104: What If NOT Having Children Was the Norm in Society?

In our current society, women without kids make up anywhere between 15 and 25% of the adult female population, depending on the country.  Recently, I started to wonder what life would look like - what grief would look like - if that were reversed. 

If mothers were in the minority, would childless women feel so much FOMO, inadequacy or lack of belonging?  Would the grief run as deep?  Would we still wonder what our legacy or purpose is?

Join me for this solo episode where I contemplate:

• aging in a world where childless women made up a larger proportion of the population than mothers
• how different purpose and legacy might look in this alternative reality
• what grief might look like for women without kids

It's this kind of reality that I'm creating inside the Women of Worth group immersion.  A place where childless women feel a sense of belonging, meaningful connection, an open space to create their best lives, even without kids. 

 If you want to take one step towards your best life, download my free PDF guide to Create Your Best Year, Even Without Kids.

Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca

If you are a childless woman looking to up-level her life in a major way, join the Love Your Beautiful, Unconventional Life Retreat, coming up at the end of February 2025.  Book a Retreat Call with Sheri here if you have questions or want to know more!

Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca

Transcript

What would the world be like if childless or child-free women made up the majority instead of the minority?

I have been thinking about this idea for a while now, just mostly to see if I could uncover some of my own subconscious beliefs about my life without kids.

And so I've been imagining what would the world look like if 80% of adult women had no kids and only 20% were mothers.

It's pretty much the opposite of today's stats, of course, depending on which country you live in, but my first thought was, well, would it really become some version of the handmaid's tail and maybe it would, but maybe something different would happen.

So I invite you to stay tuned. to find out what came out of these musings for me. Welcome back to the podcast.

If you are new here, we're on the Awakening Worth podcast, and welcome back if you are a regular listener.

I've been contemplating this alternative reality, this idea that what would the world look like if the majority of adult women had no kids and 20% were mothers.

And it started as a way to see what, you know, how could I uncover what is it about the way that childless women feel, how much of that the grief that triggers the fears about the future purpose, getting old, how much of that stems from just being part of a minority.

And what would happen to all of those if the mothers became the minority and the women without kids were the majority.

So let's first remove the fear that humanity would be heading towards extinction if this were to happen because I think that's probably the big thing that would really create the handmaid's tail sort of dystopia.

So if we just imagine that this you know that that wasn't a that wasn't a risk and let's imagine for a few minutes that it's just the norm that most women don't have kids and only some do.

How would that feel? What would be different? I'm gonna walk through some of the things that I felt would be different and

and see what resonates for you. You might even come up with other things that you think might be different than I'm not even covering here.

So the first thing that I thought about was grief. So if it were normal not to have a family, would we all want one so badly?

Would that grief be as deep? I don't know the answer to that one, but it was the first one that really sort of popped up in my head.

Next was identity. So the mother identity or and the identity of someone who wants to be a mother, that is very highly valued in today's society.

And so I imagined the empowerment that might come from redefining those personal identities. Maybe we don't over value anymore with the motherhood identity and and you know what would that look like in a society where motherhood isn't central?

I think we'd have more confidence as women without kids. We'd have more self-acceptance and maybe a lot more validation outside of those traditional family roles that are so highly valued in in most cultures, I would say.

Not every I'm sure there's cultures out there where it's not as highly valued, but I feel like most of the world is pretty prenatalist.

Next I considered belonging. So this one I feel pretty certain about. You would definitely no longer feel like you don't belong.

There wouldn't be this feeling of isolation because everybody would be like you. Not everybody, but friends were child-free or child-less, imagine, you know, going to your book club or sitting around a table at a restaurant talking about ideas instead of kids.

I think the connection that you feel might be much more meaningful. And then the next thing I did, I thought about was purpose.

This is something that really comes up a lot among my current clients and followers is purpose. We are pretty conditioned in today's society to think that purpose comes from having kids.

That's our main purpose. And you might have some other ways of fulfilling yourself, but the most important job, I hear that all the time, the most important job is being a mother, raising children.

So if that weren't If 80% of adult women were not others, that purpose and fulfillment and impact, that would really be focused on you and not your kids.

So you might feel more free to take on other roles and other ways of fulfilling yourself, other creative outlets, other ways to find purpose, and without this feeling of, how am I going to be valued or how am I going to be looked upon by others in society?

And societal perceptions of womanhood and fulfillment, they'd have to evolve in a world where motherhood is no longer the default expectation.

So maybe there would be greater validation of these other paths to fulfillment. And also, maybe there would be less pressure for women without kids to justify their life's choices, or there wouldn't be so much pressure for them to have some big purpose, some, you know, really meaningful kind of purpose that changes the world.

And we could just have greater freedom to pursue exactly what we wanted. What would that feel like if we could just pursue our own unique past to happiness, fulfillment, meaning, purpose?

The next thing that I considered was aging, and this is also something that comes up a lot in my group immersion and amongst my clients.

What, who is going to take care of me when I get old? And imagine, this is actually one of the bigger impacts that I would

that I can imagine seeing. The world would know would need to shift to a model where friends take care of friends and neighbors take care of neighbors.

There's no longer this reliance on kids to care for you when you get old. So perhaps society might even become less insular because it feels much more insular than I imagine it was, you know, I imagine our ancestors or it was in our ancestors world.

You know, we live at least in Western society. We have the nuclear family that lose inside their homes. They live alone.

They might call upon their parents to help, might call upon friends to help or friends for support. But it's really, you know, the nuclear family takes care of itself is the way that I view it from the outside.

looking in. You know, everyone has their family. They are the most important. I know in other cultures, this is not the case like you may have parents living with a family.

As they age, you might have several families living together. You might have people living more in enclosed proximity of each other.

And so I think other cultures might be a little bit different from this perspective. But our Western society, I really wonder whether they would become whether they become a society that really relies more on each other versus just their little family.

And as I thought more about this, I actually already see this in my own neighborhood, not because families are becoming less insular, but because

My neighborhood has been slowly turning over to a lot, almost all retirees, and in a retirement community, you see a lot more socialization.

You see a lot more helping out of each other, know, bringing garbage cans in or helping, you know, to move something out of the house or into the house or watching the dog, taking the dog for a walk when you're not well.

There seems to be a lot more taking care of each other that I've noticed in our neighborhood of people in their retired years when they no longer have children living with them.

So I wonder whether we would start to see that trickling down, not just in retirement, but also in, you know, our 30s and 40s and 50s.

So, I'm sure that there's other things around aging that would change, but that worry, that fear of who's going to take care of me when I get old, that would really need to shift.

There wouldn't be this reliance on your kids to care for you when you get old. And I don't even think that happens all that often now.

think people go into long-term care homes or they have other people helping them like I see in the retirement neighborhood that I live in now.

And the last thing that I considered was legacy. And here I also think that legacy would be defined very differently.

Now we think of children carrying on the family name, we think of our children maybe carrying on a business or taking over a house like a family home.

And if there weren't children to carry on that legacy. We would need to redefine what even is legacy. Like who do we need someone to carry on the family name, the business, the house?

Can we not just allow others to take that on? And I think that's what would have to happen in a society where the majority people didn't have kids.

I also think the economics or the financials would shift entirely. So you'd begin saving money just for yourself. There's no need to leave a monetary legacy for your children.

You don't need to build any sort of inheritance. So you get to decide what you leave behind and who you leave it to.

Do you plan to spend all of your money? Do you leave it to a cause that's really important to you?

Or do you leave it to? friends or other family or I don't know you would have that choice and so your financial plan might look very different and your monetary legacy might look very different.

Those are a few of the things that I was thinking about. I would love to know what your thoughts are about this because I feel like this is something I've never thought about before until recently and as I explored this alternative reality it sort of hit me that this is actually what I'm creating inside of the women of worth group immersion.

This is where I'm building a community and personal growth space where all of this can be realized. It's where you can feel a deep sense of belonging which is the first thing I talked about because in that group it's normal to not have children.

and nobody has children in that group and it's where we shift our identity to feeling like it's normal to not have kids because no one does and so we can find our worth, we can build our confidence, our self-acceptance and it's also where you're creating connection, meaningful connection which was the next thing that I considered and it's also where you can begin to create a reality where there's no fear around who's going to take care of you when you get old because I teach you how to lean into your current relationships almost like the retirement, like the retirees in my neighborhood now, leaning on the relationships that you have.

versus relying on children to take care of you. And it's also where you can consider what will your legacy be?

What do you really want to leave behind? And it's also where you begin to feel free to align with your best self, what feels more purposeful, most purposeful for you, and what aligned, because there's no expectations there of what your purpose should be or what you should be doing.

So it's where we learn to, you know, it's in a space where you're with other people who are in the same boat, or at least in a similar circumstance, that you can really start to explore these ideas.

And, and that's what I am really, it's this alternative reality that I'm really trying to create inside. out of the women of worth group immersion and it's really it's a place where you get to become this person with so much resilience and self worth and confidence in your own path that it doesn't matter when you actually do end up going out into the world that is 20 80 you know 20% women without kids and 80% mothers instead of the 80 20 it doesn't matter because you will feel all of those things already so if that is appealing to you and you want to take one step closer to this kind of a reality go ahead and grab my free guide to create your best year even without kids that is free and you'll find it at Sherijohnson.ca/best year.

 I'll link that up in the show notes in case you want to get that free download I will be back next week with another solo episode and I will see you then. Bye for now!