As 2025 winds down, it’s time for my annual Childfree Trending post!
I started this in 2016 as a way to look back on a given year. Here are three highlights that stand out for me in 2025.
The Pronatalism ‘Movement’
In the last two year’s Childfree Trending posts I have spoken to the increase in inaccurate discourse about the ‘recent rise’ of the pronatalism ‘movement’, and it has continued this year. As those of you who have read my work know, pronatalism is far from new. It has run societies since circa 5000 years ago, when civilizations needed more people in order to grow and gain power.
Today, from the media, governments, to religious institutions and the arts, the pro-baby messaging that promotes and encourages reproduction is still all around us with this end game. Why don’t more people see that pronatalism is not new? Pronatalist forces have been with us for so long people too often are just not conscious of them at work. And pronatalism is not rising; it’s been here all along. What we are seeing today are just current efforts and influences after what pronatalism has always sought to do — convince people they need to have children.
Childfree people are not following this most valued pronatalist path for their own reasons. Why should they care about the continued dominance of pronatalism? As long as pronatalism drives the social and cultural hardware of societies, it works against the normalization of the childfree choice. It works against social and cultural acceptance of this choice and those who make it.
Even in the midst of this, year by year things are happening that move toward positive social change. Here are the two areas I have noticed most this year.
Online Childfree Community Building
Over the years I have actively participated across multiple social media channels, and more recently post only on BlueSky and LinkedIn. While I have issues with the current X and Meta’s algorithms, privacy and monitoring, I continue to track childfree-related posting and discourse on these channels. Each year I also closely monitor the media and new research.
This year I have been particularly impressed with Instagram as a childfree community building platform. There are more childfree-oriented accounts there than ever, and they support childfree people in connecting, learning, and sharing their lives. For some childfree Instagramers, it also serves as a platform for presenting their audio and YouTube podcasts on a variety of childfree topics. If it ‘s anything like what we’re seeing more of with other podcasts, in the year ahead I predict we’ll see fewer audio-then-video podcasts, and more that go straight to short-form content video on childfree and related topics.
Marketing to the Childfree
In 2025 we’ve seen businesses begin to market specifically to childfree people. Over the past several years we have seen growth in counseling services for people trying to decide whether they want children. This year, added to this niche have been more counseling and coaching businesses which focus on assisting childfree people with the personal, social and cultural challenges which can come with this lifestyle choice.
Also worthy of mention are two new types of business: financial planning and estate planning for childfree and permanently childless people. These first-of-its-kind businesses have been spearheaded by Jay Zigmont, who runs Childfree Wealth and Childree Trust. Financial planning for those with no children is truly different than for those with children (or who plan to have them in the future). This is what Childfree Wealth is about. Childfree Trust’s mission is also something no business has done before; it will be the “first service to provide medical and financial power of attorney, executor and trustee representation for Childfree and Permanently Childless in all 50 states.”
May these businesses join more in the coming year that see the need to service the no-children demographic. The need has been there for some time. For example, at holiday time when advertisers spend billions of dollars for holiday shopping, revenue is lost because of the high percentage of American women shoppers of childbearing age who are not mothers.
Looking Ahead
Given that some recent research has reported that a growing percentage of respondents indicated they don’t intend to have children, may 2026 bring a fuller trend in marketing to this demographic. May we see a rise in even more online community building. May we also even begin to see organized efforts to address social issues related to those with no children, e.g., inequitable workplace and government policies that favor those with children.
