
Jackie Dives is a photojournalist, an artist, and a solo traveler. She’s additionally child-free, a title that she overtly claims in her life and her social media presence.
Jackie made a stitched video with somebody who requested, “Inform me what your life is like now,” and acknowledged in her caption that “girls are proven one option to reside their life as a result of leisure media by no means options child-free narratives.”
As a child-free lady, Jackie’s long-term relationship ended because of her alternative, and on the time, she couldn’t envision how her life would unfold.
Jackie defined that she usually will get known as out on TikTok “for saying that is how a child-free individual does ‘XYZ’ or it is a day within the lifetime of a child-free individual. Persons are like, ‘why do it is advisable put in there that you just’re child-free? What distinction does it make?’ And the rationale I do that’s as a result of I need girls like the one who I’m stitching to see what a life with out kids can seem like.”
“I’m 39 and I’m child-free,” Jackie stated proudly. “My expertise of being child-free was that when my accomplice determined that he needed to have kids, we’d been collectively for 5 years, and he really left our relationship. So I needed to determine very, very certain that I used to be prepared to let my accomplice go in trade for dwelling a child-free life.”
Jackie needed to create an entire new narrative for herself as a child-free lady. Her relationship didn’t finish for lack of affection, however quite, as a result of she and her accomplice ended up wanting various things.
“I actually beloved my accomplice quite a bit,” she stated. “And lots of people had been telling me that it was loopy to let him go and never simply have a child with him. I knew in my coronary heart and my intestine that I didn’t wish to be a mum or dad however after we separated it was actually onerous for me to visualise what my life would seem like. I might see what my life would seem like if he and I had stayed collectively. I’d be with him and we’d have a home and a child and a household and nice in-laws and a white picket fence, the entire thing.”
Jackie defined that one cause it was onerous to image a child-free life was the dearth of illustration in media of ladies who don’t have youngsters.
“As a result of we’re by no means proven examples in media or popular culture about what it seems to be prefer to be a girl who would not have kids, I had no thought what my life would seem like, if I didn’t go down the trail that everybody anticipated me to go down,” she acknowledged. “It felt actually lonely and unusual.”
Jackie acknowledged that she discovered an intentional neighborhood of different girls who additionally selected to be child-free; she needed to “go hunt down different girls who had additionally made that alternative.”
A 2021 Pew Analysis Heart Survey discovered that 44% of non-parents ages 18 to 49 will most probably stay child-free. Amongst that proportion of individuals, 56% state their choice to stay child-free is as a result of they only don’t wish to have kids.
The choice to develop into a mum or dad is an extremely private one. In an period the place girls are more and more dropping the suitable to determine what to do with their very own our bodies, deciding in opposition to parenthood can nonetheless be seen as a radical alternative.
Nevertheless it’s a alternative an increasing number of girls are making, and it deserves to be considered respectfully. The extra visibility child-free individuals have, the extra normalized the choice will develop into.
As Jackie defined in her publish, visibility remains to be a significant concern. She reiterated, “That’s why I all the time say in my movies that is what the day within the lifetime of a child-free artist seems to be like. As a result of I need girls who don’t wish to have youngsters to have an instance of what your life can seem like.”
Alexandra Blogier is a author on YourTango’s information and leisure staff. She covers movie star gossip, popular culture evaluation and all issues to do with the leisure business.