When Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance’s 2021 comments resurfaced recently, about how America was being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made,” the blowback was swift. Women without kids, columnists, prospective voters, and even stalwart Republican voices reminded Vance that significant, lasting contributions have been made by people without children.
And this isn’t a small group of people. A recent study found that more than half of current 18-to-34-year-olds are choosing not to have kids.
Despite this, pressure—from parents, peers, and the larger community, in addition to politicians and commentators—to have children remains very real. Within the Jewish community, in particular, there has long been an orientation toward family, legacy, and continuity. Passing on traditions l’dor vador—from one generation to another—is, for many Jews, an imperative, maybe because so many generations were persecuted, so many family trees stunted. There is that oft-repeated maxim that every Jewish newborn is further proof that Hitler didn’t win.
Not only is there a cultural expectation of procreation, there’s a programmatic one, with synagogue and JCC offerings typically including Tot Shabbat, Hebrew school, b’nai mitzvah, brises and baby-namings, confirmation ceremonies, and social groups of nursery school parents and empty nesters. Then there’s the scriptural pressure: the repeated themes in the Torah about begetting, infertility, ancestry, primogeniture, and inheritance.
We gathered 11 Jewish Americans who have made a conscious decision not to have or adopt children. While the recent study focused on people in their prime child-bearing years, we made a deliberate decision to invite people over that age, because we wanted to ensure this was a group that had stuck to that decision. Finding enough participants to talk about being child-free (a term most preferred to “childless”) proved difficult. There was some reluctance to be “out” as a deliberately child-free adult in the Jewish world; also, for some, their “decision” wasn’t so much an intentional decision they made with conviction, but rather simply how their lives played out, without regret. Their journeys are unique: Some once thought they’d like to be parents but changed their mind, while others knew early on that they wanted other things. Some find fulfillment by having other people’s children in their lives, while others find more contentment with their dogs. What they have in common, however, is a desire to be part of the Jewish community—if they can find a place that feels open to them.
Their ages, where they live, and their current relationship status
Melissa: 43, Manhattan, single.
Renee: 71, Chicago, single.
Michal: 48, Seattle area, single.
Stacey: 57, outside Denver. “Unmarried but partnered for 30-plus years.”
Adam: 54, Memphis, single.
Rebecca: 48, Binghamton, New York. “I’ve been a widow for three years, but have found love again and have a partner who I live with.”
Karen: 75, Berkeley, California, single.
Shira: 59, Brooklyn, divorced.
Kate: 42, Philadelphia, single.
Risa: 45, Manhattan. “Married the last six years, partnered for nine.”
Shaul: 43, Kingston, New York. “In a relationship; I define us as partnered.”
A show of hands: How many of you are comfortable with the term “child-free”? [Hands are raised.] I see 11 out of 11. We have unanimity. Can someone speak about whether the term “childless” is comfortable or not?
Michal: I think people mean it innocuously, but for me it kind of implies that there’s something wrong or something missing. Their choices are different from mine and that’s all there is to it.
Karen: I just hear the [Yiddish] word nebach afterward when someone says that, whether they actually say that word or not.
Can you translate that for readers?
Shaul: It just makes me think of like, “Oh, do you know so-and-so’s daughter? She’s 30, she’s childless. Such a shame—and she’s so pretty.”
I wish we could capture that accent you just gave us.
Shaul: [I’m originally from] the Five Towns. You’ll come visit, we’ll tell you about it.
Another show of hands: How many of you felt, as you were growing up, that there was a clear expectation by your Jewish family or community that you would and should have kids? I see eight out of 11: Risa, Karen, Stacey, Rebecca, Adam, Melissa, Renee, and Shaul.
Risa: I just want to put an asterisk on that because I think it might be more so that I was a woman than that I was a Jewish woman. As a young girl, it’s just assumed that you’re going to have a child. So I don’t know if it was my Jewishness or my gender; one of them.
Can others talk about either that expectation, or maybe pressure?
Melissa: I am first-generation American. Both my parents are immigrants. On my mom’s side, her parents were immigrants to Brazil, so there’s a lot of generational pressure, guilt, and awareness of fleeing—the refugee mindset. I think some of the pressure to have kids comes from that, especially as Jews. I do still feel some of that guilt, even at this point where I think everyone in my life has finally understood that when I say there isn’t a “now” or “unless” after the sentence, “I don’t want kids.” It’s simply, “I don’t want kids.” Now that I’m into my 40s, it’s something that I feel a lot more comfortable declaring because I didn’t feel comfortable even saying that before—while it was still much more of a biological possibility—because people just didn’t take it seriously. So there is something a little bit liberating about being in my 40s and people actually taking it at face value.
I think I’m a great uncle. I’m actually the godfather to my cousin’s son. I get to play that role because I’m not a parent.
Karen: I was brought up modern Orthodox in Brooklyn. I got married, and three months later ran into one of my mother’s neighbors on the street. She looked at me with her Eastern European accent and said, “So, when you’re going to have a baby?” It felt like a major intrusion. It’s none of your business. You don’t know who I am. How dare you, how dare you confront me like that and in the middle of the street, in the middle of the neighborhood?
Rebecca: That expectation was there for sure. I remember even as a little girl, my grandma would get Mother’s Day cards for my mother, her sister, and all the women with children. I would always get one and she would write “FMA—for the Future Mothers of America.” At age 7, I got that card.
Wow, that could definitely feel like pressure.
Renee: I wouldn’t consider it pressure to have babies, but I know that there was pressure to get married, which would imply you would then have a family. I didn’t date a lot when I was in high school, and then when I went to college, my father would call me up and say, “Are you wearing your hot pants? ... Maybe you’ll have more success dating then.” I think he thought, “Well, maybe when she goes off to college she’ll have a heavier social life, she’ll date more.”
Shaul: I wouldn’t say it’s so much that there was a pressure to have children, maybe because of the difference between male and female, but in my instance, I actually tell this anecdote about my mother to show how she learned to accept my being gay, and it kind of applies here, too: When I came out to her, her first response was, “Are you sure? Maybe you need to seek help.” It then went to, “OK, I get it. Maybe you can be gay now, but then still have a wife and children.” Then it went to, “Maybe you can have an open understanding with a woman and have a family and have children,” to the current comment, which is, “When are you going to find a partner and have children?” So her desire for me was always to have a family and to have children. I don’t know that I would define it as pressure per se, more of an expectation and an assumption that that’s what my life would be. She grew to understand that it was going to be with a man, not with a woman, but she always expected children.
That’s a great litany of just how the goalpost kept changing, but can you say how you feel about fielding her evident disappointment?
Shaul: I think she still holds on to some hope. She still kind of pushes for me to have kids. Her position is that she thinks I’d be a great father, and so she’s just upset that I’m not going to have that opportunity to be a parent. We’ve talked about it in great detail, and my explanation to her is, “Not everyone can give back as a parent.” I think I’m a great uncle. I’m actually the godfather to my cousin’s son. I get to play that role because I’m not a parent. So I get to be a parent for many as opposed to just my own individual children, and Mom has learned to understand that.
Is there anyone else on this call who identifies as gay and wants to weigh in on the baby-expectation question?
Risa: When I came out, age 21, 22, some college time, I don’t know if my family brought up kids at all. I do think that in a way, because of my queerness … there were no rules that applied to me. I was already out, so I was walking in an open field. And so I think if anything, it removed any and all expectation from aunts, cousins, Mom, Dad. They were all just like, “Oh, OK, so she’s now X, Y, Z. We don’t really know what to expect,” and that was that. So if anything, I feel like it completely released me from what would’ve been pressure.
It seems like having kids—to do what I think is right or what I would perceive to be right—is another full-time job. My real full-time job—starting a business and all this other stuff—was crazy enough.
I want to pick up on what Shaul mentioned: the idea of being there for kids in your life without parenting them. Can someone else say whether you have that kind of relationship?
Shira: I’m fortunate to say that I do. My older brother has two sons. They lost their mother when they were teenagers, so I was able to be their nanny. Actually, I was already their nanny when their mother was alive, and then I helped out for a couple of years after she died. And so we have really close relationships. I think I’m probably the closest thing to a mom that they have. They’re almost 40 now, so it’s been a long and fruitful relationship.
Rebecca: I am a stepmother, so that’s sort of my kid. But I do have a special relationship with a very close friend’s daughter. I am a dancer and she’s been dancing since she was a little girl, so I’ve made it a point to go to her recitals, we’ve danced together, practice, so we’ve had a close relationship. And that’s been the case with a couple of other friends, too, which I enjoy. I also like the fact that I could pick and choose which friends’ kids I want to mentor and leave the ones who are a pain in the butt.
Can a few of you talk about the decision you made to live child-free?
Karen: I couldn’t understand the logic of growing up, getting married, having children, going through all the schooling, and just repeating this cycle. Part of it might’ve been that I was the youngest child in an extended family, so there were no littler ones than me and I had a very uncomfortable childhood, so I couldn’t understand why people would do this. It was never something where I said, “Oh my God, I want to grow up, have a baby, and be the mommy.” I just never had that. I wanted a dog.
Renee: Ditto. Mine was more of a passive decision because I never got married, though of course I could have had children without getting married, but it never was something that I strongly desired. I never really thought about having a child in the context of being Jewish. I never got that much pressure from my parents to have children. Once they realized I wasn’t getting married, which took them a while to accept, they didn’t harass me too much. I did have nieces who I was very attached to, so I had them to fulfill any maternal instincts. I always wanted a dog, and I’m a huge dog lover. I had a succession of dogs and they give me tremendous fulfillment. I think there’s nothing like having a dog.
Karen: And also no college expenses.
I don’t have the personality to be the right parent, and I don’t have the desire for it anyway.
Renee: Well, dogs are expensive, but nothing like having college tuition to pay for.
Stacey: I’m a veterinarian, so I have plenty of dogs and cats, too. I’m very pro-dog. For me, I think it was a conscious decision, not necessarily that I never thought I’d have kids, but basically it was a work thing: After undergrad and vet school, eight years of my life, I had an opportunity to do more advanced training, so I spent four years living in other cities—apart from my significant other, working ridiculous hours. And certainly no one around me in training, certainly none of the women, were having children. A lot of the women I trained with, in retrospect, don’t have children now either. I then started dating the guy I’m still with. He’s not Jewish—that may be a factor, too. First, my parents were a little concerned, they would have preferred we married. We talked about having kids, but after four years of me living in different parts of the country, it was partly just a relief to say, “I’d like to just focus on grown-up time because we’ve been apart for four years.” Also, I was starting my career. Maybe it’s a cop-out. I certainly know other veterinarians and other veterinary specialists, female and male, who have kids, but I didn’t think I could ever have the time or the balance to do both those things well. It seems like having kids—to do what I think is right or what I would perceive to be right—is another full-time job. My real full-time job—starting a business and all this other stuff—was crazy enough. So that was my decision. Having children just didn’t make sense to me. And maybe I didn’t want it enough to make an excuse.
Kate: I was ambivalent about having kids, but in my 30s I thought that was the next thing you should do. I had a long-term partner at the time and we tried, but never ended up getting pregnant. And then when I was single again, I still thought, “Well, I’ve got the house and I’ve got the job. I should have a kid, that’s the next step.” So I got pregnant with a friend as a donor and I had a miscarriage and thought, “OK, well I’ll be a foster parent and maybe I’ll go that route.” I actually went through the training and became a foster parent and almost immediately, got my first foster kid, a really super-cute little 14-month-old boy. He was perfect, and I immediately realized, “This is not for me.” The ambivalence progressed to a realization that it just did not bring me joy or interest. I didn’t feel invested. I didn’t feel like I was fulfilling any part of myself that was missing. So when he reunited with his family, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, I let the foster care agency know that I was no longer going to take placements, and moved forward as a child-free person. It was a feeling of exhilaration, relief, and freedom to cement that in my mind.
Michal: I would say I was also ambivalent about it. I didn’t feel strongly that I wasn’t going to have children or wanted to. Like Karen said, aside from being very traditional in terms of my educational route, I never followed societal convention. I looked at people and said, “I don’t think people are making these deliberate choices. I think they’re just following the thing, and that’s sad for them.” Because I wish people would make deliberate choices. I have to say, I lived in New York most of my adult life, New York City, so it was normal to not be married or have a boyfriend as you get older. No one questions your value, I guess. There’s not a lot of pressure in New York the way there might be in other parts of the country. I’ve always been involved with children in different ways, professionally and in a volunteer capacity, so it didn’t feel like something I needed to do. I had an abortion in my senior year in college. And even looking back like, “Oh, that could have been my opportunity,” the truth is I don’t feel that way. I think, “Thank God.” I moved to Europe, I’ve traveled, I’ve done so many things in my career. And my career involves things that have significant social impact on many more people than the one child I would produce in terms of good in the world, so I feel completely validated in my decision. As I got older, maybe like Kate, I was like, “Oh no, I am not even yearning or regretful or questioning. I’m completely cool with this.” And like everyone else, I am obsessed with my dog and she costs a lot of money and that’s fine.
There’s this assumption that people who don’t have children are selfish, they don’t know how to take care of something, they don’t put money or time or effort into someone else.
Adam: I never strongly felt I wanted to have kids at all. But the main thing for me—and this sounds more awkward or whatever, like I need therapy—but by the time I was 17, my father was a divorced drug addict and he died of an overdose. I inherited his sense of humor. I also inherited his temper. It wasn’t a fun house to grow up in. I remember him taking me out to go fly a kite, playing catch with him, I remember this, I remember that. But I also remember him screaming his fucking head off at me in the middle of a supermarket or punching the shit out of me ... I worried, “I’m going to do that to a child. I’m going to be in the middle of a supermarket and my 18-month-old child is going to be flinging Nilla Wafers all over the place and I’m going to traumatize the poor thing.” I don’t have the personality to be the right parent, and I don’t have the desire for it anyway. I do remember being in the car with my sister and my niece, who was maybe 18 months, and she was just flipping out and I just turned to my sister and said, “You are never going to be an aunt. It’s not happening.”
Risa: I just assumed I was going to have one, and then by the time I was 33, 34, I started having professional, financial success, living in New York City, eating at Michelin-star restaurants, having the best wine, discovering what good wine is, traveling all over the world. I have the money to do all those things. And each and every time I would have another gorgeous experience, my next thought was like, “I don’t want to go to Disneyland, ever. Ever. I never want to have to go there. And if that’s where I have to go instead of Per Se, that’s a no.” And so it just kept growing more and more. By the time I was like 36, it was completely solidified by the thought that I get to do what I want to do. I get to do it. Let someone else take their kids to Disneyland and listen to them screaming. No. Just no.
Melissa: A lot of what people have said has resonated a lot with me. I was raised by a single mom, I have a sister, and we are a house of girls. I’m very close to my grandmother, my aunt, and two cousins who are around the same age as my sister and me, so my childhood games were very baby doll and who was the mom. I think the first time I remember saying proactively I didn’t want to have kids, I was in middle school or high school. My mom kind of castigated me and said, “Never say that. You’re going to be an amazing mom. Just wait.” That sort of condescension lasted, I think, through my adult life. “Oh, just wait. Just wait,” like at some point I would wake up and it would be like a switch flipped: “I think I do want kids!” But I was always fairly certain I didn’t want kids. I’ve always been incredibly ambitious in terms of my career and wanting to see the world, experience and accomplish things, and kids were never part of the equation. I will say the only time I even allowed it to come into my brain was when I was in a very serious relationship, and he really wanted a child. I say it in jest now, but it’s fucked up if I think about it, like I was negotiating with him that I would have one child as long as he agreed to have a dog, because he wasn’t a dog person and I am.
I have to acknowledge the powerful dog thread of this entire conversation about children.
Melissa: Yeah. I’m on my second fur-baby, so I went that route, too.
Michal: I wouldn’t normally say this, except it seems like so many people on this call have dogs. There’s this assumption that people who don’t have children are selfish, they don’t know how to take care of something, they don’t put money or time or effort into someone else. I just think dogs give us unconditional love; children don’t, necessarily. But clearly dogs are living, sentient beings dependent on us. We’re clearly caretakers, we’re clearly emotionally involved and invested in them financially and emotionally, and there’s a lot of training that goes into it. So it’s not that we’re just like, “I’m doing me, and everyone else can go away.” At least humans—human adults—can take care of themselves. But I just think the dog thing shows that obviously everyone here feels really strongly about caretaking and loving relationships.
Risa: I agree. I think it’s a really interesting point only because I’m such a nurturer by heart, that’s what I do for a living. I just think that’s such an interesting point because so many of us without kids have dogs. I have two.
I came from a home that I didn’t want to replicate. Being my mother.
I’m not going to ask if the dogs are Jewish, but I assume they are.
Karen: I just wanted to raise something related to what Adam had said: feeling like I came from a home that I didn’t want to replicate. Being my mother. It was a not-good-enough mothering, and I didn’t want to do that. A dog loves you, and I could relate to a dog.
Adam: Can we just talk about dogs for the rest of this conversation?
Shaul: I do think there’s a lot to this dog conversation, not just as another dog owner. Michal brought up the question of “do we have dogs and such love for dogs because we don’t have children and we want somewhere to give our love to, something to nurture?” I see her perspective, but I disagree with it. Maybe this is [part] of me that I’m projecting onto other people, but did I want a child in some way, didn’t have it, and therefore want to give love, and therefore had a dog instead? So it wasn’t: Is this my coping mechanism for not having a child?
Adam: All I will say to that is the song “Cat’s in the Cradle” was about humans, not a dog. A dog will never betray you.
Rebecca: I have a dog, my second one, and I love dogs. I think that deciding to have a child or deciding to have a dog is not an intellectual decision. I simply didn’t want a child, and I wanted a dog. Neither makes sense. My dog happens to cost a lot of money because he was ill or rescue issues, training, blah, blah, blah. If you have a child, yes, there’s tremendous love, my friends would not change that, but it’s expensive. They worry they’ll never sleep again in the same way. So I think it’s just that you want it or you don’t. It’s completely emotional. And I wanted a dog and not a baby.
Melissa: I did get my first dog when my best friend had her first baby. In my head I was like, “Oh, they’re going to grow up together. It’s going to be great and life phases,” but at the end of the day, my dog passed away before his “bark mitzvah.”
Stacey: In contrast to some of the other folks who’ve talked about maybe choosing not to have kids because they felt they had a not-positive childhood, I’m kind of the opposite. We had a very positive childhood. My mom was a stay-at-home mom most of when we were growing up. We had a pretty traditional childhood. And it was very Jewish. My mom drove the Hebrew school carpool because somebody had to drive it, and we were all b’nai mitzvah. We were all very involved with the synagogue. My mom would help the ladies who did kiddush, that was a rotation, and she was involved in ORT, my dad was involved in B’nai B’rith and part of my decision to not have children and focus more on work was because if I did decide to have children, there is just no way I could have given them a similar upbringing, both Jewishly and more broadly, too. So that was a big thing. If there is a regret I would have, one is I don’t really have anyone to pass that onto, although I do have nephews—one of whom lives here in Colorado, and I see quite frequently. I try to pass on some of what I had, but I can’t really pass things on directly.
I never felt guilty about that until Oct. 7. Ever since then, I do experience some guilt because the precariousness of our people has become so much more visceral to me.
I want to touch on the very strong message in Jewish life about our ancestral line, inheritance, carrying something on. There’s that message that was drummed into so many of us in childhood: So many Jews died simply for the identity, how can you abandon it? Can anyone address that drumbeat of not breaking the chain?
Kate: I am actually a Jew by choice. I converted about 16 years ago, so I never felt guilty about that until Oct. 7. Ever since then, I do experience some guilt because the precariousness of our people has become so much more visceral to me.
Renee: I always considered myself much more of a cultural Jew, a secular Jew, and I’m an atheist. After Oct. 7, things definitely changed for me. I started wearing a Jewish star and I started being much more active and seeking out ways in which I could make a difference. I’m the only one of my friends and my family who seems to have been affected by Oct. 7, and it’s very upsetting.
Adam: Speaking of passing it on—if I’d been a father, or even when it comes to my niece and nephew, I’d say, “Oh, I have to go to this stupid bar or bat mitzvah.” If I were a father I’d say, “I have to pay for this thing.” Ever since Oct. 7, it’s felt much more of an honor to have a Jewish identity. So it probably would’ve been—I’ll never know, knock on wood, I’ll never know, please—a very joyous occasion and an honor to raise a child into the Jewish culture and identity, to give a child that identity. Especially when you see what the numbers are of Jews currently alive, we’re still not at the same number we were pre-Holocaust.
Adam, has Oct. 7 made you think differently about not having added to the numbers of Jews in the world?
Adam: Just in passing, in theory. I don’t feel the weight of the world and I’m not grabbing a woman walking down the street like, “Let’s have a baby.” But in the most abstract sense, yes—the same way it’s like, “Oh, wouldn’t it be great if all the Monopoly money were real.”
Risa: I don’t know if it’s because of the manner in which I was raised Jewish—I had a Reform bat mitzvah—but never in a million years would I have thought about numbers of Jewish people. The amount of us wouldn’t have crossed my mind until you all just mentioned it. And never would it have crossed my mind about carrying on a specific family ever. So I don’t know if I’m koo-koo-ka-choo. It also could be, once again, a female thing, I don’t know. My friends and I—my family-by-choice and I—are all often of the same ilk, which is, “Why do people keep having kids when there are millions that need homes?” It seems very strange to want to birth one when so many are already here. It’s like getting a puppy instead of just rescuing a dog. Sounds disgusting as a comparison, but it feels very real.
Shaul: My sister had children first, my brother next—a daughter first, and then when he had a son, it actually gave me a huge sigh of relief that there was a male to carry on the name. So in terms of the ideology of passing on, or familial continuity, then yes, when my brother had a child, it actually gave me a sigh of relief. If I didn’t have a brother, I imagine that I would carry it [heavily] considering how relieved I was when he had it. ... My father is Sephardic, my mother is Ashkenazi, and anyone knows if you’re half-and-half, you’re Sephardic because Sephardic always dominates. I think that there are probably elements of that that tie into the name-carrying. I thought it was really interesting when Risa was saying that she never had this focus on numbers—how many Jews exist—because numbers wasn’t such a big thing for me, but family continuity was. I always felt as a child—I can remember thinking about this expectation of me carrying on the family name. That might be a Sephardic thing, being a male, it was just an expectation you’re going to have children to carry on our name.
Rebecca: I’ve had zero guilt about Jewish continuity … It does make me sad in an abstract way that my parents are probably ... well, they are the last. My cousin didn’t have kids. My two brothers are not having children, and I didn’t. So that’s kind of it, and that is sad. At the same time, I’m hearing my mother say “L’dor vador” [from generation to generation] a thousand times as a way to guilt me into making a life change that I would not want. That really aggravated me, to say the least. I don’t think that’s a reason to have a child. If you have a child, that’s a beautiful thing—to think about what you’re contributing. But if you don’t want that, that’s not a reason in itself to have a child.
Can you describe what the price has been in terms of your relationship with your mom?
Rebecca: Our relationship, sadly, is forever changed. I got married at 30. I always wanted to be married, and I also knew I didn’t want children. So there was pressure for several years, and I kept saying, “I don’t want one. I don’t want one.” She would not let that go or understand my reasons and basically told me, “I don’t understand you. This is the most un-Jewish thing, and how could you do this to me?” We wound up not speaking. I told her, “I can’t do this anymore,” so we actually stopped speaking for about six months. I only agreed to talk to her if she would go to a therapist with me, we’d get it all out. And at the end of that, the decision was, “OK, you can’t bring this up again, or I will now hang up the phone.” She made digs and everything, but basically she told me that she could never feel the same way about me. So that was a loss I had to come to terms with, still am, but now at almost 50, I mean, there’s nothing to bring up. My husband also passed away. I have a partner who’s almost 60, so what’s she going to say? I’m not having a kid. But that lasting impact will be with me forever.
I can remember thinking about this expectation of me carrying on the family name. That might be a Sephardic thing, being a male, it was just an expectation you’re going to have children to carry on our name.
Thank you for sharing that. Would any of you say that your Jewish life would be different if you had kids? Did your decision to be child-free impact your Jewish life or your involvement in the Jewish community?
Shaul: To me, being Jewish as an identity has two real components. One: My Judaism is how to be a person in society; that is how I carry my Judaism. That’s what I’ve learned to carry as a Jew. The other part of it is how to have a family and how to be a familial unit. So to me, without children, the notion of Judaism is actually fairly complicated, because what is your family? I’m not going to have Shabbat dinner with my dog. When I grew up, that was a really big part of our tradition. We always had Shabbat dinner no matter what. It wasn’t until I had a partner that I started to create or have the ability to have the familial aspect of Judaism without a child. You talk about a specific instance in which you felt separated or segregated from the rest of Jewish society, and I think that’s every single event. To me, it’s such a huge part of Judaism—this familial unit that is there for any bar mitzvah any time in any temple. A lot of it just revolves around children, and that’s your segue into Jewish life.
Shira: I was married in my mid-20s and we tried to get pregnant when I was around 30 and failed. And then a bunch of disasters happened in my life. My parents died. My father-in-law died. My sister-in-law died. And then my marriage blew up and I found myself 39 and living in New York City by myself. Then I became a Jew. So the timing happened such that I was learning how to be a Jew. I was effectively a Jewish child myself, but I was the only person who was responsible for me. So I was raising myself as a Jewish child, and I’ve been a Jew for 20 years now.
When you say you were essentially a Jewish child, you mean that metaphorically—because you were in the infancy of your Jewish life, as a convert?
Shira: That’s right. The Jewish child that I have raised is me, and I feel like I’m a good contribution to the Jewish people.
The Jewish child that I have raised is me, and I feel like I’m a good contribution to the Jewish people.
Karen: I grew up Orthodox, and one of the reasons I left was because it felt so incredibly uncomfortable not to want to have kids. Since then, what I’m aware of is that going into most Conservative synagogues feels a little uncomfortable because it’s very much couples and families and children. In the Jewish Renewal world that I’m in right now and the community that I’m in right now, part of my being in it is because so many of us don’t have kids—and don’t have kids by choice. I can come up with a total list of about 42 people. And on the list, there was one who said it was the greatest regret of her life. So I’m part of a world where we care for each other and all children. I mean, I can relate to all children as my child because I don’t have this fierceness about one given child. In my original immediate family, my father’s whole family was wiped out in the Holocaust. The name I have is my father’s father’s family name as opposed to his mother’s family. They were Hasidish. I always thought, well, maybe someday I would have a kid and I would continue that surname. Because there are no living others. I’m it. When I go, it’s over.
Stacey: Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but since I’m an introvert by nature, I think if I had children, I would be forced to be more involved in the Jewish community. It takes more of an effort when you don’t live in the Northeast in a really Jewish area. If I had children, I would want them to go to Hebrew school and to be bar mitzvah and I would want them to be involved in Jewish youth groups. Those activities would have given me entree to Jewish community, because I’m the person who prefers dogs to people, which is why I’m a veterinarian. There really isn’t an inherent niche in the synagogue community, and even the larger Jewish community, for a basically single person in a long-term relationship with a non-Jewish partner who has no kids. I’m not looking for a partner, I’m not going to Tot Shabbat with the children I don’t have. Maybe that’s a cop-out. But if you went to Tot Shabbat and you didn’t have children, I think people might think you were strange. There’s no natural pathway in.
Michal, could you share a very specific moment in your Jewish life where you felt a division in the Jewish sphere between those who have kids and those who don’t?
Michal: I’m an atheist, but I’m very involved culturally, I ethnically feel close to my heritage. When I was in New York, I just took for granted that Jewish culture is acknowledged and recognized—even on the local news they say, “Happy Rosh Hashanah,” so I didn’t need to seek it out at that time. I was there until I was about 40. When I moved to Seattle, I started looking for more community because there are no Jews, no Northeasterners—no one speaks in a direct way. I’m still a fish out of water here, even seven years later. Basically, I was looking for community in Seattle. I didn’t look that hard in terms of community centers or synagogues, but just looking to meet people and tie into them. But more recently—especially since Oct. 7, I’ve been looking into a Jewish community center or synagogues. And when I look, first of all, it could cost a ton of money to join. And since I’m not there for religious purposes, I don’t need High Holiday tickets or anything like that. I looked at how you’d sign up for membership and the questionnaire asks, “What group do you think you belong to?” And I can see how they’re really trying to be inclusive. “Are you married with young kids?” Or, “Are you a person with young kids? Are you a person with older kids? Are you a retiree? Are you an empty nester?” And while I am 48, my lifestyle is no different from when I was 38 or whenever, so I don’t act like whatever people think someone my age would be. And because I don’t have kids, I don’t have this whole domestic lifestyle. So I’m looking at the events in the Jewish community center here, and I’m thinking, “OK, let me not look at filters for what group that’s in, but just what are the events. Oh, there’s challah-making or this hike. Cool. Oh, it’s at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday.” Well, I work during weekdays, I’m not retired, I don’t mind hanging out with retired people and meeting people in that age group, but there’s no place for me to go. I would go to a Purim party and watch all the kids in their costumes and think it’s really cute, but I am also an introvert, so after an hour I need to leave because it’s just too much and that’s not the group I want to be around. I’m still looking actually, but to be honest, I can’t find anything, anywhere to land.
I grew up Orthodox, and one of the reasons I left was because it felt so incredibly uncomfortable not to want to have kids.
I so appreciate how you’re recounting the typical categories. We’ve all seen those lanes in Jewish life.
Michal: They do have 20s and 30s singles events, but again, even if I’m single, I’m not looking for people in their 20s and 30s and they’re not looking for me.
Melissa: I went to my friend’s son’s bar mitzvah this year. And bar mitzvahs are one of those places where I am there by myself. I’m a 43-year-old woman and the other adults are family of the bar mitzvah boy or parents of other children, and that pretty much sums it up. I swim at the JCC on the Upper West Side, and I’m constantly looking to see—is there something or an event or some kind of screening that I can see myself in ... And it’s always 20s and 30s, families, or 50s, 60s, older senior folks.
Melissa, you were one of the first members of Lab/Shul in New York City, which reinvented ritual and Jewish connectivity in a big way. Would you say being child-free is easy there?
Melissa: It certainly feels safer. Lab/Shul has evolved a lot in the 11 or 12 years that we’ve existed now, and it’s become slightly more similar to some of these other mainstream spiritual communities with the programmatic categorizations. A lot of the people who came in those early years and were part of the core nucleus now have kids who are bar mitzvah age or are having babies now, so it is starting to shift. But it is refreshing because one of our taglines is “We’re everybody-friendly,” and it really is everybody-friendly. That said, there is an emphasis on family. So I have these conversations with my spiritual leaders in my community about the fact that there are more people like me and we don’t feel like we have a natural place. That’s part of why I do love the community and took time to find it—despite being childless.
Rebecca: This is very interesting to me. I grew up in Roslyn, Long Island, and we were in New York City all the time. That was my upbringing. My grandfather and my father were presidents of our Conservative shul. My parents were married there. I became a bat mitzvah there. Every time I’ve gone back to my hometown synagogue, I do feel that, well, this is not for a child-free person. There’s family and there have been questions [about why I don’t have one]. But in Binghamton, where I live now, I think because there’s not many Jews, it’s a tighter Jewish community, far less judgmental. In my current synagogue, I have felt welcomed. I haven’t even thought about children or not. One of my good friends—who was the synagogue president—does have children, but another friend does not. I go to services and events as me, and I’ve definitely found community there. I just don’t go to the family stuff.
Every time I’ve gone back to my hometown synagogue, I do feel that, well, this is not for a child-free person.
Shira: This is not so much about interpersonal feelings of alienation, but when I was going regularly to Shabbat morning service, the first Psalm of Hallel ends with when God makes the barren woman ... I have my siddur right here beside me because I have to look it up: “He sets a barren woman in her house as a mother happy with children. Hallelujah.” I did really ache during the first year that I was going to shul—every time we did Hallel. Nobody was making me feel weird, but the liturgy ...
Speaking of Jewish texts, the fact that congregations hear the Hannah story every Rosh Hashanah—about how she was praying so fervently for a child that bystanders thought she was drunk, and we all know the story about how Sarah believed she’d never conceive, that Rachel was barren, etc. Is that recurring theme—or focus on fertility—something you feel you have to wrestle with when listening to or reading the Torah?
Shira: Not so much now that I’m past childbearing age. I mean, I was 39 when I became a Jew.
Well, Sarah was 99 when she gave birth to Isaac ...
Shira: (Laughs.) That’s true. And Sarah laughed when she heard she’d be finally having a child. I can’t quite laugh yet … No, I can laugh, actually. I don’t think about it anymore, but I did. I took the liturgy seriously. I still take it seriously, and it is something to be reckoned with.
Karen: The Koret Foundation gave me a grant in 1994 to do whatever I wanted to increase Jewish community in Marin. And after some research, I started a group for singles over 40, for spiritual seekers for a Saturday night synagogue, which was joyous, meaningful, fun. Nothing I did focused on children, and the synagogue membership doubled. It went from 300 to over 600 member units. When I left, they replaced me with a family educator, and the synagogue went down to 400-plus families. So ...
It’s been a great life. You can’t do everything.
Karen: There’s a lesson there. I expected others to follow, but they didn’t.
Karen, you’re our Orthodox representative here. Procreation is emphasized in Orthodox life, so can you address how that’s played out for you?
Karen: I’m the only one who doesn’t have kids in an extended family with 25 cousins. My mother’s family survived the war. And so I do feel the sense of “Poor Karen.” And I laugh internally because I’ve had an amazing life. I am 75 years old. I am grateful for my life, which I wouldn’t have had with children. I mean, if they’d allowed women rabbis, as they do now in the Orthodoxy, I might’ve stayed, and then who knows what I would’ve done. But I didn’t feel a place for myself there. And when I go into an Orthodox shul now, these are my internal demons coming up saying, “I just don’t feel comfortable here.” So it’s lasted pretty much a lifetime.
Risa: Props to my synagogue, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York. It’s the largest gay synagogue in the world, but it’s no longer just gay, we have a ton of straight peeps who come for the openness. I have never gone to a Friday night Shabbat there where there is more than one kid. People watch from all over the world, and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum has, since ’91, really created a space for people without children, for people who were not able to get married, for people who live a different lifestyle and who just want to be with Jews. I think that my Jewishness became much deeper there. My uncle Mark, may he rest, was in that synagogue, so I was raised going to CBST as a 14-year-old “straight” girl. I didn’t realize when I was that young—the light bulb hadn’t gone off. But as soon as I realized, I thought, “Oh my God, I’m totally a gay person, I can go back to that synagogue.” I was welcomed with open arms and then I discovered, “This is a synagogue for everyone.” I’ve heard only incredible things about Lab/Shul, but you don’t have to live in Manhattan to go to CBST, everything is online.
OK, the final question for each of you: What is one thing that you wish the larger Jewish community understood about Jewish people who choose not to have children?
If anything, I feel like we have more energy to bring to the Jewish world.
Adam: We still want to be part of the community. It does feel a little sealed off. Despite the fact that we don’t have our own kids, we still want to be part of the community.
Karen: To those who say, “Oh, you’re going to regret it when you’re old,” well, I’m old and I don’t regret it. I have many children in my life and many grandchildren, both blood and not blood. It’s been a great life. You can’t do everything.
Kate: I think that child-free Jews have a lot to offer the community in roles outside of just Jews with children.
Melissa: We are not a monolith. We are diverse and we are child-free for a variety of reasons. We have a lot to offer in our own ways. We are more proactive in our connection and the ways we give to the greater Jewish community because of this.
Renee: I have to say that I don’t feel excluded. So my response would be that I don’t have a response.
Shaul: I would just say child-free doesn’t mean Jew-free. We still are part of the community and we want to be involved in it, so just because we don’t have children doesn’t mean that we’re not just as Jewish as everybody else is.
Michal: It doesn’t mean we feel any less tied to our ethnic heritage. We do want to be part of a community and we are still Jewish. I want people to know that we still feel Jewish. We want to be part of the community and whatever our religious views are, we feel still tied to our heritage.
Shira: I would add that grown-ups who don’t have kids can explore their own inner child as part of a safe Jewish community. I’m lucky to be able to do that.
Stacey: The decision to be a person without children doesn’t define my Jewishness. It doesn’t take away from my upbringing or my ethnic background, my commitment to Zionism, or anything else. It’s just one piece of who I am. But by not choosing to have children, I didn’t excise that part of my existence.
Rebecca: What I would suggest to people is: Do not ask the question, “When are you having children?”
Risa: We bless our community in a different way. That’s all. I always think about Oprah’s school in Africa. When she created it, she made an announcement saying, “I now realize why I didn’t have children and I never knew why. And this is why, because I have all this energy to give.” If anything, I feel like we have more energy to bring to the Jewish world.