Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: Childfree advocates and the rhetoric of choice

Introducing an account of the recent childfree phenomenon, I focus on the strategic rhetoric of choice as the basis for childfree arguments against state and workplace support of parenting. I draw upon existing feminist analyses of the ideal worker and of caretaking and dependency to argue that the childfree rhetoric of choice is unhelpful as a tool for addressing the concerns of the childfree themselves: mitigating the effects Of Cultural prescriptions to procreate and forging equity in the workplace and in the broader national arena. Instead, I suggest, it is necessary to uncover what is obscured by the rhetoric of choice to formulate and reformulate the ideal worker norm and the place of childrearing in our society, both to address the concerns of the childfree and to create a more egalitarian state and workplace for caretakers.