[ Leilani Munter ] This is one of the most important issues if not the most important issue that humanity needs to be talking about.
[ geo title ] CORNELIUS, NC
And yet nobody wants to talk about it, because everybody’s scared to talk about it.
Everybody knows it’s a... you know, an emotional issue and such a personal ... you know, subject.
And people are scared. So people just don’t talk about it, and that’s sad.
You know, our species' survival is truly dependent on us addressing this issue.
And if we can’t even talk about it, if we can’t even have a conversation about it then we’re in trouble...
KIDLESS
US BIRTHS FELL TO A 32-YEAR LOW IN 2018* THE NUMBER OF AMERICANS CHOOSING NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IS GROWING WE DECIDED TO TALK TO SOME PEOPLE WHO ARE CHILDFREE BY CHOICE *CDC STATISTICS
[ Leilani Munter ] When I was studying biology at the University of California in San Diego,
I had a biochemistry professor that one day came into class and told all the students to close our books, and said:
“We’re not going to talk about biochemistry today, we’re going to watch a film about population”.
And I was probably about 20 years old, and I remember just being completely devastated by what I learned in that film.
And I walked across the entire campus talking to my professor about human population,
and I really decided on that day that I didn’t want to contribute to our rapidly growing population.
[ Leilani Munter, race car driver, environmental activist ] Really, every environmental issue that we face:
ocean acidification, climate change, habitat destruction, pollution, species extinction, loss of biodiversity, the collapse of ecosystems,
all of these things are accelerated by our rapidly growing population.
[ Craig Davidson ] Growing up I never really was planning towards having kids but I think somewhere in my mind I always just thought,
I was going to have kids, that I was going to find a wife, get married and end up having kids.
When I first met Leilani, she kind of told me that having kids wasn’t something that she was really that interested in.
[ Craig Davidson, engeneer ] And I thought that’s fine, I’m good not having kids, and 10 years later, 14 years later, you know,
to me it was one of the best decisions that we’ve made.
No regrets really. Really happy to be childfree by choice.
[ Craig Davidson ] Raising a child can be stressful.
So from our standpoint, I think another one of the plus sides in our relationship -
we get to spend more time connecting with each other.
And I think that’s… You know, for us it’s really important, the relationship.
I don’t know necessarily that one relationship or one style of relationship is going to be better than the other
because I think there’s some people that have kids, and that is their whole life,
and that actually brings people closer together,
but then at the same instance there’s people who have kids,
and it kind of drives a wedge between them because they don’t get to have that quality time together,
and that’s something which they valued before they had kids, and they don’t they don’t get to have that now.
[ Leilani Munter ] So this is Timbo.
Tim is our third child, he was found by Kiwi, my husband in a parking lot,
he was about 2 pounds skin and bones covered in fleas with a big hole
and an abscess in one of his rear legs…
[ Leilani Munter ] And so he scooped him up, and we took him to the vet, and he had emergency surgery.
He had a really rough first ten weeks on the planet but it’s been pretty sweet ever since, huh?
[ Leilani Munter ] Currently we’re actually living through the 6th mass extinction of species,
so we are currently driving species to extinction at a rate
that’s about a thousand times faster than the natural background rate of extinction.
And a lot of people are unaware of this.
You know, 5 major mass extinctions,
obviously the last major mass extinction on the planet was the one that took out the dinosaurs.
Right now we’re living through what they called the Anthropocene, and Anthropocene translates to the age of man.
It’s where the human impact on our planet is so great that we’re actually changing the fossil record of our future.
So, you know, I try and reduce my carbon footprint as much as I can,
I drive an electric car, the house that we’re sitting in is powered by solar...
We’re vegan and that’s great, there are more and more people
putting up solar panels and buying electric cars and going vegan,
and that’s all good for the planet,
but as long as we’re still adding a billion people to the planet every 12 years,
I don’t think that those adaptations are happening fast enough.
[ geo title ] LONGMONT, CO
[ Mike Pesci ] I wish I had some other way, another face that I could show you now
I wish I had some other place far away that we could go hang out
And if I ever had to choose, I’d make my choice based upon you, I swear
Decision in my position will be you’re always here
I will be here for you… And I know you’re there for me
[ Mike Pesci, dog walker ] So that song ‘Right Back to You’, I wrote it about my dog Marty at the time who passed away,
he made me think about family more than the traditional sense,
he was a bad dog, technically labeled a bad dog,
we got going, had a great relationship together, and he became very happy...
and became a totally different dog, and I kind of learned what love could do for something, for someone.
And that was what kinda has projected me to where I am today in my life,
and that song is probably my favorite song I’ve ever written, the greatest love song I think I could ever write.
[ Mike Pesci ] I mean, we’re happy, and that’s the thing, and again,
it goes back to that whole idea that there’s no reason to bring many more kids in the world.
I feel like bringing children in the world is bringing suffering into the world in a way.
You take things that already need love and give them love.
There’s no reason to make something else that you need to give your love to.
[ Franchesca Сarrillo ] We do our own thing, we enjoy our lives, he plays music four nights, five nights out of the week.
We like to sleep in…
[ Mike Pesci ] Yeah, that’s the other aspect...
[ Franchesca Сarrillo ] Have our freedom and spend money on things.
[ Mike Pesci ] It’s very convenient...
[ Franchesca Сarrillo ] Stupid. It’s a very small part of it.
[ Mike Pesci ] But it is very convenient in not having kids.
I got very lucky, my parents are amazing people, they took care of me so well, gave me so much love,
they still give me so much love, it’s amazing.
[ Franchesca Сarrillo ] And I really didn’t have that, I had more of, like, people telling me, my mom telling me,
and my grandma telling me, like, don’t have kids, it’s the biggest mistake you could make.
You know, that probably has a big part of it too.
[ Franchesca Сarrillo ] I feel like my own grandma, my own mom, everybody, you know ... that was generations before us,
didn’t have a choice, and they were pressured into it.
It was like you had to grow up, have babies, there was no other option.
[ Franchesca Carillo, hairstylist ] So, I’m going to take full advantage of having a choice
and not feeling like I have got to have kids, or there’s no other way.
It’s a privilege really to be able to not be shunned for having this choice.
[ Rose Cardella ] I know a lot of people, they would feel incomplete if they didn’t have kids, and they get pressure from family and...
[ Rose Cardella, hairstylist ] just pressure from everyone around them, because everyone else is having kids.
So there’s still a lot of places, mostly like smaller towns or more conservative towns that still want you to have a lot of babies.
I think there’s some maternal instinct in women because I definitely once in a while
like ... feel this need to like ... hold a baby or like ... you know, that baby fever thing.
I feel like that’s a pretty hormonal thing, and the emotional thing, and it’s not super realistic.
[ Mike Pesci ] You know, there’s this feeling that like ... the only thing you do with your life,
[ Mike Pesci, dog walker ] what you leave behind is your child, and your predecessors, and all that,
and I don’t agree with that,
I think that again, everything you do has an effect on the planet around you, the world, the people.
And not having kids for me, I feel like I’m better suited for that.
I feel like I bring more joy to the world without having responsibilities
that I’m not really feeling fit to take care of or fit to deal with.
I feel like having more time to write songs, to make music.
I do think it makes a difference, I think this community right here, in Longmont, Colorado, it’s a great example of that.
I have some friends that really kind of make... it’s overwhelming the way that they feel about
when we get together on stage and jam and stuff. And that that’s so worth it to me right there.
[ Dale Hoffman ] That’s her, like, 10 months old, we were out of Canyonlands.
This has her about 1,5 and like 3, that’s her mom Karen...
This is when Karen and Zoey came to live with me here in this house, Zoey was 2,5 then,
and they lived here for 8,5 years.
Now, I do not have children. I have never been married, I have been single all my life,
[ Dale Hoffman, software engineer ] I’m really not very relationship oriented. I identify primarily as gay,
but even with that, like I said, I’m not very relationship oriented.
And I just never felt very good about the idea of bringing children into the world
because I didn’t feel like things were in very good shape, and that a life was just going to be a lot of suffering for them. 00:11:03:165 00:11:10.755 DNA has made us very competitive but by necessity, that’s just how species evolved, 00:11:10.950 00:11:16:910 and the strongest survive, and oftentimes that involves unimaginable cruelty.
[ Dale Hoffman ] I am sure that we need to stop it from continuing to grow
because it’s like you put yeast in a bath of warm water with a little bit of sugar,
and they just keep reproducing, and putting down alcohol, till they have polluted their environment so much that they die.
It’s kind of sad that we don’t have any more control
over ourselves in our environment than little one-celled yeast organisms.
[ Dale Hoffman ] We’re working on physics today...
[ Dale Hoffman ] Yeah, Zoe, my goddaughter, I have taken care of since she was just a few hours old.
She’s like the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.
She’s still a big part of my life, although she and her mother have gotten their own place to live
and gotten on with life which was our plan always.
But you know after eight and a half years of being here, when they left, that was a bittersweet moment.
Bitter because you can become very attached, to both of them I did.
[ Zoe Bucklin-Marburger ] Okay.
[ Dale Hoffman ] Boys turning to boxes?
[ Zoe Bucklin-Marburger ] That was weird.
[ VO ] Would you like to have children? 00:12:33.093 00:12:33.933 [ Zoe Bucklin-Marburger ] I would not.
[ VO ] Why?
[ Zoe Bucklin-Marburger ] I don’t think my child would like me, because in my childhood my mother,
my biological mother tried very very hard to be the best parent she could,
[ Zoe Bucklin-Marburger, high school student ] and to raise me to be the best person I could be,
and ... I ended up not liking her, and I don’t like her as a person,
and that fact has instilled the belief in me that even if I tried the hardest I possibly could
to create a nice individual, foster a valuable person to send out into the world,
that they still would not like me as a person.
[ Dale Hoffman ] After the years have passed away I’ll still think of you each day.
And all the joy and every girl and boy but I’ll still be on the outside looking in…
Yes, I’m on the outside looking in…
[ Irina Ionov, yoga teacher, landscape designer ] We met in 2001 here, in the United States,
at work, it was our first… 00:14:47:018 00:14:48.498 [ Peter Ionov ] So it's 17 years. 00:14:48:669 00:14:52.719 [ Irina Ionov ] I decided not to have children when I was in my early 30-ties.
My career didn’t go the right way. My spiritual search continued
and I wanted to have more time to change careers, to find balance in life, to find happiness
and to find some spiritual answers for myself.
So, I thought that having a child would be an obstacle rather than help.
[ Irina Ionov ] Oh, these are our wedding pictures, honey!
[ Peter Ionov ] Oh, you’re beautiful, you’re cute. So long ago. Do you still love me?
[ Irina Ionov ] I still love you of course.
[ Peter Ionov ] I love you toо.
[ Peter Ionov ] In the third world it’s still a matter of survival. A person must have many children
in order for some of them to take care of him or her when they are old.
In well developed world, in well developed countries there is a very good social support system.
So you’d have your retirement, the government would take care of you.
And it might be much better off without children. You can retire early, you would have more savings.
So, I think it’s about our lifestyle. And it’s very expensive to raise a child here in States.
If you want to give good education, it’s at least half million dollars, maybe more.
[ Peter Ionov ] I think I’ve decided not to have children in my 20ties, when I realized that life was tough
that suffering in some form is guaranteed to everybody and happiness is not.
[ Peter Ionov, computer engineer ] And I just didn’t want to bring a new life into this world.
[ geo title ] LITTLETON, CO 00:16:29.273 00:16:30.703 [ Cheris Frailey ] I don’t know that I regret it.
You know, you always have a thought that perhaps I’m missing out on something.
And certainly my father says he thinks I’d be exceptional mother,
and we’d be exceptional parents, but I think it’s harder today to not work as a one,
because I think the cost of living is gone up so much.
[ VO ] But if it was covered, if the financial part was covered completely?
[ Cheris Frailey ] Completely?
[ VO ] Yeah. Would you stay home and raise children?
[ Cheris Frailey ] Potentially.
I think based on my experience working with children, the children that had one parent home
seemed to be a lot better behaved, better communicators.
Just seemed to be a little more balanced I think, because they had a parent there highly involved.
[ Brian Frailey ] Long story short, we just kind of kicked the can down the road,
if you will, and said, you know, maybe later, and later just never happened for us,
[ Brian Frailey, landscape architect ] but whether it was careers or... We’ve had a lot of ups and downs with careers,
and pauses, and unemployment or career changes, and geographic location moves,
and kind of all those things just delay, delay, and next thing you know you’re here, in your upper 40s,
and you’re happy with your spouse, and where you are.
[ Cheris Frailey ] I would say that most of our friends, if they don’t have children, whether they’re married or single,
[ Cheris Frailey, programme director, medical related professions ] most of them have dogs or cat, but for the most part dogs,
and we find that all of us think that our dogs are like our babies. I do think that people as there’s more and more people, 00:18:02:579 00:18:09.259 there’s more and more traffic, there’s more and more congestion, there’s not as much opportunity to be out in open spaces
and finding those things that I think really help us relax. For me it’s being with my dog, it’s being outside every day.
And if there’s less and less natural resources, if we lose the natural parks, if we lose those open spaces
that I think are key to human balance,
I think you will see a lot more aggressive behaviors, and irritability, and impatience.
[ Brian Frailey ] The more dense the world gets, the more angry I think people get, and that’s unfortunate.
[ Brian Frailey ] For me personally, I've not regretted not having children.
I think we, you know, have a good bond ourselves, and we’re able to strengthen that
and put time and energy into each other without having to have…
you needing to put time, energy into the children as well.
[ Laura Carroll ] My name is Laura Carroll and I have a Master’s in psychology.
And since the late-1990s I’ve been writing non-fiction and researching the childfree choice.
And two books that I’ve written related to that topic are "Families of Two", and the second one is called "The Baby Matrix".
[ Laura Carroll ] I don’t have any regrets because not having children has allowed me to have the freedom in my life
to create the life that I want and have the adventures that I’ve had, create the career that I’ve wanted to pursue.
I’ve been able to do so many more things I think than I would have been able to do
if parenthood really had been at the central, you know, focus of my life.
[ Laura Carroll ] The title is Fact or Fiction: Childfree Couples Are Happier than Couples with Kids,
continues to be a big debate…
There isn’t one answer. That’s my theory.
[ Laura Carroll ] Asking the question: “Why does society find the childfree choice so hard to accept?”
That led to my book The Baby Matrix and to assumptions and beliefs that
society holds that judges the childfree choice.
Where I landed was a set of beliefs that have been with us for generations,
and it’s collectively called ‘pronatalism’.
And pronatalism just means the exaltation of parenthood, motherhood, birth, and putting it on a pedestal.
And our society’s been doing that, you can go back to the Roman times,
that it’s been pushed into our brains and our social and cultural hardware
of what we’re supposed to be and supposed to do, that people think these beliefs… they’re true.
Three powerful pronatalist assumptions is, if you don’t have the desire to have children there’s something wrong with you.
As a person, there’s something wrong with you psychologically, something wrong with you in terms of you…
you haven’t figured out, especially for women, your female identity. Something’s wrong there.
[ Laura Carroll ] There’s also the assumption that we’re biologically wired to want children.
There’s absolutely no evidence to support that. So, there is, of course, evidence that
we have biological processes going on for pregnancy, at the time of birth,
but no biological processes, innately, that create this somehow desire to have children.
And a third powerful one is that by raising children… that’s when you find true fulfillment in life. They’re all myths.
[ Laura Carroll ] In my research, one thing I continue to notice is that there’s pressure.
So, it’s not so much a fear that childfree have, as much as what they experience from others
who want them to do what they did.
So, the others, loved ones, their family members, they can put different kinds of pressure on a childfree couple,
for example, to make them feel guilty for not bringing grandkids onto the scene,
not doing what they did, so that they will have a bond, an even closer bond,
because they have this thing called parenthood.
[ Laura Carroll ] When I was researching The Baby Matrix, I looked at the issue of, what if you are old and you have no children.
Will you be old and lonely? What will life be like?
And what I found from reading what has already been studied is that what people find in their older years, or their elder years,
in terms of their wellbeing, what’s most important that helps them have a positive wellbeing,
is that they are financially secure, so that then when they’re retired,
they basically have enough money to live, and also that their partner is alive.
So, it didn’t really rest on depending on their children for them to be happier in their older years.
[ Girl ] Are we done yet? Mom, are we done? Mom? [ Irina Ionov ] No.
[ Girl ] Are we done yet? [ Irina Ionov ] Almost. Can you sit straight? With a straight spine?
[ Girl ] Now are we done? I'm starving!
[ Irina Ionov ] I decided to change my mind and to try become a mother for a number of reasons.
Of course, one reason was a lot of pressure from the relatives. I also felt that I really want a major change in my life.
And I started thinking what would be at least one good reason for me to bring another soul into this world.
And it came to me that I wanted to raise a person of so to speak new generation.
I wanted to raise my child differently from the mainstream. I wanted to be a progressive parent
and I wanted to share with my child all the spiritual things, all the spiritual answers
that me and my husband found by this age with a lot of struggle.
I wanted to share this information with my child.
[ Girl ] Turn right, turn right.
[ Peter Ionov ] Oh my goodness!
[ Irina Ionov ] Are you decorating my hair?
[ Girl ] Yeah. Now they’re white with dots on it.
[ Irina Ionov ] That’s very special, actually, that’s unusual decoration. You’re creative.
[ Irina Ionov ] Previously I used to live mostly for myself, and now I get a chance to give to the child:
[ Irina Ionov, yoga teacher, landscape designer ] to give an advice, to give care.
Definitely, my life has more meaning now.
[ Peter Ionov ] I am going to be throwing it, and you just hit it, ok?
[ Peter Ionov ] I always wanted to help people, so I came to this world to be useful.
And having child provides an excellent opportunity, because I am taking care of her,
I’m raising her, I am providing for the family.
And it may be tough, but it also brings lots of happiness and lots of fun.
There is much more love in our house right now when we are parents.
[ Peter Ionov ] She is the most precious thing I’ve ever had.
[ Irina Ionov ] I know, yes, I feel the same.