When was the last time you saw our lives without children accurately portrayed in a book, movie, or TV show? Can’t think of anything? That’s because you probably didn’t see anything like that. 

Childless in the Media was the subject of a panel discussion I joined on Zoom last Thursday as part of World Childless Week. Gateway-women founder Jody Day led the discussion. Joining us were author Annie Kirby, counselor and author Meriel Whale, journalism professor Cristina Archetti, and Rosalyn Scott, an editor who runs the NoMo book club featuring books by and about childless women. You can watch the webinar here.

We all agreed that true-to-life images of people without children are hard to find. The childfree are depicted as career-obsessed, hard-hearted, and possibly crazy. Remember Alex in “Fatal Attraction”? Or the countless female characters who were forced to go back to their small-town families for some reason and discovered a handsome hunky flannel-shirted stranger who brought out their feminine mothering side? 

The childless, unable to have children due to infertility and other reasons, are shown as pitiful–until, tada!-a baby magically falls into their hands through adoption or a miraculous conception. The partner who didn’t want kids has done a complete 180 and is delighted to become a parent.

Even those who seem to be set in a childless marriage because one partner doesn’t want to have children–Penny in “The Big Bang Theory”–change their minds. Penny is pregnant and happy about it at the end of the show.

Cristina Archetti, attending from Norway, did a study of 50 films from Norway, Italy, and the United States. The stereotypes hold across cultures, she said. The childless characters either die by suicide or murder, become mothers–thus “normalizing” their lives, or become psychopaths. The exceptions: men and superheroes. Superwoman is apparently okay with not having kids. She’s too busy saving the world. 

Her conclusion: The childless, especially women, are seen as unnatural, broken and needing to be fixed, or as monsters. Yikes. I don’t think that describes most of us. But people often believe what they see in the media. We need truer images of what it’s like to be childless.  

Jody Day asked people who registered for the webinar to list their most loved and hated childless characters. Carrie Bradshaw of “Sex and the City” came out high on both lists. She married Mr. Big relatively late and he didn’t want children. She accepted that with little protest. In the new series, taking place many years later, the widowed Carrie is dating again and children seem to be the last thing on her mind. 

Some of the beloved childless characters include Mary Poppins, Miss Marple, and Jessica Fletcher of the “Murder, She Wrote” series. 

During our discussion, Annie Kirby read from her book The Hollow Sea, and I read portions of my Up Beaver Creek novels  that include childless characters. Meriel Whale shared from her forthcoming book The Unreal City. We believe there is a market for stories about women like us who don’t have children and are not crazy, mean (Nurse Ratched?, Snow White’s wicked stepmother? Cruella de Ville), or likely to end up with a baby at the end (“Mike and Molly,” “Friends”). 

Who would you name as childless characters you admire or hate? 

Is it hard for you to watch shows or read books that are filled with parents and children or that offer magical solutions to childlessness? Can you name any movies, TV shows or books that get it right? 

What do you think? I would love to read your comments. 

  Meanwhile, check out @Nomobookclub on Instagram. 

Little by little, by telling our own stories and sharing the ones that show childlessness as it really is, we can help change the way the world looks at us.