Childless
Encyclopedia
Childlessness describes a person (or couple) who does not have any children. The causes of childlessness are many and it has great personal, social and political significance. Specific instances and national trends affect individuals, cultures and nations and have impacted on social, economic and political decisions throughout history.

Reasons for childlessness include:
  • infertility
    Infertility
    Infertility primarily refers to the biological inability of a person to contribute to conception. Infertility may also refer to the state of a woman who is unable to carry a pregnancy to full term...

     (resulting from any of a range of causes including advanced maternal age
    Advanced maternal age
    Advanced maternal age is defined as an increase in the age at which women give birth to their first child, is now a widespread, and indeed near universal, phenomenon across the OECD countries....

    )
  • infant or child death
    Infant mortality
    Infant mortality is defined as the number of infant deaths per 1000 live births. Traditionally, the most common cause worldwide was dehydration from diarrhea. However, the spreading information about Oral Re-hydration Solution to mothers around the world has decreased the rate of children dying...

  • medical or gynaecological problems
    Maternal health
    Maternal health refers to the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. It encompasses the health care dimensions of family planning, preconception, prenatal, and postnatal care in order to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality.Preconception care can include...

    , including lack of maternal medical care and damage during previous childbirth
  • celibacy
    Celibacy
    Celibacy is a personal commitment to avoiding sexual relations, in particular a vow from marriage. Typically celibacy involves avoiding all romantic relationships of any kind. An individual may choose celibacy for religious reasons, such as is the case for priests in some religions, for reasons of...

  • lack of appropriate resources (financial, community, etc)
  • lack of a partner, or lack of willingness from partner
  • social infertility
  • personal choice, also known as "childfree
    Childfree
    Childfree also known as "voluntary childlessness" is a form of childlessness. The term was coined in the English language late in the 20th century and is used to describe people who have made a personal decision not to have children. The term childfree also describes domestic and urban...

    " or voluntary childlessness.

Personal

For most individuals, for most of history, childlessness has been regarded as a great personal tragedy, involving much emotional pain and grief, especially when it resulted from a failure to conceive or from the death of a child. Before conception was well-understood, childlessness was usually blamed on the woman and this in itself added to the high level of negative emotional and social effects of childlessness. “Some wealthy families also adopted children, as a means of providing heirs in cases of childlessness or where no sons had been born.” The desire for children is so strong among some childless people that a commercial market in the trafficking of children
Trafficking of children
Trafficking of children is a form of human trafficking. It is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receiving of children for the purpose of exploitation....

 exists for them.

Social

Socially, childlessness has also resulted in financial stress and sometimes ruin in societies which depend on their offspring to contribute economically and to support other members of the family or tribe. “In agricultural societies about 20 per cent of all couples would not have children because of problems for at least one of the partners. Worry about assuring the desired birth rate could become an important part of family life … even after a first child was born. … In agricultural societies up to half of all children born would die within two years … (Excess surviving children could among other things, be sent to childless families to provide labour there, reducing upkeep demands at home.) When a population disaster hit – like war or major disease – higher birth rates might briefly be feasible to fill out community ranks.”

In the 20th and 21st centuries, when control over conception became reliable in some countries, childlessness is having an enormous impact on national planning and financial planning.

Political

Specific instances of childlessness, especially in cases of royal succession, but more generally for people in positions of power or influence, have had enormous impacts on politics, culture and society. In many cases, a lack of a male child was also considered a type of childlessness, since male children were needed as heirs to property and titles. Examples of historical impacts of actual or potential childlessness include:
  • Elizabeth I of England
    Elizabeth I of England
    Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...

     was childless, choosing not to marry in part to prevent political instability in the kingdom, which passed on her death from the House of Tudor to the House of Stuart.
  • Henry VIII of England
    Henry VIII of England
    Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...

     divorced his first wife Catherine of Aragon
    Catherine of Aragon
    Catherine of Aragon , also known as Katherine or Katharine, was Queen consort of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII of England and Princess of Wales as the wife to Arthur, Prince of Wales...

    , to whom he had been married for more than 20 years, because she had not produced a male heir to the throne. This decision set in train a break between the English and the Roman churches that reverberated across Europe for centuries.
  • Queen Anne had seventeen pregnancies but none of her children survived so the throne passed from the House of Stuart to the House of Hanover.
  • Napoléon’s first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais
    Joséphine de Beauharnais
    Joséphine de Beauharnais was the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, and thus the first Empress of the French. Her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror, and she had been imprisoned in the Carmes prison until her release five days after Alexandre's...

    , did not bear him any children so he divorced her and married another in order to produce an heir.
  • The lack of a male heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne
    Chrysanthemum Throne
    The is the English term used to identify the throne of the Emperor of Japan. The term can refer to very specific seating, such as the takamikura throne in the Shishin-den at Kyoto Imperial Palace....

     in Japan
    Japan
    Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

     brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.
  • In Monaco
    Monaco
    Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...

    , the lack of legitimate children became a matter of public and political concern due to the legal and international consequences if Albert II, Prince of Monaco
    Albert II, Prince of Monaco
    Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco is the head of the House of Grimaldi and the ruler of the Principality of Monaco. He is the son of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, and the American actress Grace Kelly...

     were to die without lawful heirs.

See also

  • Infanticide
    Infanticide
    Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...

  • List of international adoption scandals
  • Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day
    Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day
    Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day is a day of remembrance for pregnancy loss and infant death which includes but is not limited to miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, or the death of a newborn...

  • Reproductive technology
    Reproductive technology
    Reproductive technology encompasses all current and anticipated uses of technology in human and animal reproduction, including assisted reproductive technology, contraception and others.-Assisted reproductive technology:...


External links

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