And the Cradle Will Fall: A Childfree Look At True Crime (A podcast)
Transcript of Episode One
Hi listener! I’m your host Jenn, aka Childfreesista.
Thank you for tuning into the very first episode of, “And the Cradle Will Fall: A Childfree Look At True Crime.”
Now if you’re listening to this, you’re probably just like me, and you just love a true crime podcast!
And of course I hope that you come to love this podcast too!
I’m a legit true crime fan: I live, eat, sleep and breathe true crime all the time! But, what may set me apart from the mainstream true crime crowd is that I’m childfree by choice AND I’ve decided to use a childfree perspective to explore true crime cases.
So, have you ever wondered about true crime from a childfree perspective? Probably not. Although the number of childfree people in the United States and all over the industrialized world is rising, our choice remains largely marginalized and misunderstood by society.
So as a childfree woman who is also a true crime junkie, I just couldn’t ignore how much we normalize the unchallenged goodness and entitlement of parenthood in our narratives about true crime cases.
In my discussions with other childfree people, our decision not to have children is usually thoughtful and thorough.
Meanwhile, the mainstream culture discusses having kids, like it forgets it’s an actual choice and not essential for a happy fulfilling life!
Thinking deeply about the family dynamics in most of the cases the true crime genre covers, has led me to believe that looking at true crime from a child free lens is an essential part of our conversation that is missing.
But as a true crime community, it’s not that we don’t see the whole picture. We’re the ones that don’t turn away from the dark ugly stuff of humanity.
It feels more like we can’t accept the whole picture and we’re not letting the picture teach us what we need to learn.
Because even though our genre covers every type of tragedy imaginable like child abuse, incest, family annihilators, postpartum homicidal psychosis, people who put hits out on their so-called loved ones, children who grow up to be mass shooters and viscous bullies, looking at true crime from a childfree perspective just might be the last taboo.
Because a childfree look at true crime will call out and challenge our society’s obsession with parenthood, especially motherhood, as the default setting and gold standard of adulthood and humanity.
Childfree people are speaking up and speaking out. We’re adding our perspective to various conversations and using it to explore and blow up problematic narratives that center the idea that having children is always a good idea that must be normalized and celebrated, despite all the evidence that, “every child deserves a parent, but not every parent deserves a child!”
We’re adding our voices to conversations on family, marriage and relationships, financial planning and retirement, health care and jobs. For everything that makes us human, there’s a child free perspective on that. And now, we’ve come for true crime!
First let’s define what we mean by childfree versus childless. This definition is from the Sterilized Auntie blog:
Childfree versus childless: People who want to have children but haven’t had them yet or can’t have them are childless. People who choose to live life without having their own children are childfree. The difference lies in whether it’s a deliberate choice or not.
Your childfree or childless stance can change during your lifetime. It’s not uncommon for people to believe that they will have children in the future, only to discover that they don’t want them. The reverse can also be true. But there are many people who have been childfree for as long as they can remember. They have never expressed a desire to be pregnant, have and raise a child.
Childlessness is often discovered later in life when actively trying to find a partner to have a child with or to try to get pregnant.
Now, before I can dive into exactly what I mean by a child free look at true crime, I’m going to introduce you to a term you may not have heard before: Pronatalism. This might be a term you’ve never heard before but I can guarantee you’ll recognize the concept. So, what is pronatalism?
From Wikipedia-Natalism (also called pronatalism or the pro-birth position) is an ideology that promotes the reproduction of human life as the preeminent objective of being human.[1]
The pronatalist bias shows up in how true crime cases are discussed and this podcast is ready to blow that all up!
As a childfree black woman of both carribean and african american descent for me, true crime is personal.
Although, I’m not a survivor of a crime, I still consume true crime media, books, podcasts, documentaries etc almost as if like my life depends on it, because the cases help me reflect on so many essential parts of myself, mentally, emotionally, and even offers me insight into my own family history and trauma, the world around me and my relationships with other humans.
Unlike a lot of the mainstream true crime crowd, solving crimes is not the draw for me. I’ll leave that to the experts! It’s exploring and understanding the human experiences, cultural and social pressures and even political ideologies that lead to tragedies. True crime is not just entertainment.
True crime is instruction.
True crime is a lesson.
And I hope you’re here because you want to learn something new.
A childfree look at true crime is about exploring the choice to become a parent, the family dynamics and what they can tell us about our society and even ourselves.
We’ve all heard of cases that involve someone so deeply religious that they refuse to get divorced, so decide that murder is less of a sin than ending the marriage legally.
And instead of shining the light on how this is reasonable to a pronatalist society, hyper religiosity among other social forces, we miss our opportunity for a deeper dive because we are too busy calling ourselves objective storytellers of true crime! But we’re not! We’re drinking that pronatalist Kool-Aid……and, from a sippy cup! Get it?
In addition to not treading lightly or tiptoeing around the indisputable facts that pro-natalism glosses over, this podcasts will include alot of snark and alot of puns. You’ve been warned!
It’s not just what’s said, it’s also what goes unsaid when we look at true crime that reveals a pronatalist bias. Because you know what comes next. After the person decides that murder is better than divorce, they’re leaving their kids orphans.
The same person that wanted so badly to get married, so badly to have children, so badly to share their life with someone doing what we’re told is the most important job in the world, raising a child, has now chosen to leave that child motherless or fatherless and ultimately both because they will get caught eventually.
So they take that father or mother out of their child’s life forever and we can’t call this hypocrisy out as a symptom of a pronatalist society that pretends children fix relationships and bond people etc etc blah blah blah.
As a childfree true crime junkie I often feel like that lady from those old Geico commercials screaming at my tv or phone, “that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works!”
But the truth is maybe that’s exactly what you get with a pronatalist society that celebrates the creation of life over the value and circumstances of that life. Then we wonder why these tragedies keep happening. But let’s keep tip toeing shall we?
Nope! Not on my watch! So I want to look at these cases, the dynamics of these cases, but also what these cases say about us as a society. So, like the very so-called “circle of life” we are so obsessed with normalizing and celebrating at any cost, hmmm, funny how it all comes back, full circle to a need for a childfree look at true crime!
And let’s clarify what I mean by pronatalist agenda, specifically focusing on the term agenda.
People who promote a pronatalist agenda don’t often realize that they have an agenda. When an ideology becomes normalcy, the default and gold standard, people will enforce it without realizing they’re enforcing anything at all.
They just think they are being normal. But isn’t the mask of normalcy what allowed John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy among other notorious serial killers to get away with their crimes for so long?
Fun fact: Both were fathers, John Wayne Gacy was a father of two! Childfree people are often bingo-ed (and I’ll discuss what that means later) by being told we can’t leave a legacy without having children.
A child free look at true crime’s clapback to this? What kind of legacy do you leave if you’re drenched in somebody’s blood? I’ll wait. Asking for a childfree friend!!!
So, back to normalcy, not only does it win you relatability points in society, it comes through in how we discuss true crime cases.
Normalcy in a pronatalist society means that we celebrate when people fall in line with a “first comes love then comes marriage, then comes the baby in a baby carriage” path in life.
Normalcy is celebrating parenthood, especially motherhood, despite all the horrors we in the true crime community entertain and at least in my case, enlighten myself with.
We just don’t know what to do with ourselves except to say congratulations, or think congratulations, and think hmm what’s the worst that could happen?
Well, if you’re a fan of true crime, you already know!
I’ve tried to anticipate the many ways I might get push back on this perspective.
I can imagine people saying,
“Why are you just focusing on the horrible things that parents do,”
“Why are you just focusing on the horrible things that kids do”,
“Why are you just focusing on the kids that grow up to be horrible people?”,
“Why are you just focusing on tragic family dynamics?”
Well excuse me, but isn’t that exactly what true crime is all about? The darkest side of humanity?
So, why then would a childfree look at true crime be out of line?
Maybe because for the first time, we’re taking our blinders off, removing the gloss we put on motherhood especially because that blocks us from seeing and accepting the awful truth:
Not all parents want what’s best for their children. Not all mothers bond with their babies.
Not all children are a gift.
We claim we get this but refuse to act like it because we continue to center a pronatalist narrative.
We’re using true crime not to solve cases but to teach us about ourselves, each other and offer insights about life and the world around us.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s the lessons that we’re afraid to learn that we need to face.
A childfree look at true crime gives us the unique ability to pick up on the pronatalist bias on how true crime cases are often talked about and I want this podcast to offer a “plot twist” if you will, on the narrative.
True crime books, podcasts, documentaries and media, revolve around a narrative and that narrative is a reflection rather than a critique of society.
The goal of this podcast is to not only explore the facts of the case but explode the narrative that often surrounds cases with clichés and bingos involving people who choose to parent.
If we’re being honest, there’s nothing objective about the way anyone tells a story. Like ever.
This podcast won’t pretend I don’t have an opinion.
This podcast will probably introduce you to cases you’ve heard before.
But this podcast will look at cases from a childfree lens that calls out pronatalist biases and stomps not tiptoes around hard truths about families, relationships and the reality of the world we so desperately want more people to bring life into.
For example,
the true crime genre continues to be OK with describing victims by their perceived attractiveness or with problematic clichés like “all American girl” and the “girl next door”, both code for white.
Or ‘they never knew a stranger” and “would give you the shirt off their back.”
Or the stale go-to we’ve come to know as, “they lit up a room” which hopefully we roll our eyes at now.
The overused signifiers of relatability and likability, especially for women, make the crimes surrounding them matter. They reveal how we can discriminate based on race, class and appearance.
So the biased superficial way we frame the players in these tragedies often say more about us and our values, than the reality of the case. The way we tell the story reflects what we consider to be normal and acceptable by society.
We’ve all heard the expression, “If it bleeds, it leads” about how violence,conflict and death boosts the ratings of news stories. But it’s also true that, “If it BREEDS, it leads!”
When it comes to the spotlight we give to stories about moms, dads and the lives of their children. Because what could be more relatable and exciting than wanting to build a family?
I mean, honestly I can think of a lot of things more exciting than that but hey, I don’t make the rules!
The way these clichés are sprinkled throughout our narratives of true crime may sound harmless and the intentions behind them may not be sinister, but they sure are problematic and they allow us to miss the lesson.
Relatability makes us more sympathetic towards victims.
Privileging parenthood in our narratives and understanding of true crime cases means we normalize a pronatalist bias and this destroys a deeper understanding of the meaning of a crime. And worst, they reflect a value judgment that we unrelentingly place on people’s lives based on how well they fit into a box.
We’ve just started talking about the ways in which racism informs the true crime genre.
It’s about time we talk about the way pronatalism does as well.
I remember hearing the story of a young woman who experienced a brutal attack with a friend but only she survived.
What really stood out for me was that the young woman said that she felt terrible that she survived, and her friend didn’t because her friend was a mother.
At the time I remember thinking wow, that’s awful.
Not just the attack that they both sustained but the fact that this woman felt that her life didn’t matter as much because she didn’t have a child.
Now I fully understand that survivor’s guilt is a thing.
But the fact that she felt guilt that her friend was a mother and she wasn’t says a lot about the value we place on people’s lives.
We assume all mothers live for their children and childfree or childless women are only living for themselves.
So, we assume that being a parent means you’re living for your child.
And we assume that being childfree means you’re only living for yourself. But the reality is, it can be just the opposite.
You can be childfree with so much more than a child to live for. And yet the value judgment and the assumption of selfishness is something that childfree people must fend off because of our choice. And it certainly shows up in how we discuss true crime cases.
So, finally, what pray tell, is a childfree look at true crime?
When I first started to think through the concept of a child free look at true crime, I immediately thought of what we in the childfree community call bingo-ing or being bingo-ed.
This is when people with children or those who buy into the norm of having children, say certain things to us because we have decided to opt out of parenthood.
Being bingo-ed is how the pro-natalist agenda gets its point across, that parenthood is a right and not a privilege, that children are always a blessing that make a family complete!
So, Imagine a childfree bingo for each of these awful cases:
Bingo: “Nothing is better than that ‘new baby smell!’” — Megan Huntsman, a Utah mother sentenced to life in prison for killing six of her newborn babies.
Bingo: “It’s different when it’s your own!” — Chris Watts, convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and their two young daughters.
Bingo: “What about the family name?” — The OG of family annihilators John List, who in 1971 killed his wife, mother, and three children at their home in Westfield, New Jersey, and then disappeared.
Bingo: “It’s all worth it!” — Carola Arnau, a Lancaster Pennsylvania mother that shot her 10-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son multiple times in a murder suicide.
Bingo: “People who don’t want kids are selfish!” — The alleged patron Saint of Shady and Selfish Casey Anthony, who’s acquittal for the disappearance and murder of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee sparked national confusion and outrage..
Bingo: “Your child could grow up to cure cancer!” — Killer twins Jasmiyah and Tasmiyah Whitehead, 16-year-old sisters convicted of killing their mother.
This podcast will look at a variety of cases and explore the questions that remain taboo even for stories often drenched in the blood of families: Which childfree bingo applies and how does society’s obsession with having kids at any cost contribute to these kinds of tragedies?
Each episode will center around a bingo.
I’ve only shared a few but trust me there’s more!
I’ll select a few cases to reveal the unique value and revelatory power of a childfree perspective.
I’ll listen to other true crime podcasts; I’ll watch documentaries and of course, cuz I’m old school I’ll read books.
I’ll discuss my thoughts on true crime from the perspective of a childfree true crime junkie.
Does anyone else remember the stories we were told about how a mother’s love was so fundamental and protective that she could lift a vehicle to save her trapped child?
I can’t be the only one who heard stories about how the power of a mother’s love could transform her into having superhuman strength!
This true crime podcast isn’t going to deny that many mothers would give their lives for their children.
It’ll be about telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth (pun intended) about what mothers, fathers and families can do to each other.
It’ll explore how society’s obsession with babies and parenthood at any cost contributes to these tragedies.
And how our pronatalist bias in true crime blinds us to the pressure people feel to be parents.
And how admitting that parenthood just isn’t always the right choice for everyone is ok.
Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned by the Supreme Court, more people who don’t want kids or shouldn’t have kids will be forced to have them. More tragedy of neglect and abuse for us to cover!
So this is not a time to tread lightly. This is not a time to tiptoe around the truth. It’s primetime for a childfree look at true crime! Let’s tell the whole story. It starts now.
Childfreesista is an award-winning poet, short story author, and essayist holding a BA in Anthropology and a Masters in Library and Information Science. She is a librarian and Jamaican American atheist raising two pandemic puppies in the DC Metro Area.
