As early as the early 1980s, psychologists asked the question, "How and why do mentally stable and reproductively capable people deliberately refuse to have children?". The research was conducted among legally registered married couples. In summarizing the results of the survey, followers of the Childfree phenomenon were divided into two large groups: rejektores, affecionados.
Their belonging to the Rejectors is explained by their reluctance and prejudice towards such a social category as children. They do not like all kinds of processes connected with them: for women, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding are a hell (they are afraid of it, oppose it) - this can be the starting point of adults' reluctance to have their own offspring.
Most people are biologically and socially conditioned to love everything "
small and cute" - children, kittens, flowers. Childfree adherents are not moved by such things. In the 60s there was a sexual revolution,
feminism was rapidly developing - people became liberated, learned to avoid responsibility.
Rejectors have always existed, but in modern realities they are more fully reflected in the ideology of childfree people. Before the emergence of reliable contraceptives, Regectors had to commit both the most inhumane acts, up to infanticide, and simply abstain from sex, not to marry or to enter a monastery.
In Western Europe, starting from the 17th century, old bachelors and spinsters were not socially reviled. Instead of establishing a family, there was an alternative way of life organization. At the same time in Eastern Europe and the rest of the world there was no such frankness. The percentage of extramarital unions did not exceed 2-3% - these were sick, incapacitated, reproductively incapable people.
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People belonging to the affecionado group are not disgusted by childish individuals - they are disgusted by the lifestyle of a fixated parent. In the middle of the twentieth century, when there was a moral decline in society, when the limits of morality were erased, people realized that their fate, their life trajectory, was in their control.
Under the pretext of traveling, creative work, self-development affecionado reject parenthood, free, carefree life for them above the continuation of the species.
These archetypes still exist today, and with protected contraception, it has become easier to delay or not have children at all. Many people postpone parenthood "until better times": first a career, a steady income, a permanent place to live. In today's expensive realities, this is the only acceptable way of life. People get used to a detached, secluded, or close to it, way of existence. The constant "then" turns into "never".
Australian scientists conducted an experiment in which they went and asked certain people questions twice, at long intervals. Interestingly, those who categorically refused to
have children ended up having a child, and those who were confident in their parenting abilities ended up becoming the real Childfree.
It was mentioned above that the philosophy of feminism has contributed to the formation of Childfree. What is the reason for this? Women usually put more effort, time, and investment than men do.
Famous Canadian radical feminist Shulamith Firestone believed that too many burdensome responsibilities were required of women. Shulamith contributed greatly to the spread of feminism by writing the book The Dialectic of Gender, in which she urged women not to give birth, thereby not "tearing their bodies in half" until science came up with a more humane way of reproducing themselves.
Many older adults often sincerely regret earlier decisions. Both actions and inactions are frustrating.