My research strives to answer questions around the role that childfree identity centrality, political anxiety, and state reproductive policy climate in the United States play on contraceptive decision-making.
I had been interested in studying the childfree by choice community for some years, both as a person who is childfree by choice and who is involved with in-person and online childfree social groups. I started designing a different research study on childfree communities in fall 2024 at the start of my PhD dissertation phase.
In the days following the November 2024 presidential election, I witnessed a massive surge of anxiety and action towards seeking long-acting reversible contraception — such as IUDs — and sterilization — such as bisalp and vasectomy — in my online childfree communities. I was inspired to change the focus of my topic about childfree communities entirely!
Over the course of a few days, and with my dissertation chair’s (appropriately concerned) blessing I did a deep dive into the research literature. I needed to see if there was a gap in the literature worth filling around what I observed and to understand some aspects of what I was seeing — namely political anxiety.
Ultimately, I determined that was no understanding of the intersection of childfree by choice identity, political anxiety, and state reproductive policy climate. Those separate constructs? Yes. But not the intersection of them all. Over the next year, I designed a quantitative research study and wrote the first three chapters of my dissertation, leading to my research study proposal defense to my dissertation committee in January 2026. I was approved with no changes and submitted my IRB application in February 2026. After some minor revisions, the IRB approved my study in March 2026. I launched my research study via social media recruitment across multiple platforms on March 17, 2026.
As I needed a bare minimum of 1800 participants to power the analysis of my research questions, I strove to overshoot that goal to account for potential bots, incomplete surveys, and more. In the end, I kept the survey open until September 5, 2026, and received over 2800 completed surveys, in full or in part. Needless to say, I am grateful to every single participant and person who engaged with my posts as everyone aided in this wild success!
As of this writing, I am finishing up writing my SPSS syntax in order to analyze my data. I will continue to post updates across my socials with initial results and other updates in the coming months before my spring 2027 final defense of my dissertation. Follow along!
the childfree by choice researcher 