“I don’t ever want to be a mother. Here’s why” – Eva zu BECK ▶️

“The man who wants to perpetuate himself at any price is scarcely to be distinguished from the dog.”
CIORAN, “The refusal to procreate”

We explore my choice to be childfree and debunk some of the myths associated with people who choose not to have children. We historically look at the role of children, societal understandings of motherhood, and track birth rates across generations to understand where the supposed ‘maternal instinct’ comes from.

Eva zu Beck (born Ewa Zubek; 26 April 1991) is a Polish travel blogger and vlogger. She hosted TRT World’s show, A Place Called Pakistan, and presented a Euronews YouTube miniseries called Rerouted: The Balkans. She has travelled to 60 countries including Pakistan, where she lived for over a year, Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq. She went viral after a controversial dance video in 2018 that was believed to have disgraced the national flag of Pakistan. Also, she joined BBC’s The Travel Show as a presenter, reporting on the clean-up of the Mexican wetlands from the canals of Xochimilco and a 450 dog-sled race in Yukon in Canada marking the 125th anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush.

Key resources used in this video:

Dr Amy Blackstone, Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence, 2019.
Anne Allison, Precarious Japan, Duke University Press, 2013.
Julie Groot, Isabelle Devos, Ariadne Schmidt, Single Life and the City 1200-1900, 2015.
Elaine T. May, Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness, 1997.
S. Philip Morgan, Late Nineteenth-And Early Twentieth-Century Childlessness, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 97, No. 3.
McCrindle, The Baby Bonus Generation, 2013.
The Nation, The Disturbing Rise of ‘Femonationalism’, 2019.
The Conversation, What the baby bonus boost looks like across ten years, 2017.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies, Household division of labour from 1991 to 2016, 2018.
Gary L. Brase & Sandra L. Brase, Emotional regulation of fertility decision making: What is the nature and structure of “baby fever”?, 2012.