The Power of Child-Free Women with Ruby Warrington
February 6, 2024
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Today is an episode that has been a long time coming, and we are doing this episode in response to an email that we received from a pod-squadder that I’m going to read right now because I think it’s so beautiful. It’s a little bit long but it’s important.
Abby Wambach:
I believe you.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you. “Hi Glennon, Abby and Amanda. I’ve been thinking about writing this message for a while but listening to your episode with Gabriel Union served as the great old kick in the butt I needed to speak my own heart and vulnerable truth. I’m always terrified of speaking out in female-centered spaces about how isolating it can feel to be a woman who has chosen not to have children. I’m worried that I’ll offend someone or that I’ll hurt someone because they may be on their own journey towards parenthood that’s filled with devastating obstacles that are really fucking hard. But realizing that I don’t want that path has also been really fucking hard.
“Listening to Gabriel talk about the shame that came with knowing that she wasn’t doing this thing that everyone expected her do, damn, I felt that. But I felt it in a distinctly different way that ultimately convinced me that speaking this truth has value too. Being child free by choice has meant that I don’t feel shame because my body is broken or failing at this thing it’s supposed to do, instead I feel shame because I must be broken since I don’t even want it in the first place.
“Society has tangled the ideals of womanhood and motherhood so close together that I can’t find professional development spaces that talk about work-life balance when life doesn’t include children. I watch TV and movies that show a woman start the story saying she doesn’t want children and then she’s changed her mind by the end. Dr. Cristina Yang being the one badass exception that I know of.”
Abby Wambach:
Grey’s Anatomy.
Glennon Doyle:
God, we love a Grey’s shout-out. “Strangers have told me that I’ll never know real love. My in-laws think I hate children and my mother tells me that I shouldn’t talk about not wanting children because that might make people who do have children feel bad about their choice. When I approached my doctor to tell her I wanted to get my tubes tied, I had to spend over 30 minutes defending this choice before she was willing to do it. And I’m confident that she only relented because I assured her that if I changed my mind, I won’t, I would always have adopting anyway. The world doesn’t trust that I know my truth about not wanting kids.
“I guess the main reason I’m writing is on the off chance that there’s someone else out there like me who feels like you aren’t allowed to speak up about what it means to be a woman who doesn’t want children and what it means to connect with your femininity without the part that most everyone else talks about. It wasn’t until after getting my tubes tied that I felt like my body fit me, that I felt like I could be proud of this body. And it wasn’t until after I felt like this female body fit me that I was able to face my binge-eating disorder head on. It wasn’t until after my surgery that I could begin to take the steps to better manage my depression.
“This choice isn’t right for everyone but I think sometimes it’s nice to hear this choice validated by others. In this week’s episode I noticed that a few times Abby mentioned that some women don’t have children by choice. It meant the world to me because it’s rare that you hear anyone say that. So thank you for validating my space in this world. And if there’s ever the right time or the right topic, it would be lovely to hear from others who have journeyed through life as a woman electing not to have children. With love, and apologies for the long message, Liz.”
This episode is for Liz.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Today we have Ruby Warrington. Of course we do, after that email. Ruby Warrington is a British-born author, editor, podcaster and the founder of Numinous Books. She is the author of Women Without Kids: The Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood. Ruby has the unique ability to identify issues that are destined to become part of the cultural narrative. That is true. Her previous books include Material Girl, Mystical World; Sober Curious. Y’all, Ruby Warrington coined the phrase sober curious.
Abby Wambach:
Yes, she did.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so freaking crazy.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I felt like we were born with that word. We were not. And the Sober Curious Reset and her work has been featured in global outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and Good Morning America. She lives in Miami. Ruby, thank you for waiting through that long introduction and thank you for all of your work in the world. We’re so grateful that you’re here.
Ruby Warrington:
I am so grateful to be here and to have this space to speak on behalf of all of the women out there like Liz. I think you read it, the subtitle for my book, Women Without Kids, is The Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood. And that feeling, that sensation of there being an unsung sisterhood of women who don’t have children, whether it’s by choice or by circumstance, was one of the motivating factors behind me wanting to write this book, as somebody like Liz who always knew that motherhood was not the path for me. I had always felt like I’m the only one. I am an anomaly, there must be something wrong with me. Women are biologically wired to not only procreate but to desire to procreate. This is what I was raised to believe, as all girl children are.
And so it was only really when I sort of reached my early 40s and honestly began looking ahead to menopause and contemplating what the end of my reproductive years might look like for me, and realizing in that moment, I have no regrets. There is no panic button being pressed in my uterus going, “It’s now or never, you’ve got to do this thing.” That this piece around, this has always been the right path for me, descended. And I realized, again, looking around at the other women in my life, wait a minute. I know so many women without kids. Where have you been, where have the spaces for us to talk about this path, where have the spaces for us to valorize each other, to discuss what it means to live without children, what it might mean for us in our elder years, where are those spaces? Those spaces do not exist.
Amanda Doyle:
This episode is decidedly for the Liz’s and the Ruby’s of the world, for sure. And I also think it would be a mistake to not mention that it feels… You talk about the motherhood spectrum in your book, and I would love to talk about that because it feels very similar to the gender spectrum or the sexuality spectrum where we understand that not just for the benefit of those that are far left and far right on that spectrum. Understanding that spectrum liberates every single person on it.
I have two biological children, and reading your book felt liberating and validating to me to find myself on that spectrum also, because it’s like, if you don’t have biological children, you’re on one side of the binary; if you do, you’re on the other. And if you do, all of these things are expected of you. And if you are not a woman who wants to play with your kid for 1900 hours with LEGOs on the floor, then you’re not a real mother either. So I just want to introduce this whole thing as liberating and validating to everyone wherever you are, that this framework is also for you.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Talk to us about that, about the difference between what we have now as a mommy binary and you are suggesting that motherhood is more of a spectrum than a binary. Just speak to us in that language, because we as queer women feel strongly about that framing.
Ruby Warrington:
Well, it’s really interesting, the last episode of the show that I listened to was with Angela Chen who was speaking about asexuality, and so much of what she was talking about in terms of this spectrum around even something as seemingly niche as asexuality really dovetails with how I talk about the motherhood spectrum. And again, Amanda, I’m so happy that you shared that the book resonated with you. I really wanted to include mothers who, and I’m just going to say it, sometimes maybe wish they didn’t have kids in this conversation too. Because that, I think, is almost one of the biggest taboos of all. The idea that somebody who is a mother could express on any level. And you know, “Sometimes this kind of sucks and sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I didn’t pursue this.” I mean, talk about verboten.
The book is for anyone who identifies as a woman without kids, including women who are mothers who want to stay connected to the women that they are without their kids.
Abby Wambach:
Yes!
Ruby Warrington:
And so the motherhood spectrum actually came out of my work with my last book, Sober Curious, which is about presenting a much less black and white approach to problem drinking. I kind of present in Sober Curious that all drinking can be problem drinking, drinking comes with some very problematic side effects, regardless of the level at which you’re drinking. And it was giving people permission who didn’t identify as alcoholics the permission to question, is this really serving me? You know?
And so that was where I had done a lot of this work before and I kind of then started just applying that mindset to this idea of mothering. People of all genders are indoctrinated with the idea that womanhood is synonymous with motherhood, This is our biological imperative. Whereas, through the lens of the motherhood spectrum, I say or suggest, because it’s an idea, right? It’s an idea. That any one individual, regardless of their gender, their desire and aptitude and experience of parenthood will exist on a spectrum that is dependent on multiple external and internal factors. Everything from a person’s basic personality to the family and the culture that they were raised in, to the religious beliefs that they were brought up on, to their financial status, to their relationship status, to their ambitions and career goals, to their creative aptitude, et cetera, et cetera.
All of these factors are of course going to influence how a person feels about taking on the indelible, lifelong role of parenting, and the responsibility of bringing a whole new human being into the world who you will be responsible for on some level for the rest of your life. A role, by the way, which given the level of gender disparity that still exists in the realm of child rearing, is going to impact every single aspect of a woman’s life, and still women are told, “But this is just what you do.” Oh, and also they’re told, “Nobody ever feels ready for it.” And also they’re told, “You’ll regret it if you don’t do it.” And also we’re told, “It’ll just come naturally to you.”
To me, when I stood back and kind of looked at it through this spectrum lens, all of that just seemed very… well, minimizing of women’s true experiences, desires, capacities, et cetera, at the very least, let’s say. So I give people permission to really investigate where am I orienting on this spectrum at this stage in my life? Because within that comes the permission to, “Well, I might if I met someone I really wanted, I could really see that happening with, then I might change my mind.” And that’s okay.
Yeah, presenting the spectrum right upfront, I wanted it to just be really permission giving for people to really pursue whatever path is right for them, by first and foremost gathering whatever information they might need to really assess what is the right thing, what is right for me in this life, at this time in this life.
Glennon Doyle:
Can we talk about, just to make all the Liz’s, I just want to give them a moment of recognition, can we just talk about all of the shit… I over-index in women, out of my closest seven women, four of them are women without children. So I hear all the things that people say to them or what culture suggests to them that are hilarious. For example, one of my best friends, Liz Gilbert, is always being told that she’ll never have a fulfilled life, she’ll never know love. If you saw this woman’s life, I cannot. She’ll send me texts that are like, “Oh, I’m still waiting for joy.” And she’s, like, on a boat in the… It’s just-
Ruby Warrington:
Still waiting to find my purpose over here.
Glennon Doyle:
You just feel for her, she can’t find her fucking purpose without a toddler.
Ruby Warrington:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
So, can you just talk to us about all of the bullshit that people say, starting with you’ll die alone, as if any of us really just die collectively, it’s just nobody, we’re all going to fucking die alone, right? So can you talk to us about all of the things-
Abby Wambach:
Remember, we went to Chelsea Handler’s show the other night and she goes, “For fuck’s sake, I hope I die alone. I don’t want a trove of people around me.”
Glennon Doyle:
Or like, it’s selfish, it’s unnatural, nobody wanted you. What are all of these things that people assume about women without children?
Ruby Warrington:
Yeah, you’ve touched on lots of them there, but yes, this idea that women without kids, especially women who have chosen not to have children, and I think we can probably get a bit into the difference between choice and circumstances, but where does a choice end and where do circumstances begin? Statistically the largest cohort of women who do not have children are defined as childless by circumstance. Meaning had they met a different life partner, had they been in a different place in their career in time, had various different different circumstances aligned they may well have had children. It wasn’t as cut and dried as the choice that people like Liz and I have made, which is just an affirmative no, pretty much out the gate.
Particularly women for whom it is an affirmative no, this is not for me, we are seen as selfish, career obsessed, narcissistic, uncaring, unfeeling, unloving, potentially defective in some way, damaged, whether it be emotionally or otherwise. I touched on this and Liz touched on it in her letter as well, this idea of just this underlying feeling of if this is my truth there must be something wrong with me. And all of those projections really, truly led me to believe that perhaps there’s something biologically wrong with me, hormonally, I’m just not wired right.
Which is a kind of heavy truth or heavy belief to carry around about oneself. And it’s actually given me a huge amount of empathy for queer people who have been told there is something wrong with you for feeling the way you do or for living in the body that you do or experiencing your body in the way that you do, you know? And so yeah, then some of the very unfeeling, sometimes well meaning, but very thoughtless comments are things like, have you really thought about this? I mean, honestly when I speak to most women without kids it’s one of the things that we have thought about incessantly since we started getting our period. Yes, you can rest assured we’ve thought about this deeply.
Have you really thought about this, the implication being you’re ignorant or deluded or you don’t know yourself or something. Who will look after you when you’re old? That’s one of the biggest ones and one that still holds a lot of fear for me, actually, that question, who will be there for me? Maybe not while I’m actually leaving this mortal coil but who will be there in those elder years? Which I think is a question that we need to look at on a societal level because actually kinless elders is one of the fastest growing demographics in the United States, and for as long as the birthrate continues to decline there will continue to be more and more elders who do not have the conveniently placed biological kin to just kind of pick up the caregiving needs as needed.
But one of the biggest ones as well is you will regret this. Maybe not now but at some point in your life you will regret not doing this thing. And there’s an incredible sociologist called Orna Donath. She has a really, truly revolutionary book called Regretting Motherhood, which reports on the findings of a study that she conducted among women who actively wanted to talk about the fact that they did regret to having had children. And she describes that comment, you will regret this, as a politicized use of emotion in that it is incredibly manipulative and coercive and ultimately, whether it is meant or intentioned in a well-meaning way, ultimately it is designed to get whoever is the recipient of that message back with the procreative program.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. And this is not to even speak to the, again, the cohort who are childless not by choice who have experienced fertility issues and who are still walking this path, I think just there’s a lot of sympathy but not so much empathy? And that sympathy can be, I think quite pitying as well. So even interwoven with that is just this sense of, I have failed, again there is something wrong with me, my body failed me, I’m not going to be able to fulfill this role or live up to people’s expectations. So again, a different shade of shame but still very much there.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I bet there’s some like, Don’t Cry for Me Argentina energy in that. I just feel like, for me, suddenly when I’m listening to you and I read your whole book and I listened to all the things, I get what you’re doing. I was thinking of you as a thought leader and that is the truth, but I’m also feeling deeply in this moment grateful for you as a community leader because when I think about the parallels between what you’re doing with motherhood and what we have experienced with sexuality, being queer is also a bunch of people telling you that you’re unnatural and that you’re broken and that you’re doing it wrong. And it’s secretly believing, no, no, no, Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, my life’s better than your life, secretly believing that. I’m like, I’m nailing it, you just don’t get it because you’re only reading the menu that somebody gave you, but when you go off menu is where all the good stuff is.
So what I’m saying is, I don’t know that I would have found the peace and power that I have if there wasn’t a queer community saying, “Oh, no, no, we know what you’re hearing, we’ve got you, we know you’ve thought it through, we know you’re not unnatural, we know that you’re living your best life.” And that’s what mothers who are child free by choice are not, need, is a place to fall and that is like, “Oh, no, no, we’ve got you. We know they don’t get it.”
Amanda Doyle:
And it comes from a bigger place because you write about… the same people who say, “Are you going to regret that?” It’s obnoxious and they shouldn’t, and it is very possible that it is coming from a very real place of concern because we are all swimming in the same sea that you point out, we have tethered our search for meaning and fulfillment to our capacity to have children.
And so that area has been monopolized, as you say purpose, family, love, legacy has been monopolized by this role of mother. And so when we are saying, “Are you sure?” We are revealing ourselves as saying, “Are you sure that you don’t want to have purpose and family and love and legacy?” And so the work that you’re doing to decouple those and say, “No, all of these things are possible, look wider,” that is liberating to all of us to do that. So what is the liberatory work that you see in helping to unshackle those things together for people who choose to not be mothers, people who involuntarily are not mothers, and people who are mothers who really need to be unshackled from that as well?
Ruby Warrington:
Right. There’s one thing I just want to say that pinged for me while you were speaking before, Glennon, I actually think that… and it’s something that’s kind of come up for me more and more since the book came out and I’ve been having conversations about it, I actually think that this idea that womanhood is synonymous with motherhood is, on some levels, homophobic because it is saying that only engaging with our sexuality as women for the purpose of procreation is valid. All non-procreative sex is invalid, right? Which immediately wipes out all same-sex relationships, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s something that’s really kind of landed for me as well. So a little aside there, but I think quite interesting. So a little aside there, but I think quite interesting.
In terms of the liberation work, I mean goodness, I actually think that… it sort of seems obvious but actually it’s not because we haven’t spoken about it in this way. The work of decoupling womanhood from motherhood specifically has really been at the heart of the women’s liberation movement. It is at the center of empowering or enabling or creating societies that make space for women to, at the very least, get an education and be financially independent. Like, that’s kind of what it comes down to. But guess what? Getting an education and being financially independent is going to take a huge amount of time, energy, and resource that might otherwise have been put into having children.
And it’s not like haven’t been picking apart the myth of having it all and who having it all is actually available to and who not, and what tends to fall through the cracks when we try and do it all. So I think liberating women from the idea that you have to… Well, yes, you can get an education and you can have a career and you can be financially independent, but you must also be a mother is a huge piece of it because so many women find themselves completely burnt out and also are unable to enjoy their mothering when they’re also feeling the pressure to, “Well, I must also have a career and I must also be earning the same as my partner. I have a partner,” et cetera, et cetera. So that, I think, is a hugely liberatory piece of this conversation, you know?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I’m just sitting here listening to you all and everything you’re saying and I just keep asking myself, why are we like this? You know?
Glennon Doyle:
Why are we like this?
Abby Wambach:
And it is a really, very smart way for the religious institutions and the nations of our world to have as many people as they possibly can for taxpayer dollars and for money in the churches and mosques and temples of the world.
Ruby Warrington:
And not to mention consumers.
Abby Wambach:
Exactly.
Ruby Warrington:
The more people, the more consumers. I mean, yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. But it’s also such a patriarchal tool to convince women that sex is only for procreation. For a million reasons. Because inherent in that is the shaming of women for sex being about just fucking feeling good. Like, that’s shaming for pleasure, right? I mean, Ruby, when you wrote, you were citing somebody and you said that the idea that a human’s sex drive is not just about procreation is so easy to debunk, because you said if you were born on a desert island you would eat and drink and masturbate but you would not obsess about wanting children. Right? It’s not inherent. You’d want to climax, you’d figure that out pretty early, but you wouldn’t be registering at Babies R Us. That’s something else. That’s programmed into us. It’s patriarchal.
Ruby Warrington:
Yeah. I was speaking to an evolutionary biologist named Gillian Ragsdale who was debunking the idea that there is a maternal urge. This was one of the things that always made me question, there’s got to be something wrong with me. This concept of baby fever, of just at a certain age something kicks in and people would describe it as a feeling, a yearning, a hunger, something that, I don’t know, it sounded physical the way they were describing it, and it was just this desire to, I’ve got to have a child. “When I walked past strollers, my ovaries start pulsing.”
And I’m like, I have never felt that. I’ve never felt that, what’s going on. And Gillian Ragsdale was sort of essentially saying that this is, yeah, socially programmed conditioning that is very much tied to what you were just touching on, Amanda, which is around like, in order for me to be accepted, to belong, to be a valid, upstanding member of society, then I must become a mother.
So Gillian was kind of saying that actually, from a biological perspective, all human beings need is a sex drive. They just need to be having enough sex, enough procreative sex, and eventually more babies will come along. And at that point, when there are infants in the mix, then there is a biological instinct to care for and protect those small, defenseless human beings, but the desire to actually engage with sex in order to have a child, to procreate, it’s not essential for our survival and evolution as a species, is what she was saying. Which to me felt incredibly revolutionary. I mean, I’d never heard someone express that before, but it makes so much sense.
Amanda Doyle:
It sure does.
Ruby Warrington:
And yes, Abby, you were talking about where does patriarchy originate? Well, in these organized religions, which deify one male god figure who doles out the rules about how we live and what is morally right and wrong, and these religions took over from earth-based religions that were much more feminine, much more cyclical, much more humane in many ways. And so yes, written into so many religious doctrines is be fruitful and multiply. Which viewed from the perspective of, well, so many things that we’re seeing unfolding in the world, it’s tribalism. It’s saying, we need more of us so that we can dominate them.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. We need more of us so we can dominate them. Go forth and multiply. It just means make more soldiers.
Ruby Warrington:
Be fruitful and multiply.
Amanda Doyle:
Make more soldiers for us.
Ruby Warrington:
Make more of us. Make more people like us.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. Let’s all be quiverfull so we can beat the other people.
Ruby Warrington:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
And it’s not to say that these decisions, because it is possible to both very much want children or very much not want children, and be able to look at the structures and the society we live in in an intellectually honest way. So if you’re sitting there and you love your kid and you don’t think it’s because God or the president told you to have it, great. That’s awesome. We believe you. But it does seem to follow, like if A then B, if B then C, that we have fallen into this trap if women’s biological imperative is to have children, we let that immediately go okay, women to biological imperative to have children.
Then we immediately go from B to C, which is having the children means C, taking on this whole host of rules. So whereas having a baby is not a political decision, much like wanting to fall in love and have a long-term monogamous relationship is not a political decision. And yet, when you enter the institution of motherhood or the institution of marriage, you are undoubtedly entering into a very real social political structure that is defined by these written/unwritten rules. Which we saw it just this time, like 40 years of mothers in the workplace advances erased in nine months by the pandemic. Why? Because if A then B then C. If you are a mother, you’re having the baby. If you’re having the baby, your ass is home, homeschooling them for this year because we have jumped that math so easily that that is the structure that we’re in. And that’s how all of this happens.
I think it’s important to say, what we can do is detribalize that situation, like I will tell you, I am on one side of the spectrum, the motherhood spectrum. I am for sure in me on the mommy side. It is clear, it’s what I wanted, even on the days that I’m ripping out my hair. I also, what I find so interesting is when somebody is on another side of the spectrum, being angry at that person or having to defend. Like, I can be on one side of the mom spectrum and respect the hell and love the person at the other side of the spectrum. I don’t feel like I need to defend my…
Abby Wambach:
Straight people don’t threaten you? You don’t feel threatened by straight people?
Amanda Doyle:
No, I mean I feel like maybe they want some more information, but do you know what I mean, Ruby? It is amazing to me, if a friend talks about her reasons not to have a child, people get upset who have children.
Ruby Warrington:
Some.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, some people. A lot of them.
Ruby Warrington:
Yeah. A lot of them.
Amanda Doyle:
So what do you…
Ruby Warrington:
Yeah, why?
Amanda Doyle:
Why does it feel so threatening? Is it because we’ve built our entire worldview on this one thing and it feels like people are taking a Jenga piece out if they question it?
Ruby Warrington:
I also just want to iterate, having a strong desire to have children, craving to be a parent, wanting to have children, even if that is a social construct doesn’t mean that it’s not very, very real for you, the person who’s experiencing that. So it’s not like anybody’s been duped into thinking they want children, no. To have that desire, depending where you are on the motherhood spectrum, is very real for the people who feel that. So I’m not trying to say that everyone’s been hoodwinked into having kids, right? Because obviously, huge swathes of the population find deep purpose and fulfillment in parenthood and could not imagine life without that dimension.
But the piece about people who are very… I mean think first and foremost, we just… And this is one of our human traits in a way, we do have a deep fear of the other, or anything that has been presented as the other. And so fear can come out as attacks, obviously, and defensiveness of choices that are in alignment with what the in-group is telling us we should do, in the sense of like we don’t want to be seen as one of the others, so the more strongly we align with the in-group then the safer we are.
And I also do think that sometimes, and this is me… I do think that sometimes when those attacks are very vicious or shaming, they could potentially reflect resentment, a feeling of being disenfranchised in the role of mother, a feeling of maybe even regretting having had children, feelings of envy about the freedom that the childless person is. But those feelings being so disallowed, that even the person who’s experiencing those feelings is probably not fully conscious of them. So it comes out as, well look at you you selfish bitch, look at you, you irresponsible, immature human being. You know?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
It’s like they’re protecting their own sense of motherhood. They’re like, how dare you offend me and my choice?
Ruby Warrington:
And God forbid that I have any desire to live my life more like that, God forbid because that would make me a terrible mother and a terrible human.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. And if you’re suffering and you feel like all you’ve got is that you did the right thing, then all you can do when someone shows up not suffering, all you can do to justify your own suffering is to say, “Yeah, but I’m going to win at the end.” Because you look like you’re winning right now.
Ruby Warrington:
Exactly.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, yeah, in the end I won’t be alone.
Ruby Warrington:
But time will come.
Amanda Doyle:
Time will come.
Glennon Doyle:
I will get my eternal reward!
Amanda Doyle:
You will meet your maker one day.
Abby Wambach:
I want to just say just something really quick, because I do think that there are a lot of queer women who listen to this podcast, a lot of older queer women, who back in the day when they were in quotes, “childbearing years”, there wasn’t as much access to medical gestational surrogacy, IVF for queer women, older women now who may have wanted to have children. And I fall in a category, I don’t have biological children of my own, and we have three children together.
And I just want to shout out to all the queer folks who have organized their family structures in different ways, and some of those women who may have wanted children and chose not to because the world wasn’t set up for them in a way that they could feel confident going into getting IVF or whatnot. There’s just so many people on this motherhood spectrum that I want to specifically shout out to those women. I see you and I know in some ways how that might have felt and we’re here.
Ruby Warrington:
Yeah. Thank you. Because in the introduction, I specifically shout out this book is also for anybody whose sexually or gender expression has written them out of the heteronormative idea of what it means to start a family.
Abby Wambach:
Beautiful.
Ruby Warrington:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
It feels like when I go out to eat with Abby sometimes, and I get the menu and I look at the menu, and I’m like here are my options. So I order something from the menu. And then Abby does some shit where she’s like, “Actually, can you do that but add that, and then can you take away that?” And it’s like not there, it wasn’t there, but then she gets her shit and it’s so much better and it annoys me because I thought were just supposed to stay on the menu. I feel like that’s how women feel, which I understand. That’s how women feel when somebody else goes off the menu and they have this delicious life/meal in front of them. And now it’s too late for me because I already ordered. So all I can think of to do is say, “You didn’t follow the rules.”
Abby Wambach:
What she says is, “Can I have yours?”
Amanda Doyle:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
Ruby, that’s what I love about your work. It’s like, no, no, no, it’s this idea that the world does give us a menu, whether it’s about sexually, gender, motherhood, whatever. But there’s specific reasons why the choices are there, and they’re not because they serve the orderer. They’re because they serve the order of things.
Ruby Warrington:
It’s most convenient for the kitchen. The kitchen can maximize profits a lot of the time by offering these set dishes.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, exactly.
Ruby Warrington:
Yes. Exactly. But I think that these off-menu options have only been available to women, and I’m speaking very, very broadly here because there are so many women who whom this is not still available and there are so many people for whom this was not available. Speaking very generally, these off-menu options have only been available to women in a kind of mainstream sense, in the west at least, only like 50 years, realistically, since the advent of reliable, effective birth control, legal abortion, changing attitudes about women’s roles in society. It’s still incredibly new. If we’re thinking about the original menu having been written really at the beginning of our modern civilization.
So I think this is why, another reason there’s still so much tension around this. It’s really only Gen X women, like our generation of women, we’re the very first generation to have been raised from birth, from babyhood, from girlhood with the message, “You can do, be, have whatever you want in your life.” And here I am, I’ve lived that, I have lived that. Thank you, thank you for mothers, for enabling me to have these choices. And yet when I make those choices I am demonized still. You know? And that just felt like no, no, no, we need to stop doing that, we need to recognize that we have fought very hard for women to have these choices and make it okay for us to make those choices.
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s talk about all the reasons, because first of all there shouldn’t be a need to suggest reasons at all, but it’s cool and fun to think about all the different reasons that people might not want to have kids, which is helpful when you think about the reasons we’re given is you hate children, you’re witches, you are broken.
Abby Wambach:
So other than those reasons, Ruby. Obviously.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Ruby Warrington:
Other than those, right.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, you did write this is all tied with witches, like not witches actual Wiccan witches, I’m talking about witch hunt. Like a witch being a woman in total control of herself.
Ruby Warrington:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
So talk to us about reasons, one being Ruby, you say in your book, it just isn’t… it’s like me being queer or like you being a mother feels as fundamentally part of yourself as your skin does.
Ruby Warrington:
There’s a chapter called Sexual Evolution where I really get into the whole piece about female sexually and how tied female sexually especially has been to procreation. And it was the hardest chapter to write and I was editing it right up until I literally had to press go, like yes, okay, you can take it now, put the book out, fine, done, but also not quite done.
And there’s a term I found myself using in interviews after the book came out, which is areproductive, which is why I was fascinated by your interview on asexuality, because to me it just sort of came out. I was like, I would say I’m just areproductive, like asexual. There’s just no desire to reproduce, like there’s no desire for me to engage with my sexually in a reproductive capacity.
And I liked that language because it just, to me, and I’m not saying that anybody else has to relate to that, by the way. For me it works because it just takes away the emotional charge of like, childless or child free. It’s more like, no, this is just how I’m made. This is how I’m made. So there’s that, which is fundamentally, it’s just a part of who I am. And I think that honestly probably does apply to a fairly small percentage of society, although I don’t know. Again, time will tell I think as the decades roll by and we see what attitudes are like among younger generations who continue to have fewer and fewer children.
And then there are, yes, wanting to prioritize my career and to pursue a creative career. I can take a risk on not having a day job, you know? I didn’t start a 401k until last year and I’m 47. And I’ve been able to take that risk because I haven’t had any other dependents, I’ve only really had to worry about me you know? Selfish bitch.
Glennon Doyle:
Amazing.
Ruby Warrington:
So wanting to pursue a creative career, also another thing that’s personal to me that a lot of other people have reflected back, “Yeah that’s me too,” I’m very introverted as in I need a lot of time on my own. I’m a very sensitive person and I absorb a lot from my environment and my surroundings, and for me having a lot of total solitude, alone time, quiet time, is incredibly important to my mental and emotional wellbeing. I mean, yeah, having kids reduces one’s capacity for solitude and alone time. I just think I’ve always known that about myself.
These are, they’re very personal reasons to me, but I’m sort of giving everyone an invitation to sort of, well what would your reasons be? You know? Then there are some potentially more painful reasons, my parents separated when I was one, my dad never lived with us, and I think I had an intuition that having a child puts incredible strain on a relationship. When I met my husband who I’ve been with for 25 years, I was 22. He was such a stabilizing force in my life at that time, and I knew I wanted to be with him forever, and I think I’ve just always not trusted that bringing a child into our relationship wouldn’t fundamentally alter the dynamic between us and put our relationship at risk. So I’ve chosen to prioritize my relationship and my connection with him. That’s another reason that’s personal to me.
Something I had honestly never seen discussed was how a person’s experience of being mothered impacts their feelings about becoming a mother. And so I do talk at length in the book about my relationship with my mum and the dynamic between us, but I also did a research sort of interview questionnaire, and I had about 200 people reply to that and so many, like a large percentage of women who replied to that expressed that a challenging relationship in some way with their mother had made them question, do I want to recreate that relationship with another human being in my life?
So these are more painful reasons, which again are never completely brushed under the carpet, never even considered actually. And then of course there are bigger societal issues as well, especially in the United States. No free healthcare, no free childcare, no paid paternity leave. Like, these sorts of issues of course are going to impact people’s very practical decision making around do I have the capacity to take on this role, you know?
Glennon Doyle:
I loved that. It was so brave and beautiful the way you talk about that some people just decide to stop the family emotional inheritance. I think you described it as sometimes the family has suffered too much to carry on another generation and that there is a way of like, to engage in the work of healing trauma without getting another generation involved is so valorous. I just thought that was so brave and beautiful to talk about. So a decision can be to stop the family emotional inheritance but then also to consider stopping the collective emotional inheritance. We don’t take care of mothers and families, right?
Ruby Warrington:
We do not.
Glennon Doyle:
Patriarchic al parenting and families are horseshit. And women and children have suffered. So in one way, there is a decision making that is about stopping suffering.
Ruby Warrington:
Right. And I think I’d always been very aware of this. You know, not having children means something is ending with me. And that kind of sounds sad and lonely and very final, but I was like what if we flip that and we consider what might be ending with me, what I might have the opportunity by not bringing another generation of my family lineage into the world, what might I have an opportunity to focus, instead of focusing my nurturing energies on that human being, what if I refocused those energies on myself and decided that I was going to dedicate my life to healing whatever emotional traumas I might have inherited, healing whatever dysfunctional patterning might have been handed down to me and my family, and in some way using that healing to benefit the lives of others. Which sounds a little bit kind of high-minded and worthy, but why the hell not? Why the hell not?
Glennon Doyle:
No, it doesn’t.
Ruby Warrington:
You know? And then I think yes, when we see, so the other piece when I first started thinking about this subject, my background is in journalism and so I immediately have this tendency to kind of zoom out and just look at the lay of the land. And I noticed very quickly that the birth rate, meaning the number of children that individual women are having is decreasing rapidly in every single country around the world. Even countries where the population is still growing, women are having far fewer children individually.
And I was like, something very interesting is happening here in terms of the evolution of womankind. What are we seeing here? And I sort of posit, just as a more sort of idea, like an intellectual idea, what if we are, on some level, enacting a… No, no more. Unless working conditions for mothers are improved, we are saying no to this. Which, yeah, there is a fantastic book by a feminist organizer called Jenny Brown specifically called Birth Strike where she she kind of gets into that idea of like, this is what we’re witnessing is a birth strike.
And that again, we haven’t really touched on the climate piece, but there is a cohort particularly among Gen Zs and younger millennials who I describe as childless by climate change, people are just incredibly worried, torn up about what it means to bring a child onto a planet that is dying, that we’re being told is dying, and that politicians and corporations seem to have very, very little interest in really addressing in a meaningful way.
Glennon Doyle:
It makes you really wonder if the question is even wrong. Okay, so why don’t you want kids? You suggest the question should be what are the potential life paths I could pursue. So like, the question for men, and I think we should go beyond even what they’re… for men, like I’m not trying to create a binary there, but for boys and men it is not do you want kids or not. That’s not the main defining question posed to you in your life. It’s more like, what are the potential life paths I could pursue? And even when you say that you’ve always had an affirmative no, which I love that concept of an affirmative no, it’s not just like I’m like oh, depressedly opting out. It’s like yay to my no, yay.
Ruby Warrington:
Yay no.
Glennon Doyle:
Yay no.
Amanda Doyle:
Hell yes to the no.
Glennon Doyle:
Hell no.
Ruby Warrington:
Exactly. Hell no.
Glennon Doyle:
But I also even feel like that on some level is unfair. It’s like, let’s get to the point where some people are opting in and they can explain to us why. But with the climate, the actual climate, and then the climate for women and families in this country, maybe we should all be explaining ourselves for why we’re opting in, not why we’re opting out.
Ruby Warrington:
I interviewed a guy called Carter Dillard, he has an organization called the Fair Start Foundation and he’s all about getting people to ask that question, what needs to be in place in order for me to ensure the fair start in life, you know? As things currently stand, there’s such deep inequity obviously globally. I mean, still probably the vast majority are children being born are not being given a fair start. He’s a human rights lawyer but one of his core tenants is encouraging people to have smaller families and to really consider investing more in the children that exist before we pressure or think about bringing more people, as many people as possible into the mix.
And I mean, this work goes directly against demographers and captains of industry on the other side who are talking very sort of scaremongering rhetoric about the dangers of population collapse and the dangers of aging societies, et cetera, et cetera. On a personal level, one of my favorite conversations as research for this book was with one of my best friends who underwent I think three or four pretty traumatic rounds of IVF to have her twins. And because we don’t ask that question, I had never thought to ask it, but we are close enough that I could say to her, “Why did you do… Why? Please explain to me why you put yourself through that.” You know?
Because watching as her friend I was obviously incredibly supportive of her and incredibly thrilled for her when she was able to have her babies, but still I couldn’t understand why, how she could go through that. And hearing her talk about and her reasons for so desperately wanting to have a family, helped me get even more clarity about my reasons for not wanting a family and just kind of, I don’t know, it created space for both of us to have our reasons, to have pursued the paths that we have and to respect each other’s choices, and there is so much misunderstanding actually on both sides, I think, if we’re talking about sides, if we’re talking about a binary… Across the spectrum, let’s say.
And I think these are actually questions that are really at the heart of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a human. You know? At one of the launch events for the book, a woman raised her hand at the very end and she said, “You know, I’m so happy to be here.” She’s like, “I realized this is something I think about every day of my life and I never talk about it.” And she’s like, “Because I didn’t realize I needed to or I could.”
And yet, these conversations, this question, should I have a child or not, is really at the heart of a human’s life and will determine the trajectory of that life going forward. So not to be entered into lightly, and in fact at this juncture in our human story, I think more important than ever to be really conscious about the humans we’re bringing through and why and what resources they’re going to have and how we’re going to really ensure that they have the best start and the best life possible.
Glennon Doyle:
Beautiful.
Amanda Doyle:
That conversation with your dear friend who had her twins by IVF was so beautiful to me because what I recall about that is one of the things she said is that, “I have so much overflowing love that I have always known that I wanted to pour that into a child.” And your reflection after that was so beautiful because you talked about oh, that overflowing love that she has that she has decided and always knew was to be directed for a child, I have that for my ideas. This overflowing love that I have for that. And I just wonder what kind of world we would live in if the question to every child that we see is not, “How many kids do you want to have? Or what are you going to be when you grow up? Or what’s your job going to be?” But was, “What are you going to pour your love into in this life.”
And if it was wide, like lots of people would have babies and lots of people would pour their love into books and service and making art. But that would assume that all choices are valid and noble and natural to pour your love into.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
So good.
Ruby Warrington:
And also that we need as humans multiple expressions of our creativity and our love and our generativity, and it’s yeah, like reflecting on that conversation with her, I’ve always felt like oh god, I’m one of those lucky weirdos who just feels completely fulfilled by my career and by my work. And I do consider myself incredibly fortunate to have been able to pursue a career and to actually make a living from it doing something that I feel so passionate about. And as I already touched on, the reason I’ve been able to pursue this is partly because I don’t have a child.
And I do think that more women leaders in business, in politics, in the arts will begin to shift the power balance in the world. It just will. The more women who are able to pour not just their love, but their time, their energy, their other resources, their intelligence, into pursuits that might impact public life the better, actually.
Amanda Doyle:
And that helps you under why the backlash against that happening is so strong. Because the shaming and the cultural ideas of you feeling less than if you’re not a mother are what are keeping more women who would choose not to do that and enter the public sphere from doing it, which makes it a worthwhile effort for the patriarchy to continue poisoning us with those ideas.
One of the things I’m so interested about in you as a person, besides this particular issue, is a connection to me from your work with Sober Curious to this work, it’s interesting to me how drinking is like the one thing you have to explain that you’re not doing. It’s like, I don’t have to be explain that you’re not doing. It’s like, I don’t have to be at a party, explain why I’m not on cocaine. I don’t have to explain like, “Why aren’t you using heroin?” But I constantly have to explain why I am not drinking.
In the same way, which proves what a cultural imperative it is, in the same way where my friends who don’t have kids have to constantly explain why they don’t have kids, which illuminates how it’s such a cultural imperative. Ruby?
Ruby Warrington:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
What else are there, what are you going to… Is there anything else that you’re thinking of? Because what’s interesting about your work is there’s this thread in it that is not even about the subject, necessarily. It’s about something that you figured out, oh that’s so weird how we all do that thing, and it’s more interesting that we’re expected to. Are there any other things that you’re looking at down the road that you’re like, huh, that’s interesting that that’s expected of us, and it’s more interesting to think about why?
Abby Wambach:
I love this question.
Ruby Warrington:
Well, first of all, thank you for picking up on that because when I pitched this book nobody wanted to buy it because all the publishers we spoke to said, “But Ruby’s audience is sober curious, they won’t be interested in a book on this subject from her.” But for me, they’re talking about a very similar life path. This is about choosing or having chosen for you a life path that will mean you’re existing in the out group, that you’re going against the cultural imperative. And that is a lonely path, it is an alienating path, and we need community on that path. And so that, for me, is the similarity between these two books, without giving away too much away I suppose because it’s still-
Amanda Doyle:
I knew it. I knew it.
Ruby Warrington:
This subject I am interested in, as a 47-year-old woman, is when does a person become an old person and become irrelevant? I don’t know, there’s something around ageism. This is it, it’s ageism. Ageism is the only ism that will impact every single human being, and yet it flies consistently under the radar and is completely accepted and normalized in so many invisible and visible ways. And so I am very interested in getting into that whole-
Amanda Doyle:
Could you do it very quickly? Because we’re right there and I really just need you to like wrap that up in the next three to four years. Thank you, Ruby.
Glennon Doyle:
I just want to involved in whatever group that Ruby is creating, a bunch of sober, old, child free women. Like, yes please, sign me up for that commune, Ruby.
Ruby Warrington:
Great, great. I do think, to that piece about, like who will look after you when you’re old, I really do believe that we’re going to come up with so many interesting, creative solutions for supporting each other, living together, living alongside each other, pooling our resources. My faith in humanity takes a beating most days, but I do have faith in our ingenuity and yeah, I believe that we’ll figure it out.
Glennon Doyle:
All right, here’s page 77 of Ruby’s book, Women Without Kids. It says, “And if our unconventional path draws criticism, this in turn means committing to radical self-love and establishing one’s own code of ethics while seeking fulfillment and a sense of purpose outside of the tidy parameters of what is deemed socially acceptable. This process will be familiar to anybody who has ever experienced being othered or even persecuted, whether due to race, religion, sexuality, gender expression, disability or class, or for being single, for getting a divorce, for having an abortion, or for being a less than perfectly selfless mom. All experiences that require a person first and foremost to uncover and advocate for who we are and what we need, no matter what our family, our culture or society at large has to say about it.”
Abby Wambach:
Ruby.
Glennon Doyle:
Ruby! Keep going, Ruby.
Ruby Warrington:
Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you, Ruby, yeah.
Ruby Warrington:
This is so great.
Glennon Doyle:
We love you, pod squad. Go forth and do whatever the fuck you want.
Ruby Warrington:
Please, be you. Give yourself what you need. Unapologetically. But be kind.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, yes. Do hard things. Do hard things softly. We love you. See you next week, bye.