To be or not to be a mother? In today’s episode, Taylor is joined by Ruby Warrington, author of “Women Without Kids” to discuss society’s greatest expectation of women - motherhood. Taylor candidly shares her personal journey, reflecting on societal pressures and assumptions about motherhood, while Ruby shares valuable advice on:
Keep listening as we normalize the conversation around the choice to have or not have children!
Mentioned in episode
Meet today’s guest
RUBY WARRINGTON is a British-born author, editor, and publishing consultant. Recognized as having the unique ability to identify issues that are destined to become part of the cultural narrative, she is perhaps best known as the creator of the term “Sober Curious”—her 2018 book and million-download podcast of the same title having helped to spearhead a global movement to reevaluate our relationship with alcohol.
Ruby’s other works include Material Girl, Mystical World and The Sober Curious Reset, while her most recent book, Women Without Kids: The Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood, seeks to valorize the path of non-motherhood as it examines the various factors behind the drop off in birth rates globally. Ruby’s work has been translated into multiple languages and featured by countless media outlets globally, including the New York Times, The Guardian, and Good Morning America. She lives in Brooklyn.
Connect with Ruby Warrington
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
You're listening to Inner Warmup. I'm your host, Taylor Elyse Morrison, founder and author of Inner Workout, ICF certified coach, and fellow journeyer. In 2017, I set out to build a life that didn't burn me out, and I found my life's work in the process. On Inner Warmup, we talk about how self-care and inner work show up in your relationships, your career, your schedule, and in the conversations you have with yourself. We get practical, we get nuanced, and we're not afraid to challenge wellness as usual. So take a deep breath and get curious. This is where your inner work begins. Today's guest is Ruby Warrington.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Ruby is a British-born author, editor, and publishing consultant who's recognized with having the unique ability to identify issues that are destined to become part of the cultural narrative. You might know her as the woman who created the term - "sober curious". She literally wrote the book on Sober Curiosity in 2018 and also has a podcast of the same name. Ruby's other works include Material Girl, Mystical World, and The Sober Curious Reset. But we are here today to talk about the work related to her most recent book, "Women Without Kids: the Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood". Through this book, Ruby seeks to valorize the path of non-motherhood as it examines the various factors behind the drop off in birth rates globally. In our conversation today, we talk about viewing parenthood as a possibility rather than an inevitability. We explore finding your crew as a person without kids, as well as some simple shifts you can make to change the conversation around parenthood with the people in your life.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
This topic hits really close to home for me, and I just can't wait to see the conversations it sparks for you and the people in your life. Ruby, I have been wanting to have this conversation with you for a long time when you wrote your book and were talking more about women and our relationship to having children. I let you know that it's a topic that's really near and dear to my heart. So I'm just grateful that you are willing to take some time to chat about it here on the podcast today.
Ruby Warrington:
Well, I'm really grateful that you invited me to talk about it. I'm extremely passionate about having these conversations because this is something that is just not spoken about. And that's starting to change but, I mean, it's interesting when I wrote the book, it was partly because statistics will show that the birth rate, the number of children that each individual woman has, is dropping like steeply and dramatically in every single country around the world. And yet, being a woman without kids or even being a woman who questions whether she wants to be a mother still seems beyond taboo. It's just sort of a non-conscious ideology or a non-conscious position in a way because for so long, forever really until very, very recently in the history of womankind, womanhood has been synonymous with motherhood and we, and I say, you know, we at your, I guess, your millennial and Gen X sort of Gen X millennial cusp, we're really the first generations of women to be questioning whether we want to be mothers, questioning our relationship to motherhood in a kinda more mainstream way. So, yeah, I'm excited to hear your story, actually. The more women I speak to about this, the more it's confirmed how individualistic and how nuanced our positions on being women without kids or women who are questioning motherhood are.
Ruby Warrington:
And so, I'm always really fascinated to hear people's personal stories in this as well.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. I'm excited to share a little bit about that. And I it's not something that I'm necessarily shied away from sharing, but it's just, again, something that we don't really talk about. So I'm gonna get to that in just a moment, but something that just clicked for me as I was listening to you talk is you have, in some ways, built a career around talking about things that maybe everyone else doesn't wanna talk about. Like, what the way that we first met each other was when you were doing things around sober curious and the sober curious reset, which now it's so popular for people to be sober curious and to not necessarily center their social life around alcohol. So I feel like the fact that you are choosing to talk about this means that give it a few years, this is going to be more and more normalized because that's just kind of the force that you have, Ruby.
Ruby Warrington:
It does seem that way. Yes. And even prior to Sober Curious, I was running an online platform called The Numinous, which was largely about bringing astrology and tarot and sort of more mystical spiritual tools for personal development into the mainstream consciousness. And kind of like removing them, the sort of woo woo tag, which, again, these subjects have become so popular now, you know? And so, it's so normal to sort of know your sun, moon, and rising sign and to think about your astrology and how that ties into your life purpose in a really mainstream way that that wasn't the case certainly like 20 years ago, 15 years ago even. So, yeah. And it's not like I've gone looking for like, what is the next subject? It's more so that I've always just followed my own innate curiosity around subjects that have felt very important to me, but which I haven't been able to find much information, let alone kind of open-minded discussion and conversation around. So, yeah, this is another one of those subjects, which is sort of like hiding in plain sight, you know? It's one of those things that I think, I mean, the question about whether or not to be a mother is central to every woman's life. It kinda has to be.
Ruby Warrington:
As soon as you become sexually active, it's there, right? Yeah. Am I going to have a child? Am I going to become pregnant? And it's almost like it's one of those things that's so central to our experience that we don't question or talk about it because it's just sort of right there. It's so obvious in a way that we're asking ourselves that question that we don't talk about it in community, which means that when we have sticking points or when our desires don't necessarily align with what the culture at large would want for us or consider the norm. Or we have questions where there are sort of pain points or challenging things to look at. We don't necessarily have the forum to discuss this discuss these things.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
The terminology you used, hiding in plain sight, obvious. Though as I was reflecting on this conversation, the word that kept coming to mind is inevitable. Like, I just kept thinking of for a really long time in my life, and this is partly being raised in the church, but I think a lot of it is just being socialized as a girl and as a woman. I thought that I would just have kids. There wasn't really a question mark around it. It was more like I never felt like I was opting into choosing to have kids. It was something I would have to opt out of. And I'm curious in your research and as you've had more of these conversations, what are the factors that you see shaping this inevitability of motherhood that so many women have internalized?
Ruby Warrington:
I think that the inevitability that you talk about is absolutely the normative sort of position. Even so I never aspired to motherhood, but I also just assumed it would sort of just happen. I had just assumed that at some point, it would sort of materialize in my life. Although, having been born and raised at a time and in a culture where birth control was made readily available to me, where safe and legal abortion was also readily available, you know, when I was in my twenties, thirties. But it was always gonna be an opting in to motherhood, actually. It wasn't going to be inevitable. It wasn't going to be something that just happened as it was for women of previous generations who didn't have the option to easily control their fertility. Right? And so, what I think now about for the book, I spoke to pretty much everybody in my private circle and I also put out a digital sort of survey and I had about 200 responses to that from women who identified as women without kids.
Ruby Warrington:
The factors that people are weighing when they're considering whether this will be an inevitability for them, whether they're either gonna opt out of motherhood or opt into motherhood. It's an opt in or an opt out now. Right? Relationship status, obviously. Who am I going to be co-parenting with? Would I have it in me to go the solo or independent parenting path if that if that's something that needs to happen, my career goals and my career ambitions, my financial status, my economic situation, the cultural kind of conditioning that I've been raised with, religious conditioning that I've been raised with, my situation with my family of origin. These are all the sort of factors that play into a person's decision making around whether or not to have children. And again, I mean, I think it's it sort of touches on almost every area of life because actually, once we have a child, every single area of our life is going to be impacted like another big factor, physical health, mental health, like how are these things going to play into my experience of not only pregnancy and childbirth, but of raising a child as well. Like, there are so many things that need to be weighed. And I think that entering very consciously into either parenthood or non parenthood is ultimately the goal, should be the goal, you know, because it is such a huge decision and it's a huge decision that impacts not only you but it impacts your partner.
Ruby Warrington:
It impacts your friendship group. It impacts your wider family. And of course, it impacts the child, the potential child who's going to be born as well. So for so long and I don't know if you've ever heard this, but for so long when I was questioning whether I wanted to be a mother, if I did have this conversation out loud with anybody, I'd sort of hear, Oh, there's never a right time. Just go for it. You'll love it once it happens. You never feel ready. You'll just figure it out.
Ruby Warrington:
That's been the sort of attitude. And in a way, I think while women haven't had the option to opt out, we've had to sort of take the attitude of just kind of dive in and make it work. But now, people have the option to say, will I be able to make it work? Will I be able to make it work the way I want it to work? Or is it gonna be a struggle for me? And weighing it in that way means that people are having fewer children. Right? And that I think is it's what we're seeing and we're seeing on a global scale.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. I found for myself both with having kids but in other aspects of my life as well, when I start to create the space to ask questions, so often I realized, oh, I don't actually want this thing or I don't want it in the way that I was taught to want it. And part of for me and my partner was him asking questions too and thinking, and he loves Reddit. And he found this subreddit called regretful parents. Have you heard of that?
Ruby Warrington:
No. I haven't. But I did read a book called Regretting Motherhood, which is it reports on a study by an Israeli sociologist called Orna Donath and where she spoke to women who would openly say that they regret having children and it was incredibly eye opening because that is a side of the story that we never hear. But now, tell me about your husband's experience.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. He found it as he was thinking on his own about, like, does he wanna be a father? These different pieces. And when I started looking in there, it's the first place because the story you do get told and part of this probably is too, like, no one wants to say I don't wanna say no one because obviously people talk to this researcher, but most people don't wanna say, if I could go back, I wish I wouldn't have had kids or I wish I would have had them on different timing. Even though I have had people that I know personally tell me those things as an aside, publicly, when we look on Instagram, people are showing their kids and their cute outfits and everything is perfectly aligned. And so to be in that subreddit and to have these people be like, man, I love my kid, but I actually would be fine not being parent. And I wish I would have done this differently. And it's really created as a space for them to support each other, and they don't want it to be a space where you're coming in and, like, help me decide if I wanna have kids or not. But in hearing these people who now have children in the world and it has impacted their relationship or their mental well-being or other things that they want to do with their life, it just made me realize, oh, yes.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
This is a choice. And this is a really weighty choice in a way that sometimes gets glossed over because we're women and we're supposed to have kids.
Ruby Warrington:
Absolutely. I mean, I think that this is one of the greatest taboos within the taboo conversation, the question of like regretting or the subject of regretting having had children because I think people just feel because they do love their children, they feel very conflicted. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance around it and there's a lot of guilt, I'm sure, about how would my child feel to know that I regretted having them. And what the sociologist found in her study was actually that women who had been able to talk to their children honestly about this, they created a kind of a sense of solidarity between them. Like the children felt very grateful to have learned this because it helped them factor into their own decision making about whether they wanted to have children. And again, I'm sure that would be different in every family given the different dynamics that are at play, right? But, yeah, I mean, I think it's really important. You mentioned that that it made you realize what a weighty decision this is. It's literally one of the only decisions that you can't unmake and it is a decision that will impact every single area of your life.
Ruby Warrington:
So yes, the more consciousness you can bring to it, including the consciousness of I might regret it. Like some things are gonna change irrevocably that I wish hadn't, you know? And there's no putting this genie back in the bottle, you know? So I think bringing that level of consciousness to the decision, if anything, it will just mean that more children are born to parents who really, really want to be parents and who really want to fully immerse themselves in that role. And I can only think that that's gonna be a good thing, but it will mean probably fewer children being born, you know, and more women without kids. Yeah. Women and men without kids.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. I love that that framing of it as and that positive. Like, when you think about a decision and you make it really intentionally, then you're ready to go all in and you've factored what could be really hard. And, obviously, there's things that you're not going to be able to foresee. But the fact that you chose this, you actively chose it instead of passively by societal osmosis had this thing not happen to you, but in some ways, you just internalize messaging and didn't really decide. So it could be really empowering, like you said. And I'm thinking of what would that look like? Like, we're in the midst of having a shortage of therapists. And like, what if there's less therapists who had to support people through having really messed up relationships with their parents.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
And how does that impact like, there's just a lot of ripple effects that people
Ruby Warrington:
There's so many players. Absolutely. And I will just say, of course, there are there may well be people listening who are like, well, yeah, I really, really want to have children and I can't for whatever reason. Maybe I've experienced like fertility issues. Maybe I just haven't been able to find that right person to be my co-parent. And I wanna acknowledge how painful it can be for people who really are in that place of wanting desperately to be parents, really wanting to give their all to this role and who are not able to whether it's for, you know, physical reasons or kinda circumstantial lifestyle reasons. And then equally, people who have accidentally become parents soon who find that they love it and they couldn't imagine not having done this. So I bring those 2 other scenarios in to say this is incredibly nuanced, like, there's no right or wrong way to go about it.
Ruby Warrington:
There's no right or wrong path. But ultimately, coming back to, I think the more that we can talk openly about our experiences in this realm, the more support we'll have for the conflicting emotions that we might be feeling around it, for the different outcomes that we may have wanted or not wanted, the more we can kinda support each other through this decision-making process.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. Support each other in the decision-making process and support each other in the decision as well. I know I'm experiencing just a little bit of it right now as my husband and I are pretty sure we don't want kids. That could change. But as it stands right now, we don't want them. And so there's conversations that happen with that. I mean, the night of our wedding, we're going around and we're saying hello to people at tables. And that night, someone was like, okay.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
When are you gonna pop a baby out? They didn't say it exactly that way, but basically and I was like, wow. Like, I cannot even just get a night to say I wanna spend my life with this person without it immediately turning into, oh, yeah. Now you're supposed to have kids, and I just think there's room to not just support people in the decision-making process, but support people. And, yeah, some people are gonna make this decision, and let's normalize that.
Ruby Warrington:
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I had the same experience as soon as I got married. People started asking, so when are you going to start a family? And I was thinking, I just I think I just did. This is my husband. He's my family now. Yep. And I think, yeah, that kind of, you know, there's a chapter in the book all about found family and chosen family and how important it is to really kind of prioritize and center and do the work of nurturing those connections, those non-biological kind of family connections when we don't have children, not least because, I mean, it can be a lonely path.
Ruby Warrington:
I mentioned that, I think I mentioned that, you know, the majority of my friends now have have children. Every single one of my kinda best, like best, I call my sister friends, every single one of my sister friends has now had a baby and every one of those experiences, I have felt, again, this kind of conflicting surge of joy for her and deep, deep sadness for how this is gonna change the dynamics of our friendship, you know? And I've spoken to many people who are child-free, whether it's by choice or by circumstance who have felt the same, this feeling of being steadily and slowly kind of like left behind as everybody else in their friendship group kind of follows that path, right, the path of parenthood. And this is something I've really felt in all of the events. And I did a retreat last summer as well, women without kids retreat, just a real deep need and yearning to find connections that kinda feel like family, to find other people to connect deeply with who are on the path of non-parenthood, because those friendships, those affinity groups, don't really exist either, I mean the friendships exist but a conversation around the need for forming deep connections with other people who don't have children, not to create a divide between, like, the ones with kids and the ones without kids. But the fact is, when you have children, your life changes in ways that don't necessarily include non-parents. You know? A lot of the socializing starts happening around the kids and the other parents and all of those activities. And there's less freedom to kind of like socialize in the ways that you might have been doing before. Priorities shift and change.
Ruby Warrington:
Personality even changes, right? Becoming a parent creates changes in the brain. Yeah. Literally. And so, yeah, I think that another reason I wanted to put this book out and to start conversations and creating spaces for non-parents was to help people find each other on this path and start to make some of those, those connections that are really important and which I think will actually become even more important as we age. Aging without kids is a whole other kinda conversation, but something that something to really think about.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. I wanna lean into this a little bit more. So I have just been kind of fortunate that I I have a pretty even split of people in my life who want kids and people in my life who don't want kids. And so I see paths forward where I will still have a social life, I will still have a social support system if we continue to decide that we don't want kids. What I'd love to hear from you as someone who's been walking this path a little bit longer is what advice would you give to someone who is listening to this? They're like, Yeah, I know that I don't want kids, but they're struggling to own it. And they're struggling to find people in their life who are making a similar choice.
Ruby Warrington:
For me, owning it has been very much about my commitment to living a life that works for me and to really kind of committing to making choices that are about honoring my own inner needs, my own knowing about who I am, what I want, even when that means willfully putting myself in the out group. This happened with the not having kids. It happened with the choosing not to drink. It can be very confronting. Being in the out group, being the other is a challenging place to be. And it does require real self belief, a lot of self love, and a lot of trust that staying true to you is ultimately going to be more fulfilling than making a decision that goes against what you know is right for you in order to fit in. So I think that's one thing, just knowing that if you're making this choice from a place of self-awareness, then that's always gonna be the right choice. And what's been interesting is that I have been finding I mean, Facebook is kind of old fashioned as it feels now.
Ruby Warrington:
It's actually a great place. There are several kind of child-free or kind of childless groups there where people are kind of like meeting, connecting, kind of talking privately in anonymous groups about this lifestyle, I suppose. And also, I mean, I really I've been living in New York for 12 years. I moved down to Florida for a year and a half. And when we came back to New York in September last year, there were several friends who I've been kind of I wouldn't say they were, like, best friend friends, but have had a connection with, have done some collaborations work wise with, and who I just really like and get. And I made us a WhatsApp. It's called we call ourselves witches without kids. And we've been meeting once a month.
Ruby Warrington:
And what kind of, like what bonds us in a way is the fact that we don't have children. We're all in our forties. We're all very kind of, you know, solopreneurs, all very working on projects and creations that feel very kinda unique and special to us. So we're all kind of on the same vibe. And I feel like there's this real closeness kinda building between us that I can see lasting many, many years into the future. And we're already talking about ways to collaborate in this space. And so I think just kinda be intentionally reaching out to other people. They might not be in your immediate circle right away, but I bet there are some people in your life who you think, interesting.
Ruby Warrington:
Or even if it's just other people you notice who don't have children, hey, could we have a conversation about that? You know, I think a lot of the time because this can be such a sensitive area, we feel like it's a taboo subject as we kinda started off talking about. Like, it's not polite to ask somebody, why don't you have kids? But actually, with sensitivity and with consciousness, asking people in our circle, hey, would you be open to having a conversation about this? Because I'm I think I'm making this decision. I am just looking for other people who are who are maybe in the same boat. And actually starting having some of those conversations with the people in your community could be incredibly enlightening. And I mean, elsewhere on social media, I mean, the the the hashtag childfree and all of that stuff is really it is really picking up. There's a lot more conversation around this, but finding each other is and actually being in rooms with each other. So I'd like I said, I had a child, women without kids retreat last summer, which was really amazing. And I'm doing a part 2 in September this year at the Kripalu Institute in Massachusetts.
Ruby Warrington:
I'm co-hosting with Rachel Cargle who has a platform called Rich Auntie Supreme, which is about celebrating child free lives. So we're gonna be collaborating with one another in person retreat that people can also join by live stream. And I'm hoping that on that live stream, there's gonna be options for people to connect and find each other too. So things like that. I mean, it's interesting. I don't think the retreat center Kripalu where I host these retreats have ever done something for non parents before. So it'll be really interesting to see who comes to that. And, yeah, I mean, I think the more the conversation gets out there, the more of these kinds of offerings we'll start to see.
Ruby Warrington:
What's interesting though is up until now, and this is what I discovered while researching for the book, a lot of the resources that are available tend to be more for people who who who haven't been able, who have wanted to become parents and who've experienced fertility issues. So there are kind of organizations and groups and there's World Childless Week in September, which kind of speaks to that specific situation. And I think it's sort of been seen as that's that's the unfortunate. It didn't happen for you. There's grieving happening. There's more need for community, for support, for resources. And I think it's been presumed that people who are are making this choice for themselves because it's a positive choice, they don't need support in the same way. But even this positive choice, which does come from a place of empowerment a lot of the time, going back to the fact that women in many other countries and parts of the world actually still and many of our foremothers didn't have this choice.
Ruby Warrington:
This is about women being more empowered, having more agency over our lives, over our bodies, over our choices. Even when it's an empowered choice, it can still lead to challenges of feeling lonely, being othered, people not understanding, being called selfish, difficult conversations with family, feeling separated from friends as we were talking about. So there are challenges on this empowering path too.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
I appreciate you sharing that. I love that you took the initiative to say, hey, Let's meet together. And maybe it doesn't start with being once a month, but, hey. Can I gather these people? We all have this in common. This just happened to me not related to not having kids, but someone was just like, we all have this in common. I want us to gather. And then now we are meeting every month or every 6 weeks on a topic, and you just never know where those opportunities to be in person together can take you. I also really love the intentionally having conversations with people about their choices to have kids or not have kids.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. There's a woman in my life, I remember she she's got one kid and I remember talking to her about it and her just telling me some of her process with her husband. And, yeah, we imagined our life, and we saw that we could have a really amazing life without a kid and a really amazing life with kids. And this is the path that we ultimately decided to take. And so having those conversations just shows you there's different pathways. I'm looking at my bookshelf behind me. There's a book called Designing Your Life, which is all about using human centered design principles. And one of the things that they do they have you do in that book is map out the different ways your life could look.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
And it's it's really inspiring to do that on your own, but also to talk to people about their life paths and choices.
Ruby Warrington:
Yeah. I love that idea. I actually some of the most enlightening conversations for me or the most helpful conversations have actually been with friends who've chosen to have children. And hearing them describe their decision making around the choice to have children reflected back to me that my decision not to have children was exactly the right choice for me. One friend in particular, and I kind of report on this conversation in the book, she went through multiple rounds of IVF. It was very traumatizing for her. She had a late stage miscarriage and finally wound up having twins with a donor egg. And just watching her go through, I was really just, Wow, you really, really want this? And I remember speaking to her about it, about why did you keep going? Why did you want this so badly? You know? And she talked about wanting to recreate a lot of the childhood experiences that she'd had with her parents, wanting to see her parents as grandparents, not liking being alone in a quiet house, wanting noise and activity all the time.
Ruby Warrington:
And I just thought, wow, too much noise and activity is really stressful to me. I need, like, the majority of my day to be quiet. One meeting a day is plenty for me. One interaction with another human being and on an outside topic. Just the things that I need for myself and my life are just not compatible with the role of parenting. And the more I've spoken to parents, the more I've spoken to non parents about these things, the more I've realized that, yes, like the actual role and the day to day existence of parenting, particularly younger children, is just really incompatible with who I am as a human being and what I need to feel centered, to feel I can, you know, do my work, show up the way that I want to for my relationships. And Yeah. So for me, it becomes more and more of a not a non-brainer.
Ruby Warrington:
It's never a non-brainer. But for me, I just feel more and more confident that this was the right decision for me.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
I love that. Thank you for sharing that, Ruby. The last question that I wanna talk to you about is we kinda talked to in the beginning about really leaning into parenthood or motherhood as something we get to choose to opt into and choose to opt out of. And I've really been trying to, in my own language and my own interactions with other people, act as if it's really a choice. So, for example, one of the shifts that I've personally made, which sounds so simple, but a lot of people don't do this, is to just stop assuming people want kids. And to if it's relevant, ask that question directly and say, yeah, what are you thinking about kids? Or realize, oh, actually, this has no bearing on the conversation that they don't want kids. So that's like one shift that I've made personally is just to stop making that assumption. I'm wondering if you have any other thoughts of what our interactions look like or what we could do if we really celebrated and embraced the fact that there are a lot of women out there who don't want kids.
Ruby Warrington:
First of all, I just I love what you just shared about just removing the assumption. It's very similar to how I approach the Sober Curious, just removing the assumption that we need to have a drink in this situation, right? Just take almost literally taking alcohol off the table, then deciding, is this an appropriate kind of like, you know, is this an appropriate thing to engage with? So, yeah, I think that's a really great way to approach it. And I think, and I don't know if you've noticed this, but it's making me think about how even the way we speak to very small children, young girls, young girls will be asked, how many children do you wanna have? What are your baby's names gonna be? We don't ask those same questions of young boys a lot of the time, which again just kinda shows how gendered the pressure to have children is or the expectation that children is becoming a parent is the ultimate kind of endgame. So, yeah, I think that's a really, really good one. And I think, again, just not being afraid to ask people, coming back to how do we normalize the decision not to have children, we talk about it openly as if it is a decision. And I think as well talking about it's funny because I hadn't really thought about it until having this conversation with you, the fact that we have to opt in to parenthood as much as we have to opt out of it in this day and age, you know? And I also just do want to table the fact that we are living in a time when women's reproductive freedom is under threat. And that actually, there are even in the United States, even as in a country as supposedly progressive as the United States, there are women who do not have who have had that option taken away from them and how regressive that is. And so, I think it's actually more important than ever to really talk about as a choice and normalize the choice to have children, the choice not to have children, normalize the fact that it's a choice on both sides of the coin.
Ruby Warrington:
And the way that we do that is by talking openly about it. Things stay taboo and things stay unexamined when they stay in our heads. As a writer, I'm I'm so aware of that like it's very different to be thinking about something. It's only really when you write it out and write it down on the page that it becomes real in a way. Those thoughts become real. And the same can be said for being in conversation. So, yeah, I think talking openly about it, not being afraid to get into challenging conversations about it, not being afraid to challenge people's assumptions when they bring them to you. You know, I was speaking to someone recently.
Ruby Warrington:
She was at a a networking event, I think, and the conversation about, do you have kids? Came up and she sort of went, no. No. And the woman, this person just wouldn't let it lie and kind of went on and on about like, you know, but if you don't, you'll be missing out on this. And if you do, you'll get all of this. And, like, she just kind of kept trying to shut the conversation down. But, yeah, I think maybe leaning into some of those conversations and and daring to challenge people. Why do you assume that I want to have children? You know? What makes you say that? Where do those assumptions come from? Kind of actually maybe unpacking it with people, obviously, depending on your bandwidth and the situation in hand. But, yeah, I think as with any taboo subject, the more we can talk about it, that's that's how we normalize it.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
That's some some really good advice, and I love that reminder. The more we can talk about it, the more that we normalize it. Mhmm. Ruby, thank you for this conversation. And I know even for me personally, I've I've thought about this a lot for myself, but I'm still leaving this conversation with more things I wanna noodle on, more conversations I wanna have with people in my life. So so thank you. And I know that you are having these conversations in other places. So if people want to keep hearing about you and your work, how can they stay connected with you?
Ruby Warrington:
Well, I will say again, the the retreat that I'm hosting is in the middle of September, September 12 to 15th. That's gonna be the place to really get deep into it and to meet other people who are on this path. So that's gonna be an amazing opportunity. I am sporadically on Instagram at rubywarrington. I have a newsletter too that I spend out sporadically. And I will say, like, the book was out a little over a year ago. I am feeling quite I'm feeling a pull to being fairly offline for a while while I, you know, regenerate and, recuperate and see what the seeds of the next project want to be. And my website as well is just rubywarrington.com.
Ruby Warrington:
And I list I've got other retreats and events coming up, so I list all of those there.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Lovely. And we have an episode this season about leaving social media. It's something I often say when I'm on other people's podcast. Like, yeah. Sometimes you can find me on Instagram here. So I deeply feel feel you on that. But thank you. We'll make sure that we link to all of those things in the the show notes, and thanks to everyone for listening.
Ruby Warrington:
Well, thanks again for having me.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Inner Warmup is a collaborative effort. It's hosted by me, Taylor Elyse Morrison, Danielle Spaulding provides production support, and it's edited by Carolina Duque. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend. And if you're looking to continue your inner work, our free Take Care assessment is a great place to start. On that note, take care.