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The Importance of Childfree Representation · Syllabus

• Ashby: Go. Okay, now we're recording. Let's go, let's do it, let's talk about it. Coco: All right. Well, hello, Ashby. I am so pumped to be talking with you once again. And we are going to be today revisiting a topic that we have discussed for hours and hours and years and gone on millions of walks. ⁓ So I'm hoping that we can arrive somewhere slightly new. But you know, we're going to see. We're going to see. And that is just Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: some reflections from this experience of being child-free at this particular moment in time. And I wanna just start us off with a little bit of the opening to Bridgette Bridgette Vincent's incredible 2023 essay, Child Adjacent. And she starts out, I feel like I need to come out every day. I'm pushing the stroller, fishing out the dummy, pointing out dogs, but this isn't what it looks like. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: At the playground or the checkout, I take the nods in maternal solidarity, staying inside the parenting illusion until it feels slightly disingenuous. I am not the mother. And I just want to say that this was me last weekend because we're recording Sunday and last Sunday was Mother's Day. And this was me entering a brunch with my husband and my sister's family who, you know, she has two small children, my beloved nephews. and the staff at the restaurant just handed me some flowers. know, they were kind of identifying the moms, walking into the restaurant and handing flowers. And because we came in with these two kids, I got some flowers. And I was just very flustered and I kind of like awkwardly like thrust them into my sister's hand and made a little bit of a joke about like, no stolen valor. I'm not trying to take credit. I'm here for some breakfast carbs. ⁓ But this is just to say that like Vincent or dare I call her Bridget, though she does have a PhD, so we could also be calling her Dr. Vincent. ⁓ I am an aunt of the Anthropocene. And this is the kind of one of the monikers that she uses as she's writing about her experience of being child free in this specific moment in time. And we're going to be revisiting her essay a couple of times through our conversation. I should mention that ⁓ Bridget Minson is Australian. And this essay that she has written was in the wake of those terrible, devastating Australian bushfires, kind of, I believe in 2022. So, you know, some of this is informed by an understanding of the environment, but also just a lot of really wonderful little moments of being in proximity to children, kind of being an aunt and caretaker. But like I said, going into the brunch, you know, I felt a little bit like this moment from a beloved television show. Ashby: You Coco: That is ⁓ Abby Jacobson playing Abby Abrams in the, what's it called? season one, episode two, Pussyweed, ⁓ in which a very high Abby Abrams, her character, ⁓ thinks a cardboard cutout is accusing her of being a mom and just like flips the fuck out. Ashby: So good. I'm gonna go back and rewatch the... I forget how funny and bizarre these episodes are. Coco: ⁓ Now, just to be clear, I'm using this as a joke, like I just to say that there's this is an identity that I occupy, but I also, I'm not offended if anyone thinks of me as a mom, know, this is Abby's character is like in her 20s and she's like, I don't want to be thought of as a mom, but I don't carry any of those negative, you know, stereotypes about moms not being cool or whatever. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: ⁓ It's more just that this identity, think for me at least, kind of primarily feels defined by awkwardness that, you know, you can understand big cultural messages, but there are also moments in your everyday life with like people that are in your life or the restaurant staff you might encounter where you perceive a slight discomfort, that there is an energy of not knowing how to treat you. ⁓ And there are like moments where you're like, maybe I'm even despised a little bit. but I also just want to mention that this is a little bit of a funny position because it is one that in my lived experience feels very privileged. ⁓ you know, this, it comes with like legitimate privilege in the sense that I live in a, in a state where I do still have access to abortion, reproductive healthcare, that ability to truly choose that I myself just This is a choice, and I know that there are a lot of people where ⁓ maybe it doesn't feel as much of a choice. Maybe it's defined by circumstances or people who have had to make harder decisions. ⁓ And then also I don't live within a culture that is kind of has explicitly pressured me to have a child. You know, there's the one thing that is rights, but there's also kind of bigger cultural pressures. So you might live in a more conservative environment or you might live in ⁓ a... a specific type of religious environment where something would have been just expected of me. And any pressure that I have experienced, ⁓ interpersonally, shall I say, has been super soft and gentle and very respectful of kind of whatever I wanted. But also on the flip side, like it's a privileged position in terms of like money and free time and flexibility. Like it is a kind of objectively like a quote unquote ease of your life. But at the same time, when we think about something like the word privilege. It's also funny because you are like living in the margin. Like you are somehow a slightly marginalized, not in a way that like, I'm not trying to compare it to ⁓ groups that experience genuine oppression by being marginalized. It's just, you exist a little bit outside of the norm, even though this is just my very ordinary and boring life. So what I'm kind of hoping that we can do together today is, just kind of explore some of the curiosities about being in this funny position, as well as being in this funny position at this specific time in history, in America, in the globe. And I wanna be a little bit light about it, but I also wanna acknowledge that there are a lot of people that I think from the outside look like me, ⁓ but may be dealing with something that's a lot harder. ⁓ Like I was mentioning, people who may have, you know, have wanted a child, but do not have one for whatever reason. And it can be very easy to be a bit myopic about, you know, our own experiences and kind of to make fun. But I do want to keep those people in mind because I think in thinking through the topic for today, there's just so much tenderness that's underneath all of this. ⁓ And I think there's a lot of separation that happens kind of across different groups. And what I'm hoping is to kind of come away with is that we all just need each other. We all love each other. We all respect each other. All right, before we get into it, I don't know Ashby, if there's anything you want to share. You are a little bit younger than me and ⁓ curious if there's anything you want to add to just thinking about this identity. Ashby: Yeah. Gosh, I just stopped saying ⁓ because I listened to this podcast back and I say ⁓ so much. Okay. Anyways. Okay. I also read the Child Adjacent piece and really enjoyed it because I like the term Child Adjacent as like this third term. I think we should probably outline what we mean by like child free versus childless, which Coco: Girl, me too. Mm-hmm. Yes. Ashby: is a whole different conversation, but most of the material we're exploring has to have like a little upfront disclaimer about like what they mean by that because it's true. All these terms are political, you know, and people have said childless indicates lack, like maybe a person that wanted children, but then didn't have them while child free kind of indicates something in opposition to parenting, which makes it sound as if parenting is an Coco: Uh-huh. Ashby: unfree or ⁓ restrictive structure and not everybody's decision to not have children they see as like a big political act that's in response to how restrictive they see child rearing or childbearing. I like this term child adjacent because it is temporal. Coco: Yeah! Ashby: Like it, lets you live where you're at, you know, which is I'm adjacent to children, but I myself am not a parent. You don't know how that person's life is going to go or how their feelings about any particular decision is going to land. But, ⁓ at least with child adjacent, you're accurately describing what you are at this current time, you know? ⁓ so as a person who also has a nephew, Coco: Yeah, ooh. Uh-huh. Ashby: It's like, oh yeah, okay. I, I feel a lot more like a child adjacent. mean, I'm not like you in the sense that I don't live close to them. So I only get to see them a few times a year, but, um, but I like the kind of like, uh, what we would call like aloe parenting role of like being supportive of my friends with kids, um, and being supportive of family members with kids. And, you know, I think that's fine. So yeah, child free or childless never really quite sounded Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: right to me, but child adjacent was like a much nicer in between ⁓ as things are now description. Coco: And I'll just mention, I don't know what's, I think that kind of just oddly, a lot of things I came across are kind of produced from Australia and New Zealand. And they are using these words, child-free, childless. I forget the other one. And child adjacent. Kind of to mean like, they're using child-free and childless to mean specific things. They mean child-free is child-free by choice, childless is you wanted a child and you don't have one. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Coco: ⁓ I don't think in the United States we like use those words in a way that like means something like kind of colloquially across the board that we would understand those nuances or differences. ⁓ I'm gonna kind of use probably child free a lot just as like that's the ease, that's my go-to one, but I don't really mean necessarily anything so specific by it, but occasionally like that has come up in some of the stuff that's going on in Australia, which is interesting. Ashby: Mm-hmm. What I like- Coco: ⁓ sorry, I would just think that the Australian stuff is interesting to me just because I think it is a place that is experiencing environmental change in some dramatic ways. And so it's kind of producing maybe some more discourse ⁓ in a more defined way than it is here. Ashby: Yeah, I feel like this is kind of back to our conversation about radical women, which is that I think what happens is if someone doesn't know a person or speaking colloquially, they will apply childless to a person that they know is not a parent. ⁓ And then a person who is self-identifying, who has chosen not to be a parent or is not a parent right now, will refer to themselves as child free. And so Coco: Uh-huh. Ashby: I don't know. think ⁓ it's a perspective shift. And I think that has to do a little bit with people's like bristling about it, you know, because if you just like, if you go read your like doctor's notes or whatever, and it's like 37 year old married childless woman, you're like, fuck you. You don't know me. You know my fucking life, you know, but you know that. Coco: Mm-hmm. Yeah. With rusty uterus Ashby: You know that they didn't mean anything by it, but it's like, that's how they just are going to describe another person. And it's funny your anecdote about Mother's Day because I just live with, you know, my husband and our cat. And on Mother's Day, nobody in this house felt like cooking. And so I went to, I think it was the day before Mother's Day, I went to the like vegetarian Chinese place near us and ordered like a big order for us. Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: And then when I got there to pick it up, they were like, happy Mother's Day. And then I saw how many like forks and stuff they included. And I was thinking, yep, this is for me and my large family. Coco: Yep. Like it's such, it's well intentioned, of course. Ashby: But I'm fine. I was fine with it. I was like, thank you. I appreciate that Coco: That's very like Miranda when she feels judged by the people at the restaurant. Okay, so I want to just mention that, you know, like I said, you and I have been having these conversations kind of for years, and I feel like we're having this conversation now where I have gotten off the fence in one direction, right? ⁓ But what is kind of going back and thinking about this, you know, Ashby: Yeah. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Coco: I've been having this conversation with myself for years, ⁓ even long before my husband arrived in my hinge app. ⁓ And my feelings about it have always been deeply personal. And of course, my deeply personal feelings also consider the world. They are about the world. They're about my experience being in the world. ⁓ it's funny because what's happening now is we're experiencing kind of ⁓ a Ashby: Yeah. Coco: collision of two things that are intertwined, that are necessarily intertwined, but that is, know, ⁓ far-right nationalism that has so much to do with gender and pronatalism, and at the same time, media, increasing media coverage over the declining birth rate. So let's just start with our bros and the far-right. ⁓ who are kind of out there saying, know, alert, alert, we need more white babies. Yeah. Yeah. So these are a couple of quotes from JD Vance. I won't make you read them. I feel that wouldn't be fair to you to make you read JD Vance's words, but he has said, I want more babies in the United States of America. We want more babies because children are good and we believe children are good because we are not sociopaths. We owe something to our nation. We owe something to our future. Ashby: Basically, yeah, would sum that up. yeah, mm-hmm. Coco: We must wage war against the anti-child ideology prevalent in our society. Kind of up until that point, I was kind of like, in a neutral world, I'm agreeing, but that last one, no, thank you. Our population isn't producing enough offspring to sustain itself. A society devoid of children is pretty icky and pretty gross. But one of his thesis statement essentially is that, People who are quote unquote, childless cat ladies are not invested in the future. They don't have the same stake in the country's future. Which I love sometimes encountering these types of honestly propaganda messages because being a child-free person and having fellow child-free friends, it's so easy to dismiss and so easy to say that's not true. You know, I think that there are... There are people who, with children and without children, who ⁓ are politically active and engaged and give back to the community. But I really do see that among fellow child-free people, a kind of a direct ⁓ investment in what the future looks like for all of us, whether we're here and whether we have offspring or not. ⁓ Mm-hmm. Ashby: think that's really funny. ⁓ As a technically childless cat lady, ⁓ I don't think he has any understanding at all of what goes into dealing with an orange cat. I think he should really think about that. She's got no thoughts, just an empty little head. It's all running on all instinct and hunger. Coco: ⁓ hehehehe You Ashby: and ⁓ just crazy, just crazy stuff that, that she comes up with to do stuff. Did you know my orange cat's feet are always wet? And if you encounter her, you're just like that. What the, what is this? What is this about? It's because she's always trying to get in sinks. She's trying to lick the drain because the drain smells like food. ⁓ yeah. So yeah. Yeah. So I just, I just have a, I have one. Coco: Wow. Boy. Okay, I want to stay on orange cats for just one second. Ashby: small qualm with him because I think he's saying the quiet part out loud, is that ⁓ if the country was run by a bunch of childless cat ladies would be too powerful. He doesn't want us to get ahead of him. Coco: One small hum. Well, that is part of it. So in a recent episode of Southern Hospitality, which I actually love and I think is great, there is a ongoing fight that is basically a white woman has kind of accused a black man in the cast of being threatening and it's totally made. It's like totally fabricated and it's she's spreading these rumors and. ⁓ The whole cast is united in saying like, this is a microaggression and you need to stop. And she also goes to this like place of like hyperventilating and like very like victimhood. It's just a, it's kind of a fascinating case study. So they're having this kind of fight slash conversation as a big, like a big table for like the eighth time. People are trying to get through to this lady and the one woman is just sitting there and she just starts standing on her chair. And you're like, what's going on? And then they cut to a little orange cat that's skittering through this outdoor restaurant. And she's like, they're like, are you OK? And then she's like, I have a phobia of cats. And then the other guy at the table is like, ⁓ that's an orange one. Those ones are crazy. Ashby: Yeah, because when it comes to food, nothing can stop them. They are single track minded freaks. Okay. Garfield is a stereotype for a reason. Salami is, listen, I just all the time, I can't believe what, what she gets up to. Um, anyways, so yeah. Coco: you This cat looks just like salami. Yes, apologies. I had to tell you the cat anecdote. Ashby: I appreciate that. I think it's funny someone has a phobia of cats, but I think it's really funny if they have a phobia of orange cats because while they're crazy, they're also not smart. Easy to outsmart and outrun. Yeah. Coco: So we are recording this, you know, the same week that the Trump administration has released moms.gov. And Ashby, I would just quickly like for you to type into your browser moms.gov. Ashby: Coco when we started this podcast we said it was gonna be fun. We thought this was supposed to be fun. I didn't know I would be subjected to abuse on while recording. ⁓ Jesus it's so gross. What is this fucking WordPress? Okay all right resources information and help for new and expecting mothers addressing the needs of mothers and fathers who face difficult Coco: Do it! Do it! I knew, I knew. Ashby: and unexpected pregnancies and ensuring the wellbeing of mothers and the health of American families cut to, ⁓ my God, this makes me feel ill. Let me, let me, no, I want to say, let me continue. Let me continue. The only image that they have bothered to put on here is very clearly like a stock image of like a white blonde woman standing in a goddamn wheat field and they've managed to dehumanize her by doing what? Coco: You don't really need to read I just really also wanted you to Ashby: cutting off her head and her feet so that you only see her pregnant belly. Like the media literacy, you know, analysis here is shocking. Like it's not even rich. And then they've put blue baby feet prints on one side and pink baby feet prints on the left side, which this is some low brow scrapbook looking shit, but it makes it so clear they're doubling down on this idea of like, there are only girls and there are only boys. Coco: Uh-huh. It's not even a rich text. It's like, ugh. Ashby: ⁓ it's, this is yucky. This is real yucky. Coco: I wanted you to see how bad the website was. It's definitely not accessible. Ashby: It's so rough. ⁓ God. Also, I can't believe that they are, ⁓ my fucking God, I cannot believe that the US government is pushing pregnancy centers. For fuck's sake. quick fucking, fucking fuck. Okay, quick side note. ⁓ The proudest thing I've ever done is I helped a friend get an abortion. ⁓ Coco: can't believe it! Yeah, please go. Go off. Yeah. Ashby: I am the most proud of that of all the things I've achieved because ⁓ that was what she wanted. And she was really stressed and kind of in one of those in between places in life while we were in grad school. And it just was a no brainer to me. I mean, yes, I was working in like reproductive justice nonprofits. she just was like, I, it was clear that that was what she wanted, but she just was kind of frazzled because it was so unexpected. She was already kind of reorganizing her career and some other stuff like that and had a lot of expectations from her family and was just kind of just getting on her feet to start this new chapter. And then boom, this unexpected pregnancy happened. And ⁓ so I told her like, okay, I will help you. She wanted to talk to her sister about it and like do some other research. And I was like, if that's the place you land, like I will help you get services that is not. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: critically on your parents' insurance. And ⁓ she said, okay, I have an appointment this week ⁓ and I'm gonna meet up with my sister and then we'll talk more. She came back to the house totally crying because she thought this was a legitimate appointment, a legitimate like pregnancy ultrasound appointment that she was going to, but. No, she had found what she thought was a free clinic was actually a pregnancy center. And she said the first thing they did when they took her in was take her to a room with a bunch of baby clothes and that they just started from a place of you're going to keep it. You're going to be a wonderful mother. We have all these resources showing her instead of giving her like an actual ultrasound, showing her like images of fetal development and just really. Coco: ⁓ huh. Ashby: aggressive tactics. Yes, trying to get her to sign stuff and record information about herself when she wanted this to be a not that kind of appointment. And just the level of manipulation that she felt and when she came back saying that she was just shocked that the world could be this way because she was being very vocal to them, that she had not made a decision, that she was, you know, she's good at, she's a smart person who's good at advocating for herself. Coco: manipulative. Mm-hmm. Ashby: And she got tricked is the point. so, you know, eventually we found her the services for her and she actually launched a really excellent, amazing, ⁓ medical career in, actually in women's health. And I'm just so happy for her because that just wasn't the right time for her. It didn't mean anything about, you know, how she felt about children or whether or not she'd be a good mom. was just not the right time, but just. Coco: Of course. Ashby: These places are just incredibly predatory. And it just, it just, it hurts my heart to think that all the money that I pay in taxes goes to this shit ass WordPress website that some tech bro from Doge probably put together in five minutes using AI and that they've put this link to pregnancy centers on there right next to the link for FQHCs ⁓ because these Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm. Ashby: places are not, ⁓ they do not have like the woman's choice and the woman's best interest in mind. So anyway, bums me out. Coco: Beautifully said. ⁓ I know I agree ⁓ And yeah, so we have moms.gov now pushing, you know these I know I think it came out because of maybe wait for Father's Day I'm afraid at what's Yeah, daddy's.gov. I hope some I hope someone claims that Ashby: Cool. Wait, I gotta know if there's a dads.gov, so I will now be ch- Let me, let me do it. Let me try it. I got to know what's there. want to see a go. Hmm. Can't reach this page. What about daddies.gov? damn that one's not there yet. Well, you know what we need to do? We need to purchase daddies.gov and dads.gov fathers.gov. We need to purchase all of them now. And then they can purchase those domains from me for the low, low price of Coco: Mm-hmm. Let's... Papa's dot gov. Ashby: I have some thoughts on policy. Coco: ⁓ Yeah, I mean, and like this is not just, you know, the current administration that is doing this. We also have our tech billionaires, like whatever Elon Musk is doing, which, you know, I try to like know like less about him. The less I know, the better. I know he has a million children. ⁓ And then also, I'm going to put this in air quotes here, but anxieties about immigration, racism and white nationalism. Ashby: Yep. Mm-hmm. Coco: and just in general, the entire kind of the entire administration being, you know, very weird about gender. And so I'm going to just play a tiny excerpt, the tiniest of excerpts from my buddy, Jamel Bowie, who makes wonderful kind of like, 10 minute long, like YouTube videos, uptakes, like kind of, I don't know if it's, it's not every day, but it's, it's a lot. It's multiple times per week and they're fantastic if you want some commentary. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: So here we go. I just thought I wanted to include that because I came across it. Ashby: love it so much. did watch this whole ⁓ clip and it's a really good and such an important like thread of this discourse and something I've thought about a lot too. ⁓ And well, I mean, we'll get more into this, you know, basically, yeah, laying out this sort of like ⁓ masculine dominating aggressive characteristics that Coco: But yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashby: kind of characterize this administration and this party as linking those things to the sort of manosphere's idea of what a man is. And that has to do with the strong person gets to dominate the weak person, which is essentially rape culture. And ⁓ anyway, that's certainly an argument that's been made before. But one of the things that I really see in that is Coco: Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Ashby: some of the more recent scholarship and stuff I've been reading about how borders are just inherently violent. And we maybe don't need to have borders at all. Maybe we should be thinking about a more global society that isn't invested in each little country's way of doing things. And that would be a very collectivist approach. And what I really see is what Jamel lays out is Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: A. how we used to have basically similar actions, but we had different rhetoric around it. So the war, when we were growing up, the Persian Gulf Wars a little bit before us, and then the war in Afghanistan after 9-11. Same principles, but we used different rhetoric at the time. And the rhetoric was more about being a leader and... peace builders and things like that, democracy building and things like that. But ultimately it was still, you know, imperialism. And now this administration is like, we've said before, doing away with the pretense of pretense and just saying what they want, saying what they want, which is just, we, we want to dominate stuff. We want to own the resources and we want to be the most in charge and we want the rest of the world to be dependent on us. That's the, that's the quote natural order of things. And Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, plug for our other episode. Ashby: What I really see in this arc is sort of a gasping, dying breath of an old version of masculinity. It's like, look at you little piss babies screaming and crying that you're big men and you're so manly and you just want all the women to get pregnant because you don't like looking around and seeing a world that increasingly doesn't need you, doesn't want you, like it doesn't. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: put you at the top of a hierarchy, but like ⁓ an increasingly multicultural world where people actually want to rely on each other is not a world where they see themselves succeeding. And yeah, so fuck them. Coco: That yes, so fuck them and I don't know if I actually said it but the specific video of Jamel Buies we're talking about is called everything is gender and will be included in the sub stack. ⁓ But this is all just to say like this like exactly what you're saying. This is all a right wing project to you know, police gender police reproduction ⁓ and it's all centered around kind of an invented national identity. And I'll just mention that like I actually find all of this in my personal life as a child-free person. Like, this is all very easy for me to dismiss. Like, it highlights the absurdity of some of it. ⁓ And even if it is, like, slightly alarming to hear, like, a fascist regime kind of, like, call you out, like, name you as one of the enemies of the people, like, it doesn't even compare to the ways in which they're targeting other people, so it's very, like, easy to kind of dismiss it, and at the same time, like, giving me a little bit of spite. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: it's real fun i'm happy spite is very fueling so i want to transition now to talk about like the some of the stuff that actually like did get under my skin ⁓ so to use the language of lindsey hubbard aka mother hubbard who is a mother in all senses of the word ⁓ you know it got me a little activated and this is the first headline that i can remember where i my brain just went what Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: out of here. Okay, and that is... This one. Would you read that for me? Ashby: ⁓ yes, as women have far fewer babies, the US and the world face unprecedented challenges. Now that's for Morning Edition on NPR National Public Radio. Coco: Yeah, yeah. then I'm just kind of, July 2025. Now look, the comment section did have my back on this one, but I'm curious Ashby, what you read in it. It's just the headline. Ashby: That's from July of last year, July of 2025. Well, the first thing I see is that it's got a very clear object of who to blame for this. just, it really just locates all that shit right on women of like, why aren't you doing it better? Why aren't you doing more? ⁓ as women have far fewer babies, the U S and the world face unprecedented challenges. Like not only, I mean, we talked before that, like, I guess there's a extremely Coco: Yes. Ashby: I suppose there is an extremely like capital P, capital G, like politics and governance 101 interest of the state in whether or not their population continues, right? Sure. I suppose there's a reason for that. But then to go a little further and just be like, as women have far fewer babies, it's not just the U.S. where allegedly these women live. It's also the world. So you've also fucked the world by trying to live your life. Have you ever thought about that, Coco? Coco: Mm-hmm. So this is I truly like, I truly, this was I posted on my Instagram stories and I was like, fuck off. Like, and okay, since then I've yes, learned more about like this ⁓ kind of declining birth rate, which is a quite global phenomenon. And we're gonna, we're gonna take a beat, but we're gonna come back at the end as to what might be the reasons for that. ⁓ Ashby: You I'm activated, do not activate ROTC Coco. Coco: And I do understand that there are like real considerations that are involved in, you know, a declining birth rate. So when deaths outnumber births, there's like a younger generation that cannot care or may not be able to care for an outsized elderly population. There are fewer future workers, fewer future taxpayers, future consumers, future caregivers. You know, we have Social Security, Medicare, the military like built on. and assumption about the kind of repopulation rate. And there's going to be like schools that may close, some industries that will be affected. And then the funniest one to me that I've come across in reading a light selection sampler platter of these types of articles is that like fewer people might mean less innovation, Ashby, less innovation. Think of the fewer. Ashby: ⁓ no, not about the innovation. I thought that we didn't need people for innovation. I thought we had invented robots for that that are gonna innovate so much better and faster on us with better than we could ever do. And also they're gonna do it whether we like it or not. the non-consensual part seems to really be the sort of Venn diagram overlap there between those two groups. Coco: Yeah, the non-consensual AI-ification of our lives. Yeah. Ashby: But yes. Coco: And just also shout out to Hacks for a really great AI episode in the latest season. Let's just continue a little tiny bit with our media literacy section of the pod. So here's another piece from Discover. Would you mind just like, I want you to read the headline, but then I want you to describe the picture that accompanies the headline. Ashby: Mm-hmm. ⁓ not the innovation. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sure, sure. The world may face population decline later this century. What does this mean for society? Learn more about why the human population seems to be in decline and what that could mean for the future. And this is from February of 2026 in ⁓ Discover. And the picture is of ⁓ a bunch of colorful swings just sitting empty somewhere. wow, they love these sort of like trite, pointless Coco: You Ashby: stock images that are sort of like in that weird soft focus that things from royalty-free websites often have for you to put in your powerpoints. Fascinating. Okay. Coco: ⁓ huh, yeah of course. Yep, okay, and then our final one before we move on to our next section is here. And I'm gonna say this is from The Guardian, and this one actually ends up being good, but let's see how it opens. mm-hmm. Ashby: Yeah, I read this one. The tipping point. What happens when deaths outnumber births? ⁓ In Japan, there are now companies that specialize in cleaning the apartments of elderly people who've died alone and gone undiscovered for weeks or months, while adult incontinence pads have outstripped nappy sales, I mean, diapers for more than a decade. In Italy, depopulating villages are selling homes for one euro to attract new residents and keep services running. In the UK, falling pupil numbers are already closing schools and classrooms in parts of London. Yeah, I read this one too. Coco: Mm-hmm. So I just want to say that the portrait that they're painting is that we are entering our children of men era. Ashby: I knew that was coming because you got to talk about Children of Men. You got to. A great scientific dystopian ⁓ film featuring featuring original zaddy Clive Owen. Coco: You and we'll... Yeah, and we're gonna watch the opening scene. You ready? Ashby: I'm ready. Coco: Okay, now I would, ⁓ do you want to read what the date is that this is taking place? Ashby: Yes, I that is so salient. I had never realized that. But this movie is set in 2027. So by November of next year, we'll be living in this dystopian hellscape of everybody following reality TV stars for being the last youngest people on earth. Fascinating. Coco: Ooooo Yeah. And now what has happened, what is happening in that scene, if you haven't seen the movie, it's been a long time, is that Clive Owen is pushing his way through like a coffee shop, even though while a whole crowd of people is wrapped watching this news that the youngest person on the planet has died, there's no new children, spoiler alert for children of men. ⁓ And he, you can tell he's just disaffected and he doesn't care. He's like, I'm getting my coffee. Then what happens is he goes outside. and he pours some ⁓ liquor into his coffee cup and then the coffee shop blows up that he had just been inside because there's terrorism, there's kind of societal collapse that is happening within this universe. And we're gonna come back to Children of Men again, an incredible, incredible film. But what I want to just drive home is that we are nowhere near that in... Ashby: really fascinating. Coco: this current moment, right? And I think that the ways that everyday media, kind of common media in respectable publications talks about this, ⁓ this news story or whatever you want to call it around declining birth rate is really important. And I think needs to just be handled with care to not stoke fear. And also like you were saying, not place the blame upon women solely. Ashby: I also love that that clip opens with like, people are being deported and the borders are going to remain closed. I think they're trying to paint a picture of a sort of like, you know, dystopian world where everyone's fighting. And so, you know, we have to tighten security measures, but it really hits different in 2026 to just be like, well, yeah, like, yeah, like it's a, it's game theory. It's if you're not going to act in an altruistic way, you're going to Coco: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashby: receive, you're also not going to receive altruistic actions. sure, you know, anyway, it's fascinating. And then we can also talk more about how population decline for the state and for countries is really what they mean is like, ⁓ they don't, they no longer want to be part of like global migration. And, and that that is a major component here that's not said. Coco: Hehehehehe Yeah, right. Ashby: And I wanna just stay one second on this. I know we're talking more about this, but I wanna stay one second on this news aspect because reading all this stuff for today, a big thing that I was struck by is that this is the doing of the news media. This isn't a thing. This is not a thing without the headlines because imagine if the birth rate were up, what would the headlines be saying? We're gonna run out of social security. We just don't have enough services. Coco: Mm-hmm. No, please! Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: Nobody can get their kids into preschool and now the rich white kids are having to go to public school, boo. Like we don't have the services to take care of these people. More people are dropping out of the workforce, blah, blah, blah. Like they would find a way to fear monger no matter what. And so this is kind of, I don't want to say fake news, but it's kind of like the point of news these days is to create these headlines that make it sound like the world is ending. Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: and that it's something an individual should care about and do something about. ⁓ So I don't think there's a world where we don't see headlines like this. I think no matter what. Coco: Mm-hmm. I did. Like, I understand that it is a real phenomenon. I do think that there is still not clear understandings of, like, where the phenomenon's going, right? This is a moment in time. Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm. Ashby: Yeah, or necessarily what it means. These are just predictions. It's not necessarily means any of that. And none of that stuff is like salient necessarily, but it is. ⁓ Anyway, I feel like so much of this, while it might be a phenomenon, I feel like the ⁓ energy around it is being laundered by the news. And I think that speaks a lot to the conditions of the world that we live in that might be contributing to this, including. Coco: But, but I- Mm-hmm. Ashby: the corporatization of media. Coco: Yeah, I was like, I do need like Peter and Michael from If Books Could Kill or like Sarah Marshall. I need these experts in identifying and breaking down moral panics to kind of like talk about this because I don't know where it fits on the moral panic spectrum. Like it is a, but it feels something along that. Yeah. Ashby: Mm-hmm. It feels like a moral panic. It really does. Yeah, you're right. That's a good word for it, actually, because it is a sort of like, ⁓ no, you know, anytime you see something like rising in a headline, just go rising from how much? Coco: I'm big part of the reasons why there's a declining birth rate, we're not getting into that today, like there's plenty of coming, but is because we've solved to a large degree teen pregnancy. And it's like, guys, didn't we want that world? Yeah. So I do want to, okay, but let's stick with a little bit ⁓ our right to an abortion. And I wanted to say, so, you I'm saying, okay, I'm a, Ashby: Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Isn't that what we wanted? ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. Coco: I have aged into this category of being a child-free person. I had this kind of decision-making time period overlap with the rise of some of these, you know, the far-right nationalism, as well as kind of this birth rate panic. ⁓ But at the same time, like none of this is that new. You know, we exist in a very pronatalist culture, and I'm not really saying that's a bad thing, but I think that the ways in which our media representations ⁓ treat women is important. And so I found this kind of interesting, ⁓ more academic paper on child free female characters narrating pronatalism. This is by Cornelia Klecker. It was published in an Australian journal, but I do believe she is, I don't know, Nordic to some extent. Apologies to Cornelia Klecker. I listened to her accent. I was like, she's not Australian. ⁓ But this is kind of a breakdown of ⁓ characters in like network. television shows, of really popular network television shows. And she frames it kind of within the context of overturning Robi Wade. So we're gonna talk just a little bit about some of the stuff in that piece. But let's go with, ⁓ would you mind reading this kind of, this is towards the opening of her piece. Ashby: ⁓ yes, I remember this. I read this piece too. The reframing of the abortion debate around the most extreme cases is clearly informed by a pro-natalist ideology that is still pervasive in US culture. However, it is not just the news media that frequently buys into this pro-natalist narrative by evading the inclusion of, if not actively undermining, a woman's right to be child-free. Depictions of abortions are rare in popular fictional narratives. be it in television, film, or literature, so are voluntarily childless female characters. Not only, but particularly when it comes to lead characters. Yeah. Coco: Yeah, and I, this is gonna maybe sound really obvious, but I don't know why, but I don't know that I had like really heard the phrase, a woman's right to be child free. We always say a woman's right to choose, but we rarely say like a woman's right to be child free. And I know that a lot of us on the left mean that, like that is implied that that is meant, but I do think it's kind of a little bit radical to just even hear the phrase, a woman's right to be child free. Ashby: That's so true. That is really so true. ⁓ And I don't, was it in one of these? Let me think for just one second. I'll put a marker. ⁓ Coco: Uh-huh. Ashby: ⁓ well, I shoot. I'm not sure. I'm not sure where I heard this phrase, but like you don't really have a right if you don't also have a remedy or something that really stood out to me. And so now when I think about rights, it's like, yes, of course women have a right to be child free, but for that to be true, we'd have to enforce it. There'd need to be like a legal remedy for that. And it just gives you a different framework to think about. Coco: Oooooh! Ashby: when you think about things like ⁓ essentially forcing people to have kids if they live in certain states. Coco: Wow, yeah, I I don't think I've come across that one, but that definitely feels right. And so we're not gonna spend too much time on this piece, but she does, what I think she does a great job of is identify characters that had kind of vocally expressed that their identity was, I'm planning to not have children, I don't want to have children, kind of these characters. And then she just goes through, she says there's some positive examples. She uses Diane Lockhart from, ⁓ Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: The Good Wife and then The Good Fight. I loved The Good Wife. I didn't watch The Good Fight. I'm sorry to you, Diane Lockhart, but she uses hers like a really positive example of a person who chooses to be child-free and it's really like not made a big deal of. And even when it is, it really just grants dignity to that choice. And I think that's really nice. But she goes through a lot of examples of these main characters who then somehow, even though they had made that choice, that it gets like negated by the framework of the television show. And I think that it is interesting to think about how, especially like network television can be kind of very conservative and that it always kind of reverts back to what is palatable to the audience in a lot of ways or kind of historically has been. So ⁓ would you mind reading this part about Robert Shrabatsky from How I Met Your Mother? Ashby: Yes. Robin repeatedly states that she does not ever want children, but eventually it is also revealed that she cannot biologically have any, which she is rather upset about. This, at the very least, undercuts the notion of choice. She is what I would like to call eventually childless, i.e. the character starts out as childfree, but ultimately pronatalist expectations are still fulfilled. By introducing her inability to physically bear children, the narrative drowns out her childfreeness, and replaces it with the more palatable childlessness. In other words, the woman did not actually choose to defy the norm. Yeah, that stood out to me too, ⁓ for sure. Coco: Yup. And then one more, is we're gonna talk about Grey's Anatomy. Ashby: Okay, it says, Robin, Christina Yang from Grey's Anatomy does remain child free. She never doubts that she does not want children, but struggles with and is punished for her choice because her husband does. Therefore she can only truly live out her desire to remain child free once she moves to Switzerland. With that, of course, her appearance on the series ends too. So audiences have little time to actually see a child free woman on the show. Coco: And then there are more examples, are even I was just truly writing like, likes, ⁓ yikes in the margins as I was reading this, ⁓ which is, you know, a character in the show Elementary, Lucy Lue's character, like, is saying she doesn't want to have children, but then like in the show Flash Forwards and it she has a little boy. And then Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: And then this one was the one that like kind of really like made me feel crazy. So let's actually read it. Would you mind reading this one? Ashby: Sure. have, trigger warning. This is about the Big Bang Theory. And I should say that I have a personal vendetta against this show. I despise this show. If the show is on in like a doctor's office, I feel infuriated. ⁓ This is a show that I personally feel that too many Fox News adults Coco: A show that's about scientists. Ashby: think is like good entertainment and it is filled with pandering and for some goddamn reason it is always on and it is always too loud. So I will now continue. Penny in The Big Bang Theory stood out as a female lead in a network sitcom who declared that she did not want any children. Even more, she remained steadfast despite being pressured not only by her husband and father, but I should, okay, by her husband. and also by her father, not her husband and father. Her husband. Let me try that again. Even more, she remained steadfast despite being pressured not only by her husband and also being pressured by her father, but also by her two closest female friends. And yet the series concluded with a double episode during which her unintentional pregnancy was revealed, a fact that is celebrated by her friends. Coco: You Ashby: Even Penny herself is only very briefly surprised and worried, but never actually unhappy. Notably, having an abortion is not given a moment's consideration. It is not just no choice, but not even a procedure that seems to exist in the series story world. Thus, her identity as a woman, which is still so persistently linked to motherhood, is restored and the pronatalist ideology normalized once more. Yeah. Yep. Coco: Yep. So, I mean, I'm glad you read this entire thing. I'm curious if you had any other thoughts on the piece. Like, I think it was just very validating and transparently, I always felt like, when one of the female lead characters gets pregnant on a show, that's usually like deeper into the show. And I always kind of read it as like the writer's room got tired. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've always thought that too. I really think the wedding and the baby part are just storytelling devices that a TV show that's been renewed a lot of times, they start to run out of ideas. And it's kind what we were saying ⁓ in our Lindy West episode about we just kind of don't have public narratives for what a story art could look like for women that don't hit those milestones. so I... Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: I just think of it as like, they're like, okay, well, what are the other things that can happen in life? We've got to find some way to make something new because essentially what you usually get in these is the woman is single and she's like hot and in her career era. And then she eventually settles down with someone. Well, who wants to watch a show about two people bickering about the socks on the floor? Right. I mean, we, ⁓ my God, I just thought of one that wasn't in here. Coco: That show, the best show. Ashby: mad about you, it was mad about you, and then they had a baby. ⁓ my God. At the end of mad about you. Coco: even then she uses the example of Will and Grace, which is like, she's not pregnant and then they have end the show with her being pregnant and then they like have to rewrite it out like, like, what's it called? Retcon that she didn't have a child when they rebooted the show. And then they still end Will and Grace with Deborah Messing's character having a child when she would have been like 50. And I know like sometimes that happens, but it's what that's so weird. That's so culturally weird. Ashby: Yes! Mm-hmm. Yes. It's They just gotta do it. I really think it's that people like, people really like it when a person goes from one chapter of their life to the next chapter of their life. That's the part they wanna tune in for. Nobody actually wants to watch the chapter though. So they like to end the series or the episode or the movie with a wedding, like in a rom-com or with a baby. Now, what you start to get in a bizarro world land is, Coco: Yeah. Ashby: These things are all sort of, think, in the shadow of the soap opera. So these shows have been on for years and years years years and years with the same characters, and they've got to think of something to do with them. And so then they just start adding more and more pregnancy plots and who's the real father and who's actually dead and who's not. It's like, this is, this is just kind of, we don't know what, I think we just are not that creative when it comes to arcs about interpersonal relationships. Coco: Yeah. ⁓ huh. Yep. here's where I just kind of give it up for Sex and the City and just like that. Everyone says like Samantha Jones is such a go-to woman who didn't have a baby and I'm like that's true and awesome. But also like Carrie Bradshaw never has a kid and it's like that's ⁓ true to the identity of who that character is and they never change it. ⁓ And just like that, Gone Too Soon and also terrible but I would have watched 30 more seasons of it. Ashby: Yep. Yep. Hmm Yeah, and Sex and the City is great too, except, you know, I can see from reading this article that Miranda really, her storyline really falls into this thing as well, which is a woman who starts out child free and very like career oriented and then changes her mind. ⁓ But I got to say that that felt really authentic to the Miranda character. Coco: Uh-huh. a problem with the Miranda character. I thought it was a really interesting contrast to Charlotte's character. I actually thought that was well done. I'm not saying that any woman in a television show who says she doesn't want to have a kid can never have one. But sensitively done it, yeah. These Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. No, no, but it's interesting reading these examples. It's interesting reading these examples because you could see that as a punishment of that character, which is essentially how they've treated these other ones or as a sort of like reigning in of that character because they've got to do something with her life arc or they need to humanize her in some way. And so that's what I think is really interesting is that for these other characters, it was sort of a Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: the examples that they give in this in this article. It was a sort of like, oh yeah, well you had your fun. Now it's time to saddle you with this, you know, I almost said anchor baby. Oh, that's not what I meant. I meant baby, but as like an anchor. It's that now it's time to weigh you down with this with this baby. Coco: ⁓ And they just like have to do it before the closing credits. Like it's so weird. Ashby: And they just have to do it. And I honestly think, okay, the examples they give are of like network television shows. You do got to think about who's watching that. It's like my me mom. Okay. My me mom wants to see the main characters get married and have a baby. That is what she wants to see. She doesn't want to see Robin Scherbatsky decide she doesn't want to get married and decide that she doesn't want to have kids. Like that's Coco: Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ it's... Mm-hmm. And CBS... Ashby: What, who cares? If I wanted to watch that, what they will watch though, I think, I think what people can get behind is a, you've sort of done your time arc, like Estella's got her groove back thing. I think they like that. They like to see like, you know, a 48 year old woman be divorced and her kids be grown and her go like, live her, pray, love life. I think they like that. But I don't think like for a network television show, I just think that the audience has got, they've got to have it. Coco: Sure. Ashby: You know, they've got to have it. I wrote this down in my notes for the Lindy episode, but so much of the narratives about women, feel like women who are not partnered and women who are not, honestly, women who are not heterosexual, women who are not cis, women who are not pregnant or mothers, they occupy this kind of weird space, which is sort of like an unpaired electron. Like I think there's an uncomfortableness that Coco: Wait, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: audiences have with them as like a woman who's not these things represents a potentiality and until that potentiality is fulfilled, like they're paired with a man and they wear the nice dress and everybody claps, they are pregnant with a baby and now they have a baby that looks like a miniature version of them. Like there's something about this unrealized potential there that ⁓ I think it just kind of bugs people until they can see it. You know, it's like Coco: No, it's coming from a place of fear and anxiety and it needs to be resolved. Like, I think that's what it feels like. Ashby: Yeah, yeah. It's like something needs to be resolved or it's like, you know, it's like looking at a present that's like wrapped. It's like they got, they got to do it. They just got to, they just got to, they have to know, they have to know, they just have to, it's like, they just cannot see a version. As long as those two things are hanging out there for some reason, I just think it, it, it bothers people. It boggles people's minds. Coco: Hahaha Thank you. Yep. So this is all to say, you know, this is a lot. This is a lot of shit. If you're just a person who's just living their life and just like, don't know if I want to have a kid, like, let me think about it. Oh, I kind of thought about it. This is a lot. And from this position, you eventually kind of like pick up on these different cultural messages. And so this is the section of our this episode I would like to call Forgive Me, but a Moment for My Gripes. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: and they're ranked by level of annoyance. the least annoying to most offensive is how I'm gonna think of them. This is a non-comprehensive list of gripes. These are my gripes. These are my specific cocoa gripes. So the first one is that I'm a childless cat lady who doesn't care about the future. And I've already said, this is just like obviously ridiculous. And I see people who... Ashby: I love a ranking. I love the 90s. Coco: don't have children all the time, people in different forms of relationships, know, queer people, ⁓ show up for the future in really meaningful, tangible ways all the time, every day. So fuck that. ⁓ The second one is that you're selfish if you don't have a child. And this is the one that I always, if you like take a couple seconds to think about it, it feels very like funny and misogynistic, a little bit like what you're saying about like, we don't know what to do with these women. So a woman having a bunch of time. comes across as selfish, even though like, forgive me, but like, I didn't like, there's not a baby that I'm neglecting. I didn't bring that baby here. So there's not a baby crying in the other room that I'm ignoring in order to like do my crafts. I'm sorry. The next one that is that I'm cold and unloving or like ruthless and career driven. And I just want to say you, will refer you to our work sucks. I know episode to understand that. At least for me personally, no, the stereotype does not apply that I'm just giving it all up for my career and a Hallmark movie narrative needs to happen to me where I go back to a small town and fall in love with a lumberjack and decide I want to have kids. If you want that, I support you. The next one is that like you're damaged. And I honestly think this one is a little, getting closer to the more serious ones. Ashby: But if you do want that, I support you. Thank you. Thank you. Coco: ⁓ And this one I think is like hard because like maybe sometimes, maybe sometimes people who have had a hard time and they say like, actually, like, I don't know that I want to bring a child to do this. Or like maybe sometimes they say, it took me a long time to learn how to care for myself. And I'm like, no, I don't know that that's what I want. And like, I just think we should treat that more sensitively as opposed to like using it as a way to dismiss people who choose not to have children. ⁓ and that you're unfulfilled and lonely. And I just think that this one, this unfulfilled message, I think is very funny, because if you take a step back and think about it, you're like, society does not care if I'm fulfilled in any other way of my life. They only care if I'm fulfilled by becoming a mother. And it did remind me a little bit about the messages we have gotten from Lindy West, or maintenance phase messages. The way that we treat fat people, where it's like this externalization at fat people about like their fatness, ⁓ that comes across as like, we're concerned about you. And it's like, bitch, you are not concerned about those people. You are operating from a place of your own fears, phobias, hatreds, et cetera. Let me take a breather. Let me take a little fan myself off. Thank you for this moment for my gripes. I'm gonna transition into more serious gripes, but anything that's coming up for you. Ashby: That's a good point. I mean, just that you seem like a hormonal woman, you know, you got so many feelings, you know, you just, think you need to calm down. Okay. Coco: you Yeah, I think like some breastfeeding right now would really do me good. ⁓ OK, these are the ones that like kind of hurt my feelings. And so I'm going to be honest and say like these ones I think are hurtful. I don't think that. The one that we talked a little bit briefly about was that this phenomenon, if you're like going about and you're living your life and you've been like maybe in this specific cultural instance, like raised to be like a quote unquote straight A student that you. have been have these expectations of you're gonna go have a good career, you're gonna like build a really great life. And somewhere that message is that like your life is for you. And then you simply kind of like age into a category and this is very like specifically like cis straight, like women and also once you end up in a heterosexual partnership, it's like this external eyes start looking at you and perceive you as lacking something that you lack. that you become like in a state of lack. ⁓ And this is a very bizarre message to kind of untangle for yourself. And I don't think anyone is malicious in like this, in kind of sending this message necessarily. But I wanna say that it does hurt in the sense of like thinking that the world... saw you as a whole person and then feeling like, I owed something back for this life. And that is a tougher feeling to wrestle with. ⁓ Now, we're going to go back to our friend Bridgette Vincent, but the next one I wanted to mention is like this phrase of being immature or like someone thinking that you're immature. So let's go read a quote from ⁓ Bridgette Vincent from Child Adjacent once more. I'm gonna turn this one over to you Ashby. Ashby: I reflect 1 3 a.m. that childless doesn't feel like the right word when you're finding the lost dummy. They mean pacifier for the fourth time that night. I once came up with the half joking child adjacent as the best term for my situation. Childless suggests involuntariness. Childless by choice feels like there's a silent goddammit. If childless is too negative about my situation, child free is too negative about children themselves. They're not a disease or gluten. Coco: Hehehe Ashby: But perhaps to be child adjacent is also to risk being, well, child adjacent, the one that never grew up. Yeah, so well said. This is like the part that really stuck with me. Coco: Yeah, and it's just so beautiful. And I love this essay. And unfortunately, the essay itself, I believe, is behind a paywall, but there is an audio recording of her reading it. So we'll include that in the sub stack. And it's really nice companion if you're going on a walk. But this claim about immaturity is one that, transparently, someone said to me about me in relation to being a child-free person. And it was kind of like an offhanded comment and I laughed it off, but it did like stick with me. And I just want to say like, I don't go around and operate from a place of like thinking that the people in my life feel these stereotypes, but they are subconscious in our culture. And so they might emerge. And so it did kind of hurt. And then also it just hurt in the sense of like, it is a topic or decision that I wrestled with for years. ⁓ And also, like it just does diminish like a lot of the other things. about you kind of reduces it down to this element of like if you have a child, a child is a sign of being an adult, having a child is a sign of maturity. But my number one, my number one, the biggest gripe is that people, people who disregard how much I love my pet. Ashby: ⁓ yep, here it is. Coco: Because of having a because I don't have a child. I think that this is a common like refrain that you hear. I think it's that like, ⁓ they're confused. Like there's this almost like assumption like, ⁓ they don't have a child. So they filled this void in their life with their pet. ⁓ And it's a way to demean like what is so special in my life and to demean that like different forms of love are. powerful and meaningful. And so I would, I wanted to just maybe bring in another person that is a representative of someone I really admire out there. And this is written by a woman named Janice who runs the account Bernie and the Bean, which is named after ⁓ two of her three dogs. And she shares wonderful content. can talk more about in her in a moment, but would you mind reading this post? ⁓ wait, let me set, do some setup. So, ⁓ Janice over the last summer took in a rescue dog, Dolly, who was pregnant and then documented her journey of caring for these puppies ⁓ once they arrived and like all of the labor, but also like all of the knowledge and things that she was learning alongside caring for these little puppies ⁓ in bringing them, kind of bringing them up into, you know, the place where they could be adopted out. ⁓ And so she took, she's also like a videographer, content creator, photographer person. So she did a really beautiful photo of this mama dog. And this is what she posted on Mother's Day. Ashby: Okay, it says, Mother's Day to the best, parentheses, actual dog mom out there. Sweet Dolly, parentheses, no longer adoptable, deserves everything and anything she wants today for raising these seven perfect puppies. But while we're talking about dog moms, let's not hate on anyone who celebrates Mother's Day as a parent of dogs. Not only do dog moms put in a ton of time, energy, and love into their pups and deserve to be celebrated for it, but it might also be an otherwise sad day that has found new meaning and joy. Dead moms, infertility, lost children, we have no idea the battles people are facing behind the scenes and stealing their joy and celebration in order to further validate your own is never the right answer. Happy Mother's Day to all the different moms out there. Aw, that's sweet. Coco: like so sweet. And I think that's what that is partially, you know, where we're going next is just this kind of understanding that there's this is so such a loaded topic for people and that we don't understand like what people are going through. I really do love seeing all the posts on Mother's Day that like recognize that Mother's Day can be hard for all number of reasons. I have people in my extended family who have lost their mother. There's just a lot of things that ⁓ can be going on. And I did think that was beautiful. And ⁓ yes, I love animals, but I just think it's such a... I don't want anyone to say happy Mother's Day to me because I have a dog. But... I'm trying to hold on a second. have a point, I promise. ⁓ It's okay. Maybe we just move on, but cool. All right. So all of this is to say, and I know this is a lot, but this is to say I seek my comrades and my comrades are just people who ⁓ exist out there and live their lives as examples of a fulfilling life that ⁓ maybe includes children in this child adjacent category that we're talking about. ⁓ or just to have ⁓ full kind of whole lives regardless of whether they're a parent or not. And so here's where I would love to talk about our pod mother, salute to you, Helen Peterson. So I been aware of Anne Helen Peterson's writing for a long time, but I feel like I really started consuming her content during the pandemic. ⁓ And that collided with the phase in which I, of my life where I was kind of making this decision. I highly recommend her podcast episode of Culture Study called A Very Funny Episode About Being a Childless Freak with Natasha Veinblatt. So we can talk about that in a moment. But I just want to mention that she has done such incredible writing and built this community online ⁓ of people who are sharing across the experience of being a parent and having friends who don't have children and being the friend that doesn't have children. being friends with people who do and kind of all of the beautiful things that kind of come about that situation. But I wanna just give us a little excerpt from this podcast episode and also thank you to them for sharing their. transcript online. So I'll have you read this, Ashby. Ashby: Okay, who do you want to be? Coco: ⁓ I guess I can be Anne Helen Peterson. So ⁓ Anne Helen Peterson says, where does the name Childless Freak come from? Which is in reference to Natasha Vane Blatt's comedy special slash one woman show about not having children. Ashby: Okay. Natasha says, it comes from the fact that deep down, my fear was that if I lived this life, some people would pity me and others would see me as a childless freak. So me calling the show that ultimately is embracing the reality that that might even be the case for some people, that some people might see me that way and it doesn't matter. Coco: And Anne Helen Peterson says, right, right, because I think sometimes the impulse is to be like, no, you can live your life and like no one will ever levy this judgment on you. And that's not the case. Like people are going to think that you're a childless freak. You just have to figure out how you feel about it. And that's where we're going next. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: Give me a second. Sorry, long outline. I hope you're doing okay. Cool. All right. ⁓ Yes. So definitely go listen to that episode. It is very funny and they do cover a lot of things in it. ⁓ They talk about going back and forth on the decision and like existing within some ambivalence ⁓ and they deal dealing with those external feelings, kind of talking about that feeling of needing to kind of quote unquote come out as someone who will be childless. And they also talk about and this comes up so many times in examples from people who are talking about this experience, how important it was to have an example of a childless woman in their life kind of when they were younger and kind of seeing what that life looked like and seeing that that was a valid choice. And then they also talk about how as a woman, society doesn't trust you to have your own instincts, except if you, unless it's about having a child, and then they will validate those instincts. But I also love that Natasha talks about kind of this experience of being an immigrant ⁓ and the immigrant dream of kind of like establishing for future generations. And she is an only child and like having those conversations with her family and kind of thinking about what that means for them overall and what they thought their story was going to be, but it's still a very good story that they have. ⁓ But I'll just add for Anne Helen Peterson that, you know, it's really for me, it's like not just about this incredible her incredible writing and her podcast episodes that have been about this topic. It's in part, and I don't mean this to sound creepy at all, but it's in part like seeing her life. It's seeing like the content that she posts on Instagram, for example, you know, going for hike with her dogs, ⁓ having intergenerational friendships and having close friendships with children in your life, which is not something that everyone needs to do to validate their child. free existence, but if you're someone like me that also loves children, it's like having those relationships with children and seeing that that also plays an important role has been really validating and wonderful. ⁓ And we were just talking about the Bernie and the Bean ⁓ Instagram account. And so I will say that also, feel that feels true to me of how I feel about Janice who runs that account, who not only cares for these dogs and like, trains them and shows these experiences with these dogs, but also renovates cabins in Maine and like goes to cool things. like, it's just, it's just seeing people have full lives. ⁓ It's very small, but also feels kind of radical. So Anne Helen Peterson, back in October of 2025, started this series in her culture study newsletter called ⁓ big no kids energy. And she uses this phrase of like no kids energy to avoid some of these pitfalls of the language that we're talking about around like child free or childless. ⁓ And just saying like, I don't have kids, but like I've got a lot of energy and I got a lot of zest for life. And so I could have included the whole intro to that series, but let's just read a snippet of it. Ashby: It says, there's no such thing as a no kids lobby. We have no propaganda department. That's a stark contrast to the have kids do it now faction whose power is so tremendous, so omnipresent that it doesn't even present as a faction, just a fact. The series aims to offer representation of life without kids in its many wild iteration and in so doing make these lives not just visible, but worthy. Because you know what? The status quo is not fixed. Yes, people need to keep having kids, but not having kids and working to be part of a larger system that makes not just raising a human, but being a human easier is also an option and not just an option, but a good and praiseworthy one. Yeah. Coco: Yeah, and I did this. did cut some stuff out of that. This is just some segments from that intro piece. ⁓ And I would say go subscribe to Culture Study because what she's doing is in this first issue of this series, she's telling kind of her own story and the things that she loves about her life. ⁓ But then she also is profiling other people. ⁓ And so some of the things that she calls out that she really likes that really did, I'll be honest, made me feel seen. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: was the flexibility that she has in her life. And she clarifies that it's not necessarily quote unquote freedom. It is just flexibility. ⁓ Being actual friends with kids, which feels so true to me. Being able to, if you're not doing full time child care, that you can be much more of a goofy goober with some of these kids without it feeling. She's Ashby. I'm having a technical struggle here. Let me stop sharing. All right. ⁓ But so ⁓ being actual friends with kids, because if you are not, you know, responsible for taking care of them, you just can like drop in, like play sword fight and then like leave. ⁓ Some of the money that's not spent on childcare, which is just a truth. And then, you know, kind of surprising people with your choices. So she kind of says she gets a kick out of know, explaining to people that she doesn't have children and kind of sitting with sometimes the awkwardness of their reaction to that. ⁓ And then she, there's a couple other things, but she really is saying, and at the same time, I want all of my friends that are parents to also have these things. Like more of this should be available to everyone. And the hope is that we can start to organize society in a way that we can kind of give flexibility, money, like, you know, more time in general to all people and not just reserve it for those of us who make this specific choice. Okay, pause for a second. Something that has happened is that I can no longer see your face when I'm in the outline. That's why I'm like, I don't know what I did, but it used to pop out and now it's just not. So I'll just pull you out to the side there. All right. Okay, how are you doing? How are you doing? You're doing okay. Okay. I feel like I'm talking a lot at you. So I don't, I would love to like invite you more in. I'm just, I'm not sure. Ashby: Good, good, good. ⁓ okay, I just wanted to make sure we got, didn't know if you wanted to go through this stuff and then talk at the end. So I was like, I want to make sure we hit the things and then have all that to refer to so that I'm not referencing something you're about to bring up. Yeah. Coco: Mm-hmm. No. Yeah, no worries, no worries. Okay, maybe one final thing and then I'll, and then like, we'll maybe just get back and forth. one of the things that has, ⁓ I already mentioned that in Anne Helen Peterson's newsletter community culture study, there is a really vibrant kind of comment section and it exists. you know, mostly behind a paywall, but also it kind of exists within like a community that has opted in. And she does set really strong ground rules for like, let's keep this one of the good places on the internet. And it's not about saying my choice is more right than your choice ever. But she then sets up these different ways in which people can talk to each other. Again, sometimes that's across the like parent, no parent, like divide. And then she also created at least one thread that was like very specifically, this is exclusively reserved for people who don't have children. ⁓ And something that I'm gonna, this is a little bit, hope this doesn't come across as too vain or something, but something that happened was a woman wrote a piece that was about, kind of wrote a comment that was a little bit about this feeling of if you don't have children, that you then need to live a big extraordinary life, that you need to justify through your life. that you made the right choice. And I wrote a response to that comment. And what happened was I wrote this response and forgot about it. And then months later, the original poster replied to it. It was like, I've returned to this a couple of times because I needed to read it again. And then when she did that, I needed to read it again. And I just think that there's something kind of profound where... If you exist largely within a community of people who have made a different choice than you, a valid, beautiful choice, some of us do need to kind of hold each other's hands and touch each other. So ⁓ Ashby, apologies. I'm gonna have you read my comment. Unless that's too weird. Ashby: can't wait. Listen, this is our podcast. Okay. Even if I wasn't reading it, you know, everything we say is sort of us saying our comments. Okay. Okay. So here is Coco: Yeah. I'm Yeah, and I don't feel comfortable bringing somebody else's private comment into this, so I'm only including mine. yeah, if that makes it but. Ashby: Okay, so this is your discussion. It says, wow, this just made me tear up. I'm about to be married at 37 and just coming to the realization that my partner and I most likely will not have kids. The envy of those who are certain is so real, parentheses, to know you want them ⁓ to know for sure you do not. And yet I think that there's some beauty in ambivalence in seeing the joy, opportunity and grace that comes with either timeline. There is also, as you mentioned, grief for either life not lived. The grief for me is compounded by the knowledge that I can't simply ask myself whether I want children. I have to ask myself if I want to be a parent in this America, with its expectations of work, the expenses of childcare, the daunting cost of college, and so much more. And I must ask myself if I want to push my child through the gauntlet of achievement, the pressure to survive what seems like an ever more dangerous future. I am sorry to be a bummer. So for me, the ambivalence in a way, its own answer, that it's something I think I should be sure about, both for my own life and even more so for the child's, and that I can't say that I am. Side note, I am infinitely curious about those who have children as a sort of default mode, and often think what makes people who intentionally elect to not have children so threatening is that we're asking a question you're not supposed to ask. I have also... had to confront the feelings of needing to justify a child-free life in some way, career success, travel and adventure, art, civic duty. And I realized that I was encountering some internalized misogyny that of course I don't think that other women somehow need to prove that they were right not to have children by doing something extraordinary. And so why do I feel this way about myself? In a way, is it not slightly radical to simply live a good and comfortable life, to be gentle and present? to make recipes and spend quality time with the dog, to care about the movies you watch, the books you read, to host friends, be able to answer the phone when someone calls to chat, to even be an example to the adjacent children in your life if you have them, that there are many ways to live and that they have the freedom to live the life that they want. I hope in my future years to feel more grounded in my own dignity, to understand and accept that while I won't be celebrated in the same way that mothers are, And I'm not saying that they shouldn't be, that my life is no less valid, that to enjoy your life, to cultivate pleasure is not selfish, but rather in this country that demands relentless work, beautiful and life-affirming. ⁓ that's so nice. Yeah, I was just gonna say, was, people can't see, but when you were talking about this earlier, I was just nodding emphatically because coming to that realization that you don't have to make your life, you know. Coco: And so... Ashby: something extraordinary instead. It's just so, important ⁓ to really own that choice and to really live it out. But yes, this is really well said. Coco: I and it's funny because I read it and it's like, got to remind myself, I wrote it and I got to remind myself of these things. And I think what I would like add to this was the two years ago, plus when I wrote this little comment and then someone reminded me of it by replying to it way later was, is that no, don't need to, you don't need to justify your life. And. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: I do think that there is the fun work of like figuring out what you want your life to be. And I think that we've talked about that a lot on this, you know, overall, but kind of figuring out what are those things that you're interested in and kind of figuring out what activities you want to do and like being intentional about meeting new people and like creating a life is still like the work that's like, if you don't do it. your life doesn't get any bigger. And I think that's like part of my reflection on like this era of my life now. ⁓ But yeah, yeah. Okay, so before we move on and kind of circle back to why the fuck aren't people having children, I want to just shout out a couple other things that really meant a lot to me. There is a great movie called, it's a French movie called Other People's Children, and it really exists in the spectrum of like the ambiguity part of it, where it's a really beautiful, and the director has said she only wanted to, she wanted to cast like a really kind of aspirational and beautiful person to play this role because she didn't want it to seem like it was a degraded position to be in. But a single woman who doesn't have children as she's like about 40 years old. And she falls for this man who has a young daughter and the movie is very gentle and that it's just kind of exploring like as you're getting closer to this family, there's like an attachment that you feel to the child. There's like the kind of sliding doors experience of like, well, I could be, maybe this is how I'm a mother. ⁓ And I don't want to say what kind of happens in the end, but I found it to be really, like really poignant in that it felt, I felt very seen by it. And the director has said that she also, really made it from a very personal place. And I thought that was great. So if you haven't checked out that movie, Other People's Children, directed by Rebecca Zlotowski, apologies, starring Virginia Efira, I recommend it, absolutely. And then another one that I wanted to recommend ⁓ is I just purchased this book called Otherhood, and it's essays on being childless, child free, and child adjacent. and it's a collection of kind of true stories, essays written by people. And it's edited by Ali Benj, Lil O'Brien, and Catherine Van Beek. And I listened to a great podcast with those editors on the podcast, Gray Areas with Petra Baggis, another Australian, and these editors are all from New Zealand. But it came away from that, listening to that conversation, and I'm really excited to read these essays. is that it really expands out to say it's not just people who are child-free by choice. It's people who have gone through like a fertility journey and they don't become pregnant and then like decide not to pursue it further. It includes people who are like foster parents but don't identify as a mother. Includes people who even have like lost children. But it just, think what was so beautiful about listening to the episode is There are so many people who feel othered. Like there are so many people that feel outside. And I love actually thinking of us as like all being able to very cheesily like hold hands with each other and be like, wait, I see you, I see you. Like your life is meaningful. If you don't fit a specific narrative, that doesn't mean your life is any less worthy. Alright, Ashby, before we move to like, the why the fuck aren't people having kids of it all? How you doing? What are your thoughts? Any reactions? Ashby: ⁓ God, I just have so many. ⁓ Okay, number one is I've always really identified as ambivalent because I really feel like I could go either way. sort of think about, so yeah, I agree. I also have the envy of people who are really sure either way. Like ⁓ anyone who feels really settled in their choice, I'm like, wow, that must be really nice. there's... really only been a handful of decisions I think in my life that I've made in advance and then really like stuck with them and they felt right the whole time. A lot of decisions aren't made that way. A lot of decisions are made like you kind of dip a toe in and you kind of live in that world for a little bit and then you you gradually seed some things or other things. Like I was actually really for a while okay with like not getting married and I was actually okay for a while with not. Coco: Mmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ashby: even if I was partnered not living in the same house. Those were kind of these non-traditional directions that I was really open to, but ⁓ ended up the way I am and I'm really happy with it. But if you'd asked me like 10 years ago, it's not like I made a big decision necessarily. It's just I sort of went this direction and each little thing felt right as I went along. Having a child is a little bit different. Like you're of, you're on one side of it and then you're on the other side of it. And so, you know, it... Coco: Mm-hmm. Mmm. Yeah. And it's like a privilege that we get to choose and you then have to like, I'm not complaining about it, like the obligation to like decide. Ashby: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, it's like, okay. That's why I think ambivalent has always just fit me better because my life just feels like something I'm doing in the present, not like a narrative that I'm writing out for the future. It's not a to-do list. You know, it's, it's kind of see where things take you. ⁓ so, but, but I do really feel the idea of Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: every person's life should be enjoyable and valuable. And ⁓ the sureness about the decision, that's great that some people have that and I'm envious of them, but I'm not uncomfortable being ambivalent. I think I'm supposed to be, but I'm kind of not. And so, you know, another thing I think about is, you know, a friend, when I was kind of going through the transition of trying to be like a career person to recognizing that that's kind of not who I am in our life. Coco: Yeah. Ashby: in our like work sucks episode. ⁓ A friend said to me that one of the reasons that, you know, as a kid, you think that you need to like grow up to be like a president, or you think you want to grow up to be like, you know, CEO or a famous actor or an astronaut, you think that as you're younger, because you can only picture this kind of big life with those trajectories, right? Coco: ⁓ huh. Right. Ashby: But then when you actually become 19 or 25 and you have your first apartment, the small things about being an independent adult are actually incredibly satisfying. It's actually pretty awesome to like be a 25 year old receptionist, you know, and then you like order pizza and your friends come over to your rented apartment. It's like fun. It's fun. I didn't need to be, I didn't need to be president. You know, I was like enjoying that life at each stage. Coco: So fun! Mm-hmm. Ashby: ⁓ And so I feel the same way about, you know, the idea people maybe have of the arc of their life that they'll get married and they'll have kids or whatever, you know, or, you know, they want to have kids without being married, whatever, whatever that is. But like, maybe you pictured it at a certain point, but then actually living your life as an independent single person, you felt pretty complete. And then it just kind of didn't come up until it was off the table. Like, I think that's a Coco: Of course, yeah. Yeah. Ashby: perfectly fine way to go into things. You know, I think that's totally fine. You might be surprised to find that modern life as an adult, you can actually make that very satisfying without needing to go down the path of having kids. And I also think about, ⁓ gosh, I want to say it was Sarah Marshall where on one of her podcasts where she was quoting someone else talking about ⁓ whether or not we should have the royal family. Coco: Yeah. Ashby: And that there's that great quote that she read from the person who said, ⁓ I now think of it not as whether or not should we have Royals is the same way I think of whether or not we should have pandas because like they're also, you know, they have difficulty breeding. They're they're about to go extinct or become irrelevant at any moment. And it's sort of like, sure, we should have them, but we shouldn't devote like a ton of like resources to just Coco: haha Ashby: to just this one endeavor, you know, it is going to exist no matter what, right? I kind of feel the same way about like whether or not people have kids. It's like the same thing I feel about ⁓ some people if you talk to them will say, ⁓ you simply must live abroad. You don't know what it's like, you know, until you live in another country. Like it's such a gratifying experience. It's so wonderful. And until you do that, you won't really appreciate anything, right? Coco: Right. Ashby: I can see that. I'm sure that that is true. I'm also sure that only a handful of people with a certain set of resources can really do that in a way that doesn't feel terrible and fraught. It feels very similar to having kids of like, I'm sure that it is fun for some people. And I'm also sure that for some people, the conditions are such that that would be a terrible and fraught experience. And so, Coco: I know. Mm-hmm. Ashby: I imagine myself old looking back at my life as sort of a like, ⁓ shoot, I never lived abroad. Like in the same way, I sort of feel like, ⁓ damn, I never did get knocked up. It's like, it's kind of like, it's one option. It's just one option, but I won't, I don't need to like rank it in some way necessarily. It's like, this is one path that existed. ⁓ You could have gone that way. It could have been great. It could have been not great. Coco: Yeah. Hehehehehe Yeah. Ashby: or you could have just kept doing what felt right and comfortable to you. That's also fine, also totally fine. Coco: Like I was trying to think about this because something about it does feel very connected to the Lindy West episode and how we feel really uncomfortable with a woman having a happy life that doesn't fit with what we think she should get. And I actually think that we do feel more comfortable with women who say, never want children because we can be like, well, they know what they want. I do feel like speaking about ambivalence becomes harder for other people to be okay with. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Coco: So it's like I can be okay with my own ambivalence. You can be okay with your own ambivalence and like But if I say I'm ambivalent in any way ⁓ Ashby: people then need to start advocating. They start trying to help you make a decision either way. They're not comfortable with ambivalence because like we've said, women existing in a sort of ⁓ liminal space that is all potentiality, ⁓ that bothers people. They really need you to resolve that shit. You are an unpaired electron and you are just zipping around and they really need you to connect to something and pick something one way or the other. Yeah, yeah. Coco: Yeah! ⁓ huh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You Yeah, yeah, so it's just a funny. Ashby: It's sort of like our uteruses are like Schrodinger's uterus. You know, it exists in a... it's got to go off. the Schrodinger's uterus, I mean, it exists in a superposition. It could go either way. But if you look in there, I'm dead. Wait, this metaphor is falling apart. Coco: Chekov's uterus is gonna go off. Ashby: ⁓ But yeah, I think there's a couple other things here too. I do want to stay with, I know our focus here is on having a good, fulfilling child-free life in the face of a lot of ⁓ moral panic about ⁓ postnatalists, yeah, in face of lot of pro-natalist ⁓ moral panic about birth rates. Coco: Yeah. GoF Ashby: How can you, with that being the prevailing narrative, how do you have a fulfilling child-free life that feels complete with, how do you live that out? I definitely do wanna stay there. I also, I know when we have these conversations, a lot of times the conversations then veer to a place of how can we make parents' lives less terrible? I just wanna say, not everyone is making the choice to not be a parent. from a place of thinking that parenting looks shitty. Some people are, but that's not everyone's motivation. Some people's regular lives are good and not everyone is like, ⁓ I looked over there. My sister looks stressed out. No, thank you. That's not how people make life decisions. It's not like you are buying something on Amazon and you read the reviews. is a little bit different than that. So ⁓ yeah, I think. Coco: No, we're gonna talk about that. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Mm-mm. Ashby: I forgot I had a point. ⁓ I know what I was going to say. I know what I going to say. It was just that in that vein, I also don't think we should say that once women have kids, that's the thing that fulfills their life. I think we've got to stop centering like women having kids as like, well, thank God I can relax now. Her life is complete. Like, what the fuck? That is a dumb place to end. Coco: No, no, let's, let's, no, think you're taking this up perfectly, yeah. ⁓ sure. ⁓ I know. Ashby: a narrative for a character on TV, having finally resolved that decision, but also for like regular people. Like I have said before, I don't necessarily think kids should get the message that they're the center of their parents' lives. I don't necessarily think that's healthy. I don't think we should be like, ⁓ now you have kids, now you don't need to have hobbies, now you don't need to, you know. Coco: Hmm? Mm-hmm. You Ashby: explore civic duty or anything like that. It shouldn't just be that, well, once you have kids, that's 100 % of your identity. You should get all your fulfillment from that. It's not great for kids. It's not good for parents either. Coco: And a big part of this is we need what I want even from our Lindy episode, I want women to share honestly about their experiences of life. And so that includes being a mother. There's a really fantastic Australian television show that I cannot, so much Australia today, but an Australian television show which is about a woman who just had a baby and it's very, very funny and it's her experience. ⁓ I also love Alana Glazer talking about her experiences of motherhood, which she's so. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Coco: over and over again reiterates the joy that it brings her and also like has an incredible episode about like her pelvic floor journey. ⁓ And then we also have someone like Brennan Lee Mulligan who is like, I always wanted to be a father. This is so core to my identity and it includes these challenges. And also I don't like expect other people to want the same thing as me. Like I think we just need all of these different narratives out there. And we really do need like, I'm sorry I brought Brennan into this. Ashby: Mm-hmm. You're not sorry. Coco: always top of mind, but I do just want women to be able to, we need also space for women to be able to complain about the experiences of motherhood. And I know it's the most taboo things ever, but we also need women who can say, ⁓ I love my children, but I might not have made this choice. I just didn't know it was really an option for me to not have kids. And the representation that even someone like Anne Helen Peterson brings. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Coco: It just gives you these little lighthouses in the distance where you say, if I can't imagine what a life looks like, but something doesn't quite feel right about having a kid, just to see some of those examples, it's just so incredibly powerful. Ashby: There needs to be more space in general for people to be able to express regret and also for people to be able to express regret, but it not be this thing that causes people to pity them. Every single life is going to have things in it that a person regrets. There's no way to optimize out of that. You're going to have regrets. That's going to happen, guys. But that's like the number one thing that you hear is if you don't have kids, you'll regret it. But then I think women who do have kids, like you said, they feel Coco: Right. Mm-hmm. Ashby: incredibly pressured if some of them do have regrets to not ever express those because it is so taboo to say like you can say you love your kids and also you can say that you regret becoming a parent. ⁓ Some great ⁓ feminist reading on that front ⁓ is Alice Walker, think is either to Alice Walker from Alice Walker ⁓ writing to her daughter basically being like I don't like, I sort of don't feel one way or another about you sort of like, I sort of like, you know, I love you, but like, I don't necessarily want to be your mom. Like, I don't know. I think, I think that it's okay for people to like center their, their selves without. Yeah. Coco: Hehehehe! Mm-hmm! Yeah, even Jane Fonda has talked about like that she's a parent, but she's all the way, she's been like, I don't know that that's like where I was like best in life. Like I actually had been really good at like this activist thing felt really core to me. like, and it was not, she wasn't saying like, I don't like my kids or whatever. It was just, which some people can say they don't like their children. Like also, Yeah. ⁓ I do think the, ⁓ yeah, no, go ahead. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think you should be okay. think it should also be okay to say you don't like your kids. I think that should also be okay. ⁓ But yeah. And I do think there's different things. We should empower everyone to have the kind of life they want to have. People who do want to raise kids, don't think that should be unnecessarily hard for them. I want them to have that choice validated socially, like with infrastructure and stuff like that. I'm sad to think about people who do want to have kids, but the actual conditions mean that they don't. That is a life of regret that's really sad. And that ends up being the people that this, is the birth rate falling? It ends up being about those people as if there are people who are making a rational choice to have kids by looking at the facts and being like, well, I don't live in Norway, ergo, I'm not gonna have kids. that is, first of all, I don't think that's how people make decisions, but I do think it's sad to think about people for whom they would like to have kids or maybe would like to have more kids and they don't feel like, they literally can because the life that they would live would be so brutal. And I want to fix that whether or not I ever end up with kids. I think we should fix that. ⁓ But you know, yeah. Coco: So let's, okay, you're teeing me up perfectly. And so there's this declining birth rate globally. And that includes places like Norway and Sweden that do provide a robust social safety net. I did like the diabolicalized episode, Who Wants Kids? Where they really point out that like even in these cultures though, expectations of work are still quite high. So there is something that we view as like a socialist society and yet like... Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: still understanding that like the demands on your time, you're still being pulled in a lot of different directions. So maybe you have one child and decide I'm gonna stop because I don't have more room to have more kids. And that's, think what you're talking about where it's like, let's create the conditions where people can have as many children as they want. ⁓ And I would say like, I think you're talking about this kind of sad type of regret. Like that's something Anne Helen Peterson spoke about in that podcast episode. That's something that I feel. Ashby: People that already want to. Yeah. Coco: Like where you're like, ⁓ well, it's this life. It's like this universe that I exist in. And so this is the decision I'm making. ⁓ I'm not, I hope other people can be comfortable with that. I'm okay with existing that. mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: Mm-hmm. I have got to include in here, I mean, maybe we'll do a different one about the actual decision part, but there is that really great piece from The Rumpus that Cheryl Strayed wrote where a man wrote in to say he was sort of not sure about whether or not he wanted to have a kid. And she just has this beautiful poetic, like she does, exploration of, sit down on the floor and like write out. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: what your life looks like in this one direction and then what it looks like in another direction and really picture them as like two ships, you know, and kind of grieving it or whatever. But also like, you know, I thought it's such a beautiful like encapsulation for people who are kind of grieving that what that other life would look like, like how to actually do that. Coco: Yeah, you can only get on one. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So this is a theory that in the, it's I think an opinion piece itself is calling the, let me find. Where did I? I lost my thing. ⁓ It's called the Vibes Theory of Demographic Decline. I mean, that's not the title of the piece, I like the Vibes Theory of Demographic Decline. So a little bit long, but would you mind reading this for us? If it's not too small, is it too small? Ashby: ⁓ yeah, I read this. It made me laugh. ⁓ Okay, I got it. got it. ⁓ What unites these disparate cultures, policy environments, and demographics, researchers are now realizing, is young people's inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline. The future has never been assured, but it feels as though we are living in a time of spectacular uncertainty. In the United States, job tenures have contracted and income volatility has risen. Life expectancy, once an inexorable march upward, has fallen for less educated women and men. Many of the forces our economy is built on—AI, immigration, global trade—feel distressingly volatile. Disruption, once a byword for a disturbance problem, is the governing ethos of a terrifyingly powerful sector of our economy. The rise of prediction markets has turned the world into one large casino. The climate crisis is spiraling, as are the costs of everything that could enable parenthood, whether that's a roof over one's head or childcare. The past half century has brought us breathtaking inequality accompanied by a sharp decline in social mobility. The two generations currently of childbearing age bear the psychological and financial scars of coming of age amid world scale catastrophes. Older millennials entered the labor market during the Great Recession. Many watched their parents lose their jobs or homes. Members of Gen Z whose lives were upturned by the COVID-19 pandemic now find themselves competing against AI for entry-level jobs and even prospective partners. The man running America seems single-mindedly devoted to chaos at home and abroad. Hell yeah. Way to sum it up. Yeah, way to really, ⁓ fuck. Coco: Like, I know we don't smoke but need a cigarette. But okay, I want to say that this could be like, wow, we're just ending on that note? What the hell, Coco? That's just depressing as fuck. But what I want to kind of come back to or think about is that this connects back to me to our kind of radical women episode where we were looking at Greta Thunberg, Sada Shakur, Angela Davis, and considering all the different Ashby: Mm-mm. Coco: causes and things that they were identifying and saying that paints a really overwhelming picture. And yet the positive thing in all of this is that we can all fight this fight together. Like that this is true. Like this really feels true to me. This is a plays a role in my decision. ⁓ And we're going to come back to Bridgette Vincent one more time before we say goodbye today. ⁓ But I do see something in this that's like. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: going back to that myth about people who don't have children aren't invested in the future. It's like I am so incredibly, I am not a pessimist. Even if I'm making a calculation for what feels right for myself, like I do believe in the future and I do believe in like fighting the fight all together in whatever way feels true to us. ⁓ And like what is so beautiful about the movie Children of Men is that it is a group of people who do not have children that are fighting for a future that they will not see to make that possible for like a different generation. That it is about hope that you might not ever touch. And I thought about making you watch the last scene of Children of Men, but then I started crying while watching it and I thought we don't need to push it too far. Ashby: Yeah, we could also just play the Luther rail, Lutheran rail speech from Andor. Same thing, same thing, same thing. Coco: Sacrifice! Any other, we're gonna turn back to Bridgette Vincent in just a second, but anything else that this piece, if you read the whole piece, that it brought up for you. Ashby: Yeah, I just find it so easy to dismiss that idea that people without kids don't care about the future. Like people who are intentionally choosing not to have kids definitely have thought about the future. Like they, they've definitely thought through the situation. And of course they care about the future and not having kids doesn't mean that there aren't kids in your life whose lives you want to see succeed. What I really think people are saying when they say that is that Coco: I know. Mm-hmm. Ashby: they would find it hard to care about the future if it weren't for their own progeny having to live in it. And that, that, that's telling on yourself. That's telling on yourself if what, yeah. Coco: That, it's like, oh, I have a mother, so I care about women. Ashby: It's exactly that. It's the same shit as guys being like, I never cared about women until I had a daughter. It's the same thing to be like, ⁓ you actually need yourselves to continue living in order to care about the future. Weird. I care about that. The other thing I want to say is all of those things are things happening in the present. I care about that now. We should care about that now. What are you talking about? Coco: I know. Ashby: Old people shouldn't have to deal with this. Young people shouldn't have to deal with this. People of any age shouldn't have to deal with any of this at any time. So I don't know. don't see this making any sense to me if you give it more than two seconds thought that all of the doomerism in the world is making young people just not want to have kids and that they won't care about the future as a result. ⁓ No, I think it's absolutely the Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: different thing from that altogether, which is that they care about the present and they care about the future. What the other early article said, just being a human shouldn't be so hard. Some of these people are looking at how hard it is to be a human and thinking they maybe don't want to do that themselves as a parent or that they don't want to bring someone else into this, but that doesn't mean that they don't care. It might mean that they care a lot. Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think that's exactly right. And I think that it's like, we do need all of those policies of like universal childcare, know, universal pre-K, universal elder care. Yeah, like let's, and we need a child tax credit to be more than like, here's like a thousand dollars. And we need like, Ashby: Universal elder care. Let's start having that. Let's start talking about that too. Yeah. Coco: We need schools to be free. need college to be free. We need parental leave to be government mandated and paid for. You know, we need all of these policies and we can say those policies don't necessarily increase the birth rate. We need the world to be a more stable place where people can see and believe in the future and that future is a positive vision. And like that can't exist within this like world of billionaires going out to the rainforest being like, let me burn this shit down. Ashby: and build my bunker for my own test tube babies. Coco: Yeah. So, and I'm like, we can fight that fight. Like, that's a fight that we can fight. But there is an awkwardness to all of this, which is that sometimes this feels like the thing you can't say. Sometimes this feels like a thing that's like a little bit delicate to express if you're a person who doesn't have children. And so I'm just going to go back to someone who is much more eloquent than myself, ⁓ Bridgette Vincent, to have you read this part. And then we're going to jump ahead in the essay a little bit and then read ⁓ one more part. Ashby: Okay, if talking about childlessness at any time is fraught with discursive pitfalls and misunderstandings, talking about it during the climate crisis is all the more hazardous. To express worry about climate in the same breath as questioning the association of childlessness with selfishness is to risk being heard as someone who sees selfishness in having children. I wish we could have a different kind of conversation about having children. one that rejects both the racism of foreign overpopulation and the racism of calls to replace Australians with a lot of homegrown ones. Coco: And you can certainly replace Australians with the United States or whether Britain or any of these quote unquote Western nations that are deeply racist. Okay, final part. Ashby: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. ⁓ Ants of the Anthropocene sounds like something out of Monty Python or a niche cult with a 1990s webpage, all light blue and spinning icons. But really, this Ant-hood involves something neither more selfish, yay for shoe money, nor more selfless, see Jane abstain for the planet than parenting, but rather a human in mesh desire to be the village, to tend to what's left. Like parenting itself, this is another mode of realism, another way to be the adult in the room. Coco: I just loved it. Ashby: Yeah, I like that too. yeah, just on this note of like the kind of moral panic, the kind of like putting this firmly on women's shoulders, the kind of, the kind of like, ⁓ freak out about this of, my God, we need more kids. And if we don't have kids, then what happens? One of the things I think about is that I think people in power want people to have kids because then you're easier to manipulate. I think there is something. about the fact that there'd be a lot, what they mean when they say ⁓ childless cat ladies not being invested in the future is that we have time to organize. ⁓ I think that's kind of what they're getting at is that there's something there about, that we don't care about the future, but that we care too much now about the present. Coco: Yeah. Truthfully. Truthfully. Ashby: and that we actually maybe have less to lose. And it's so much easier to manipulate a population that is absolutely desperate for the welfare of their children. So yeah, I care about the future, but what they mean is I'm not desperate for the future in a way that makes me easy to control. I especially think about this in the absolutely heartbreaking examples of the way that ICE is using children against parents. Coco: Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Ashby: And that's an example of how they're able to control people because people love their kids more than their own lives and their own present reality. ⁓ So the more people that opt out of that, the more people are like, you know, showing up in Minneapolis with their phones. Like, I don't have anywhere to be. I don't got no childcare pick up today. I'm here to fuck shit up. Like I, I kind of am getting a little bit of that from the JD Vances of the world. Coco: Mm-hmm. Sure. I mean, and that New York Times piece ends with a couple that had said they wanted to have children and then they kind of were like, I just cannot believe this world. And then it ends with them moving to Minnesota before that ICE occupation. ⁓ And then they say they see the community rally and this is what gives them the hope and they do decide to have children, which is, that's beautiful. That's like the... Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: I know that's just one anecdote and then they carefully pick these anecdotes. But like still, I think it is meaningful to say like when you can like see people coming together to like fight the good fight, then that is ⁓ powerful in a way that's really great. And I agree with you. Like I think that there's, there are amazing parents who do are very politically active and do have time to organize. And like, I don't think that's an obligation of anyone to do if you do not have the time. But it is easy for me to see as a person who has time, I can go to a DSA meeting, I can go to a protest, I can volunteer. I have the time. And if there's more of me, that is threatening to an establishment that really wants people to be ⁓ rigid in how they live their lives. One narrative is the only way that's OK. And especially parenting under capitalism, where it requires every little ounce of you. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: it looks like ⁓ to get the kids to the daycare on time than to both have the job that can pay for the daycare. Like it ⁓ is a rigorous like thing to go through and it requires so much. So yeah, hard to... hard to do some other stuff. Ashby: Yeah. And I was listening to the newest Diabolical Lies this morning, ⁓ talking a little bit more about the actual process of childbirth. I did tell you that I tried to listen to it while having breakfast and I am not squeamish about women's bodies at all. I've like worked in Planned Parenthoods and ⁓ a women's clinic. I've done like trainings on STDs and stuff. So I'm not squeamish. Coco: Uh-huh. Hehehehehe Ashby: but they started describing it in a episiotomy and I said, I need to take a break. So that was interesting. But one of the things they talk about is the kind of like racist undercurrents in America that is tied all the way back to slavery about this sort of like medicalization of childbirth, but also pressure on women to have children no matter what the costs. And part of that came from Coco: Yeah. Ashby: the decision to eliminate transnational slave trade, ⁓ then put additional pressure on existing US slave owners to push for added ⁓ population replacement by insisting on additional children being born from the slaves that they had. That is horrific dehumanizing history that we have, but I think we can't untangle it. Coco: Yeah. ⁓ huh. Ashby: when you open Children of Men with we're closing the borders and then you open 2026 with we're closing the borders and we're cracking down on ⁓ immigrants, both lawful and undocumented. And I think it goes, I think it's really interesting that you have those dynamics in place where if you bar labor from outside of your made up borders, I must insist once again that borders are Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: made up and people are real. ⁓ I don't care more about borders than I care about human beings. ⁓ Yeah, but when you get rid of international labor, there suddenly becomes an additional pressure to have children within the borders of that country so that you have an additional labor force. Coco: And nations are made up. Yeah. Ashby: I'm sure that it is distressing to JD Vance to see that, but ⁓ you you done did it to yourself. I don't know. In the process of doing that, you've also radicalized a lot of people. Coco: Let's be clear, nothing is distressing to JD Vance. He is a opportunist. He's saying what he got to say. And Stephen Miller is a little piss baby. Ashby: No, he's a mush. He's a mush clown. He's just a mush clown. Just a clown. Just just a just a little clown suit full of mush. That's what I think. That's what I really think is going on in there. Yeah. Coco: to back to like talking about like women's ⁓ bodies and complications. I have love Lena Dunham on her book tour now talking openly about her hysterectomy and like how she finds herself also in this identity of like the fun aunt. ⁓ And she kind of go traces back in. She's done so many interviews so you could yeah, find this anywhere but she's in Lost Culturista is very joking about it like, ⁓ like she remembers this like artist woman that she knew as a child. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I listened to that. That was lovely. Coco: who just shows her a constellation on her butt, a tattoo of a constellation on her butt. And Lena clarifies, she's like, I will not drop my pants in front of a child. It was a different time. But just loving that eccentric part of it, and also saying that she really has found deep friendships within the queer community, and especially queer men, who have different understandings of family, and what quote unquote, your normal life looks like, and being a person who's not going to have children. ⁓ Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: and just kind of, you know, coming to terms happily, I would say, with like that identity. Ashby: Yeah, I think there's something that's kind of unspoken underneath all of this, which is that when people are like, this is crazy how women are not having as many babies now that they have a choice. I think there's, I think there's a little something unspoken here, which is that it's crazy how many babies women have when we don't give them a choice. and that should bother people. Coco: Sure. That's why. Ashby: It should bother people that we need there to be this shrouded, mysterious fulfillment narrative around it and it has to become a default choice for women because it looks like when you give women other options and it looks like when women can have a fulfilled life on their own, they wouldn't rationally choose to have children or at least more of them. At least more, yeah. Coco: Yeah. Some of them won't and some of them, yeah, wanted to have four children, but they can't under this system. Yes. What is it like socialism? Like to each his ability and desire. Yeah, like something like that. Yeah. Ashby: but they can only afford one. Yeah, yeah. I think, I think, yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Buy your ability in what you wanna do. You're exactly right. So like, I think we should look at the, it's that same thing of like, what do you not need evidence to believe, you know? We have all these myths in our culture and I really kind of feel like... Coco: Mmm. Ashby: By not having children, it's very threatening to people who, like you said, have never really thought about it. I mean, people in power who have these kind of regressive notions about what women should be doing with their time. And I also think we should really ask ourselves, like, if people do have a choice and they choose not to, like, it just goes to show you that there's not anything rational about having a kid. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: I've read a lot of different articles about like, you know, how, how fence sitters and stuff get off the fence. And a lot of people will say like, it isn't a rational decision because you can't make it like you make buying a car. It is not something you know, it's like on one side of the list, you have like, you know, ⁓ baby and on the other side of the list, it's like, how would you even go about weighing those things? One of them is like, ⁓ the greatest love you've ever known. Coco: Yeah. Right. It's not like which milk is cheapest or whatever. Ashby: And then the other one is like, costs this much for childcare. You know, how can a person on this side of a decision make it fully necessarily? So yeah, I don't necessarily think that having kids is like a rational choice. It's something that people feel and that they want to do. Yeah. Yeah. Coco: No. Yeah, we are animals too. Like, it's okay. Like, not everything needs to be logic. Like, some of it can be what feels right to you. I like would love that exists in the realm of like poetry and art. Like, it's something along those lines. That's really true. And I just want to on that note of like the greatest love you'll ever know. I think that it's not one that like bothers me so much. I didn't include it in my gripes. ⁓ Ashby: Right. Mm-hmm. Coco: I don't think it's a kind thing to say to people. ⁓ But I also, who don't have children, for whatever reason, and you don't always know what reason, it's a deeply personal thing to ask someone. I'm recording a whole podcast about it. You can ask me. But some people don't want to be asked. ⁓ But at the same time, I do sometimes think, that says more about you than it does about me. I'm like, well, you don't know the spectrum of feeling I have. Ashby: I don't either. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: for things in like this life. Like I don't think my feelings compared to having a child by any means, I don't wanna diminish that, but it's also like I get joy from all these different sources, like that can still make up a whole life. And I just think there's something a little bit like... ⁓ Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: I don't know, maybe going back even to what we talking about with the Lindy West of it all and how we react to her and something kind of bourgeois where it's like you have to have all of these check marks and milestones. Otherwise, there's just a pit of fear under that. And I just wanna say, do we feel the same way about people who live in countries where the circumstances aren't as luxurious as ours? Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: Like you don't have to have all of these things to like make your life meaningful. You don't need to live to be 90 to be have a meaningful life. Like all of these just things feel like layered in together. I'm not being very articulate about it, but something along that those lines. Ashby: No, I know what you mean. I was trying to say that too, which is like, some people are obsessed with the idea of maximizing their experience on earth. Some people, and this really, a lot of these sources that you shared today really hit on this as like part of a neoliberal conception of yourself as an individual who needs to like absolutely maximize every single. Coco: Yeah. Ashby: thing about being alive and that the ultimate objective is to maximize utility and to minimize any regrets and to get the full, the full like top end of the human experience. And so for some people, maybe like, there's just an easy thing to throw in there where they're like, wow, I, you know, I, ⁓ I only thought of life and I felt it in this range. And then I had a kid and now I felt this whole additional range open up. And so they, think because of the culture we live in, they want to tell other people about it where they're like, hey guys, there's this hidden level that you can get to. Okay, sure. Well intentioned, but like, but yes, I see what you mean. It's like not, that doesn't mean that the life people are living is not meaningful. And it doesn't mean that people are missing out if, or even that the idea of missing out is a bad thing. This is the other part. It's like, it's part of this like need to acquire experiences. Coco: Which is like, well intentioned in some ways. That's kind of what I'm, yeah. Ashby: this need to like, you know, fully, you know, just suck the marrow out of every little thing. But then you'll also hear people say that, I mean, I have absolutely heard parents say that it is the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. They didn't even know that they could go that low. And so you expand the range. So like, yeah. Coco: Well, if you expand the range, you expand the full range. I mean, I posted on Instagram, I was like, if you have media you love that's like child free stuff, send it to me. And I had one woman, a mom, replied to me. She was like, you should talk to all my moms who hate being moms. And I was like, I'm glad that they can talk about it with each other. That's so healthy. But some people have that experience and that's fine. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And one of the, so like we're looking at all the reasons for this, right? And the big thing that all these articles come to is that young people are just too anxious about the world and they've decided that as a rational decision, they themselves will not be having children because it will be too difficult for them and too difficult for the children. And they just care about the planet so much, right? Like, I'm not terribly persuaded by that because again, I don't think that's how people make choices. Yes. Coco: Mm-hmm. Sure. think it's the mix of all of the different things. Yeah. Ashby: But I also think like... There's another layer here of what's happened in the culture, which what you had touched on earlier of people finally learning to care for themselves. There has been a massive shift in the last couple of generations of people going to therapy and learning all of the ways that their childhood wasn't awesome. And I don't feel like we're like really bringing that in. It's like, sure, there's the climate change. That's also part of it, but Coco: Mm. Hmm? Ashby: A part of the way that the therapy culture has mixed with the intense neoliberal culture is that it's created this scenario where, I've said this many times, even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility. And I think people are asking themselves, in the process of going to therapy, what were some of the mistakes my parents made? For a lot of people right now, they did not have happy childhoods. It's hard to imagine a person who did not have a happy childhood Coco: now. Ashby: wanting to then have a kid. Some people do and they find that they're able to like heal a lot of things about themselves in that process. But there's a element of responsibility there. What a lot of people get is like they go to like this very psychodynamic flavor of therapy and it's like asking you what things you didn't get as a child. There's no way to come away from that without feeling a little bit like, ⁓ Coco: Yeah, yeah. Ashby: here are some choices that my parents should have made differently. I think that it puts something on you to be like, well, then what could I do? If you live in a culture that's like every single choice, every single thing about your life is a choice. Every single thing is your responsibility. Every single thing is your fault. The whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps, individualist mentality, along with mining how your own childhood wasn't happy. You might kind of be like, you know, I don't want to take this on. I don't think I can do it. I don't think I can live up to the expectations. I don't know that I can actually do this better. And the message that you've gotten is if you can't do it better, then you shouldn't have done it. ⁓ And that is kind of a lot, I think, for millennials. Coco: I mean, I have read Count, mm-hmm. But I think maybe more gently, I'd say, I think that there are, I've read lots of people expressing their feelings on this and saying like, I'm actually just like stopping this generational trauma right here. And like, I think that's just such a valid response. And at the same time, in terms of like caring for ourselves, I think some people are like, well, what would, what's the toll that would be taken on my body? Am I okay with how it might or might not go? And like, Ashby: ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Coco: If we give women the choice to choose, and I don't just mean women, we give people the choice to choose. ⁓ Not just women that can get pregnant, of course, but like, ⁓ we have to like be okay if they choose not to for like whatever the like mix of reasons it might be, ⁓ et cetera. So, yeah. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I just mean it comes back to this personal responsibility thing. You're supposed to somehow want to have kids and you're supposed to be 100,000 % responsible for every single thing about that child's life. Coco: Yeah. Right. ⁓ sure. And I will say Anne Helen Peterson in her like big no kids ⁓ essay about herself, she says it's actually one of the like side benefits. She's like, I have a healthy distance from like toxic per parenting culture. That's very like the high intensive parenting stuff, kind of the expectation of like getting an A at parents. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm. But also just their emotional well-being. Like, it's one thing for me to be kind of a mess who gets my sleep schedule all fucked up when I only have an orange cat. But like, you know, I don't know how some of the things about my personality will affect a smushy brain where in 30 years they look back and they're like, you know, my mother was absent in these ways because she didn't have these skills ⁓ to care for me. Coco: Sure. Yeah. Ashby: I don't know. It's just something to think about. if you didn't have, if you've, if you're kind of reflecting on the ways that your caregiving could have been better. And a lot of people will say, you know, I love my parents. I think the best they did the best they could with what they had to work with. Now you get into what they were talking about on diabolical lives with the people in Norway, where they're like, even if you have all this stuff, you start to think, is this enough though, to do a really good job? Is this enough to do a really good job? But there's always going to be people that do want to. Coco: Mm-hmm. That's that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Ashby: kids. So I'm not super worried about the like population thing. just I agree with you. think no matter what people what kind of life people have, I think we should support whatever those choices are. I don't think there's a ton of people out there who are like, well, I would have had kids if the government had just written me a hundred thousand dollar check. I don't think that's really what it is. You know, no. Coco: No, exactly. I think, no, yeah. And that's why I liked, you know, I had qualms with it, of course, but I like at least like that piece in the New York Times was like, guys, it's just like instability overall, and is an accumulation of different factors. ⁓ And I know I mentioned that Guardian ⁓ article that we talked about at the beginning that was like starting off with this like, just like dark picture of like, ⁓ no, like, Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: The schools are depopulated, the villages are empty. But it ends with me saying, let's organize our future. Let's start planning right now for a future that demographically, age-wise, is gonna look different. But like, let's make a plan. It reminds me of ⁓ Cher in Clueless, when she's giving her like speech and she's like, we could just get to the kitchen, rearrange a couple of things. ⁓ Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: It does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty. But was like, yeah, that's right. We should organize it now. Part of what the Guardian was advocating was phased retirement, a.k.a. people should just work longer. And I was like, well, it's not the future I'm going to be fighting for. But definitely one where everyone's allowed to. And they talk in that piece that there are actually so many people who would like to have more children. They just are stretched really thin. And so let's create a society where those people can have as many kids as they want. Ashby: No. Mm-hmm. Coco: I can come over and I can do a sword fight with them and we're gonna have less. Ashby: Yeah. Another thing I want to say is that in addition to this kind of adjacent to this conversation is so many people who have said that they're one and done and that there's been a big reaction to that as well. And I think about what you shared, one of your friends being like, you know, I have finally had a kid. then you think, OK, everybody can lay off my ass about this unpaired electron thing. But then it turns out they just keep on. They're just like, well, when are you going to have another one? When are you going to have another one? Coco: Yes! Uh-huh. Ashby: Which is crazy to me because it's like, ⁓ my God. Anyway, but I think the thing about one and done, know a lot of, they always want more. I think the interesting thing about one and done is like, there seems to be this again, prevailing wisdom that's like kids need siblings. But I think we've had a couple years now of a culture of people trying to reparent themselves to heal from their trauma growing up in their childhoods. Coco: She was like, they're always gonna want more. Ashby: And a kind of a lot of people's trauma does come from their siblings. There are a lot of people who've had great relationships with their siblings, but there are also a lot of people that didn't have great relationships with their siblings. There are a lot of only children. There's been this stereotype of like only children as like lonely little adults who are weird, but that's absolutely not true. Like they, in the same way that parents should have access to other parts of community beyond just their little household. Coco: I know. Yeah. Ashby: Kids should have access to other kids and be socialized and not need to be their siblings. Not everyone has great relationships with their siblings. There's not something magical about siblings that's better. Yeah. Coco: I think is quite rare. Like I have a very close relationship with my sister and I love my brother. ⁓ He's a lot younger than me we don't live in the same place. But like, ⁓ so we're not as close. But it's like, I see how close I am with my sister and just be like, actually, like, I'm not seeing this pattern play out like across the board. Like it's pretty, it's kind of unusual to some extent. And just going back to like how incredible Anne Helen Peterson. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: manages the community that she's kind of stewards here. And she just actually just did like a thread for like only children only. So she's like, if you are an only child, or I think she said like, if you have an only child, this is a place where you can talk to each other. And it was like, everyone else, you don't time in. And then reading like all the different things that they're like, there's all these stereotypes about me, kind of like what I'm talking about today is incredible. And like those things aren't true. But also there are challenges like, Ashby: ⁓ that's nice. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: ⁓ I now have to care for my aging parents and like there's only me. Like there was some real interesting stuff there. Ashby: ⁓ on that, one of the features that she had is ⁓ I read one of those stories about a woman who ⁓ came to the US with her ⁓ parents from Taiwan when she was very young and had to like basically grow up really fast to care for her parents in this country and that that is a constant place of tension for her, something she's really had to heal from and that she's okay in her life now with not having kids. ⁓ Coco: Mm-hmm. Yes. Ashby: that that's the life she wants for herself. But like, I think about that too, that like, ⁓ not everyone's, sometimes people's experience growing up like was such that they've got enough on their plate, you know? And that they don't necessarily want to navigate that whole thing. Yeah. Coco: Like gentleness and like people also who have been parentified as a child. I know maybe that's a different version of it. It's like, it's because of an immigrant experience, but people who have had to care for their younger siblings. ⁓ Like one of the characters that ⁓ from a television show is ⁓ Emmy Rossum's character from the show, Shameless, who like decides not to have children because she like cared for all of her siblings. Yeah. Ashby: Yes, yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to say, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is raising for her siblings. Yeah. And I think about that too, when we were talking about yesteryear and educated, look, especially for like the people who feel like criticized for one and done, there's a little part of me that's like, yes, of course I do want people to have as be supported and having as many kids as they want. But I don't think that should mean that siblings raise each other. And I don't really know at what point Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: society should intervene in that dynamic. Because I do think we've seen enough from Welcome to Plathville and the Duggars that some of these large families, their support is coming from inside the house, from the children, and those kids are not having the best childhood that they could because they're in a position of raising their younger siblings. ⁓ Coco: You can mistake being involved is not great, but we don't have the solution. We don't have the solution. Community, I know you didn't. I know you didn't, but. Ashby: I, yeah, I just don't, mean, society, I said society get involved, not state, not the state. But, but yeah, it's that I do think there's probably, there's probably nuance to the conversation on either end, you know? And I have long said that I do not agree with the idea that people who don't have kids are selfish. I don't understand where that comes from. I guess what, I guess what people are trying to say is two things. When I've heard that it's been, Coco: It's very weird. Yeah. Ashby: You're selfish because you're not giving these people grandchildren, which is weird. ⁓ And then... Coco: I do feel like blessed in that, like that is not my case because there are grandchildren. So I feel like dodged that one, but that would be a lot of pressure. Yeah. Ashby: But let's talk about that. Let's talk about that one second. One of the reasons I think people get such weird grandparent grief is that they're essentially saying, well, raising you sucked. And now I want to just do the fun part. Coco: I just want to do the, I get to just do the fun part as the aunt. Ashby: I just want to do the fun part. But see, but that's really what grandparents are saying. They're like, no, I just want to be, I just want to do the fun part of parenting. want to, this is supposed to be my reward for the shittiness of raising this person to adulthood. I don't think we should think, ⁓ I'm obviously way oversimplifying it, but I don't, I'm just saying there is that kind of undercurrent there of like, yeah, but I just want to come visit some cute kids and play with them and then go back to my Florida retirement home. Like that. Coco: Yeah. Yeah. Ashby: I don't think we should think of parenting as something that you need to get a reward for. Coco: It's a narrow, it's like a, well, and that's what I was saying from my gripes where it's like, wait, I just didn't know that this contract involved me giving something back. Like, and I'm not saying that pressure comes from my parents really, they've been very respectful, but I just, it's a societal message that you hear over and over again. And you're like, wait, I didn't know I owed you shit for this. I thought my life was mine. Ashby: Yeah. that you're supposed to, and when they say give something, when they say give something back, they don't mean like, they don't mean like, take your parents on a cruise. They mean like give your whole body, your actual physical living body for a time and like all of your time and energy to this person so that I can have fun Christmases. That's a not very cool proposition that we give people. And I don't think someone's, experience of raising a kid should have been so difficult that they feel that they're owed that in the first place, you know? Coco: Yeah, I mean, I think it can be even like as simple as like hard to like, this is why I think that the representation of meaningful power, like incredible and by incredible, I don't mean like you change the world. just mean like every day representation of child free people is really important because like they don't have the other narrative is like cold, dark and death family line ends. Like it's just a very like kind of funny like Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: And if we could just like, we're also so obsessed with our own DNA. I don't know. Ashby: Yeah. That's the thing. I think there's something weird about that too, is like this, this, own DNA thing. But, but yeah, I, so I don't, I don't see that. And then the other thing I see is that at least like I've told you before, where I've grown up, I've seen a lot of selfishness in people choosing to have children. I don't mean, I know that there's a kind of one of the pieces that we read today, like has this part where it's like talking about selfishness sometimes has, and the climate at the same time. can sometimes imply that you think people who are having kids are selfish. Look, I don't mean it like that, but like I do understand that there's that, some people probably do have that thought where they think it is ⁓ a strain on the environment for someone to choose to bring another person into the world when there absolutely are a lot of kids that do need homes. That's not a debate I'm having, but they're, but they're. Coco: Yeah, you don't mean it like that, right? No, yeah, there's some thoughts on all of this. Ashby: There are some radical thoughts on every end of the spectrum, but there are definitely people online who have made that their personal climate direction. Not necessarily for me at all. Coco: Mm-hmm. The people who are birth strikers who are saying, I would have had a child and I'm not, and it's a form of protest, I actually support that form of protest and say people are desperate. There are people who are experiencing severe anxiety because of the climate and it's like, I somehow shut it out every day. those people, like, if that's your form of protest, go for it. I don't like when people tell people you shouldn't have children. I'm like, it's still personal. No. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Hmm. That's the thing. We're not in the business of like shaming other people's choices. Yes. Right. Or to make your stance individually part. I mean, it's one thing to be like explaining that these impacts on the climate have had impacts on people's personal choice. But I, for the most part, I don't think people should like politicize their life choices because everyone's life choice is so singular. Coco: I don't think to tell people to have children or to tell them to not have children. It's like, that's fucking weird. Mm-hmm. Yeah. are political also, yeah, but mm-hmm. Yeah. Ashby: But you can't really like turn that into a thing. But ⁓ anyway, I... ⁓ selfishness. I was just gonna say like... Yeah, we fixed teen pregnancy now, but it wasn't that long ago that it was a problem, like a really seriously bad problem. And I have definitely seen a lot of people in my community have kids way before they were ready. And that's not been great for the parents or the family or the mother or the child. And some of the selfishness I've seen around people choosing to have children or care for children, ⁓ comes down to something called that baby comes with a chick where people will argue to care for a child based on child support benefits or state benefits that they would get for caring for them. So I think there are ways that ⁓ people pushing for having kids or as some type of selfless act can actually have, there are times where it can be a very selfish endeavor. ⁓ So I've never resonated with the idea that ⁓ not having kids is selfish. I have often seen people who should probably not be involved ⁓ getting involved in people's lives for very selfish motivations. So I don't see that. I don't see those things as binary at all. I think one of the kindest things I did to my family was wait this long and not create more drama around ⁓ custody. I would just like to say you're welcome everyone for my birth control. Coco: I mean, and I think all of this is like also like we live in hell, like we need a world where like children have like rights and then like good options, like if they're like, if their home environments aren't good or like whatever and like we should we need to care for the kids who are here. Like all this pro-natalism has such little to do with like, what are the fucking schools like? Are we feeding these kids? Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Coco: Like let's care for the people who are here and then maybe they will want to have more children. Like I just don't, I think we're kind of jumping to this like end goal. Like we need more kids. And it's like. Ashby: also think people are infantilizing both women. I do mean this importantly. They're infantilizing women, but they're romanticizing infantilization because what's nice about an infant is there's nothing going on in there. Also, they tie up their caregiver pretty much completely for the first one to three years. There's just something there about how it kind of necessarily Coco: Yeah, ⁓ of course. Yeah. Yeah. Ashby: is very labor intensive. That's just a fact of raising a human baby that is interesting. It's sort of like they're like, need to be something, somebody needs to do something with you. You need to be occupied. Here's a baby. And people love babies, but nobody seems to care about like 13 year olds. Okay. Nobody seems to care about, you know, like a 17 year old who wants to go to college and can't afford it. So until we're ready to like have those conversations, like Coco: Yeah. Ashby: I don't want to hear JD Vance talk about having babies. Like sure, babies are cute and fun, but that is, it's so easy for them to talk about having babies, but nobody seems to want to talk about like a society that cares for children into adulthood. Coco: Exactly, exactly. I, two things. On the like selfish point, when we're talking about like no one cares for like the 13 year old or whatever, I cannot wait for like my nephews and all these kids in my life to be like weirdo little adolescents and like kid kids like and like teenagers and to like come stay at my house and like hang out at my pool, which I will have in my future life that I envisioned for myself. And like I do want to be the person that Ashby: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: cares about them. I like part of my ability to do that is me not having my own children. Like part of my ability to, if someone needed a place to stay, they could stay with me. It's like the money, the finance, like all of this stuff like that kind of comes with having an extended quote unquote village, which sometimes it's like a really cheesy term of people that like have different kinds of like lives and like flexibility. And like, it's not to say Ashby: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Coco: There's no part of me that's like, I'm not having children because I love my nephew so much, but I understand that that relationship would change if I did have my own kids. And I love it so much. like the, sounds like I'm giving like pro-parent, like it's the most meaningful thing in my life, but it's just this wonderful gift that I have. And it does provide me with a lot of meaning. ⁓ And again, just saying, you don't need to have that and you don't need to leave in like kids for any of the rest of our points to be true, but. Ashby: Yeah, it's true. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's true, it's true. Yeah, I think maybe another thing that's missing here is were people maybe having too many kids before? Maybe there were, and I don't mean each person having, okay, that's another thing. We should really tease out this whole thing about like the birth rates. What people are really upset about is like each, there are individual women are not having as many kids per woman, okay? But that isn't, I don't know that it's necessarily useful in a modern context to compare that to like 1900, right? Like where almost all women had multiple children. I think what we're talking about is like, might not be a bad thing for society to have more parents who are intentionally having, you know, one to three kids and then a few people who choose not to have kids who are able to be like more present for those kids. Like it's a quantity over quality kind of, you know, situation. Coco: Yeah, I mean, and the funny part of that New York Times piece that I did go, huh, was they were like, faith seems to be the one outlier where people in these religious communities had like seven children. And I want to be like, faith is doing a heavy lifting. this is, these are often high control religious environments. Ashby: Yeah. They're giving those people the benefit of the doubt. They're really trying to see any type of possible positive connotation to fit this narrative. it's that, oh, I guess I get, but what I took from that was like, are you trying to say that religious fundamentalists just don't care about climate change? Because that's kind what they're saying. I know some of them don't. Coco: Yeah. Yes. Some of them don't because some of them are rooting for the end times right now. They think that the war in Iran is related to it. Like we don't, this is not. Ashby: But there are... But that's crazy because there are people who are religious and do organize for the environment. So it's a bizarre thing for them to just be like, ⁓ no, no, no, no. If you're part of a mega church, you'll just pump out seven kids. And that's not a problem for you. Cause you don't care if the world explodes or something like that. Coco: Oh, of course, of course. Yeah, I know. some of them are different, they're talking about Orthodox Judaism. There's some parts of that that are about, our community was devastated by the Holocaust. There are things that are, that's different than just the word faith. And I just thought, I was like, I'm not getting into it, and here I am getting into it, but. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-mm. Mm-hmm. But they're trying to say that like, if it's because, you know, all these non-secular people, they don't have any faith in their future, they feel like things are so unstable. But if they just had a religion, then they could feel so much more comfortable having kids. But that really is flattening out a lot there. There's a lot more involved in that. Yeah. Like you, like you had just said that like, well, yeah, because within a religion, sometimes there are cultural tenants and beliefs about having kids. It's not to do with the fact that they just figure God will handle climate change. Coco: I'm just so excited that we can bring Catholicism back into the conversation. I'm always looking for it. But my mom was one of eight children. Because they're an Irish Catholic family, now it wasn't super ideological. Not in the ways that we modernly think about politics and religion. But I'm like, I don't know, dude. That was just... Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: That's the part of choice that's like, well, if it's just like a cultural inevitability, like is it even a choice? Like, I don't know. It's just... Ashby: That's the thing. The point is that if people have a choice, they're gonna sometimes choose to do things differently. And when we look back in time, people had less choice. So you just, it's not useful to me to compare anything happening when people have a choice to then really. ⁓ Coco: An agency. Yeah. And sometimes people literally needed to have a bunch of kids to work on the farm and care for the other children. There's a lot of stuff that was happening in the past that we don't need to romanticize it. Ashby: But then asking those people exactly asking those people what life was like, they would say like, not great. So like now people are looking more toward like, how can I have a meaningful life? Sometimes that includes kids and sometimes it doesn't, but it's important to understand that there were people in the, when the birth rate was higher, a lot of those people were having kids that didn't want to. And Coco: And a lot of those women were constantly pregnant. Ashby: So that's not really something I'm like worrying to fix. Okay. I don't really see that as a problem. If people have a choice now and they're getting to make a choice that yeah. Coco: And you and I have talked about this for so many times, but it is sometimes fascinating or takes your breath away to sit and think about where we are in this modern moment, where we're like, we are one of the first generations where this has played out for us our entire lives, that we were told this from an early age, that we have the right to choose even if that right is slipping away in some places of this country. Ashby: Mm. Coco: wouldn't you expect there to be some kind of recalibration at some point? Like, I did in the response to that New York Times piece about ⁓ uncertainty, there was like one response that was like, yo, like some people just like don't want to have kids. I was like, true. Ashby: Yeah. I read those. Yeah. that, but now, but not now, not only can they not want to, they can also just not do it. They could just not do it. And I'm good with that. I don't think that means anything about society. I'm sorry that a bunch of boomers are worried that there's not going to be anyone to like, you know, take care of them. but that's, you know, partially the choices of people who decided to wreck the earth for the people that we have. ⁓ Coco: They could just not do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Take it, schnott's fired at boomers. Ashby: ⁓ another thing I want to say is a lot of people, a lot of people say that a reason to have kids is to have someone to care for you in old age. And just like everything else, first of all, that shouldn't fall to children. I don't think that I, I really loved the book, ⁓ the Nordic theory of everything, where they talk about how the concept of family should not include this level of dependency, but what a cr- but I don't like this like transactional thing. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: of, I have kids so that someone will take care of me when I'm old. And then because I raised them, they will then give me grandkids so I can do the fun part of parenting. And I don't think that relationships should be transactional like that. I think people should come to stuff in a more ⁓ loving, meaningful, community-driven way and not in this individualist transactional thing. Lots of people end up not having their adult children care for them. Coco: I know, yeah. Yeah. Ashby: in when they become older for lots of different reasons because they can't afford it, because infrastructure is not there, or because they don't have a good relationship. I think the same is also true for when people used to say, you know, I used to hear people say like, well, if you don't get married, you'll die alone. Let me tell you something. Everybody dies alone. Ultimately, everyone dies alone. Okay. Coco: Ashby here to up- up- us all in the fourth quarter. Ashby: Well, same thing with our Lindy episode of like, everybody has this notion of what marriage is supposed to provide for them or what having kids is supposed to provide for them, but there are no guarantees. So what are you talking about? Getting married or having kids or having a faith, none of those things actually makes this future that you picture for yourself a reality. In a lot of ways, the future doesn't exist. We really only have right now and the choices that we make right now. Coco: Yeah. Mm-hmm. I know. Ashby: I don't want to hear that having a kid is a silver bullet. I don't want to hear that marriage is a silver bullet or that joining a church is a silver bullet. We really only have the problems we have now that we can all come together to fix now and that's it. That's it. Coco: I love, I mean, just I love your point about like it shouldn't be transactional. So I agree with your higher point. I agree with your more, your more ethical and beautiful point. And I will say on the more petty level has ⁓ Don Draper says, that's what the money is for. Like if you don't have a child, it costs like a million dollars or something at this point. like I'm just, and that's not everyone's case. Like some people are like, I'm not going to have a child because I'm an artist. And like the life of an artist is like, Ashby: No. That's what the money is for. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Coco: not going to give me any guarantees and like that's what I want my life to be like. like, so like there's, just mean there's multiple paths, but it is very funny when I hear that thing, like you're going to regret it later. I actually always think like, I actually feel like I, the only time I would regret it is like now, like I would, I feel, I mean, can only imagine what my future self can feel, but I'm like, I think I love the baby parts. I love the little kid parts. Like I know they're the hardest parts, but like that is where I'm like, ⁓ I, I would want that. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Coco: I am so look forward to having those relationships with those like teenagers in my life. But it's like, I don't think I'm gonna like long for like doing college tours. Like I just don't think I'm gonna or like kids sports. Like I'm like, I'm okay, I'm okay. Like, know. ⁓ Ashby: No. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I just want to add another thing on the ambivalence part. I feel bad because I know there are people that know for sure they want to have kids and they are willing to go to a lot of lengths for it, like fertility or adoption or surrogacy or things like that. ⁓ I'm ambivalent. I'm not really willing to go to those lengths, honestly. And I know that's crazy, but when people talk about regretting something, Coco: ⁓ huh. Huh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: I don't know how to put this, but people would say that, that's the worst thing in the world that could happen to you. I'll survive, regret, I'm fine. I'm good. ⁓ Regret is a part of life and I can embrace that. If my journey ends up having kids with it, kids in it, may regret that in its own way, but I'll also be fine. Coco: I know. Ashby: And like, if it doesn't have kids in it, I'm not, I've said, I'm probably not willing to go to a bunch of links for it. Then, you know, I might feel a little bit of disappointment, but I think I'll also be fine. And like, maybe that feels belittling to people to kind of be like, you know, how can you just be okay, you know, how can you just be okay with any outcome or something like that, that you, but I, I don't know. I'm not trying to, I'm, Coco: Uhhh Well, I don't think you're belittling anyone who does go to those lengths. I think it's reflection of a ⁓ certainty of what they want. And like, that's great. I think I want us to push this message of like, we have to be more OK with ambivalence. We have to be more OK with like life unfolding in ways that like doesn't fit a specific script. ⁓ In the Otherhood interview, one of the editors talks about that she went through like Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Coco: a bunch of rounds of IVF. And then she got pregnant and she lost that pregnancy. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. ⁓ and I've heard people say that like no one tells you when to stop trying even though it's horrible on your body and like because it's like once you make a choice you're supposed to like stick to that choice no matter what or something like that but new information can come to light such as no thank you this sucks or like I'm in debt this sucks you can choose that for yourself at any time. Yeah, yeah. Coco: Yep ⁓ Mm-hmm. And sh- And she describes basically being like, it didn't like occur to her originally that she could stop. And I think her wife says, you know, we can stop or something like that. And just feeling like a flood of relief. And like, then like envisioning her life in a different path and being like happy with that life. And you're like, I just, I don't know. Maybe we should keep this on our back pocket. I'm like this regret thing. It feels very American to me. I don't know how to pin it down, but something it's like, we're so rigid in certain things that it's like, Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. Coco: I, it's not just about this decision. It's about like a lot of areas of my life. Like I've never been like a person who's like, this is what I want to do for my career. It's just, well, like a lot of different things can be fine. Ashby: Right. I think it has to do with, like I said, an insistence that everyone is responsible for every element of their life and that you need to pilot it at all times and you need to constantly engineer it from behind the scenes or earn it in some way. We're not really so comfortable with just seeing what happens. That's not a life narrative we feel good about. We want people to be really committed. Coco: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashby: to one thing or another. It's a very like the individualist, the individualist idea, identity in America is basically the hero's journey. And so there's no, my story doesn't look like that. My story doesn't look like, you know, I always knew I wanted to be a high powered lawyer. So I went to law school and I journeyed and I did this and then I had this, okay. It doesn't look like that. There's not a great template for like, one day a little animated squirrel woke up. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: and then just sort of wandered around and saw what happened. Coco: I mean, I just don't know how like a little bit like beautiful and devastating style though. I'm like, we don't want to admit that like we could have a child and that child could die. Like we could die tomorrow. Like we are not guaranteed anything. And like if you live a little bit more comfortable with ambivalence and like with just like, it just gives you, I think it's kind of a gift. Like I think it kind of like, Ashby: Yeah. Mm-hmm. No. Yeah. Coco: does make me feel like all the timelines are okay and my responsibility is to be a good person. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Exactly. I think that's beautiful. And it really has to do with like a faith. I do have faith. have faith in my own. I have faith in my own resilience. I have faith that I have faith in my ability to reinvent myself. I have faith in, you know, my ability to rise to the challenge of dealing with a cranky toddler if I decide that I want to do that. But I also have faith in my ability to be like, you know, Coco: Bates! Gotta have baits. Yeah. Ashby: I'm just going to save and go on a vacation or spend my time, you know, helping other people in my life. I've total faith that I can be okay with all of those outcomes. And I think a lot of people, maybe, maybe they feel more fragile. Maybe they really think that they have to, ⁓ engineer their life from, from the beginning or else they'll be so immensely disappointed. But I think that really comes back to the like, everything that happens to you is your personal responsibility. Coco: Yeah. ⁓ huh. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Ashby: attitude that we have here. It's just so rigid. And we should get rid of that. should be more life is open ended. ⁓ People can, people are resilient and ⁓ people are smart. People can understand themselves and know what direction they want to head. Coco: Yeah. also shout out that I am lucky where I have friends who have chosen to be child free before me, while I was ambivalent, and I could talk to them openly about that conversation. they could acknowledge the grief parts and the benefit parts. And I'm just saying, whatever stereotypes we have about people who live empty, sad lives because they don't have kids, I have seen in my friends them be able to pursue their interests and to Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: like love art and to be invested in their job if that's the kind of person they are. it's like, just think like it tells me a lot about like what the stereotypes tell me a lot about like how much propaganda we need to have. Ashby: say that I have noticed that and I have noticed, I actually think the propaganda is flipped either way. Here's what I mean by that is that I think there's this reaction to the pro-natalist position that's like you said, ⁓ I can have this really cool, meaningful individual life because ⁓ I have space and flexibility for that because I'm not caring for kids. I can imagine that people who do have kids Coco: Mm-hmm. Hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. Ashby: kind of hear that as like, as like, ⁓ so you think it's just miserable in here? Yeah, there's things about it that suck, but there's things about it that are awesome. Like I can, I can see that there's a one way of talking about the cool childless person's life that, or child free person's life that can make people with kids feel like we're romanticizing that life. Okay. And that it isn't full of things like having to go to the fucking DMV and stuff like that. Like just like there's this. Okay. You know, it can be a way. And then I also see, you know, the opposite where I feel like people have to constantly denigrate the single life to try to make it sound like ⁓ the child free life, to make it sound like the child life is so good because we know there are so many things about having children that are difficult ⁓ that I think that side of the world is constantly like, ⁓ they must be so lonely and sad in there as a way to kind of Coco: ⁓ sure, mean, yeah. Ashby: prop up the like, isn't our life so wonderful and meaningful? I just think what one stereotype about each says about the other is flip flopped and like way too extreme. And there's almost certainly the nuances like right there in the middle, you know? Coco: Yeah. agree and I guess again, overly hyping Anne Helen Peterson, but what I love is that she creates spaces that are not people fighting it out on the Instagram comments about like what one person says versus what one side says versus what the other side says and like people actually can talk to each other and what comes across so often and is like people who have children being like, I actually like I'm struggling here and like I know I have child free friends, but like I don't like. Ashby: Yeah, yeah. Coco: I don't think they're going to want to hang out with my kids. And then the child free people in the comments can be like, actually, like, we don't even care if your house is messy. Like, just invite us over. We'll play with your kids. We're like, we're not like overplaying with the trucks. We can do it. Like we, you know, we have bandwidth to do that because we haven't done it for like the past four hours. Like, I think it's actually really great to be like these two people, these two sides, they're angry, but they want each other. Like for the most, for the most part. And I do have a tiny bit, a tiny bit more. Ashby: Mm. Mm-mm. ⁓ Mm-hmm. Yo, that's so true. Coco: empathy for the child-free people because it's not equal guys. It's not equal. ⁓ I don't think it's helpful to be like, I hate it when children are in restaurants. Like go fuck yourself. Kids have a right to be places. You know, you can be annoyed by it. But like, ⁓ I do feel like we have to also let people talk about what the experience is like and even like say like these are the things I like about that experience. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I know. I totally agree. So in summary, we just want everyone's choices to be supported, however they arrive at them, whatever that looks like. And then, you know, I like having bandwidth. I really do. And I also think it's okay to let people live their lives like temporally or in phases, like... Coco: Of course. Yeah. Ashby: Like right now I've had bandwidth, who knows what the future holds, but anything could happen in the future. You know, I could get hit by a bus and I really might the way I do things. do you know what I mean? But it's like, nobody really knows, you know, but there could be, I mean, I have really enjoyed being there for my friends. ⁓ You know, I was talking to one of my friends that has a kid about like a difficult situation she was in and she was like, ⁓ my gosh, thanks for like talking this out with me. I just, I needed to hear it from someone else. And I was like, Coco: Don't get hit by a bus. No, I agree. I agree. Yeah. Ashby: Well, yeah, because you're like caring for a toddler. Like I have, I have something called bandwidth. And so I love, I love being able to like provide that for you. And I can do that now. It may be in the future that I have a toddler and someone else has a teenager and they, we can like be there for each other. like, you know, we can meet people where they're at with each stage in their life and with whatever choices they've made. Coco: And then you need... Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I also said like, I'm grateful for my child for friends. I'm so grateful for my friends who have kids. Like it's been a freaking delight. Like, and they're really, they're really like not, they're not precious about it. They're like, come over. Like we're going to order takeout and like my daughter's going to drag you around the house. And I'm like, I can't wait. I cannot wait. Ashby: Me too, I love your friends that have kids. Mm-mm. Mm-hmm. I think parenthood, people who have kids, I think it can hold so much more duality than we've given it credit for. People can still be themselves. They can be whole people. Their kids are just a part of their life and people can be totally changed by the experience of having a kid. You can be both. You can be both. Just like a person without kids can be a totally fulfilled and complete individual. ⁓ Coco: Yes. Ashby: and that they'd be totally settled in that choice or a person can be kind of in the middle and they can be okay with any outcome. One of the things I was thinking about this was maybe the problem is just a language problem. I don't even know that I like the idea of saying child-free or childless because it centers the idea of the child as like, I mean, know that's the topic we're talking about, but why don't we have a word? It's like. Coco: I know, that's like the child adjacent essay is kind of wrestling with that. Yeah. Ashby: But it's sort of like, cares? Who cares about what your status is about whether why do we need to identify that? You know, it's sort of like how people have to wear wedding rings or whatever to show that they're married. Like, do people need to have some type of like identification system? Why do we need that? Why do we need that to like interact with someone ⁓ and know how to treat them? It seems like we shouldn't need that information if they want to bring it. It's interesting. But like we shouldn't need that for the person at the restaurant to know how to address me. Do know what I mean? Like, does it seem Coco: Yeah. I know, I know. Well, and that's maybe partially what I'm starting out with was like, I'm just a person living my life and it's it became a weird thing. Yeah. Ashby: Like, it seems like it shouldn't matter. I'm just a person living my life. Yeah, yeah. And so that's whole thing is I was thinking about it. Like maybe we just need a better all-encompassing word to be like, this person is a complete individual that doesn't center whether or not they've had kids. And then I realized, ⁓ it's because we have a word for people who opt in to have kids and those people are called parents. So we don't really need another word. We don't need another word. It's just, if you're a parent, you will identify as such. And if you're not, you're just, then you're, you're whatever you are. You're whatever you are. You're an artist or you're, you know, a dog mom or whatever your thing is. But like, we only really actually need to communicate when a person is a parent. And so yeah. ⁓ that's true. That's true. Now stay tuned everyone next, for the next episode when I let you know how. Coco: Then you're human. You're human. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I know. And let's be honest, it's not the same for dads, but fine. Ashby: how much I extorted the administration for for dads.gov. Coco: That's cannot wait. But before we go, I thought, let's, who can help us round this out? And I thought, let's, let's hang out with our, our child free, ⁓ Queen Mary Oliver. ⁓ you know, who was a, who was in a queer relationship, maybe during a different time. I don't know what the options were available, but like, I just thought I, a person who always is, helps you kind of get out of your head and back into the moment. ⁓ Ashby: Yes. ⁓ I love her. Coco: And so this is her poem called Don't Hesitate. Ashby: I think you should read this one. Coco: Okay. If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give into it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise and not very often kind, and much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. snaps. Ashby: Queen, absolute queen. Love her. Love her so much. And she's right. Joy is not made to be a crumb. that's true for everyone, no matter what choices they made. ⁓ We should support that. Coco: Yeah. All right. Well, my headphones have died and we've said a lot and I really appreciate you going on this journey with me. And we'll include a lot of more things in the sub stack. There were some things that didn't make it into the episode that are great. Ashby: Hmm? ⁓ And, and maybe we'll have a future conversation about like the, the experience of fence sitting just because we've been through that so much that I think we might actually have like some interesting resources and stuff to offer. So stay tuned. Okay. All right. Talk to you later. Bye dude. Coco: Woohoo! Yeah, that sounds great. All right. Bye, Ashki. Bye.