Vol. 16 No. 32 (2025): Communities and possible worlds. Community experiences and practices of resistance in neoliberal rationality
Articles

Becoming Mothers? No Thanks! The Phenomenon of Childfree Women in a Web Community

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  • Giuseppe Masullo,
  • Brian Joseph Gilley
Giuseppe Masullo
Department of Human, Philosophic and Education Sciences, University of Salerno, Italy
Brian Joseph Gilley
Department of Anthropology, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-16162

Published 2025-12-30

Keywords

  • Childfree Women,
  • Propensity to Motherhood,
  • Digital Ethnography,
  • Web Community

How to Cite

Masullo, G., & Gilley, B. J. (2025). Becoming Mothers? No Thanks! The Phenomenon of Childfree Women in a Web Community. SocietàMutamentoPolitica, 16(32), 49–59. https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-16162

Copyright (c) 2025 Giuseppe Masullo, Brian Joseph Gilley

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The article intends to examine the cultural phenomenon called “childfree”, that is, those women who choose not to have a child, and examines the forms of symbolic and relational psychological resistance that they give rise to in opposition to a culture that, instead, still forcefully affirms the equation “woman = mother”. To this end, the study focuses on two web communities on the social media Facebook that bring together online all the women who adhere to this subcultural universe in which the experience of motherhood does not constitute a goal of fulfillment. Applying a digital ethnography approach, the researchers wanted to examine, through the posts, the discursive and communicative practices through which women define themselves as childfree; the motivations that lead to giving up, to the point of belittling, what is still considered the maximum expression of a woman’s fulfillment: becoming a mother. The study also aims to verify whether a “collective self” is created where the community becomes a catalyst for identity, culture, emancipation and struggle, as well as the nucleus of resistance to dominant models to build alternative visions on concepts such as motherhood, gender roles, educational models, representations of femininity.

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