Just “Different Life Paths”: Situated Resistance to Pronatalist Discourse in Older Childfree Women's Accounts

Abstract

Despite recurring concerns about childlessness in old age, little is known about how meaning, value, and belonging are shaped for older voluntarily childfree women, whose perspectives remain largely neglected. Taking a reproductive justice approach, this study examined how such women discursively negotiate stigma linked to pronatalist discourse, which celebrates motherhood and devalues non-motherhood. Interviews with 15 voluntarily childfree women aged 50 years and older in Aotearoa New Zealand were analyzed using critical discursive psychology, identifying three rhetorical strategies through which participants navigated and resisted stigma: (a) “Different life paths”: Constructing multiple pathways to fulfillment; (b) “I’m just who I am”: Resisting otherness through normalization; and (c) “I’ve lived a very pleasant life”: Rejecting deficit identities. These strategies were shaped by participants’ generational positioning, life stage, and the constraints of enduring pronatalist norms, and are conceptualized as forms of situated resistance. Although these strategies opened space for more inclusive representations of womanhood, their heavy reliance on neoliberal discourses of individual choice and personal responsibility also limited opportunities for collective critique. The implications of these findings are considered in relation to reproductive justice's emphasis on building solidarities that challenge normative reproductive expectations and more expansive reproductive possibilities for all.