Social connection and exclusion of Australian women with no children during midlife

Abstract

Evidence indicates women with no children can experience pronatalism-driven stereotyping, stigmatisation and exclusion. This exploratory cross-sectional study described the social connection and exclusion of Australian women with no children during midlife (defined as aged 45 to 64 years). A total of 294 Australian midlife women with no children completed a self-administered online questionnaire. Data were collected on indicators of exclusion in the social, civic, service and economic domains of life, and participants' self-reported perceptions of being stereotyped, stigmatised and excluded because they have no children. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and, for differences between involuntarily childless, circumstantially childless and voluntarily childless women: One Way ANOVAs for normally distributed continuous data, and Kruskal Wallis Analyses of Ranks and Chi Square Tests for Independence for categorical data and non-normally distributed continuous data. The findings indicate midlife women feel negatively stereotyped because they have no children. The extent and quality of midlife women's resources and participation vary between and within the domains of life. However, midlife women reported feeling more excluded because they have no children in the social and civic domains than the service and economic domains. There are few differences between typologies of women with no children. Given that social exclusion is a key social determinant of health and wellbeing, it is essential to ensure all women have opportunities for connection in all domains of life in Australian society regardless of their motherhood status, by challenging pronatalism at all levels of society.

The influence of social support on health and wellbeing among women with and without children

“…It has been argued that women's social identity is attached to the role of wife and mother, and acceptable behaviours in those roles are based on social norms (Eckert, 1993). Gender relations are complex and may produce conflict across the life course (Connell, 2002), for example when women are unable to or choose not to have children this creates conflict as it violates the gender norms in pronatalist societies (Rich, Taket, Graham & Shelley, 2011;Turnbull, Graham, & Taket, 2016a;Turnbull et al, 2016b;Turnbull, Graham & Taket, 2016c). This violation of gender norms results in the 'othering' of women without children and for those women who choose to be childless, being further labeled as deviant (Gillespie, 2000;Letherby, 1999), both of which can have negative consequences for health.…”