Society Still Has a Problem With the Child Free Woman
The depiction of child free women in pop culture
Despite all the advances that have been made in terms of women’s rights, motherhood is still depicted as the idealized end goal for all women, to the point where depictions of childfree women in movies and often feel reductive or even vilified.
She’s usually relegated to a few, unflattering character choices: the career driven workaholic, the basketcase, or the most insidious: the evil, femme fatale.
In real life, women without children have been classified as undesirable, disobedient or “loose,” lonely and unfulfilled, unfit for motherhood, or baby-hating monsters. Our negative portrayal of the childfree woman in what we watch reinforces these ugly stereotypes and feeds back into a culture where childlessness is already stigmatized.
“R/childfree” is one of the fastest growing communities on Reddit and the #childfree, where people share their decision to skip parenthood has over 400million views on TikTok. And it’s not just a social media movement.
We’ve seen a massive shift in what our idea of the traditional “family” means. Even the fact that we use the word “childfree” instead of “childless” signals a shift in public perception…But film and TV hasn’t seemed to catch up.
