Pacific Standard cites childfree adult research by Blackstone, graduate
Research conducted by University of Maine sociology professor Amy Blackstone and UMaine graduate Mahala Stewart was cited in the Pacific Standard magazine article, “How the childfree decide.” Blackstone and Stewart’s recent article in The Family Journal, “There’s More Thinking to Decide: How the Childfree Decide Not to Parent,” engages the topic and extends the scholarly and public work Blackstone has done, including her shared blog, “we’re {not} having a baby,” Pacific Standard reported. In their article, Blackstone and Stewart state that, as is often the case with media portrayals of contemporary families, descriptions of how people come to the decision to be childfree have been oversimplified, according to the report, and people who are childfree put a significant amount of thought into the formation of their families. New York magazine and The Huffington Post also reported on Blackstone and Stewart’s research. “Right now, girls in particular, but girls and boys both, are raised to imagine themselves as parents of children,” Blackstone told Huffington Post. “But if we more critically thought about the question of whether or not to parent, then everyone would have the opportunity to make the choice that’s right for them.”