makes a child-free icon? Because it's tough to find people that live the creed that they are definitely going to be child-free. Because it hurts the community when people say they don't want kids and then they're famous and then they do have kids. Because all that does is gives people ammunition to come back at us and be like see, you can't be that serious, they change their minds, You're going to change your mind too. It kind of hurts everything that we want in our lives. Interesting yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:59

Well, they'll hold on hope for Chelsea.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Yeah, and then from that I was chatting with Lenora about the situation, kind of like yours. You know we have all of these people that are creating content, but we're so fractured. They're creating blogs, blogs, podcasts, whatever it might be, but it's so hard to find us because the algorithm just stomps you down. Unless you can get a lot of followers who do the shares, do the likes, the comments, all that stuff, you're not really going to be found unless someone goes in a search bar and types in child-free, and child-free happens to be in your name or with the hashtag. They're not going to find you. And so child-free media came to be through myself and Lenora Faye, and that's really what we wanted it to be was a platform where we can help other content creators. Basically, put our powers together, keep creating the content and then just let child-free media push it out. And if we can get everybody going to at least one place to consume the content, but then, once they enjoy the content, they can follow your website or your blog or your social media, whatever that's great Like. Let them help the content creators in that regard, and I think that's the last thing that I've started working on. No, no wait, it's not International Child Free Day. Lenora and I, with child-free media, were the team that's now behind internationalchildfreedaycom. That's the newest thing that we're working on.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Laura Carroll really is the one who brought life back into the celebration of international child-free. It started in its first rendition back in 1973. It was an in-person little parade, the Crown of King and Queen kind of thing, and over the years it went away and then in 2013, laura Carroll started internationalchildfreedaycom and she started to revive life into it again. And this year, in 2023, she was looking for some new leadership to kind of take the reins on that and keep it going, taking it to the next level, whatever the next rendition might be, and luckily she tapped Lenora and myself to do that, so we're behind that website as well. Like I just have a passion for the community, I enjoy hearing people's stories, and why did they choose this? How are they enjoying their life? Do they have even regrets? I don't care, let's talk about everything. Nothing should be off the table with that. Here I am.

Speaker 2: 12:55

So what makes you so passionate? Because I hear the passion and I feel like it speaks for itself All of these things that you do in this space for seemingly probably not the income or the money.

Speaker 1: 13:06

There's no money in this at all, like that's the thing, like it is a passion project. It definitely is. It just needs to happen. There's always been something in me that's driven me to taking a leadership role and if kind of always been my MO and child-free, has been no different. I got in and then I saw a need and I wanted to get involved and then help fill in the gaps where I needed and help really just to promote other people. That's my passion. I want you to be famous. I want you to go on and do great things.

Speaker 2: 13:31

Me too yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:33

And help just the name, the community, what it is, what it can be.

Speaker 2: 13:36

What's the biggest need, do you think, in the child-free space?

Speaker 1: 13:41

Oh, a clear definition because there seem to be different shades of child-free to people. We did a convention panel on gatekeeping. So there's a lot of gatekeeping in the child-free community because are you child-free enough? You know this. Last convention we had a panel for the aggressively child-free ACF. That's the moniker to get themselves and even then, after hearing from the people who are in those communities, it wasn't aggressive enough. Again, it's like just an understanding of the different colors of what makes up the child-free community. We need to find our own unified voice of what is the core child-free thing.

Speaker 2: 14:14

What is that?

Speaker 1: 14:15

And then it can kind of spring off. People are going to have their own ideas. You can't fit everybody in a one box, but we should at least have one core thing that we can all agree on. It's like yes, that is definitively child-free.

Speaker 1: 14:25

And example, some people might say that if you're a step parent, then you're not child-free. But what if that person gets divorced from the individual? Do they get to be child-free? Then they were a step parent, but now they're again back to being a single child-free person. So when did they get to put the hat on and off? And then, of course, there's people that don't understand the definition at all and they might be an empty nester, meaning that their kids are out of the house and they're like oh, I'm child-free, I don't have kids at home, that's not child-free.

Speaker 2: 14:49

What is your definition of child-free?

Speaker 1: 14:51

About as simple as I can probably make. It is child free. It's a person who does not have a child now and does not want a child in the future. I think that that can almost be the same definition for childless, which we get confused with a lot in social media and click baby type of articles where they use child free and childless interchangeably. To me, a childless person is a person who does not have a child but wants a child in the future. So the and in the but in my mind make them two different things. To me that's kind of at its core of what a child free person would be.

Speaker 2: 15:22

I agree, so I'm relatively new to the space, but I distinguish between childless and child free. As child free, being childless by choice is probably the best way I've described it, but I like your push on the future. So, knowing you don't have children now and you don't have children in the future, I want to rewind to 2014.

Speaker 1: 15:41

OK.

Speaker 2: 15:41

This sounds like that's when you first started to enter the child free space, but you were child free by choice, well beyond that.

Speaker 1: 15:48

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:49

Talk a little bit about your journey to that decision and what it looked like Sure.

Speaker 1: 15:52

I backed into it, was told, just like almost everybody else in the world. I know, definitely in the US, we hear you go to school, you get a job, you get married, you have kids. They don't tell you anything after have kids. So, you know, in my 20s I thought that's what was supposed to happen. I never thought I would not ever have children. And then when I met my now wife and we were dating and the topic of kids comes up early and it should everybody talk about it, and we both kind of decided that we'd be happy being a family too. But that was our definition of it is. We just weren't going to have kids, we're just going to grow all together. And we got married in 2010. And then in 2014,. That's where I actually heard the term child free first. That's where the light bulb went off we're child free. It's like, hey, honey, there's a name for what we are we're child free people.

Speaker 2: 16:32

Are there a lot of people in your circle of friends, family, that were in the same boat, or do you feel like you were on your own?

Speaker 1: 16:39

I have relatives who don't have kids Now by choice or circumstance, I don't know. I slowly learned as I've aged now, and the good thing about being child free and aging is that your social circle can get better and bigger, because eventually people get busy. They do get married and have kids and if you're no fault of their own or yours, they get busy and they really don't have time for whatever friendship you had going. I look at life as changing every four to five years. Every four to five years you're going to have some kind of a major life shift. It's just going to happen and so you know your circle of friends is going to change every four or five years.

Speaker 1: 17:13

And what I noticed here we're in Savannah Georgia. I've been here since 2003. My wife is from this area and so once we got married and started to develop a couple of friendships and I slowly noticed at my wife's 40th birthday party that, like 95% of the people I invited didn't have kids and were child free. And it just hit me then this is like a few years ago it's a while we just literally built up a little community, unknowingly, that it was child free people.

Speaker 1: 17:36

So as you get older you do kind of like little magnets, you kind of find each other. Some of our oldest friends I just literally had a conversation with the husband just a few weeks ago about their situation and their story. You could say they're child free by circumstance but they're happily child free, like they're very happy that they don't have kids. So you know, everyone's got a different path here. Like I said, I kind of backed into it. Some people know from an early age that they don't want kids. Everyone's a little bit different.

Speaker 2: 17:58

Have you, and I'm sure you got this all the time. One of the big things I hear is oh, you'll regret not having children. Have you and your wife ever faced regret?

Speaker 1: 18:06

No, I've never. We, I say we check in with each other all the time, and usually it's a rhetorical answer. It's the answer is definitely going to be no Every time. We're so happy with where we are in our life, being a family too, just being us together. You know, me and her against the world. I think it is important for couples to check in with each other, because that's another one of those topics that you see a lot in Reddit or Facebook groups of my husband or wife of five, six, 10 years, whatever it might be they now want a kid. It's like well, did that come out of nowhere, or did you guys just maybe bury the conversation early on and never discuss it? And one thinks they're going to change the other's mind and it can go either way. They could think, oh, I'm going to make sure my wife changes her mind and never wants kids. Or she might think, oh, I'm going to change my husband's mind, he's going to have kids. Conversation, communication is definitely important.

Speaker 2: 18:47

We touched on this a little bit earlier, but I want to come back to it. As a man who is child-free, do you think there's any unique challenges or stereotypes that you face that differ from, maybe, the experience of a woman who is child-free?

Speaker 1: 19:00

I guess the only stereotype for a child-free man which is true, so it doesn't even make it a stereotype is that we're not challenged by society.

Speaker 1: 19:07

I can't say all men aren't challenged by society, but I mean the vast majority. Like, if you talk to a child-free guy and they are open about the decision that they don't want kids ever, and friends, strangers, coworkers, we're not really check, we're not. You know, question, oh, but what if? And if we are, it's light stepping, they're not going to come at us very hard. I don't know why. I don't think I'm a very intimidating person. I think I'm pretty open. People could talk to me.

Speaker 1: 19:30

So if someone really wanted to, like you know, cody, won't you regret this? Like I would have an open conversation with him about it. And I mean the answer is no, I'm not going to regret it. I can't. I can't regret something I'm happy about. Now it's almost a question back to them. It's a mirror. You're asking me if I'm going to regret it. It's like well, what are you? What are you afraid of? What are you worried about? Do you think your kids are not going to take care of you? Do you think you're going to be lonely? Like what? Where are you coming from with this question to me? Maybe they see that a lot of people are truly child-free and happy and they just don't get it and they're like no you, you must there must be something.

Speaker 1: 20:00

There's got to be a catchier like something's wrong, and to me that's the beautiful thing about you know we'll go back to the definition of what is child-free. When you say that you're child-free and you've made that leap, to say I'm happy with this decision, to say that you're happy with something A lot of people don't get to say that they're happy on a daily basis. But to say you're child-free means you've made that mental decision and you've chosen a happy path of not having a child. And that's it's hard for a lot of people to come to understanding with because it goes back against everything that we're taught go to school, get a job, get married, have kids. We're it's beat into us and so you know society is going to tell you what's best for society not necessarily what's best for you.

Speaker 1: 20:36

You're going to get challenged, but men, over the most part, I would say that we are not nearly challenged enough. Not that I'm asking you to be challenged, but compared to women, you guys definitely get the lion's share of the berating and the trolls that are out there.

Speaker 2: 20:49

So you'd say your experience has been different than your wife's experience.

Speaker 1: 20:53

Yeah, yeah, I would say so.

Speaker 1: 20:55

And a lot of times it's that women and I might be generalizing here, but they want to talk about the process of childbirth no interest in hearing that, or what happens with the kid after, or just it becomes a hard sell for parents A lot of times once they start talking about all the negativities of being a parent and they're like so why don't you want kids?

Speaker 1: 21:13

It's like I just listened to you for like five minutes, Like you just again reassured my stance. I don't think she's ever been challenged to the fact where it's you go to a leave you one day if you don't give him a child. No one's ever really challenged her and I think that's because she's very sure in herself and her responses as well. And so that's where it's helpful, Even if you're just not discovering the child free space or you've been in it for a while but just building up your response to those types of questions and just be confident in it, Like that is your decision. And if they still challenge you, you don't have to write it off in your head and be like look, they're not challenging me, they're challenging the idea, they're challenging their life, they're questioning themselves but they're phrasing it as an arrow pointed at me, and that's the answer thing.

Speaker 2: 21:54

I love that way of thinking about it. You do experience a certain amount of aggression, or even anger, but you're not quite sure where it comes from. But that's an interesting perspective of maybe it's just a mirror that people are questioning Are there any stereotypes of being child free, specifically as a man, that you would want to debunk?

Speaker 1: 22:13

I think that a stereotype specifically is that they think we just don't like kids. And there are child free people that literally don't like to be around kids for a my out of reasons. It could be just because kids are loud Sometimes you can't control what they do or say and they're super energetic. That's more than some people can handle. You can't fault them for knowing their own limits of being around situations like that. Imagine if that child was an adult. Would you want to hang around that adult? Probably not. I think the stereotype is that a child free man doesn't care or can't be nurturing towards children.

Speaker 2: 22:40

I'm great with kids, like that's the irony.

Speaker 1: 22:42

I'm amazingly great with kids. We've got tons of child free people all over the country in the world that are teachers, that are pediatric physicians, that deal with children on a daily life. For their job that's literally to get paid to be around children, and so I think it's a little unfair to say that child free people have something against the children. Usually, if there's anything, it would be against the bad habits they've learned along the way, and that's not really the kids fault, it's society's fault, not even necessarily the parents fault.

Speaker 2: 23:08

You mentioned earlier that not a lot of people engage in the community. It sounds like they consume the content but don't engage. Why do you think that is?

Speaker 1: 23:18

In one very short word I would say fear. It's fear of how they're going to be reacted to Again, like what we're just talking about the stereotype of seeming uncaring, to be labeled as something that you're not. But also there's been a history where people get doxxed and they lose their jobs. It's very difficult to take an open position outside of the child free groups, like 99% of them are all private. I can't think of a public child free group that I'm a member of, because everything that's in there it's kind of our place to talk about things. So I think it's very hard for people to come into that kind of space and then think I can take my thoughts and opinions outside of this space and still receive a positive reaction versus the questions or the side eye or, even worse, the pity. We don't need your pity.

Speaker 2: 24:02

Trust us, we're happy God, we're so happy. Have you ever experienced something that would make you fear putting yourself out there?

Speaker 1: 24:09

Not really Again. I don't know if it's because I'm a guy, I don't get a lot of troll, a lot of the trolls out there that they just go after the child-free women and they're thinking maybe for some reason, like you're really crappy comment that they've heard a hundred times, that's going to be the one that changes their mind and be like oh, you're right, I totally wanted to have kids. I've told them mistaken Again. Guys, this aren't checked. It's kind of just in society in general, like I don't fear walking down the street by myself.

Speaker 1: 24:32

The irony is is that there aren't a lot of vocal child-free guys in general. There aren't a lot of child-free guys that are in the spaces in general, which is strange because the statistics are closer to 50-50 as far as the population goes. People that are over 50 years old in the United States think it's 56 to 44 split between women and men. Men are like 44 percent, women are like 56 percent. So it's almost even in how many people in the society are child-free and are men and women. But in the child-free spaces what I've seen is it's probably, if you're lucky, an 80-20 split 80 percent women, 20 percent men, and that's if there's a large population of guys in that group. It's usually closer to like 10 or 12, maybe 15. It's not a lot.

Speaker 1: 25:12

How do we engage this community more? Because it's a massive demographic. Some of the figures are like a one in five. 20 percent of the population will never have kids, possibly even by choice. To own a 20 percent market share of something is massive. That's an amazing thing and companies are so afraid to go after that demographic because they don't want to seem like they don't care about kids. Again, the same problem that we have is child-free people. The companies want to avoid the same thing and they don't want to risk their fan base or users.

Speaker 2: 25:39

I don't think I ever thought about how much we obviously love children in this society. I don't think I ever connected the dot between that and the stigma and how much the child-free community can be ostracized because of that.

Speaker 1: 25:52

Yeah, I mean, that's just a thing in media. We're just a trope. We're gonna be the overworked single woman that doesn't want kids because she's power driven and she wants to be the CEO, or she's gonna be a sad cat lady. For the guys again, it's the cool, sexy bachelor, the James Bondy type. Oh well, he's too cool to have kids, he's just gonna womanize people. It's all tropey out if you watch the big bang theory.

Speaker 2: 26:12

But that was a train wreck. Love that show that was a train wreck at the end.

Speaker 1: 26:15

They just took two characters and completely flipped a script on them.

Speaker 2: 26:18

What happened? I don't think I saw the last episode.

Speaker 1: 26:20

Penny wants to have kids and the fact that they made Bernadette want to have kids. She was the one you know, this smart, intelligent woman who's driven for her job. She doesn't want kids. She stated she doesn't want kids, and then they give her kids anyway and then Penny, at the end, like she ends up wanting to have kids too. It's just what they think their fan base wanted to see, even though the fans were happy with Bernadette and Penny not being parents. There was no reason to even go through that character arc, but they did it anyway. Again, the big bag with pronatalism. That's what's supposed to happen. You're supposed to change your mind and want kids. They're just trying to subtly force it on us to believe that that's what's gonna happen. Yeah, there aren't a lot of strong child-free characters out there that are like, as we know, child-free, child-free.

Speaker 2: 27:01

What is your vision for the child-free community?

Speaker 1: 27:04

I joke about this. Often it's like, look, I'll shut everything down, I'll stop doing what I'm doing the day that any random person that's child-free has a conversation, and when someone asks them oh, do you have kids? And the answer is no, okay, well, what do you think about the weather? Like they topic once it's accepted to where it doesn't matter anymore, that's when I'll just I'll quit everything. So that's really the goal is just to keep getting the word out there, and it's just going to take time and understanding and patience it's acceptance, yeah, of the choice even more than acceptance is just where it's not even a consideration.

Speaker 1: 27:36

It's just your regular dry banter you have at a networking event. It doesn't matter, it doesn't define you. So why try to say well then, you should be this way because of what you're saying, that you are. Once it just becomes a non-issue. It really it should be, it shouldn't matter, it really shouldn't matter what do you think is preventing us from achieving that vision?

Speaker 2: 27:54

is it just time like eventually we'll get there, or is there something more systemic that you think needs to change?

Speaker 1: 28:00

the big bad wolf for the child free community is pro natalism. It's the belief that people should have kids at its core to be child free as a choice, and that choice goes both ways. I'm child free. I don't care if someone else has a kid at its core. A child free person shouldn't care if someone's a parent or not. But that's where the little bit of the infighting happens. We know people shouldn't have kids because of pick your poison, like the climate change or overpopulation or food disparity or whatever it's going to be.

Speaker 1: 28:28

That, to me, is where anti natalism is dipping its toes into the child free community and it muddies the waters a little bit. And so we're at kind of a precipice now where it's a challenge to define what child free is Like. That's my most basic first goal is just to help come up with a better definition of what child free is, as I mentioned before, that we can all kind of agree on. And then again it can spur out from there, like if you're a child free, anti natalist, that tells me everything I need to know about you just by those two words. And there's child free, pro natalists. There's people that think I choose not to have kids but I think the rest of society should. I'm more in the middle, I just made up the term neutral natalist, like I'm. Just have kids, don't have kids, that's fine, and I think more of the population of child free people fall within that realm.

Speaker 2: 29:11

But the other ends are a little bit more vocal than we are I feel like that's usually the case in most communities in dynamics.

Speaker 1: 29:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:19

And you guys do have a podcast. It's just you summarizing child free news.

Speaker 1: 29:24

Twiq this weekend child free kind of scour the headlines. We just go live. So there is no editing Lenora, who's in a show with me. She has no idea what it's about. So, yeah, we literally just have a live reaction to what's being put out there in social media and websites. Dink is a big one. Dink's been around since the 80s.

Speaker 1: 29:41

And even before then, there have always been child free couples that have never had kids. There was just no term for it. This isn't a new thing. There's happened to be more people talking about it because again they're discovering the term.

Speaker 2: 29:52

Now it's an acronym.

Speaker 1: 29:53

Yeah, they're excited about it.

Speaker 2: 29:54

When is the next convention?

Speaker 1: 29:56

It'll be in 2024. Dates to be determined, but it's usually right before International Child Free Day, which is August the first.

Speaker 2: 30:04

Okay, so next summer. Well, cody, thank you.

Speaker 1: 30:07

This has been so much fun.

Speaker 2: 30:09

I love speaking with you. I love learning more about the community as I continue to explore it. It's really been great.

Speaker 1: 30:14

Yeah, so keep me in the loop on when you start dropping episodes and if you want to utilize child for media, let me know and we'll hook you up.

Speaker 2: 30:21

I certainly will. Thank you so much, cody. All right, thanks, and that's it for today. Thank you for joining me. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, or please consider leaving a review wherever you listen to your podcasts, and remember to tune in next week to my conversation with my good friend Amber, who was brave enough to say yes to this crazy experiment, and come on to speak about her child free journey, specifically as it relates to her career. It's a great conversation. It may or may not involve wine, so I'll see you then.