BY JAZMIN BANAL
I HAVE not given birth to anyone. I am supposed to be called, medically, nulliparous. Being in that category has its health risks and challenges.
Studies have shown that being childless or childfree carries a stigma. Why does exclusion follow the woman wherever she goes, whatever the reason for not having children?
To begin with, “null” means “not” and “parere” means “to bring forth.” The medical term itself imposes an undesirable trait, something like an admonition that one is not natural. It is a label of not being able to “go forth and multiply.”
In the Philippines, religious and cultural pressures obviously exist. A healthy woman without a child is a disconcerting concept. Her thoughts and feelings in even the most personal of relationships can become irrelevant, often taking a backseat, giving way to the thoughts and feelings of those who have children.
The feeling of isolation, of invisibility, can also arise in innocent encounters. I recall a scene in Sex and the City. Miranda got frustrated with Charlotte, Carrie, and Samantha and she walked out, but not without speaking up: “How does it happen that four smart women have nothing to talk about but their boyfriends? What about us? What we think, we feel, we know? Does it always have to be about them?” If single women constantly talk about men, mothers constantly talk about kids, and sometimes that could make them oblivious to the nulliparous. That could cause a disconnect even without meaning to.
Things can be especially painful for women who, for medical reasons, are not able to have children. The Gateway Elderwomen founder, Jody Day, speaks of how “grief is a language that this lost tribe speaks fluently but which our society is deaf to.”
Such a sensitive topic should not be avoided. What’s important is empathy. And science. Unless Philippine society can be open about the emotions and the facts, women without children will always be seen as abnormal.
So, what do we know about this phenomenon?
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) apparently conducts periodic National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) covering women aged 15-49.
The 2008 NDHS reported that among all women, 37% did not have children. The PSA categorically stated: that’s more than one in three women. For me, it meant that even back then the phenomenon was real.
And yet, the PSA said in the same report that the phenomenon was not common in the Philippines. How? It focused on married older women and emphasized that only 4% did not have children. Then, it assumed that voluntary childlessness was rare and that the married women were infertile.
I’m not sure if I’m the only one who got confused. By insisting that Filipinas without children could only happen within the context of marriage, and due to medical reasons, the official report came across as incomplete and evasive.
This attitude was also evident in the 2022 NDHS. The report did not even discuss the phenomenon like in 2008. Still, I scrolled through the document and found a table with relevant figures. The big revelation related to younger women.
Comparing the 2008 and 2022 figures, the number of younger women who have no children jumped. From 57.5% to 75% for aged 20-24, from 27.2% to 40.3% for aged 25-29, and from 15.5% to 20.6% for aged 30-34.
Within my sphere, I know of younger women who prefer not to have children. It’s ironic and embarrassing that even I had questioned them. It only shows that prejudices are not going away. It’s about time to treat the phenomenon not as a problem — in the sense that there is something wrong about one’s life choices — but as a reality that requires acknowledgment and support.
Some literature I’ve seen gave certain points that could add to the conversation. The 2020 study entitled “Struggles, Coping Mechanisms, and Insights of Childless Teachers in the Philippines” explained that there are various ways of describing “childless” women, i.e., “without children, non-mother, postponers, and passive decision makers.” The 2024 study entitled “Childfree in the Philippines” observed that the likelihood of women in the Philippines being childfree is higher if they are “single, older, live in an urban area, and have a lower level of education.”
Given the latest NDHS findings, there should be more studies on the implications of the increasing number of younger women with no children, what it means for our Generation Y and Generation Z, their aspirations and their future, and how society and government should cope with it. It would be interesting to know if the dramatic increase also translates to a change in attitude towards childlessness. It would be useful to understand if the stigma experienced by us older women is no longer true, and, if so, what the new burden of childfree living is.
Female parents need family, social, and government support, and that also goes for women who couldn’t have children and women without children. “There is a well of pain surrounding motherhood,” the journalist Nicola Slawson said, “among childless women who want to become mothers; childfree women who face stigma; and even mothers, too, who feel chronically misunderstood.” Our changing world deserves a deeper look./PN
