One question I occasionally get is why I work with both childfree and childless clients. Aren’t those opposite experiences?

My answer is simple: not usually.

While these identities are often discussed as though they exist on opposite ends of a spectrum—one representing choice and the other representing lack of choice—the reality is that many people’s experiences don’t fit neatly into either category. In my clinical work, I’ve found that the most meaningful conversations often happen in the complicated middle.

The cultural narratives surrounding parenthood status tend to rely on binaries. Childfree is often framed as a fully voluntary decision not to have children. Childless is often framed as a wholly involuntary experience resulting from infertility, loss, or circumstance.

But what about the people whose experiences don’t fit either story?

What about someone who does not want children, but wishes they wanted them because their partner does? Someone who feels a deep lack of desire to parent but struggles with societal expectations or family pressure? Is that entirely a choice?

What about someone who would have considered parenthood under different circumstances but finds the financial realities of raising children inaccessible? Or someone whose medical trauma, disability, chronic illness, mental health conditions, neurodivergence, and/or phobia/fear of pregnancy and childbirth makes reproduction feel very difficult to pursue safely, either from a psychological or physical standpoint? Is that entirely not a choice?

The more closely we look, the more blurry the boundaries become.

Many people experience parenthood status as the result of multiple intersecting factors: personal desire, the presence or absence of a drive to become a parent, relationships, finances, physical and mental health, disability, medical access, social support, loss, trauma, fertility, and timing. Rarely does it boil down to a single factor.

This is one reason I resist rigid definitions that assume childfree means “100% chosen” and childless means “0% chosen.”

Both narratives can erase important parts of people’s lived experiences.

When we define childlessness exclusively as something that happened to someone, we can inadvertently erase the agency people exercise within difficult circumstances. People make decisions every day about how much treatment they are willing or able to pursue, what risks they are willing to take, what financial sacrifices feel sustainable, and what costs are simply too high. Those decisions do not negate grief, loss, or longing. They also do not erase the very real structural inequities that shape those decisions. 

At the same time, when we define childfreedom as a completely unconstrained choice, we risk ignoring the reality that reproduction and parenting occur within systems of access and limitation. Financial barriers, healthcare access, disability, discrimination, caregiving responsibilities, housing costs, and countless other factors shape what options are realistically available. Very few people make reproductive decisions in a vacuum.

I worry that seeing “childlessness” and “childfreedom” as complete opposites can reinforce harmful stereotypes. On one side, childlessness is frequently framed as entirely involuntary, which can invite pity and othering. On the other side, childfreedom is frequently framed as entirely voluntary, which can invite moralization, judgment, and assumptions about personal responsibility. In both cases, the complexity of human experience gets flattened. 

In both narratives, the depth of thoughtfulness and care that goes into navigating systems that make reproduction and parenting difficult, as well as the immense grief that can result from whatever limited options are available, gets erased. Childfreedom is seen as easy and even self-indulgent, while childlessness is seen as empty and tragic. The labor that people in both groups go through to navigate decision-making, societal responses, and systemic barriers goes unseen. 

The clients I work with often find themselves navigating questions that don’t fit cleanly into existing categories:

• “I don’t know whether I wanted children badly enough to pursue increasingly invasive treatment.”
• “I wanted children, but not at any cost.”
• “I don’t want children, but I grieve the fact that I don’t want them due to how I am treated as a childfree person.”
• “I would have considered parenthood if it felt more accessible.”
• “I stopped pursuing parenthood because the emotional, financial, or medical costs became too high.”
• “I don’t know whether this was a choice, a circumstance, or both.”

These are not contradictory experiences. They are human ones.

Ultimately, I don’t see childfree and childless individuals as representing opposite issues. I see them as people grappling with many of the same underlying themes: identity, grief, agency, uncertainty, belonging, meaning-making, stigma, and navigating a world that often expects a simple answer to a profoundly complex question.

And because so many people live in that complicated, nuanced middle space, I believe there should be room for all of those experiences to be explored with curiosity rather than forced into categories that don’t quite fit.