Breeders vs. Cat Ladies, it's a personal choice, one is not better/worst

[theking]

..than the other:

It's getting ugly between 'breeders' and 'childless cat ladies'
Online, parents and the child-free-by-choice are having heated battles over who's more insensitive.
In 2024, TikTok couple Alex Madison and Jon Bouffard, who had long been known for making content about their “DINK” (that is, dual-income, no kids) lifestyle, posted a viral video announcing that Alex was pregnant. Like most of their posts, the video was a sketch, framed as their “resignation” from the child-free lifestyle — a whimsical DINK administrator told them to say goodbye to all eight hours of sleep, going to the bathroom by themselves and ever going to a party again.

The comments section of their Instagram post filled up with congratulation s, laughing emoji and … something darker. People who had loved Madison and Bouffard’s funny, relatable content about being child-free wrote that they would be unfollowing. “Children will ruin your relationship,” one commenter wrote, predicting what pregnancy would do to Madison’s body. “Oh noooooo the weird kid content is starting [sic]. I’ll be unsubscribing,” said another. In response, supportive followers hit back, calling the negative commenters “childfree lunatics” and “kidless narcissist.”

In the 4,000 comments, a battle was raging: Parents and people who were child-free by choice, exchanging vitriolic volleys and revealing a cultural rift that extends far beyond one TikTok couple.


Watching from the sidelines was Julia, a 27-year-old mother and local government worker. (Most of the parents and child-free people I interviewed for this story requested Yahoo use their first names only to discuss such a private topic.) “It’s like there’s just no winning,” Julia told me. “It’s not necessarily the culture war that the internet claims it is, but … people really go crazy when we’re all just trying to find purpose in life.”

There are few more intimately personal decisions made in life than whether to have children. Yet, online (and sometimes, in real life), the choice can take on a larger, more dogmatic meaning, with tempers flaring and battle lines drawn.

It’s not necessarily the culture war that the internet claims it is, but … people really go crazy when we’re all just trying to find purpose in life.

Julia, 27
The hostility between the two groups comes as more and more people are choosing to forgo children. As of 2023, 47% of U.S. adults under 50 without kids said they were unlikely to ever have them, up from 37% in 2018, according to Pew Research Center data. With that seismic shift comes a redefinition of what adulthood is supposed to look like. “It’s an adjustment period, and change is scary for humans,” Mary Lett, a psychologist who specializes in working with child-free people, tells me.

Somehow, each camp — parents and child-free people — has become a fun house mirror reflection of the very things it blames the other for: Stigmatizing those who have made a different choice, being dismissive and acting selfishly. How did we get there? Why is everyone so mad? And can we ever bridge the divide?

'Oh, you’re a breeder'
Online, there's a schoolyard taunt for basically everything — pick me’s, Karens, almond moms, incels. In certain child-free corners of the internet, parents are known simply as “breeders.”


Nicholas, 28, is a master's student, museum tour guide and an English-as-a-second-language teacher in California who is also a self-assured child-free man. Despite his work with kids, Nicholas has never wanted to have any of his own, and is certain enough that he’s undergone a vasectomy.

During a substitute teaching shift, he met another teacher in her 50s and casually mentioned that he had undergone the sterilization procedure. "Her tone shifted and she said, 'You're gonna regret that,'" Nicholas recalls. "I just laughed and said, 'You don't even know me.' I thought it was funny, because, in my mind, I was like, 'oh you're a breeder.'"

The ones who are actively lying through their teeth about how much they love being a parent or are very jealous that I can go scuba diving on a Sunday and they have to spend it cleaning piss off the floors."

Nicholas, 28
Nicholas reserves the derogatory term for someone who treats reproducing as their sole or primary purpose in life, with little introspection. When he thinks of “breeders,” he conjures up the stereotype of a reluctant parent who regrets their choices, he says, singling out “the ones who are actively lying through their teeth about how much they love being a parent or are very jealous that I can go scuba diving on a Sunday and they have to spend it cleaning piss off the floors."

For all the cultural hand-wringing and political pressure surrounding parenthood, the data is surprisingly straightforwar d. A 2024 Pew survey found that 57% of adults under 50 without children — and 31% of older adults without them — said they simply didn’t want kids. For Nicholas, that’s the point: his decision is simply a preference, something that can be hard to communicate to certain parents.


The term “Breeders” gets tossed around a lot on the subreddit, r/childfree, of which Nicholas is a member. Katie, 42, is one of the group’s moderators, but says she doesn’t condone such unflattering language (see also: “crotch goblins” for kids).

Katie thinks those words are primarily used by younger people who tend to be angrier, or are perhaps just trying to be “edgy,” she tells me. “I hope those people grow out of that mindset because, to use it ironically, it’s childish.” But she and her fellow moderators don’t ban them from the subreddit. They recognize that the online forum may be the only place its members have to vent their frustrations.

Child-free in a family-centric world
Anger among child-free people isn’t entirely unfounded, according to Lett. “I think that’s probably a reaction to feeling judged,” she tells me. “When someone feels dismissed or judged or told their lives are incomplete, that makes people angry.”

American society is still in many ways centered around families. The tax code favors married couples and families over singles. The majority of houses are single-family homes, designed for a couple and a kid or two. And every 30-something you know is being harassed at Thanksgiving about when they’re going to get married and have babies. Statistically, the nuclear family — think: a mom, a dad, 2.5 kids and maybe a dog — is no longer the norm in the U.S., but the fantasy of it is still baked into the country’s social structures.


The pressure to fall in line with that model exists beyond the personal realm too. The Trump administration has said it’s considering policies to encourage women to have more children to combat the declining U.S. fertility rate. Vice President JD Vance infamously declared, “I want more babies in the United States of America.” Single working women, especially those invested in their careers, have become a target of vicious mockery in many conservative circles, derided as “childless cat ladies.” A new study published in the journal PLOS Global Public Health found that childlessness is often portrayed in the media worldwide as a “threat to national interests," according to a press release from its Swedish authors.


Lett says that the political landscape around abortion also can’t be ignored. “I’m in Georgia, and reproductive rights have been really drastically limited,” she says. For her clients, “that’s infuriating, and it’s scary. It’s really scary. … People ultimately don’t want to be forced to do something against their will.”

Emma, a 33-year-old systems analyst in New Orleans who’s undecided about kids, says women face a double bind: They’re urged to become mothers but receive little support when they do. “Moms aren’t super respected in our society,” Emma says. “They’re not given enough paid leave when they have kids, it takes a toll on your body and we live in a very superficial society.” All of those factors make her lean toward staying child-free. One of her main hesitations is how society would view her if she chose that path, but that seems like the (much) lesser evil when compared to going broke. “The only downside to not having a child is that some people in society will call me a cat woman,” she adds.

Misreading each other
But a deep sense of alienation in American society isn’t exclusive to child-free people — and sometimes, their hard-line attitudes make things tougher on parents, some say.

Julia considers herself liberal and a feminist, but now feels as though her desire to be a mother is seen by otherwise like-minded people as aligned with traditional, conservative values. She detects an undercurrent of misogyny and hatred of motherhood specifically underneath the discourse. “It’s gotten so far out of hand that there’s almost a rejection [of] something that only women can do,” she says, referring to giving birth. “Women don’t need to do it, but why are we so hateful toward women that do?”


The rising cost of living has upped the ante for everyone, with and without kids. The U.S. Census Bureau found that child care costs drive women out of the workforce to the tune of $122 billion lost dollars for the nation’s economy. And the Department of Labor deemed the cost of child care “almost prohibitive” for many Americans. For those who are or want to be parents, this makes the process of childbearing and raising kids even harder. For those who are not sure they want children, it makes the possibility even less appealing, if not altogether impossible.


None of Julia’s friends have children, and some of them are quite adamantly child-free. They don’t always understand how drastically her life and time commitments have changed as a working mother to a 4-year-old. Her friends seem to want her to be the same person she was before having her daughter, but “I really went through a war when I gave birth,” says Julia. “It’s such a big, mind- and body-altering thing.” Social media has become the only place she feels she can talk openly about being a parent.

But even there, she falls into the lonely cracks between two vocal communities: people who are child-free and the “sub-groups of moms that are very PTA [parent-teacher-association],” says Julia. “I’m somewhere in the middle; somewhere and nowhere.”

Ali and Charlie Higgins have not handed in their DINK resignations. In fact, they’ve stepped up to be leaders of the group, founding the DINK Social Club, a group dedicated to connecting couples who are child-free by choice to one another.

I’m not going to bring a child into this world just to go on mom walks.

Ali Higgins
The Higginses, who are American but now live in the Netherlands, outside Amsterdam, “feel like we’re in the minority where we live right now because everyone has kids around us,” Charlie tells me. So do most of their friends back in the States. “We see them, we hang out with the kids and we enjoy that,” says Ali. “We’re so happy for all of them, but there is a shift in the friendship. We keep in touch and get baby photos, but … we didn’t have any friends to travel with and, I love Charlie, but sometimes it’s fun to have other couples to go out and do stuff with.”


Neither Ali nor Charlie has felt pressure to have kids from friends or family. But they do occasionally encounter it online. “Maybe part of the problem is that, online and on social media, you can feel like you're pitted against each other,” explains Charlie.

Ali, who wasn’t always sure whether she wanted kids, says she still feels pressure, probably as a result of “how society views child-free men versus child-free women.” But she’s also carried a sense of isolation and grief as she’s watched her friends become parents. “I see my friends bonding over this really special thing in life, and I will never be a part of it,” she says. “But I’m not going to bring a child into this world just to go on mom walks.”


The outrage machine
On the internet, algorithms often feed people their own personal ragebait, fanning the flames of those tensions. Julia says that her only social media posts that go viral are the ones that “enrage child-free people.” That’s particularly frustrating, she says. It feels “hypocritical, because it’s the same people who are super feminist and inclusive of all … except for moms.”

A similar pattern is playing out on the opposite side of the rift. Emma has watched outpourings of love and support for women having kids or facing fertility struggles, online and in real life. That’s fine, in her eyes, but why are her problems any less valid, she wonders. For Emma, it’s been a struggle to find a partner — a burden she feels lonely carrying.


“Maybe it goes back to Christianity because [having a child is thought of as] so pure … as trying to ‘fulfill your purpose,’ but I guess I’m trash because I’m looking for a boyfriend, even though that’s part of the process every married person goes through before having kids,” she says. “The heartbreak of that is not really respected. I think it should be a sensitive subject too.”

At the heart of the rift between parents and child-free people seems to be an ocean of misunderstandi ngs and sensitivity to judgment. Which is funny, because the desire — or lack thereof — to have kids typically has little to do with feelings toward those who want something different, says Lett.

In Lett’s eyes, the key to better relationships between childless people and parents is mutual respect. “I think there’s a lot of tension that comes from interpreting someone else’s choice as a judgment on [one’s] own,” she says. “But really, another person’s decision about their life isn’t about you; it’s about them.”