“Do You Have a Cat?” Conversations with Child Free Women Color photography, audio 24”x24” each (prints), variable-length (audio) 2024-Ongoing
From the time of my early childhood, I learned through media, family, and social structures that women who didn’t have children were, in one way or another, deficient. Many were portrayed as mean — cruel nurses, strict schoolteachers, or miserable spinsters who lived in a scary house on the edge of the woods. These women might trap a child in their house, intent on eating that child for dinner. One thing was for certain, a childless woman would not return your ball if it mistakenly rolled into her yard. In my family, the feeling conveyed was sadness. An unimaginable emptiness surely must accompany the life of a childless woman. If not hateful and cruel, she must certainly be depressed and lonely.
In recent years, I have noticed how many news headlines warn about declining birthrates. Growing up I remember the American family standard being “2.5 kids and a dog.” The ever-declining current birthrate of 1.62 kids per woman seems to have a significant number of people concerned—a concern I can’t understand given that the world has an ever-growing population of 8.2 BILLION people. Is a pressing problem of contemporary society really a lack of people?
As a child free woman myself, I was curious. How are other child free women navigating the current news, the social norms embedded since childhood, and the dreaded “old-age-without-someone-to-take-care-of-you” that seems just around the corner. How can the lives of child free women be transformed from a social perception of “lack” to an acceptance of the child free life as just another way to experience the time we have?
After years of planning, I began photographing in July of 2024. Coincidentally, also in July 2024, news broke that the current Republican (then) nominee for vice-president had, in 2020, made public derogatory statements about “childless cat ladies.” His comments succinctly sum up a common opinion—complete with misery and fear—about the lives and intentions of women who don’t have children. My project counters this dehumanizing view of choosing to live a child free life via direct conversation. Specifically, I engage the participant in a conversation about the child free life they have lived while making the photographs. The recorded conversations make up companion pieces to the photographs.