Childfreeness, parenthood and adulthood

Abstract

This article discusses voluntary childlessness and reaching adulthood in Sweden, focusing on childfree women and men with intellectual disabilities (IDs). The article is based on interviews with 19 childfree individuals, four of whom had IDs. It focuses on motives for voluntary childlessness, with three types of motives being mentioned only by the interviewees with IDs; namely the difficulties of parenthood and of building relations with children, the risk of heredity and the maliciousness of children. The interviews have been analysed with relevance to power axes of gender, age and abilities, and these three motives may be seen as results of the interviewees' ascribed position as intellectually disabled and of the segregation in society between able and disabled individuals. The article also includes a discussion about how to achieve ‘adult status’ when parenthood is ruled out. Other issues in everyday life seem more important than parenthood, according to the individuals with IDs.

Keywords:

• voluntary childlessness
• childfree
• parenthood
• intellectual disabilities
• gender

Notes

1. Sometimes voluntarily childless individuals resist the concept of ‘voluntary childlessness’ since it has negative connotations implying that they are missing out on something in their lives. Instead ‘childfreeness’ has been promoted (Dykstra and Hagestad 2007). In this article, ‘childfreeness’ and ‘voluntary childlessness’ are used synonymously.

2. The experiences of interviewees without IDs have already been analyzed and presented in (Engwall 2010a, 2010b; Peterson and Engwall 2010; Engwall and Peterson 2011).