Demolishing a Stereotype

A woman’s casually stated choice not to have children can deep-freeze a conversation, even between friends. But is the choice ever casually stated? How can it be when it is so rarely brought forward as a topic, least of all by the non-moms themselves? If you stopped to ask yourself what percentage of Canadians have chosen to live their lives without having kids, could you even begin to guess? From mommy bloggers to yummy celebrity mummies, pronatalism has a lock on lifestyle discussion.

Estimates vary (depending on who interprets the figures from Statistics Canada and the U.S. Bureau of the Census), but between 8 percent and 20 percent of North American men and women say they intend to remain or have remained childless. Even taking the safe, low-end figure, 8 percent amounts to well over 2 million Canadians.

Nobody’s Mother: Life without Kids, edited by Lynne Van Luven with a foreword by Shelagh Rogers, attempts to start the cultural conversation...