Hummer Examines How Context Shapes the Meaning of Childlessness in the United States and Japan
Posted: 4/23/2026 (CSDE Research)
CSDE External Affiliate Holly Hummer (University of British Columbia) recently published an article in Social Forces comparing how women in the United States and Japan experience and evaluate childlessness. Drawing on 157 interviews with non-mothers across the two countries, Hummer finds that Japanese women were more likely to frame childlessness as increasingly normalized and attributable to entrenched gender inequalities, while American women more often described it as socially isolating and publicly contested, frequently drawing on moral logics to justify their non-motherhood. The findings highlight childlessness as a status whose meaning is shaped by cultural and demographic context — particularly women’s perceptions of what it takes to be a “good” mother and how they interpret national fertility conditions.