(Im)mobile autobiography: the mobilisation of life without children auto/biography and its significance

Abstract

The paper contributes to the theme of the special issue by making auto/biography the focal point of analysis and theorising its potential to be mobile or immobile. The theoretical developments of the paper are grounded in a mobilisation of life-without-children auto/biographical non-fiction across the last 10–15 years, in which those who do not have children, whatever the reason, have opened-up about their stories and found ways to share them with one another. The paper explicates an original concept immobile autobiography defined as: ‘life narratives that are invisible and side-lined, essentialized or not told in first person, and whose circulation both within (intra) and between (inter) generations is structurally limited’; and its converse mobile autobiography. (Im)mobile auto/biographies include, but cannot be reduced to, digital and physical mobilities. The potential of the concept lies in its ability to consider how lives, and the stories told about them, evolve, circulate and perform transformation, as they intersect with, transgress and re-shape changing cultural climates of a mobile world.

Keywords:

• Autobiography
• mobility justice
• childless
• childfree
• epistemic injustice
• climate change

Introduction

The paper offers a novel response to the theme of this special issue - ‘Auto/biography and Mobilities in a Context of Climate Change’. It does so by focussing on the first two terms in the special issue title: auto/biography and mobilities, and exploring possible productive articulations between these fields. The paper takes as its empirical focus the proliferation, since approximately 2010, of auto/biographies produced by non-parents; people who are leading a life without children whatever the reason. Through a discussion of over fifty examples of publicly available auto/biographies, which take a variety of narrative genres, and circulate through online and offline formats, the paper makes auto/biography the focal point of analysis and conceptualizes it as having the potential to be mobile or immobile.

In making this move, the paper draws on and extends the new mobilities paradigm, by picking up on Urry’s (2000) call to analyse complex interdependencies and social consequences of ‘the diverse mobilities of peoples, objects, images, information’ (Urry 2000, 1, my italic). Although a substantial proportion of mobilities scholarship engages with the potential of exploring the complex interdependencies of these forms of movement, the former have been engaged with far more than the latter, and where mobilities of information and image are explored such analyses are frequently organized around understanding aspects of physical mobility in some way, whether that be analysing autobiographical life writing to understand how the physical and corporeal mobilities of the 20th Century have come to shape lifecourse and intimate relationships (e.g. Pearce 2019); or whether it be to question how informational or digital mobilities reshape physical movements (Elliott and Urry 2010).

In this context, the paper develops a distinctive approach and a novel concept: im/mobile auto/biography. As part of the analysis the paper explores how digital, informational and physical mobilities both shape and are shaped by auto/biographical im/mobilities.

The approach builds on a methodological strength of the mobilities paradigm; the ability to see ‘how “moves” make social and material realities’ (Büscher and Urry 2009, 99) and how objects, people, information and images carry across multiple spaces without putting one space a priori the other (ibid). Therefore, although digital spaces and tools are partly implied in the auto/biographical mobilization discussed in the paper it cannot be reduced to them. In this way the approach developed demonstrates one of the productive outcomes of bringing these fields into dialogue. It begins with and follows auto/biography and its inherent knowledge, revealing something of how digital and physical mobilities shape each other, whilst enabling the broader social significances of im/mobile auto/biographies to be explored.

The third component of the special issue title refers to the ‘context of climate change’. Before moving into the main part of the paper, I wish to say a few words on the positioning of the paper in relation to this theme.

The mention of non-parenthood, and of life-without-children alongside the word ‘climate change’ can result in the jumping to conclusions as to the stance being taken. There are high profile debates currently in the media which draw connections between these themes. Some examples are discussions of the carbon footprint of children and overconsumption (e.g. Carrington 2017), or discussions of overpopulation in relation to a warming planet and ecological crisis (e.g. (Clarke and Haraway 2018)). Elsewhere, underpopulation is made the focus, for example the reporting of statistics on declining birth rates in the UK, across Europe (Giuffrida 2023) and in other parts of the world (e.g. S. Korea, Poston Jr, 2023). These discussions revolve around questions such as ‘what is the replacement rate, and will countries end up with too few people?’ (BBC, 2022a); ‘how will we pay for the health care needs of our growing elderly population?’; and ‘Can we – and should we – try to reverse declining birth rates?’ (BBC, 2022b).

These debates do not form the starting point or the focus of discussion of the paper, in fact the paper intentionally sets aside all of these narratives, so as to create a new space. Namely, a space for the valuable and legitimate knowledge that is emerging from those who are leading lives as non-parents for a whole range of reasons; a space to explore for whom and why this opening up is significant; and a space to figure out to which debates and spheres of social life it has something to say. The persistent ignorance of diverse life-without-children trajectories, which is perpetuated through the circulation of reductive portrayals is symptomatic of and contributes to the invisibility and side-lining of the diverse life course (Archetti 2020) that the auto/biographical writing considered in the paper seeks to disrupt.

The paper’s interest then, is in recognising the auto/biographies discussed as valuable and legitimate knowledge about forms of life course that until very recently have not been openly talked about. The significance – or rather, the particular significances – of this opening up have not yet been fully articulated, and the paper makes some initial steps towards this goal.

This opening up is in part because of the ‘changing climates’ of complex and dynamic socio-cultural, political and environmental contexts. Im/mobile Auto/biography demonstrates that lives and the stories told to make sense of them, evolve, circulate and perform identity, whilst they simultaneously intersect with, transgress and re-shape the changing climates of a mobile world.

In the next section I provide an analytic overview of the mobilisation of life without children autobiography across the past 10–15 years. I then theorise the mobilisation through drawing together theoretical resources from Katrina M. Powell (2021), Fricker (2009) and Sheller (2018), setting out how aspects of these contributions provide compatible starting points for insight and analysis. In the final section, I comment on the significance of this sociocultural change in three ways: for individuals and communities; for the furore of issues and debates that single out and situate life without children in reductive and problematic ways; and for mobilities scholarship. Ultimately, and in the context of this special issue, the paper argues that im/mobile auto/biography provides a concept and theoretical framework which places diversity foremost in explorations of lifecourse in changing climates.

The mobilisation of life without children auto/biography

… when I wrote that very first blog, I had no idea that what I was doing was, sort of so radical, in its own way. I used my own name, I used my own photograph, I didn’t hide behind anything. I didn’t say I’m ashamed of my childlessness by hiding. I just spoke from my heart about how I was feeling about my childlessness, and I got my first piece of PR the next day, and also women from around the world were writing to me, commenting on those early blogs, saying ‘how do you know the exact words that are in my head?’.

(Jody Day, speaking on the One in Five Podcast in 2022)

I had been married at the time for about ten years, and everyone almost, around me, was starting to have children, and I went looking for a book. Where are the long-term marriages… that go the distance… and that never had kids. What was it like? Where was the glue? What issues did they face? I didn’t find that book out there anywhere… so I did it myself… The more I learned about it from people, and from other research that had been done, I really thought that a more provocative question was ‘why is it such a big deal to begin with?’

(Laura Carroll, speaking on the ChildFreeGirls podcast in 2020).

… [do childless men need a community?]…I think most of us would say ‘yes we do’, but we know culturally, men entering that space and talking about this intimate thing. I don’t know if taboo is the right word, but what we need to do is change that particular paradigm. How do we make, or how do we get men to actually open up and talk about this?

(Michael Hughes, speaking on The Full Stop Podcast in March 2021).

These different excerpts from recent podcasts come from individuals who, in the context of this paper, I would view as ‘authors’ of life without children auto/biography. They are three people with very different life stories. The first quote above is from UK-based Jody Day. In the quote she looks back on the first blog that she wrote about not having children circa 2010. Finding herself single again in her early 40s, and following several years of unsuccessfully pursuing parenthood in a previous relationship, she realised that she did not have children, and that she never would become a mother. Plunged into a ‘dark night of the soul’ of what she has since articulated as bereavement and grief, she blogged, then founded a network, qualified as a psychotherapist, authored a self-help book, and went on to build the global friendship and advocacy network for childless women, Gateway Women. Becoming critical of her own assumptions about motherhood, whilst honouring her grief, developing resources, critiquing pronatalism, and reidentifying as more ‘childfree than childless’, she drew on her own transformation to support other women through the same, and continues to work to transform the social narrative and develop appropriate support on this issue.

The second quote is from Laura Carroll, US author of Families of Two, she openly speaks about her childfree choice. In this first publication on the topic, published in 2000, she interviewed childfree couples about their decision not to have kids, the positives, but also the pressures and challenges they had faced, the views and reactions of other people, their lives, friendships and values, and how they perceived their role in relation to the next generation and the future. One of the first books directly addressing this topic, the research led her to question why the childfree choice is so hard to accept in the first place, from society’s perspective. This led to her analysis and critique of pronatalist societies published in The Baby Matrix in 2012. More recently she has published works on overpopulation (Foreman 2015) and 25 over 10: A Childfree Longitudinal Study (2022).

Finally, the third quote is by Michael Hughes, based in Australia, and one of the three founders, and directors, of The Full Stop: a global childless community and podcast. Michael describes himself as ‘one half of a childless couple’ that has ‘made it through’. He is one of the first men to speak openly about his autobiography, his childlessness and how he feels about it.

In placing these very different ‘life without children’ authors in one frame, I am making a number of presuppositions which need to be made explicit so as to make sense of the arguments which follow.

First of all, I am using the term auto/biography, to refer to auto/biographical non-fiction which takes multiple forms. In the examples above, this has been in the form of autobiographical blogs, self-help books, biographical research and the development of other autobiographically inspired resources, which includes online communities and podcasts. I also include the auto/biography that is produced through interviews with guests on these podcasts, people who tell their stories in the safe space that the podcasts create, and who thus put their life narrative into the world. Thus, the term ‘auto/biography’ is used to refer to a variety of ‘texts’, a proliferation of genres that has emerged across the last ten to fifteen years, which include biography, but all of which have been motivated through the autobiographical experience of the author.

Secondly I have chosen to use a term ‘life without children’ throughout this paper. I use this term to create a framing which enables my work to be inclusive of accounts from those who self-identity as childfree by choice, childless due to infertility and childless due to circumstance, sometimes otherwise categorised into voluntary and involuntary childlessness. My use of the terminology ‘life without children’ is an intentional move. It is the stance that these categories are fluid and not bounded, and that the trajectory to life without children can, for some, be very complex. My reason for creating this framing, rather than separating out the ‘involuntary’ and ‘voluntary’ childless as many other academic and public accounts have done, is that these terms themselves act as condensed and simplified narratives - narratives which several of the authors I am intrigued in seek to challenge. In other words, my starting point is that terms such as ‘childless’ and ‘childfree’, although potentially effectual in creating group identity and raising issues, simultaneously become another part of a politically, emotionally and ethically fuelled landscape - one that is rife with stereotypes, taboo and ideology. These group identities, that are often reinforced and developed in digital spaces, become yet another part of the complex of cultural understandings through which individuals figure out their own paths.

I am therefore inclusive of authors and narratives that are grounded in a variety of political projects and life experience, because I think that as a movement they are the parallel tracks of a socio-cultural shift. Despite their many differences, they are united due to the fact that they have been part of a global surge of auto/biographical ‘life without children’ narrative in the last decade or so. In the following paragraphs I set out some of the distinctive qualities of the auto/biographical mobilisation and consider its diversification in terms of genre and author demographic, before proceeding to propose theoretical understanding of it, in the next section.

It is undeniable that there has been a proliferation of auto/biographical non-fiction concerning life without children – whatever the route into this life path – over the past 10–15 years. Although not exhaustive, my literature search, which builds on that of Day (2023) explores sources using the parameters described above. It returns just eleven sources for publication years of 1960–2008 (Bartlett 1995; Black and Scull 2005; Bratton 2005; Carroll 2000; Carter and Carter 1998; Casey 1998; Lafayette 1995; Leibovich 2007; Mezey 2008; Nicholson 2007; Tyler May 1997). This contrasts with forty six sources for the publication years of 2009–2023, (Agonito 2014; Archetti 2020; Athill 2009; Broad 2017; Bueno 2019; Carlini and Davidsman 2016; Carroll 2022; Carter 2019; Chrastil 2019; Cleantis 2015; Comstock and Comstock 2013; Daum 2015; Day 2019; Day 2016; De Ridder and Nick 2013; Erickson 2015; Fagalde Lick 2012; Fenthum 2017; Firecracker, Tsetsi, and Faye 2019; Froelker 2015; Gibb 2019; Gross 2011; Guthrie Woods 2021; Hawkins 2021; Hepburn 2014; Hepburn 2019; John 2016; Kamalamani 2016; Kaufman 2018; Knight 2017; Leigh 2016; Lowrie 2020; Macdonald 2014; Mahoney Tsigdinos 2009; Manterfield 2010; Manterfield 2016; Notkin 2014; Pyne 2018; Raber 2014; Reid 2014; Rosengarten 2022; Schuitemaker 2019; Shannon Hollis 2019; Thornley 2022; Tonkin 2018; Voysey 2013).

This does not include the life narratives shared in private online communities such as The Childless Collective (previously Gateway Women, founded by Jody Day), at international events such as the https://worldchildlessweek.net, the https://childlesscollective.com summit, and https://childfreeconvention.com. Nor does it include those interviewed about their lives on podcasts that have emerged in the latter part of this period such as The Full Stop (Lawrence, Howard-Smith, and Hughes 2019), One in Five (Pendse 2022) and https://childfreegirls.com.

There has also been a diversification of genre across the period. In the remainder of this section I discuss the autobiographical texts in circulation since 2009, organising the discussion by genre to provide an overview of the content of these life narrative resources. The genres discussed are: auto/biographically grounded academic research; Self-help; Becoming/transformation; Historical biography; Poetry; Extended letter; Evocative objects; Graphic memoir; Adventure/challenge; Being and life course; and, Compendium.

Auto/biographically grounded academic research refers to texts that are grounded in various disciplinary paradigms including Sociology, Media and Cultural Studies, Literary studies, Psychotherapy and Health, Reproduction and Culture. It is united in that the motivation for these projects stems from the situated/partial perspective of the author themselves. For example, Laura Carroll’s 2000 and 2022 works and Amy Blackstone’s 2019 book are motivated by their own experiences of being childfree by choice (e.g. Carroll’s motivation for ‘Families of Two’ is discussed above). Similarly, Archetti (2020) and Gibb (2019) both begin their works by telling about their complex personal journeys to non-motherhood (which for these authors has included unexplained infertility and endometriosis). These projects, though located differently in terms of experiences and identities of non-parenthood, are similar in their autobiographical starting points. This personal experience, and the recognition that there are few places where it is possible to speak out about it, or (for some) to have the depth and trauma of their experience recognised and supported, also shapes the methodology of these works. For example, Carroll (2012) and Gibb (2019) (both sociologists) argue for biographical interviews as their key research method, and as a way of hearing the voices of childless and childfree persons around the world. Similarly, Carroll 2022, works with an original longitundinal dataset that she has developed (which follows the lives of childfree women, initially in their 20s, for 10 years) to challenge the relentless social messaging received by these women that they will ‘change their minds’. Archetti (2020) draws on her specialism of media and cultural studies to critique and theorise why life without children, and the life course trajectories into it is still shrouded in the stigma and taboo that she has personally experienced.

A final example of this genre is my emerging work; it is due to my own experience of ‘life without children’ (which has involved unexpected and difficult decisions and losses alongside seeking appropriate support) that I am cognisant of the autobiographical mobilisation discussed in this paper. Articulating the dimensions and significance(s) of this mobilisation is work that has not yet been done, and this is the overall aim. Within this paper’s more limited scope I set the foundations of this project, by evidencing the existence of this auto/biographical mobilisation, developing a theoretical understanding of it, and exploring what kinds of knowledge is being created.

As a sidenote, there is, of course, academic research on life without children that is not autobiographically grounded (Sappleton 2018; Throsby 2004). The contributions above, and my own contribution can also be situated within this field. However, for the purposes of this paper, in which I am building an argument that autobiographically- grounded works on life without children have proliferated in the past decade, I include only those texts that are openly framed in this way.

One of the most often cited auto/biographically grounded self-help texts is Jody Day’s (2016) Living the Life Unexpected. A work that was originally self-published in 2012, the book is written for women self-identifying as childless not by choice because of a whole range of reasons, often in complex combinations (e.g. through circumstances related to health, relationships, career, including endometriosis, early life cancer, not meeting anyone early enough, unexplained infertility, miscarriage, decision not to adopt, failed adoption). This text is commonly cited in podcasts and by authors across the genre’s discussed. However, there are other contributions that take this form, including texts by Manterfield (2016); Erickson (2015); Cleantis (2015); and Carter and Carter (1998) for those identifying as childless not by choice; and by Carlini and Davidsman (2016) for those self-identifying as childfree.

Memoirs of becoming refers to texts that tell the story of becoming childless/childfree, often stretching back to early life to explore assumptions about life course, parenthood, non-mothers, and family. Examples include Lisa Manterfield’s (2010) I’m Taking my Eggs and Going Home, and Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos (2009) Silent Sorority. Texts within this genre pay particular attention to the messaging received through childhood, and as adults within the healthcare system and in media. They open up the variety of feelings, dilemmas, diagnoses, treatments, experiences, reactions and losses that can be associated with becoming a non-parent. Texts within this genre also often include a discussion of societal responses and pressures, shifting relationships with friends and family, alongside strategies for dealing with them. Finally, these texts tend to end in the moment of non-parenthood (whenever that was reached or realised), and may possibly hint at the values and possibilities of a different life, but without opening this up in anyway.

Transformative memoirs refers to texts which move beyond the narrative of becoming, to expand on the meaningful life achieved beyond non-parenthood. Examples include Jody Day’s (2016) Living the Life Unexpected (which combines this genre within a self-help book), and Sheridan Voysey’s (2013) Resurrection Year in which the author weaves a love story as he documents the year spent travelling with his wife as they recover from their broken dream of parenthood, whilst grappling with their Christian faith. Commonplace themes appearing in these texts include the need for grieving; finding healing in natural beauty, friendship and love; the development of a new meaning and sense of purpose; building new friendships; (humorously) dealing with common ‘bingos’ (i.e. common things that people say which are hurtful, stereotyping or offensive); (re)defining family and assertively (re)defining one’s familial role. This can involve being part of children’s lives via family, friends or one’s profession, but also involves retaining space for the new relationships and purpose that now provide one’s life with meaning.

A creative spin on the transformative genre, Jessica Hepburn (2019) harnesses a form of transformative auto/biographical writing associated with the adventure industry. In the case of her 2019 book 21 Miles this is the challenge of swimming across the English Channel to France. In order to gain the weight needed to stave off the cold, she eats lunch with other women – some childless, some not – and explores the meaning of (non)motherhood and happiness to them, and to herself. Within the adventure genre more broadly, narratives often explore the physical and mental challenge of the adventure as it segues into other (less spoken of and less celebrated) challenges they have overcome in their life. In the case of this book, the author explores (non)motherhood, complex fertility journeys and a body that, though not meeting with personal or societal expectations, is yet still capable of many great things.

I use the term Being and Life Course to refer to sources which begin from the presupposition that it is a societal need, and legitimate form of situated knowledge, to discuss life without children and its impact/challenges at different times of life. For example, caring for ageing parents, and understanding/supporting one’s own ageing without children (Athill 2009; Gross 2011). This is as a response to existing resources on these topics, which are grounded in the assumption of a life course involving an intergenerational family (i.e. children and grandchildren) and which thus overlooks the needs of a growing segment of society.

Historical biography, such as Virginia Nicholson’s (2007) Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War, refers to texts which research and recreate the life narratives of people (both famous and non-famous) through oral history and other historical and archival research. Poetry collections are just that (for example, Carter 2019). Other creative genres include Tessa Broad’s (2017) Dear You: A Letter to my Unborn Children, a book length text in which the author writes a letter as a way of compassionately talking about her complex grief and how she has overcome it to live a meaningful and fulfilling life, even though she is unable to share it with her offspring. Also, Rosengarten’s (2022) Second Chance: My Life in Things, in which she discusses personal and meaningful objects as a means of exploring experiences of migration, loss and childlessness. In The Facts of Life (2017), Paula Knight turns to her profession as a graphic designer and comic artist to produce a sensitive, yet pithy and irreverent graphic memoir recording her own journey to becoming ‘childless?…childfree? … neither, just me’ (2017, 227). Similarly (and more recently) the Childfree Girls (2019) ‘Comfort Food For Thought’ takes the form of a compendium of subversive memes, facts and responses for women (of childbearing age) who have chosen to be childfree, originally produced for social media.

Amidst the proliferation of auto/biographical sources noted, something of a diversification of authorship can be identified across the period. My searches have been limited to English language sources, and so my reflections on the diversity of authorship is likewise limited from this point of view. In terms of nationality the authors come from the UK, Western Europe, US, Australia, Canada, Colombia and New Zealand. Through the methodological emphasis on opening up biographies which underpins several of the texts and podcasts, there is then a further reach. As such the auto/biographical phenomenon with which the paper is concerned includes many white, western, literate women, and increasingly includes LGBTQIA+, male/female perspectives, perspectives of singles/couples, experiences of women of colour, experiences within south Asian families, experiences in countries and cultures around the world. However, the patterns of auto/biographical authorship, who is an author and who is not, is in my view significant, and though a full analysis is beyond the scope of this paper, it forms a relevant aspect for further research.

The proliferation of auto/biographical non-fiction, in which I include a variety of ‘texts’ (see definition above) is in no small part an outcome of a democratisation of authorship that has accompanied the digital age, including the ongoing introduction of digital platforms for the creation of multi-media and its sharing to communities around the world. This includes spaces on community and social media apps including Facebook, Mighty Networks, Instagram, Spotify, YouTube, Circle and Twitter. Similarly, the shift in the field of publishing has made space for more people to tell and circulate their stories. Of the sources that I have reviewed, this diversification begins in 2012 with Day’s initially self-published ‘Living the Life Unexpected’, and goes on to include several other books published independently or with hybrid publishers (e.g. De Ridder and Nick 2013, Erickson 2015; Firecracker, Tsetsi, and Faye 2019; Kaufman 2018) as well as crowd-funded and open access publication (Hepburn 2019; Rosengarten 2022).

In summary, during the last 10–15 years, life without children auto/biography has proliferated and diversified both in terms of genre and with respect to intersectional issues. This is a significant shift for an aspect of society and culture that has previously been hidden, and been a source of stigma, stereotyping and social taboo. In the following section I propose a theoretical understanding of this cultural change, and later in the paper explore in more depth why it is significant, for whom, and in the context of which debates.

Theorising auto/biographical (im)mobilities

Abstracting from the details of the preceding case of ‘life without children auto/biography’, I want to propose a concept and put forward a theorisation to deepen understanding. My starting point is that the trajectory of life without children narratives that I have discussed provides an example of, what I will term, (im)mobile auto/biography. To understand the mobilisation described, to theorise how knowledge has become mobile, it is also necessary to ask how it was immobile in the first place. My working definition is that immobile auto/biographies are life narratives that are invisible and side-lined, essentialized or not told in first person, and whose circulation both within (intra) and between (inter) generations is structurally limited. Conversely, mobile auto/biographies are visible and their telling is embraced, they are transgressive (i.e. they challenge problematic dominant narratives) and are ideally told in first person, and their circulation in time and space is supported by social structures and socio-cultural practices.

In this part of the paper, I set out the theoretical framework which underpins this working definition. My proposed framework brings three distinctive yet complementary contributions into dialogue. These are: Mimi Sheller’s (2018) Mobility Justice; Fricker’s (2009) Epistemic Injustice; and Powell’s (2021) Performing Autobiography. In bringing these works into dialogue, I also explore one instantiation of the conjunction between two currently unrelated fields: mobilities and autobiographical studies. For the purposes of this paper, the theorists have been brought together because of their shared interest in forms of justice, knowledge and testimony, feminist sensibility and futurity. All of them is concerned with the mobilities of knowledge in some way - in whether and how it circulates in the present and future and with what effects.

The most important key tenet of Powell’s contribution for my purposes is her starting point/observation that ‘Women who write auto/biographically, whether in memoir, diary, letters, lists, tweets or some other life narratives, sometimes do so to redress existing narratives that do not adequately tell their stories’ (2021, 2). Although my focus extends to a diversity of authors, and not only women, this point speaks directly to my own hypothesis regarding the immobility - and recent mobilisation - of auto/biographically-grounded resources about childless/childfree lives, and to my specific interest in authors that are challenging dominant and essentialising narratives. Within Powell’s work mobility per se is implicit, rather than explicit, but in my view it figures throughout.

For example, her focus is on authors who make their personal lives public - and who are thus intent on a form of autobiographical mobility - being as they are, specifically engaged in autobiographical writing that will be sent forth into the world. Her focus is on the practices and processes through which this is achieved. She views these authors as engaged in activist writing defined as ‘…writing one’s life experience to redress history, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of misrepresentation’ (2021, 7). Putting themselves into the world through the vehicle of autobiographical text, people expose themselves physically and emotionally, but also make themselves visible to each other. In this sense, Powell touches on the processes by which people with comparable life narrative may become connected with, share alongside or conversely, be separated from each other- three aspects of mobility justice.

She highlights the complexity of this process, for example that representing the self has rhetorical dimensions to it; identity is fluid, and this processual quality simultaneously provides autobiography with the potential to reproduce or disrupt genre and narrative. (Her interest, like mine, is in the latter). Finally, she touches on the possibility of mobile autobiography (e.g. she says ‘Each life narrative offers, whether implicitly or explicitly, instruction on how to survive processes of marginalisation and use that survival to assist others with similar struggles’ (2021, 12)).

A final point on Powell’s contribution, is that it has a futurity to it. She frames the autobiographical texts which she explores as examples of ‘transgressive archives’ in that they ‘… challenge and disrupt and make us rethink how work is catalogued, saved, and layered for future work and interpretation’ (2021, 5). She suggests that it is an ethical responsibility to question what gets privileged in archiving practices. These points resonate with recent contributions from Moore et al (2017), who discuss how new routes and new forms of collection can be created, as a central component of a feminist archival sensibility. Such futurity is present in the auto/biographical authorship that is the focus of the paper, which recognises that without first hand narrative, the stories told (and not told) about people without children will never be transgressed.

A second key cornerstone of my theorisation of (im)mobile auto/biography is Fricker’s (2009) Epistemic Injustice. A philosophical contribution that explores the territory between ethics and epistemology, Fricker (2009) argues that there is an ethical dimension to our epistemic practices, and that a type of injustice exists specifically concerned with knowledge, in which a person can be wronged in their capacity as a knower. Fricker’s (2009) work provides valuable conceptual resources which enable a theoretical understanding of how life without children auto/biography - a form of legitimate knowledge - has previously been side-lined and rendered invisible, as well as offering insight on the processes of its mobilisation, and the significance of this shift from immobile to mobile.

Fricker explicates two forms of epistemic injustice in her 2009 book, these are namely ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’. On the former she argues that prejudice grounded in social stereotypes can result in a hearer deflating the credibility of a speaker’s word. The impact being that the hearer misses out on knowledge and the speaker is undermined. This discrediting of legitimate knowledge renders the subject vulnerable to other forms of injustice such as in health, legal, economic, family and political spheres. It can also result in more localised incidental injustices in an individual’s everyday life. Although not always leading to systemic injustice such instances can be painful and require strategies on the part of individuals, if they are to remain emotionally intact.

The distinctive but related concept of hermeneutical injustice refers to ‘a gap in collective interpretive resources’ (Fricker 2009, 1) which makes it hard for individuals to make sense of their social experiences (and thus to communicate them in a credible way). Hermeneutical injustice becomes apparent in discursive exchanges, in which both the speaker and the hearer struggle to understand one another, both grappling with the same inadequate tools (Fricker 2009, 7). An example in the context of this paper, is the commonplace retrospective reporting of those who have unsuccessfully pursued parenthood, that they neither have the vocabulary to express their internal world nor to have the depth of their feeling for all that has been lost from their anticipated future - acknowledged by those around them. The work of psychotherapist, author and activist Jody Day (2021) on the disenfranchised grief of involuntary childlessness has created a set of interpretive resources through which this experience can be understood by those going through it, communicated to others, and appropriately supported. A second example, is Carroll’s (2000; 2012) articulation of pronatalism and its impacts on those who have chosen to be childfree in her books Families of Two and The Baby Matrix, which I discussed in the previous section.

Through my concept of im/mobile auto/biography, I propose that first person life without children narratives are a form of testimony. One aspect of the mobilisation of these testimonies are the new possibilities to connect with and to share alongside. Through this sharing hermeneutical resources are developed. This is significant for a variety of individuals and communities, and for socio-cultural change. The detail of this has not yet been fully articulated. There is need for original empirical research which I am developing (although the detail of this lies beyond the scope of this paper).

The third theoretical contribution that serves as an anchor for my concept of (im)mobile autobiography is Mimi Sheller’s (2018) Mobility Justice. In her book, Sheller develops a theorisation of how (im)mobilities form a foundational part of social justice. While the full extent and potential of Sheller’s work cannot be reviewed here, of particular note are the foundational role of mobilities (meant broadly to encompass physical, material and informational) for being separated from, connected with and sharing alongside these all being the outcome of mobile practices which have real life implications. The related concept of network capital (Elliott and Urry 2010 in Sheller 2018, 26–27) helps to theorise how this is so, noting that the emergence of extensive, fast and expanding mobility systems leads to complex social worlds, and that the social situation of an individual in relation to these systems creates, or undermines the possibility of realising ‘ambitions and interests’ and of engaging with ‘social contestation’ (Elliott and Urry 2010, 10). In other words, the mobility field has a form of power associated with it – network capital. The dynamic mobility field simultaneously makes space for new forms of network capital, whilst new immobilities (and thus new inequalities) become associated with a lack of it.

In a context of life without children narratives, and (im)mobile auto/biography, new digital technologies, online platforms and social media have enabled new forms of informational mobility and new kinds of network capital to develop. These spaces transcend geographical and social distance, whilst providing a means of, and platform for the democratisation of auto/biographical authorship. Network capital has impacted the extent to which those with comparable life narratives can share alongside one another. This is not insignificant for those in this minority, previously isolated due to a dearth of safe spaces to express and understand experience, whilst being fed stories about themselves from sources with little knowledge of their actual experience, in a context rife with inaccurate and reductive narratives of the childless and childfree man/woman/person.

These new local, national and international connections provide known others around the globe, creating new destinations of friendship and protected places along the way. In this way autobiographical mobility is shaping physical mobilities. Sheller’s analysis (in dialogue with Powell and Fricker) both provides a means of theorising the mobilisation of auto/biography and its impacts, whilst remaining cognisant of the fact that mobilities are always uneven and that mobilities and immobilities shadow each other. As new forms of network capital develop and are enabling, so they are at the foundation of new inequalities. The auto/biographical (im)mobilities theorised in this paper will be similarly patterned in this way.

Nevertheless, irrevocably connected to the recent mobilisation are the forms of mobility justice, in particular the network capital, realised through an opening up and democratisation of genres and digital platforms that has enabled ‘awakenings’ (Vogelstein and Stone 2021) around this aspect of experience. Through this process, previously separated individuals and networks are building digitally and then in specific geographies; and via this process intra-, inter- and trans-generational learning is starting to evolve, vocabularies and understanding to develop, along with a related futurity and care which seeks to ensure the availability of knowledge and resources, and the social inclusion, of coming cohorts.

Discussion: Significance and possibilities in changing climates

Across the UK, Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, first-hand, bottom-up resources for embracing childless and childfree life, and for dealing with challenges through the life course, have gone from almost non-existent two decades ago, to thriving, informed and more recently interconnected. This mobilisation of life without children auto/biography is significant in ways not yet fully articulated, known or practised. In this final section of the paper I begin to open up this aspect by outlining the significance of this cultural shift in three ways. Firstly, for individuals who have chosen life without children, or who have experienced not having children as a bereavement, and for younger generations as they engage anew with questions of how to navigate life course, in a context of changing climates; secondly, for the furore of issues and debates that single out and situate life without children in reductive and problematic ways; finally, for mobilities scholarship.

Significance for individuals who have experienced not having children as a bereavement, or who have chosen life without children, and for younger generations

The mobilisation of life without children auto/biography (from immobile to mobile) identified, described and theorised in this paper has had major implications for the lives and emotional well-being of those who have experienced not having children as a bereavement. I have touched on some of these implications throughout this paper, which include the breaking of social taboo, development of a vocabulary and supportive resources for working through grief, and the establishing of networks through which friendship and community can be found. It is also leading to the articulation of needs across the life course that are related to the social situation of not having children in a context of institutions, policies and systems that are grounded in the assumption of intergenerational family.

Testimonies from some of the elder members of these communities (e.g. Yvonne John, Jody Day) encapsulate the profound and positive implications of this autobiographical mobilisation which they have both shaped and benefitted from. Although experiences of being ‘childless not by choice’ are not of apiece, it is nevertheless, in part, socially shaped as such these narratives are, to an extent shared. These narratives discuss how the social taboo over infertility and social infertility, which existed in the initial decades of their experience, meant that many of the most challenging years of their lives were navigated on their own - the auto/biographical mobilisation that is the topic of this book hadn’t yet happened. Through its gradual emergence across the last decade, these individuals initially found connection and friendship; many then began to pay it forward through sharing their stories, taking part in or organising online and face-to-face meet-ups, or bringing their own unique skills to make a positive contribution which might help their peers. Thus, in this respect, life without children auto/biography has supported the development of meaning and legacy; provided a space for living with bereavement and grief in life and identity; enabled an authentic existence which simultaneously highlights the damaging realities of pronatalist cultures that silence such experiences; and created both online and face-to-face networks and connections, through which a life (without children) can be embraced.

For those choosing life without children from an early age (ie. deciding not to pursue parenthood at all), a distinctive but overlapping significance of mobilising autobiography can be identified. In an interview on the Childfree Girls podcast (episode 75, 2022) French independent journalist, owner of the Instagram Account ‘Je ne veux pas d’enfants’, and winner of the 2022 childfree person of the year award, Bettina Zourli, discusses the people who engage with her Instagram work. She says:

…on my Instagram account I do receive a lot of messages from people, from women who don’t understand why I don’t want children – sometimes I get insulted, of course – but mostly they just want to understand, because they just simply don’t, because they never met someone who was thinking that they did not want children. I also have a lot of childfree women who are just thanking me – or not just thanking me – but thanking the fact that there are some places like this Instagram account, to speak with other people who are just like them…. for the moment, many people don’t have this opportunity to know that it is possible not to have children (21:53–24:05).

The message is a common one that is heard in relation to the auto/biographical mobilisation outlined, from those who have chosen to be childfree. The feeling is that there is a significance in developing awareness which challenges negative stereotypes; in recognising that this personal choice currently has social and political implications, and that some of these require a community and strategies to be handled effectively. There is a value in having spaces where these aspects can be discussed, alongside being supported in more personal matters, such as finding clarity on choosing a childfree life amidst family, social and other pressures; addressing workplace inequality; rethinking adulthood and ageing, finding positive role models, and the list could go on.

More recently, podcasts and resources have started to emerge from younger generations, and with this, life without children (whatever the reason) is being situated in current debates. Some examples of these more recent resources are ‘Millennial Emma’ (instagram account), ‘The Childfree Girls’ (podcast, instagram account and book), and ‘One in Five’ (a podcast by journalist Geeta Pendse). These resources value the life stories of those without children from different perspectives and explore a range of related pithy topics which include: changing the narrative; creating community; rethinking adulthood; dealing with ‘bingos’ and misunderstanding; understanding one’s identity in relation to issues and emerging discourse around climate and environment, overconsumption and overpopulation; redefining meaning and legacy; ageing well without children.

In the context of this special issue, it is relevant to note that in some instances the recent exploration of first-hand life without children narratives, especially amongst younger generations, stems from a concern with changing climates and environments, overconsumption and overpopulation, and some explicit thinking on the best way in which they might contribute to this pressing global challenge throughout their lives. As such, the tone of such media is characterised by a significant shift in narrative (in contrast to dominant media representations to date); it is more open, nuanced and feminist-informed. This is having a two-fold impact on existing childless and childfree communities. Firstly these enquiries by younger generations are recognising that until now first hand ‘life without children’ narratives have been ‘invisible and side-lined’ (Pendse 2022), and their circulation both within (intra) and between (inter) generations has been limited (Millenial Emma, Childfreegirls). To use the concept developed in this paper they have been an instantiation of immobile auto/biography. Secondly, these inquiries have created a new space for the growing movements of people who are telling about their lives without children, whether through choice or circumstance, which as I have shown in this paper, was already under way. This is making visible previously undiscussed aspects of their experience and knowledge to a broader audience, and enabling the cross-sector implications to be articulated and challenged (e.g. in local services, health and women’s health, the reproductive industries, reproductive policies, workplace policies, financial services, ageing).

The cultural shift can be compellingly encapsulated by reflecting on the implications of these recent changes, for those who have experienced childlessness as a bereavement, and whose lives have simultaneously intersected with the auto/biographical mobilisation described. For these people who have travelled this path, and engaged with the emerging communities and resources available to them, they have experienced in the space of a lifetime, a social and cultural re-situation of their identities, from being stereotyped, invisible and taboo; to being individuals who are inspirational, and who through their lives-as-lived are brimming with legitimate knowledge that is of unique value and sought out.

In combination, the ‘childless not by choice’ and ‘childfree’ – or in the language of this paper, those living ‘life without children’, now make up one in five of women aged 45 and over in the UK (ONS 2022); up to a quarter of women born in the 1970s in Southern Europe are expected to remain childless (French Institute of Demographic Studies, in Archetti 2020); one in three in Germany and Japan (Day 2021), there are similar shifts around the world, and though the statistics focus on women, the reality is much more diverse. As such these significances, which in terms of their impact on the lives of a silenced minority, were already compelling, become even more so in light of the scale of this group. As I state earlier, the paper is not a treatise for non-parenthood, but rather putting forward the case that legitimate knowledge and experience emerges from such adulthoods. This is not least in relation to the furore of debates which have themselves played a part in the problematising representations discussed in the paper, and which I turn to next.

Significance for the furore of issues and debates – the ‘changing climates’ – in which life without children is singled out and situated in reductive and problematic ways

The mobilisation of life without children narrative exists in tension with debates and discourses which potentially undermine these positive and empowering impacts on people’s lives. For example, some of the pronatal discourses related to under population and low fertility rates that are emerging in some countries are in stark and problematic contrast with the transformative thinking that is enabling those who are childless by circumstance to challenge stigma and live lives that are fulfilling and personally meaningful. Although these debates are of a different register, they intersect in the lives of individuals. Indeed, it is partly due to such intersections that the lived experiences of people without children are inflected by country and culture, and that it is dynamic; it depends on the (re)framing of the ‘childless’ and ‘childfree’ within broader debates, as well as the specific (and changing) social situation of the individual.

There is a deep complexity to this. Not having/having children is a contested issue, and these contestations are on multiple fronts and can point in different directions on issues related to economics, demographics, religious beliefs, feminisms, reproductive technologies, climate and ecological crises. In respect to life without children, debate frequently unfolds without sensitivity, nuance or understanding, and frequently reverts to reductive assumptions or stereotypes. Some examples of public debates which touch on not having children include feminist debates on the right to be childfree; the proliferation of reproductive technologies and the right to access them and have children; austerity policy and its impacts on reproduction and the intergenerational family; overpopulation; underpopulation; overconsumption; ageing populations; future economy; pandemic-related policy responses; climate change and changing environments; the right to parent in safe environments; the introduction of pronatalist policy; the damaging impacts of pronatalist policy. In combination, such shifting public and policy realities form ‘changing cultural climates’ within which life without children is woven, and which deeply impacts challenges faced, and the spaces that are available (or not) for articulations of such life narratives.

It is beyond the scope of the paper to articulate how the mobilisation of auto/biography discussed in this paper is/is not significant to each of these debates. Rather, the point I wish to make is that such an articulation is possible, and would be valuable as the next step in this mobilisation. For such knowledge to be articulated, shared and explored, a necessary first step is to recognise the mobilisation of ‘life without children’ auto/biography that has occurred and to afford it the status of legitimate knowledge with significance and possibility that had not been articulated, and is waiting to be developed.

On this point then I conclude with the questions not yet asked, but which inform the next steps of my work: How did life narrative authors find the courage, platform and genre to tell their story? What impact is it having on their identity and life? What is their take on these debates and how have they come across them within their own life? How do they encounter ideology as it is refracted into policies, practices, and everyday life? How can this be challenged and transformed?

Significance for mobilities scholarship

In the final paragraphs of the paper, I wish to reflect on the significance of the analysis and theorisations for mobilities scholarship. Although the mobilities literature refers to theoretical approaches and methodological innovations for analysing (and reshaping) complex movements of people and objects and of (digital) information, knowledges and ideas (Urry 2000), the latter have been engaged with far less than the former. Further, where they have been explored, the analysis is frequently organised around physical mobility of persons as the focal phenomenon to be explained. In the turn to mobility humanities, aspects of the human experience such as emotion and affect that can be explored through engaging with autobiographical writing, are theorised as shaped by and shaping of physical mobilities. However, in this paper my focus is distinctive to this. By placing the (im)mobilities of life narrative at the centre, and theorising how ideas, information, knowledges and identities are constituted as mobile, potentially mobile, or not - in time and space – I open up an analysis which though grounded in mobilities thinking, has a distinctive entry point.

The pattern of scholarly attention to physical mobilities has been carried forward in Sheller’s (2018) development of mobility justice, which does go beyond the physical to discuss digital mobilities, but always as they are intimately connected to physical mobilities of some kind and scale, whether it be issues of uneven motility and mobility rights, infrastructuring of differential and uneven mobility, and broader questions of power. In this paper I bring these questions and concepts of mobility justice to a focal topic of (im)mobile auto/biography, and theorise how informational mobility and physical mobility can open up the account of the mobility justice concept and phenomenon. In doing so it brings a different set of justice concerns in concert with each other (than those explored by Sheller), namely mobility justice, epistemic justice and social justice.

Conclusion

In the introduction to this special issue, Pearce and Spurling note that ‘…the climate and ecological crisis, whenever and wherever it is brought to consciousness, will impact the direction that diverse lives take, and the stories told to make sense of them’. The discussion in this paper offers some insight to this statement. Life without children autobiography provides one example of diverse lives, and the dynamics of sense-making related to them as they intersect with weighty contemporary topics, and emerging discourse around the climate and ecological crisis. More fundamentally, ‘(im)mobile auto/biographies’ provides a concept and theoretical framework which has potential beyond the specific substantive focus of the paper. On this, its potential lies in its ability to place diversity foremost in explorations of lifecourse in changing climates, because the articulation of a concept of immobile auto/biography renders their existence visible in the world. Finally, the mobile in the (im)mobile encourages a focus on how such lives and the stories about them evolve, circulate and themselves perform transformation, as they intersect with, transgress and re-shape the changing climates of a mobile world.

Disclosure statement

No conflicts of interest were reported by the author.