I recently had the pleasure of asking author Gloria Bowman about her novel, Human Slices, which has a main female character who is childfree. We also got into the childfree in novels and films. Check it out:

Q&A with Gloria Bowman

What inspired you to write Human Slices?

When I wrote the book, in my much younger days, I was trying to find my voice — and to be a voice for women who were of childbearing years and who had decided on childlessness. I also wanted to be a voice for those who may not have gone through a decision-making process to be childfree but knew in their hearts that motherhood wasn’t something they aspired to.

Gloria Bowman

Can you tell us a bit about the story line?

Human Slices is first of all a romance, a story about coupling and uncoupling and recoupling. Unlike a typical romance, the story is populated with characters who are a bit on the quirky side and who are living lifestyles that also register a bit off-kilter. Salm, the main female character (short for “Little Salmon,” her father’s childhood nickname for her), has always known she doesn’t want children and that self-knowledge has negatively impacted previous relationships in her life. She meets and falls for a man named Luke who understands and accepts her position but he has second thoughts when his best friend becomes a father.

What has been your experience of reading about characters who are childfree – with no children by choice?

There are stacks of books and stories with female characters without children—from contemporary writers like Elizabeth Gilbert as well as the likes of Colette, Marguerite Duras, Edgar Allan Poe, Anais Nin, and Jacqueline Susann. In fact, one of the best quotes about women and children is from D.H. Lawrence:  “That she bear children is not a woman’s significance. But that she bear herself, that is her supreme and risky fate.”

I would venture to say, however, that a great number of the characters are more characterized as being childless by circumstance, not necessarily by choice and how that choice came to be. As far as contemporary novels, I am drawn to those that feature childfree or implied-childfree lives (at least until after the book ends). If I pick up a book that has a lot to do with motherhood, it’s a hard nut to crack. And if a character with no children spends a lot of time longing to change that state of being, I can lose interest quickly.

How do you see women with no children portrayed in books and films?

There are a lot of childfree women in books and films — it’s just that the childfree character is usually bitter or unfulfilled or evil or zany (trying to take on motherhood by accident) or cold or other fill-in-the-blank stereotypes. All too often women who don’t reproduce are still marginalized and “suspect.”

I just watched the film Atonement, and there is this scene of a woman with dementia pushing an empty baby carriage–the lead character’s vision of herself in old age. Really? It was as if the filmmaker was saying everything would have been fine if she had just had a baby.

And of course a prime example is with the ever-popular Sex in the City show with the character, Carrie, the heroine, who is childfree yet also characterized as irrational and flighty, driven by selfishness, consumerism, and having one love crisis after another. The other childfree character, Samantha, is the “whore,” of course, and she’s the one who gets breast cancer and it’s represented as a kind of punishment because we’re reminded that not having children can increase your risk of that disease. The two “good girls” have babies.

I enjoyed seeing this season of the Bravo TV reality show, Southern Charm. One of the main players is a young woman who doesn’t want to have children. She is pondering and questioning it, and her mother says something to her like, “It’s OK if you don’t have kids.” That seemed to me a revolutionary moment on television!

Do you think we will see more childfree characters in film and books?

It will evolve and the market will decide. Look at how older women are appearing in more and more books and films. People are paying attention to the elder demographic because it’s powerful. As the population changes and technology opens doors and tired gatekeepers fade away, the doors open wider and wider for the childfree to be represented and portrayed in a more meaningful way.

Thank you, Gloria! Learn more about Gloria and her book at gloriabowman.com.