Exploring Voluntary Childlessness Using Digital Trace Data: Insights from R/Childfree

• In Event: 21016 - Fertility Desires and Patterns in Changing Social Contexts

Abstract

A growing body of research highlights the rise in voluntary childlessness as a significant sociodemographic trend across high-income countries, especially among recent cohorts. As voluntary childlessness is becoming more acceptable and prevalent, we can expect increasing levels of childfreedom in the future. For instance, several cultural and structural theoretical perspectives of fertility change, from the Second Demographic Transition to theories of socioeconomic uncertainty, predict a rise in voluntary childlessness levels. Still, there is a limited understanding of the motivations, both structural and individual, and the consequences of voluntary childlessness in people’s lives. Childfree individuals increasingly participate in online communities, which can be a major source of support and exchange of information and spaces of meaning- and identity-making among individuals who do not want to have children. In this paper, I draw from an abductive approach and combine computational and qualitative methods to analyze the largest childfree online community on Reddit, R/Childfree. R/Childfree grew rapidly over the last few years and has, to date, more than 1.5 million subscribers. Preliminary analyses of about 15,000 posts between February 2024 and February 2025 identified several key topics, including discussions about sterilization and contraception, relationships with partners, family members, friends, and neighborhoods, abortion, and political debates, and some significant time trends associated with the U.S. presidential elections. The final paper will include in-depth qualitative analyses and present a broader theoretical framework to situate childfreedom in a context of fertility decline and persistent pronatalism.

Author

• Luca Badolato, The Ohio State University