Childfree Spaces And Women

Being childfree is a choice more people are making every year and, for some, with that choice seems to come a desire to remove children from life completely. Childfree zones as they currently exist allow a space that is quiet and calm. They are additions to places that accept everyone, or at least try to. But some people want more.

There are repercussions to childfree spaces. They are also motherfree spaces. Women do 77% more childcare than men, which is why any issue surrounding children tends to affect them more. Isolating mothers from even more spaces could be catastrophic for their mental health with over 80% of mothers reporting feelings of isolation and loneliness.

There's also a problem in keeping male-dominated spaces childfree. Most spaces are assumed childfree already, allowing fathers to leave their children more easily with the mother. This reinforces the idea of the mother as the caregiver and solidifies gender roles in the home. Unfortunately, this childfree nature of male-dominated spaces often goes unexamined as we haven't fully unpacked some gender roles. Until we unpack these roles, though, we have to focus on women's lives now.

By looking at the bigger picture, how children fit into society, who they are dependent on, we can see the true repercussions of excluding them from more and more spaces.