In contrast to infertility, voluntary childlessness is a much under-studied experience. There are only a handful of existing studies on this topic, and yet demographic research indicates that more and more people across the globe (including Australians) are choosing not to give birth and/or to parent in other ways. As public awareness and concern about the immediate effects of climate change increase, journalists and some social researchers are reporting connections between life decisions not to become a parent and concern about climate change.

 

This interdisciplinary and international research group will explore how Australians who are deciding not to have children are thinking through these issues. How do they conceive of the risks of climate change and what concerns do they have about parenting and future generations? What kinds of resources are they drawing on to make their decisions and what is their experience of articulating these decisions to others? What are their thoughts about family and kinship and how do they build alternatives to conventional ‘parents and children’ households? How do issues of sex/gender and sexuality play out in these reproductive decisions? Speaking to a series of leading international scholars, our group will also map the existing feminist scholarship in this area and explore how it might it be disseminated to wider publics through the Gender Institute. We will produce a series of short podcast conversations between these scholars and activists and the ANU research team (who are leading scholars in this area in their own right), and accompanying animations presenting key ideas from the research and the podcasts for wider publics. These outputs will be made available on the Gender Institute website. Additionally, we will work towards writing a collaborative bid for Discovery Project funding from the Australian Research Council.