>Thank you for your patience with my break. I'm going to keep working through this one. I love it so much and want to provide as much as I can for you and the thread.
>
>3) Q: If so, please elaborate on the specific challenges or themes you find!

In addition to what I have already mentioned, persons who have chosen to be childfree and those who are childless by circumstance and now embracing life without kids is the, what feels like, constant attempts from others to "change our minds" or "pity" or "problem solving" that is forced on us in social environments.

For example, for the childless many will discuss ways they or "people they know" have been successful in conceiving and carrying to term. Tons of advice on how the childless can "fix" the "problem" of living without children.

Similarly, the childfree by choice are often faced with opinions that are based from the POV that those who do have children have chosen a "better" life.

In both of these examples, especially since these aren't uncommon or rare by any means, the receiver of these messages are fundamentally -- "you're different and we don't like it so we need to fix you" and/or "you're a bad person."

I do admit those statements are reductionistic and generalized. I also am knowledgeable of how the conscious and subconscious parts of our brain process information. The latter takes in information and does just that--simplifies it to fit into a category that activates the sympathetic nervous system or the parasympathetic nervous system (scary stimuli or safe stimuli, respectively).

So, when we think about themes and specific challenges of the childfree and childless it really is about working through the all too big question "who am I" and then "where do I fit into the world?"

Often the childfree and childless will attempt and be welcomed initially by those who love and care for them. The goal is to live as if the choice they made or that their bodies made doesn't make them different (because remember "different = bad"). So instead there is a shrinking that happens. A guilt for having different interests, more money or more time, a desire to branch out of the expected.

And as with any group that is not in the "majority" there is a loneliness that comes from feeling like the only one or somehow broken.

The latter is much more common for childless by circumstance persons but also for the childfree by choice like me who don't have a "maternal clock" or the desire to have babies. From the first stories we are told as young girls is that our bodies were MADE to have kids...and sure I have all the organs that in theory would allow me to do that so choosing not to use them in that way can, for some, feel like a betrayal.

Although there are a ton more themes, I'll finally mention religion as one of the largest forces behind the pressure to reproduce. Edin & Kefalas (2011) discussed how specifically in the Catholic faith marriage has historically been taught as "primarily procreative." Which is one of many examples of the lessons taught to "be fruitful and multiply."