No Kids Project

The "No Kids Project" collaboration emerged from the shared experience of four women as attendees of women's psychology conferences.  Repeatedly, professional women referred to their parenting experiences as if it were part of their training to become psychotherapists.  For example, at the Learning from Women Conference at Harvard, one chairperson introduced her panel members, lauding their academic achievements and then their status as mothers;  "...and she is the mother of three wonderful children..."  Our objective is to break the silence that marginalizes women who are not mothers and to expand our understanding of women's psychological and relational development.

An essential and formative feature of women's development and women therapists' work is the mothering experience.  It does not surprise us that mothering is regarded as a model for nurturing.  And it does not surprise us that many women's experience of mothering is regarded as the ultimate expression of womanhood.

How do any of us learn to be in relationship and to foster psychological development of people in our lives, whether they be clients, lovers or friends?  One training ground has been our relationships with our own mothers and mother surrogates. Another is our own experience as mothers.  But what does this mean for women who have not had the experience of mothering?  Are women who are not mothers deficient in some important way? Societal attitudes towards women without children throughout modern history illustrate the culture's bias that childless women may be different indeed.  They may not be "real women"; normal or natural.  If one's status as a mother reflects the achievement of an important developmental goal, what does childlessness reflect about any particular women's psychological development?

One of the truths of many women's lives is that they are not mothers.  Women are not mothers for many and complex reasons.  Today women have choices about becoming mothers that they did not have only a few decades ago.  But where do childless women fit in our world today?  How do childless women challenge our ideas of what it means to be a woman?  A real woman?  A  natural woman?  We hope that our work will invite every woman to examine these questions and elaborate a new and more inclusive definition of what it means to be women.

We want to give voice to women's experience, not to be silenced by shame.  Contact Dr. Hinchman for more information.