The Not-So-Selfish Choice To Be Childfree
Award-winning filmmaker Therese Shechter discusses her new paradigm shifting documentary film My So-Called Selfish Life about one of our greatest social taboos: choosing not to become a mother. At a time when reproductive rights are increasingly under threat due to growth-driven pro-natalist population policies, Therese shines a light on these oppressive unspoken but powerful cultural narratives that seek to maintain control over women’s minds, bodies, and their imagined life stories. We also discuss the need to promote a broader conception of the word 'family', childfree dating, and ways to host a film screening in your own community.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
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Film Clip from the Documentary, ‘My So-Called Selfish Life’: 0:00
I've known since high school that I did not want to be a mother .
At one point you just declared that if I ever want to have grandchildren, don't look at me.
I didn't really ever want kids, but I always assumed I would have them. I kept asking myself, Is this gonna happen to me? Does it have to happen?
What does it mean to live in a world where motherhood is our destiny? And what happens if we say no?
Alan Ware 0:29
That was a clip from a new documentary film titled My So-Called Selfish Life. The film challenges the cultural narrative that all women want and should have children. In today's episode of the Overpopulation Podcast we get to hear from the creator of the film, Therese Shecter.
Nandita Bajaj 0:52
Welcome to the Overpopulation Podcast where we tirelessly make overshoot and overpopulation common knowledge. That's the first step in right-sizing the scale of our human footprint so that it is in balance with life on Earth, enabling all species to thrive. I'm Nandita Bajaj, co-host and executive director of Population Balance.
Alan Ware 01:14
And I'm Alan Ware, co-host of the podcast and researcher with Population Balance, an organization that educates about and offer solutions to address the impacts of human overpopulation and overconsumption on the planet, people, and animals.
Nandita Bajaj 01:30
We are excited to welcome Therese Shechter to our podcast today. And before we dive into that conversation, we have some listener feedback to share.
Alan Ware 01:40
Here's a response from Kay in Canada about our last episode with Carter Dillard. ‘Exactly three years ago, I went to Mauritius to visit my mom and it was very hot. I started investigating the cause and realized quickly that we were experiencing rapid climate change which I thought prior would take decades. I suffered from eco- anxiety and started to refocus my energy towards air pollution. Your latest podcast by Carter Dillard, Understanding the Right to Have Children was brilliant and connected all the dots and strengthened my thinking for a legal case that would have an impact on everyone in the world. I feel strongly that there will be a real lawsuit between kids and their parents and possibly the grandparents, for divorcing themselves from mother nature, and letting children pay the price for their own joy but not considering the true needs of the future generations -clean air, clean water and clean food. Your podcast has reduced my eco-anxiety considerably. And I sent a donation to Population Balance as a thank you.’ And well thank you Kay. And we're glad to do our small part in reducing your eco anxiety and hopefully other people's eco anxieties. That was great.
Nandita Bajaj 02:48
And we have another one from Brix in the Philippines. He says, ‘Even though this is the first I've encountered Mr. Carter Dillard, I consider him as one of the best law professors I've ever had. I applauded during certain parts of the episode, which were paradigm breakers. For me, the concept of a ‘fair start’ is something I've never heard of. My favorite quote from him during that podcast is that having children is not a personal right just for the parent, but an interpersonal right between a parent and a child. Here in the Philippines children's laws exist, but they never deal with the parents’ accountability as to the choice of having them in the first place. Having any number of children, regardless of the parents capacity to take care of them, should not be a norm that the law turns a blind eye to. This is why there is widespread child poverty, trafficking and sexual abuse here. Thank you once again for this brilliant episode.’ Well, thank you for that heartfelt comment, Brix, and also for being such a loyal listener. It is so heartening for us to know that our work is reaching people like you across the globe. If you're a listener living outside of North America, we would especially love to hear from you and learn how our ideas and conversations are being received in communities around the world. You can write to us using the contact form on our website, population balance.org or by emailing us directly at podcast at population balance.org.
Alan Ware 04:00
Today's guest, Therese Shechter, is an award winning filmmaker and speaker and the founder of the feminist production company, Trixie Films. Therese's work fuses humor, activism, and personal storytelling to disrupt what's considered most sacred about womanhood. Her new documentary My So-Called Selfish Life is a paradigm-shifting film about one of our society's greatest social taboos - choosing not to become a mother. It is the third part of a trilogy, which includes her films How to Lose Your Virginity from 2013 and I Was A Teenage Feminist from 2005. Therese's entertaining and thought-provoking films have screened from Rio de Janeiro to Istanbul to Seoul. Her work is in the collections of over three hundred universities, nonprofits, and libraries.
Nandita Bajaj 05:12
Many of you may have attended our VIP film screening and Q and A event with Therese in early December, which was a fabulous event. In fact, we can't wait for the film to be officially out so that we can run a larger public screening for all of our supporters. In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this interview with Therese. Welcome Therese, I am so happy to be sitting in this virtual studio with you and Alan, especially because it was almost four years ago when we met for a coffee in Toronto, and you told me about your upcoming film and opened my eyes into this whole world of pronatalism. In fact, it's not a total coincidence that I ditched my other career soon after, and ended up dedicating my life to this work. That meeting was definitely the spark of my journey into pronatalism, you were responsible for introducing me to so many other visionaries in the movement, and now I teach a course in it. And I'm bringing this concept into the population discourse through the work that I'm doing here with my colleagues at Population Balance. So I want to start by thanking you for bringing this brilliant work into my awareness and also into the world.
Therese Shechter 06:30
You're welcome. And thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you for adding to our ranks of people who are taking a very serious look at pronatalism and the effects it has on all of our lives. So thank you.
Nandita Bajaj 06:43
Yeah.
Alan Ware 06:44
And thank you, Therese. I didn't know that Nandita was impacted by meeting you like that four years ago, that you got her on this path.
Therese Shechter 06:52
I mean, I remember our meeting, which was really fun. And I didn't know until she told me quite recently that it was a little bit of a springboard, so.
Alan Ware 06:59
Neat. So you've been working on this film for a few years. And while the pronatalism conversation has been gaining more traction in the last few years, you were aware of it years before it became popular. And now after interviewing so many different people with so many different backgrounds, as well as a lot of experts in the film, how is your understanding of the issue of pronatalism changed?
Therese Shechter 07:21
Before I tell you about my own sort of journey through pronatalism, I have to acknowledge that people have been working on this topic for quite a long time. Whether people were listening to this work is a different story, as it always is. But I would highly recommend the book Pronatalism: the Myth of Mom and Apple Pie by Ellen Peck and Judith Senderowitz, which was done in the early seventies I believe. The things that they talk about in that book, we are still talking about. Also Laura Carroll's book, the Baby Matrix, again, really important work that was done in the 2010s I believe, and other things too. So I have to say, I stand on their shoulders, first of all, with this work, but my knowledge of pronatalism was really kind of this idea that some governments give baby bonuses. You know, when people have children, they give them money for each child. That's it. That was basically my understanding of it. And I thought, wow, that's a really great thing, how nice, it must be really helpful for people. As I started reading more and working on the film and talking to experts on the subject, of course, it opened up into an entire worldview and system that then helped me place everything else that was going on, within its framework. It's like when people tell you the word patriarchy and explain what it means. And suddenly the entire world shifts that to focus. Because it's a really powerful framework that explains a lot of things around gender inequality, and so many other things. So it was the same as pronatalism, when I realized that there was a system that was encouraging people to have children, even forcing them to have children. And even beyond that, deciding who should and shouldn't have children, all under this framework. It just helped me make sense of so many things that are going on around the childfree conversation and beyond. It's a word that I talk about in the film, we define it, most people don't know it, "What is pronatalism, and why should we care?" So that's really great that we get to do that because it, in a way, I hope teaches people how to watch the rest of the film. Here's this framework that you may not have known about. And now that you have this framework, it might help you work through the other issues we bring up in the film.
Alan Ware 09:46
Right. I think I was kind of like you thinking in terms of just policy - baby credits - before I met Nandita, and then Therese, I was reading an interview you had about Big Bang, that the two main women characters on there say they never want children. And then you said in the tenth season, the finale, they end it with her getting pregnant. And in that interview you mentioned, yeah, all of her ten years of wishing to never have a child or just swept away by the script writers in one episode creating some happily ever after. That's such a subtle but powerful cultural indication of pronatalism.
Therese Shechter 10:23
Yeah, that was pretty staggering. I'm not a big fan or regular viewer of the show. But I do remember sort of tracking one of the characters who didn't want kids, who then got pregnant and had kids. And then yeah, in the finale, the lead female character gets pregnant. And it's not even sort of discussed, "Oh, well, I'm pregnant," even though that entire season was full of conversations about how much she did not want to have children. It's frustrating. But it's also so alarming that this is a popular culture we're all consuming. It's no wonder our relatives bug us over holiday dinners to have babies already, because we're so surrounded by this reinforcement over and over again, that this idea that it's completely natural, that women will have children, that women want children, even if they say they don't want children, they really do want children, they're going to change their minds. Look, it happen on Big Bang Theory, so. I was also struck since we're talking about this, you know, Betty White, who passed away recently, there's been a lot of great writing on this, but she kept being called America's grandmother.
Nandita Bajaj 11:29
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 11:29
As if that is the highest honor that could be bestowed on this absolute visionary legend of television. She's everyone's grandmother. The fact that she was outspokenly childfree, and yet she's still being cast this way. It is this constant, constant attempt to put every woman under this pyramid, where the top of the pyramid is motherhood, it's always motherhood, and then the rest of us are fit in under there. "Oh, well, you nurture children. It's like being a mother." I'm not a mother. Stop trying to make me one. I'm really not.
Nandita Bajaj 12:04
Yes, it's almost like an apology that people are making for you. "You know, even though you missed out on the chance to be a real mother, we'll still give you the honor of being a mother."
Therese Shechter 12:16
Yeah, it's done with love. Like they think they're doing a wonderful thing by casting you as some form of mother. It's really not my identity. It's not my goal.
Nandita Bajaj 12:26
Right.
Therese Shechter 12:26
The really interesting thing is that I had posted some things about Betty White and this sort of conversation in our Facebook group. And boy, Were there a lot of comments about, "Oh, well, she was a step-mother. She's not childfree. She had children, she married someone with children." And this is a whole long conversation of this unbelievable gatekeeping of the word childfree, where even childfree people are looking to put people into the mother roles. Like instead of saying, "What an icon of a beautiful childfree life is Betty White."
Nandita Bajaj 13:00
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 13:00
"No, we're gonna do everything to make her a mother, also." There was a very interesting conversation in the comments about this. So I'm kind of glad that it came up, but come on.
Nandita Bajaj 13:10
It was a refreshing piece that you posted, was NBC I think, an opinion piece was written by this author, who rightfully called out people for singling her out in a way, because in just the last few weeks, a few people have passed away - a few iconic people. A few of them were men who actually did have children and grandchildren. And they were never put into this box of fatherhood or grandfatherhood, the way Betty White was, even though she, out of all of the people, actually didn't have biological children. So it is a very interesting double standard that was playing out after the fact. In fact, when Alan brought up the show, The Big Bang Theory, I started thinking of all of the other shows that I got completely turned off of while I was in the middle of watching them that had similar twists, where, you know, things weren't going that great. And suddenly, you make a pregnancy announcement and the relationship fixes itself, a one night stand relationship becomes into a happily ever after magical romance, a relationship that is on the rocks suddenly gets saved by having a child.
Therese Shechter 14:23
That always happens. That's the way to save a relationship is to have a baby. Everyone knows that.
Nandita Bajaj 14:29
I can't count how many films or shows I've seen where the childfree choice has been portrayed at all, or if it has, if it's been portrayed positively. So there's a lot of work to be done in the media and I'm so glad that you brought in a film that's doing that. And of course, the topic of today is pronatalism and the childfree choice. The childfree choice, as you just alluded to, is still considered taboo. Pronatalism works through this unspoken norm, an expectation that women feel to live a certain life, typically to get married, then have one or preferably more than one child. And these unspoken but powerful expectations, they become a form of control over women's minds, their bodies, their imagined life stories. How do the women or people who identify as female that you've interviewed push back against this subtle but powerful form of mind and behavior control?
Therese Shechter 15:33
I think that it's an ongoing thing that we have to do. I think sometimes people are in very supportive environments, where they feel comfortable being who they want to be, and they get support from their families, friends. I certainly have a lot of support from my family making this decision. So in some ways, if you have people around you who are saying, "Yeah, you should be true to yourself," it makes it a lot easier in a world that really doesn't want you to make that choice. But I think also, as you get older, you worry a bit less about what people think about you, and more about what you want to do. Turning forty, which is a sort of significant age for childbearing, turning forty was a wonderful moment in my life, when I realized that I actually didn't have to have kids if I didn't want to. Up until then, I thought I would have, and would have to have. And I found that in several of the women in the film felt the same way. They just assumed they were going to have kids, even though they knew they didn't want to. And they sort of made it through their thirties and into their forties and then realize, "No, no, no, I don't have to do this. I never wanted to do this, I'm not going to do this." But I think it's always a struggle. It's a struggle for anything that you're doing. If your body doesn't look a certain way, if you don't love the right gender. If you don't live in a heterosexual nuclear family, you're always pushing against a stream of a belief system that is in our popular culture, in our religious faiths, in our family structures, and our cultural beliefs. It's really difficult. One person in the film, who grew up in the South, said she came to New York, because she couldn't live in the South with all of the expectations of her undertaking a very, very traditional husband and kids in a big house life. She escaped to New York, where she felt a lot more freedom to make her own choices. So there are different ways to do this. One thing I thought was very interesting was there's a couple in the film who were a lesbian couple, and then one of them transitioned, and they now look like a heterosexual couple. Of course, they're a very queer couple, but they look a certain way. So people started asking them about kids at that point. But fascinatingly, so did their queer community, their queer community started saying, "Oh, when are you going to have kids, you should have kids." And as one of the members of this couple says in the film, that even in a queer community, which sort of seeks to push back against these societal norms, there's still so much of this kind of influence pervading their lives.
Nandita Bajaj 18:17
Yes.
Therese Shechter 18:18
I think the best way, and this is sort of my mission, is to bring these conversations to the world, to people who don't even know they have a choice, who might end up wanting to be parents, be wonderful parents, raise wonderful kids. Either choice is valid. But you have to know you have a choice.
Nandita Bajaj 18:36
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 18:37
You can't feel like there's only one path to be on and there are no branching paths from there. So I think bringing the conversation to the world, validating seeing these different ways of living, just seeing what's possible. So you can actually imagine it and try it on, and see if it fits for you. I think it's crucially important.
Nandita Bajaj 19:00
Yeah. And to your point about the pressure that the queer couple was experiencing, not just from the normative society, but even from within the queer community. That's something that I've been trying to study a little bit more as I was developing this course. And I've got anecdotal experience, so it's not really deeply researched. But friends who are in gay relationships have shared that after fighting for so long to be seen as, quote unquote, normal in our society, being able to have children, whether adoptive or biological, was a way for them to show that they had made it. That they weren't on the fringe anymore, that they belonged. So thanks for that really important insight. I was very thrilled to see the diversity of family types that you covered in the film, because not only are you dismantling the structure of procreation, you're also actually celebrating the diversity of families that already exist. One of the positions we've taken is that pronatalism is actually one of the root causes of overpopulation, that this reckless growth in our population, in our numbers, has much to do with these oppressive, pervasive pressures that are put on people to have children that have been happening over centuries. And that it also creates a lot of reproductive injustice. What are your thoughts on that?
Therese Shechter 20:40
I think that's a really important factor. I remember listening to you talk about the fact that contraception is available in many places in the world. However, the women don't take advantage of it because it's taboo, or because they are being shamed for it, or for whatever reason. But these tools are available for them to make their own decisions about their families. And they're not taking advantage of it because of cultural pressures.
Nandita Bajaj 21:08
Right.
Therese Shechter 21:08
So I think that's a very good illustration of that point. And the interesting thing is, you know, in my own historical research, it's very clear that we have been trying to control our own fertility for millennia. Like you find contraceptive devices that are thousands of years old. This has always been a concern, is to be able to decide how many or any children, you're going to have. For many reasons, including maternal mortality, leading cause of death in young women until I think the 1940s. But when you talk about reproductive injustice, you know, that's part of it, the idea that we've always been searching for ways to control this. And some of it's been dangerous, some of it has been illegal, some of it could get you executed as a witch. And yet, it goes on. That's the power of controlling our own bodies. That's how strong that is, how strong that need is. If you're taking all of these things away, especially in the service of growing the population, that is a tragedy. And historically, there have been nations that have done just that. To grow their own populations, they take away contraception, they take away abortion, and it leads to tragic outcomes, as we saw in Romania, with all the Romanian orphans, all the women who died of illegal abortions. So again, getting back to this reproductive injustice, I think that is a tool to grow populations for the good of the people who need more people that look like them. Yeah, I do agree, I think it's a really interesting way to look at the world. That if people had sort of the free choice to make their own decisions, I do believe there would be less people in the world, the population would drop, if people could do exactly what they wanted to do if we're given the tools to do it. That's something to shoot for, with the knowledge that we don't want to be oppressing people either, that we're not being doctrinaire about who can and can't have kids. And not being doctrinaire about how many kids people can have. It's a really nuanced conversation, I think. And it's a very careful conversation to have to give people the tools and the freedom, and to also make sure that we're not imposing our own particular agendas on people.
Nandita Bajaj 23:22
That is such an important distinction, especially in the population arena that we work in. Of course, some of the taboos that we have to keep demystifying for people is that addressing overpopulation will inevitably involve coercive population control methods. The reason we have taken this position is what is happening through pronatalism is a coercive population control method. And as you say, we really are fighting for reproductive justice in the biggest possible sense. And, to your point, when women and people are given access, education, and opportunities to make decisions for themselves that are best for them, for their families, for the planet, we see that. Countries that have moved into more progressive worldviews are moving towards lower fertility - in a general sense that women, when they have choice, they tend to have fewer children.
Therese Shechter 24:28
Yeah, that's really true. I don't know if you're including Scandinavian nations in that. They still have governments that are in panic mode-
Nandita Bajaj 24:36
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 24:37
About the birth rate. So these things happen at the same time. And again, one of the ways that nations deal with it is by taking all control away from people - and that's both having more kids and having less kids.
Nandita Bajaj 24:49
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 24:50
I mean China's one-child policy is just as reproductively coercive as anything else. And now, their population is messed up now, their demographics are messed up. They're trying to encourage people to have more kids.
Nandita Bajaj 25:01
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 25:01
People are like, "No, we're good. Actually, we're fine." And I just read recently that it's very hard to get a vasectomy in China now.
Nandita Bajaj 25:09
Yes.
Alan Ware 25:09
Wow.
Nandita Bajaj 25:10
Yeah. They're doubling down.
Therese Shechter 25:11
Yeah, my first thought was, finally the guys are taking one for the team. Maybe now you have an idea of what we've been dealing with for so long. It's very, very concerning that they have moved in that direction.
Alan Ware 25:23
Yeah, there's so much baby bust alarmism, as I'm sure you're aware, in the overdeveloped countries. How did you respond to those baby bust alarmists? It sounds like you had some of your comments there that it's an infringement on people's reproductive rights, really, to have the government and business for the sake of a growing economy, or a growing tax base, or growing number of workers. For the sake of the nation, have more children.
Therese Shechter 25:50
Absolutely. And you know, in the United States, our entire eugenics movement of the early twentieth century well into the seventies and eighties, and even today, grew out of this fear of immigrants having more children than white people were having - middle class white people. That was a response to white women aren't having enough babies. And I personally believe, although I can't really pull up data for you, I believe that the fertility rate panic in the United States is also motivated by white supremacy. That it's the fact that there's a growing nonwhite population in the country, that immigrants are coming into the country, that quote unquote, white race suicide, which was a term that was coined in the late 1800s is still a preoccupation running out of white people. I don't believe for a minute that they care about the entire population, the people who are making the most noise about this. I think they care about keeping the white race in the majority.
Alan Ware 26:51
So more of us defined by race, or religion, or some other designation. Have you encountered women who feel pressure to boost their numbers due to race or religion?
Therese Shechter 27:02
Certainly religion. I think that it's much more difficult to talk about the racial aspects of this. Although it is very interesting conversation, Dr. Kimya, Dennis, who's on our film, who's done really great research with childfree people of the African diaspora. She's childfree, she has had surgical procedure, so she can't get pregnant, and the pushback from her community, "You're doing the white man's work by doing this." And she pushes back very hard on that. But that's a reality. And what the Pope's latest statements, bless his heart, clearly he needs more Catholics.
Nandita Bajaj 27:39
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 27:40
I think that's all there is to it. Earth needs more Catholics. And you find that in other religions, too. I'm Jewish, and I grew up hearing how we have to have children to replace the millions that were murdered in Nazi Germany and beyond. This is a conversation that not unusual that we need to have Jewish kids, because so much of the Jewish population was murdered. So it's not an uncommon conversation. But these conversations can take place within communities. And then they can also be mandated by governments. And when they're mandated by governments, it's a much more serious situation.
Nandita Bajaj 28:17
And extension of that too, Therese, when it's dictated by pressures related to religion, especially for communities that have suffered in the past in the way you've spoken about with the black community and the Jewish community, the extra layer of pressure that is placed on women can be extremely difficult to overcome. Because there's a layer of guilt laden on the choice. It's not just related to some of the other assumptions, like it's the most fulfilling path or who's going to take care of you when you're old. It has a much weightier reason for why you are being asked to procreate.
Therese Shechter 28:57
I think just personally, I get it, I get all of it. I'm not confused by this, I get it, I get where it's coming from. However, at the end of the day, you cannot force people to have children. You cannot force people to bring new humans into the world if they don't want to. You cannot co-opt somebody's ovaries in the service of some political or religious enterprise. You cannot. We have to keep our bodily autonomy. We have to be able to make our own decisions about something as profound as becoming a parent, as profound as bringing any person into this world who will need to be cared for. We have to think about it all the way down the line. So while I understand the pressures, at the end of the day, no, you can't force someone to do this. And that goes for all the stupid Big Bang Theory episodes, too. We don't take those as seriously, because it's just entertainment. It's too profound a thing thing to have a child to go into it in a sort of a cavalier way, or in a way that is pushing you towards something you don't want, or that's alighted, that no one's allowed to talk about how hard parenting is. If you can have a conversation about everything that is involved in being a good parent and raising happy and healthy children, if you can have that conversation openly, and then decide, yeah, I really want to be a parent, this is what I really want to do. I understand everything that's involved in it. I believe this is the best thing to do with my life. Go for it, you're gonna be the best parents we've got. Because you've thought it through. You genuinely want to parent and you know what's involved with it.
Nandita Bajaj 30:42
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 30:42
You just can't make someone just do it. When people are like, "Oh, oops, we got pregnant, I guess we're gonna have a baby." Really?
Nandita Bajaj 30:51
That was it.
Therese Shechter 30:52
That's it.
Nandita Bajaj 30:53
You spent more time choosing your furniture than you did deciding to give new life.
Therese Shechter 30:59
Yeah, exactly. You spent more time deciding what kind of pasta sauce you want. And again, this is a delicate territory, because for some people, that's absolutely the best choice. And they're moving forward because they feel like, actually this is something we want, and we're gonna move forward with it. Sometimes it's, I have no access to reproductive health care. So I have no choice in the matter. And I have to bring a child into the world with no support. So it's a complex thing.
Nandita Bajaj 31:28
Yeah. And maybe that's the last part is something we can go into a little further, especially with what's happening in the US is Roe v. Wade is that much closer to being ended, and abortion rights are under assault in states across the US. How do these coercive pronatalist policies impact not just reproductive rights, but also the rights of prospective children?
Therese Shechter 31:52
Well, I don't think we want any unwanted children in this world. It's not good for a child to be born into a world that doesn't want them and can't care for them, who has a parent or parents who regret the decision and to grow up knowing that nobody wanted you.
Nandita Bajaj 32:08
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 32:08
But was stuck with you, somehow. We know that single mothers are more likely to become impoverished because they've had a child. You know, there's a lot about this. Again, you want children to be wanted and cared for. This seems like a no brainer to me, but apparently not. We want children who are wanted and loved and can be cared for properly, partly a parent's job, it is partly our job as a society to care for our children, and make sure they're healthy. That's another big part of the reproductive justice framework here in the US, you know, which was created by black women and encompasses not having children if you don't want them, being able to have children, if you want to have children, and being able to raise these children in healthy and safe environments, which includes healthy and safe for the mother as well as the child because we know black maternal mortality is shockingly high. So it seems like a pretty basic request. I'm not gonna speculate here why it's so hard to achieve. That's a baseline requirement of us as a society.
Nandita Bajaj 33:10
Yeah. And what do you think might be the most effective ways that people in the US can do to respond to this? I know, it's been at least in the news that the rates of vasectomies have started to go up as the abortion rights are coming under attack. So that is a nice response in terms of shared reproductive responsibility. But any other thoughts on things people can do?
Therese Shechter 33:36
I think the first thing that we can do is understand that we have a problem. I think that that's a really crucial first step, is to look around and say, "There's something here that's seriously messed up. We have a problem. We have a health care problem. We have a social problem. We have a lot of problems with this bodily autonomy not being available to so many people." That's the first thing. I think it's great that the guys are stepping up. You know, you can't actually have a child without sperm, newsflash. And I think men need to share half the burden, half the activism, half the energy, half the support for this. Since time immemorial, this seems to be just something that happened to a woman that she needs to deal with. And I think it's incumbent on the sperm half to step up and say, "Yeah, I'm just as responsible for this and I'm just as responsible for making things better and more equitable." I like that more men are getting vasectomies, that again seems like such a no brainer to me. If you don't want kids get a vasectomy. They're easy. It takes no time at all. You do it in your doctor's office, maybe you're in pain, you poor thing for a day or two.
Alan Ware 34:47
You're like an upcoming episode we're going to have with a mobile vasectomy doctor who has a mobile unit.
Therese Shechter 34:53
Oh, yeah. I've been following that. That's great. I'm so excited that you're going to be talking about this. I think it's kind of a brilliant idea actually. Maybe just make it really easy. Just walk in. So yeah, I understand that this is an issue. And it's been an issue for a long time. For decades. This didn't suddenly happen. Like it didn't suddenly become incredibly difficult to get an abortion in Texas, it's been really difficult to get an abortion in Texas for a very, very long time. If you don't have the resources to travel somewhere, if you're not able to take a few days off of work, all of it. So I think we should make these things more of a priority. It's like the first issue that gets dropped whenever things get tense politically. I think we still have far too many people in our political leadership that never have to deal with this problem.
Nandita Bajaj 35:48
Yeah.
Therese Shechter 35:48
We need more uteri in government. But I also think, you know, pay attention to the people you're voting for. This idea of reproductive health care really just gets tossed to the side as soon as something else happens. And the issues around women, and children particularly, are very quick to be tossed aside. It's still happening. It's happening in progressive and liberal movements as well. This isn't just a conservative thing. I think we have to decide this as important and treat it that way. Those are a few of my thoughts for a very big issue. First, we have to all agree that this is important. This is a existential issue.
Alan Ware 36:28
So here at Population Balance, we're trying to promote a broader conception of the word family to include any set of relationships that bring a sense of love, belonging, connection, care, companionship, and purpose to our lives. And that family can include your partner, companion animals, friends, or a favorite natural space and all the creatures that live in it. In your film, you've done an excellent job of capturing a diversity of all kinds of family types. And we know this definition of family is definitely not in the cultural mainstream, but do you think it could catch on? Are you seeing any indication based on the conversations you've had all these many years?
Therese Shechter 37:05
Well, I'm going to circle back to Betty White, and say thank you to Golden Girls. Because I think Golden Girls has not been credited enough with showing us a different possibility for family. You know, you can nitpick? Yes, they all have kids. But their family was these four women living together. That was the family. That was their primary unit of care, and companionship, and almost all the things you might need from your family. I think they've had a profound influence on how people want to age, it really has made a big difference. And that's what it gets me back to one of my little soap boxes, which is we need to see it to know it's possible. That's a fictional television show. I don't think I want to live with three other older women in a house in Florida, really, but because the reality is probably not quite as delightful. But it's a model of something. I'm so glad one of the women in our film, Chanel Dubofsky. I'm so glad she's in the film for many reasons, but one of them is she lives in a house with seven other people. This is a house full of artists and writers. And they have chosen to live as a group in this big house. That's what they've chosen. It's not like they can't afford to do things, or they're just out of college. They're not. This is a choice that they've made. And she talks in the film about how surprised people are that she has chosen that life. And she's not just there until she gets a man and gets the house and starts having babies. She has a longtime partner who does not live in that house. So I think that's a great thing to just see someone go, "Yeah, I live here and all these other people live here. And this is our choice with our lives." I think of many times in my life where I've said to myself, "Oh, I didn't know I could do that. How about that." And it has created great change in my life. I live in a family of two, my husband and I, it's definitely a family. I would like some more animals in our family, that's being negotiated all the time.
Nandita Bajaj 39:10
And to your point, it's not like these families don't already exist in culture. What you've done through your film, and what we're trying to do with our redefining family initiative at Population Balance is celebrate the families that already exist, but they don't get the light of day in culture because we are so fixated on a certain model of family. So really, we are shining light on it to allow other people to see possibilities of how they could live. So Therese, much of the work in pronatalism is being led by people who identify as female. Men, or those who identify as male, experience similar pressures to procreate, although as you've shown in your film, and as we've seen, in culture pressures are experienced either exclusively or much more strongly by females. But similarly, there are many assumptions that go along with such pressures for males. "You're not a real man, you're not masculine or virile if you don't have children." Have you explored this area or know of other work that looks at how pronatalism impacts men?
Therese Shechter 40:20
Yeah, my work largely focuses on the underreported experiences of women or people who identify as female. So that's the focus of the film, really. You can only do so much in an hour and fifteen minutes. However, on our website, we've had a few projects that have included men's voices, which is great. We have a video project called Selfish Selfies, that's a collection of twenty-four videos, some of those videos are from men, they talk about things like getting vasectomies, or sort of the public image of the child free man. And I was involved with the child free convention last year on international childfree day, which is August first. And since then, I think they've been doing really good work in amplifying voices of childfree men to the organizers, or guys. So I think that also makes a difference. And you can go on YouTube and look up childfree convention, and they've recorded a lot of panel discussions, and a significant amount of them are men and issues more specific to men who have made the choice to be childfree. It is true that there is much more sort of work being done by women, it's just a much bigger stake in a lot of this stuff. So it has been more at the forefront of our concerns. But even if you go back into the seventies, the childfree movement contains a lot of men, and parents - fathers and mothers. I think that group is growing and becoming more vocal, and we're very happy to support those conversations.
Nandita Bajaj 41:55
Great. Just a follow up to that, Therese, for people seeking to be an intimate relationship - how do they find others who are interested in being childfree? Have you looked at any sites or any work in that area?
Therese Shechter 42:09
That is a really popular concern among the folks in our social media audience and many other social media audiences. We're often getting comments about, "How can I find a childfree guy?" There are some dating services that are specifically for childfree people, which I don't know enough about to endorse. But I would say if you Googled childfree dating, you might come up with some options. And then there are mainstream dating sites that also acknowledge that there are many people out there looking for partners that don't want children, and especially Bumble comes to mind, where you can tick off a box that says I don't want children. And that will hopefully help to filter out your matches that do want children, although you should always ask when you go on your first date, again, because it doesn't always guarantee that the person doesn't want children. That's what I know of that's available right now. I think generally just hanging out in child free spaces. The local meetups are also great ways to meet potential childfree partners, you know, there are outings to events and bars. A little different since COVID, but nevertheless, it is a great way to meet local, childfree people.
Alan Ware 43:20
So we've normalized these past few decades, a lot greater cultural sensitivity around race and gender. And now we really need to normalize the childfree decision. And we think it starts with normalizing the conversation, and podcasts like this, and in your film. And what's your vision for how the conversations around reproductive justice in this broadest sense, which would include the childfree decision, become more normalized, in especially our North American culture that we live in and know best?
Therese Shechter 43:50
I can tell you one thing that we're planning to do with the film, because, you know, as we've talked about, I made this film in part just to open up this conversation through film, which is my medium. We're hoping to be able to do a fairly ambitious impact campaign, which means taking the film out to different groups and providing screenings, discussions, events, in order to discuss the issues around this, and get people talking about it, and feel validated. As I say, this is something I hear all the time, like people feel validated and seen and safe in those spaces. We're actually applying for grants and doing some fundraising so we can do it. It's quite expensive to mount something like this. But I think it'd be a really wonderful way to get the film out in a way that will make it available to many, many more people. Also, the beauty of virtual cinema now, since COVID, has made it a lot easier to do it that way too. But an important component of that is we plan to do five or six international screenings because I recognize that this is a global conversation. This is by no means limited to North America. And different countries come at it from different places. So it's not actually quite the same conversation all over the world, which I find very interesting and exciting. We would like to target different cities or different countries, figure out how we can do a virtual screening for that region, partner with local partners, make sure that we are presenting the stuff in the context of what's going on in those areas. So that is also part of our very ambitious plan. But again, because of virtual screening capabilities, it's much easier to do than it would have been five years ago. For example, Nandita and I have talked about India and how to get the film to Indian audiences and be able to engage all of us in these conversations. It's very hard to get an American film on Indian television, if not impossible. However, with the right collaborators, with the right kind of organization, we can bring this film to India. And it's super exciting to be able to do that. That's part of our mission for 2022.
Alan Ware 46:07
That would it be great, to have a more cross-cultural look at this issue, finding people within those cultures that can speak sensitively and thoroughly about it would be amazing.
Therese Shechter 46:18
Yeah, this is sort of my top, most exciting possible thing we could do is to take the film globally. To that end, we're fundraising we're organizing, we're reaching out to create some relationships with people in different countries. We already know a lot of people in different countries, thanks to the global childfree community. I have to give props to the childfree convention, their day long program last year on international childfree day brought people together from all over the world, which was fantastic. We want to expand on that and bring the film out in that same way.
Nandita Bajaj 46:51
Yeah, that's really brilliant. Thank you so much, Therese, for that. If people would like to find out more about the film, and other initiatives related to the film, and more about yourself, where can they find out?
Therese Shechter 47:05
The best thing to do is go to our website, myselfishlife.com. That's kind of the hub of everything that we do. And we'll give you sort of links and pathways to get to everything else. You can get on a list that we call the First To Know list, which literally makes you the first to know, of screening opportunities and other events that are coming up. You can find a link to get more information about hosting your own screening. We're currently working with organizations, schools, and conferences to schedule private screenings with their groups. And I should say, we just signed with an educational distributor who is going to be bringing the film to classrooms, and libraries, and beyond. We will have some public screenings later this year, but because we're still in our festival run, we can't do that yet. So there's a host a screening button. There's also a place to see what events we've already done and what are coming up. You can see video clips, you can see our Selfish Selfies project, which are these one minute films that are audience generated. We have an online comic there, which I absolutely love. It's kind of my favorite thing. We have a gallery of over a hundred women who never had children, and yet somehow still managed to live happy and accomplished lives. So there's a lot at the website, and also all the links to our social media groups. We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, we're on Twitter, I encourage anyone to reach out to me, it's very easy to contact me through the site. We love feedback. We love potential collaborators. And at this point, because we have a very ambitious impact and outreach plan, if you're interested in underwriting any part of it, we would love to talk to you too, and tell you more about what we're planning. But if you just want to say hi, that's fantastic. I'd love to hear from you.
Nandita Bajaj 48:50
Wonderful. Therese, thank you so much for such an enlightening conversation and for doing what we feel is one of the most urgent types of work that needs to be done is dismantling pronatalism. Our goal really is to help bring this work into the world in the most effective way possible, and to help people continue to make liberated, autonomous, and responsible choices, especially when it comes to procreative choices. Thank you, Therese, for being with us today.
Alan Ware 49:22
That was great. She's such an insightful and courageous person. In her film and in interviews like this, she shines such a bright light - this filmmakers light - on the too often overlooked, the subtle but always powerful influence of pronatalism.
Nandita Bajaj 49:38
I couldn't agree more. This interview was especially exciting for me because Therese is a fellow Torontonian even though she now lives in New York, and I mentioned earlier on in the interview that Therese and I met about four years ago when she was in the early stages of the film. And she's the one responsible for introducing me to the many luminaries, well including herself, such as Laura Carroll, Orna Donath, Dr. Kimya Dennis, and others who have inspired my journey into exploring pronatalism. And I love the film so much that I'm using it to start off my course called Pronatalism and Overpopulation, which officially begins next week. And today, instead of reading a quote, we thought it would be more fun to play more of the excellent film trailer for Teresa's documentary, My So-Called Selfish Life.
Film Clip from the documentary, “My So-Called Selfish Life”:
Remember, your biological clock is ticking. I gotta have a baby. I gotta have a baby. I gotta have a baby. You have a biological clock. Not ticking within me. So I've the answer would have to be no. There's no biological reason for that to happen. You could list any number of honors and degrees and somebody will still think that you're not fully accomplished if you haven't had a child. Motherhood has increased in value yet again. It's almost fetishized in our society. This is the real solution to climate change. Babies. Nations need childbirth. Babies are good for the economy. This is by design. It's like, I'm not missing anything. I didn't forget to have kids. I’m just not interested. To have somebody tell you, you don't know what's best for you is extremely condescending and insulting. Never question my African identity, because I'm child free. You can be an aunt or an uncle to your friend's children, and you'll be fine. In fact, you'll be great. Don't forget to take your pill.
Alan Ware 52:03
Well, that's it for this edition of the Overpopulation Podcast. Visit populationbalance.org to learn more. If you feel inspired by our work, please consider supporting us using the donate button.
Nandia Bajaj 52:14
Until next time, I'm Nandita Bajaj reminding you that we can all make a dent in this movement by choosing small footprint families, whatever family means to you.
