Childfree vs. Childless with Katy Seppi

Welcome to the Childfree Wealth Podcast, hosted by Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®. In this episode, Dr. Jay engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Katy Seppi, the founder of The Childless Collective, a community for women & non-binary individuals dedicated to fostering friendship, connection, healing, hangouts, conversation, and inspiration among childless individuals.

During the podcast, Dr. Jay and Katy delve into the nuances and terminology between being childfree &  childless. They explore the distinct experiences and challenges faced by each group and discuss the societal norms and expectations surrounding parenthood.

Katy shares her personal journey and the motivation behind creating The Childless Collective, a safe and supportive space where individuals who are childless can connect, heal, and find inspiration. Join Dr. Jay and Katy as they share their wisdom, experiences, and inspiration on this important topic.

Katy Seppi

• Follow Katy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childlesscollective/ 
• Learn more about The Childless Collective: https://childlesscollective.com
• Visit The Childless Men’s Community on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/childlessmenscommunity/

The Childfree Wealth Podcast, hosted by Bri Conn and Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®, is a financial and lifestyle podcast that explores the unique perspectives and concerns of childfree individuals and couples.

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

Transcript

00;00;00;16 - Bri

Hi. You're listening to the Childfree Wealth podcast we’re your hosts, Bri and Dr. Jay. Certified Financial Planner. Here we discuss life and finances as it relates to being childfree. This podcast is for educational entertainment purposes only. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

00;00;24;16 - Dr. Jay

So for the past eight months, I have had the pleasure of working with Katy and she has taught me more about the concepts of childless, childfree, other things that I had no clue about. And I'm just being frank on that. I look at things from a financial standpoint, say once your life is at a point where you don't have kids and I'm planning on having kids.

That's where I come in. But how you get there is huge. And so I've asked Katy to kind of come and join us to talk about it. But Katy, why don't you introduce yourself and what you've been doing and, you know, this whole Childless Collective you do and everything else is give us kind of like an overview of who you are.

00;01;01;14 - Katy

Sure. And I should just say to you, I have loved working with you as well. So thank you for inviting me into the work that you do. I learned a lot about financial planning that I'm implementing in my own life. So, you know, thanks for the work that you're doing as well. So yeah, my name is Katy. I am the founder of the Childless Collective it use to be called Chasing Creation.

And I just made a move over to a new name and this is kind of been an evolving project for me. I started it about five years ago after my hysterectomy. So a hysterectomy came after four years of going through infertility and obviously not having that work out and then making the decision to have a hysterectomy due to medical reasons.

And that kind of was the final moment of, “Okay, like I'm actually not going to be a mom like I was hoping and like I planned and what does that mean for me?” And I found that when I was going through infertility, I had so much support. A lot of my friends and family members got it. I could look on the internet, I could just Google infertility and a million resources came up support groups like all this stuff and once I realized I wasn't going to have kids, there were only a few things I could find.

And I felt really lonely. I didn't really know anyone else in my life who was going through it. And so it started out as a project of just, well, let me put out a blog and an Instagram account and see if I can find a few other people who get it that I can connect with and talk to about it.

And that just kind of grew. So now, you know, I've got a lot of people I've met through Instagram and through a lot of events that I've done. So I've posted in a lot of different kinds of events over the years, and some of those are part of my like Childless Chat series, where I'll bring on guest speakers for conversations every month.

I run support groups for the last three years, and then the last two years I've done the Child Collective Summit, which has had about 3,000 attendees online each year. And then this year I moved full time into this and started well, actually not started, but kind of became the new host of Jodi Day's Gateway Women Online Community. And so now I am running that community and it's been just such a fun shift for me.

And it marks my kind of full time transition into this work of just being with the childless community and providing support there.

00;03;36;13 - Dr. Jay

Yeah, and just a little transparency. So Katy has been helping me on, you know, creating videos and doing things for me and helped me with social media and just because I don't know any of that. And her and I one of our first debates was, how do you explain to the world that we do financial planning for people who don't have kids and aren't planning on having kids?

Because if we say, hey, we do financial planning without kids, well, then people will assume, you know, like you just don't have them right now. If we say childfree, does that get rid of people are childless, do we say childless? Well, what about the people that you know are trying and oh? This was just one of those.

And I swear, we've spent like months on this debate. And at some point we came to the conclusion that, you know, Childfree Wealth serve childfree people and permanently childless people, but I still don't 100% love the terminology. But if we really want it technical, we could say it as non-parent wealth. You know, we replace the word childfree with non-parents or I don't know.

But like Kate, give me kind of your feel on the word childfree, childless, kind of like I know in the childfree community, we're still you know, debating the word childfree. And whether it's a dash in the middle and how it's spelled, the AP guide says something different than everybody else and childless. And like, how do you see the difference between the two?

00;04;56;15 - Katy

Oh, I feel like that is something I put a lot of thought into. I feel like in just trying to create terms that kind of the world understands because you'll notice in if someone writes an article about people who don't have kids, they often don't differentiate any of the reasons. So they'll use childless when they actually means only childfree that, you know, the terminology in the outside world is just there's like no awareness at all.

So I think in terms of just trying to simplify for people outside of our communities, I think it makes sense to have childfree means that you didn't want kids, you know, you wanted a childfree life. That was your first option and that's what you wanted. If you are childless, you wanted kids and for whatever reason, couldn't have them.

And so I feel like just to make it, try to make it clear to the outside world that it's like the simplest way to do it. But once you get into the communities, like you said, there's debates going on within the childfree community about, you know, the things that you mentioned. I think with what I'm saying in the childless community is we're not having debates about if it should be capitalized, that there should be any hyphens.

If we're not having these AP style guideline questions. The thing that I hear from the childless community is we don't like the term. It sounds negative, it sounds like a lack. It's focusing on the lack of what you don't have. And so, you know, we are we have that term and a lot of us really don't like, but there's no alternative to it.

And like you said, you even if you see non parent, well there are also people who are not parents right now, but they plan to be parents in the future. That's a very different community. You even have people who are going through infertility who would say they were childless if they don't have kids. But if they're, you know, if they have a child after infertility, which most people who go through infertility will end up with a kid, then they're not childless anymore.

So there it is complicated, I would say, just to add another layer of complexity to it is that we often kind of have these two terms of childbearing means you don't want kids, childless means you did and you couldn't have them. What I found is that there are some people who fit very neatly into one of those two boxes.

But for a lot of people that I talked to, it seems to be more of a spectrum where it's really hard to clearly define exactly where you fall in because life is complicated and a lot of reasons. There may be multiple factors that contribute to us not having kids, and it doesn't always just fit so nicely into that did want or didn't want.

00;07;42;04 - Dr. Jay

Well, yeah. And I'm going to I'm going to make I'm going to put you on the spot here and make you decided what my title is because, you know, my wife and I, we met in our twenties and she has a 50/50 chance of dying. And that just kind of made our you know… I argue there's not really a choice there, but whatever.

But whether it's by choice or not, I've had people ask the question. I go, “There wasn't really like it just yeah, it was an answer.” So okay, so are my wife and I childfree or childless in your terminology?

00;08;11;12 - Katy

I would say that it's whatever you define yourself as like I'm definitely in the camp of we should be able to define how we feel and I think that that can fluctuate. So I don't know I don't know how you and your wife felt about that. Maybe you never wanted kids anyway. And so the fact that that would have been, you know, that she had that 50/50 chance of dying wasn't a factor in deciding because you already didn't want kids like, I don't know. I, I feel like it's really how you define your experience, not about the biology of it, you know what I mean?

And I think the, the piece about do we have choices? That's another really interesting one because I'll have people say, well, am I really childless? Not by choice, because I could have done IVF, I could have gotten a surrogate, I could have adopted. So I had choices left. I chose not to pursue those choices for whatever reasons. You know, this obviously people who are going through fertility, am I still way still being childless, not by choice.

If I had choices and didn't pursue them. And so it's complicated. There are some really deep and complex conversations happening within this community.

00;09;33;17 - Dr. Jay

Well, and I think there's there's almost like two sets of discussions. There's that within the community and then there's like within the public. Those are those two. So Chelsea Handler came out and said, you know, she doesn't have kids and she was were childless. Yeah. But then people were like, well, was it by choice or not? And how do you know?

And we went… we're not going to go into like how Fox News flipped out on her, even saying not having kids is a choice, but whatever. But like, you know, my wife and I, we use the term childfree, but that really wasn't even like a thing. So my, my thing on it was, okay, we decide not having kids.

It just kind of was what it was. And then a few years later, I'm like, huh, are we weird or not? We are weird, but just kind of like, is there community? And the first thing I found was the the Childfree Reddit. And I said, okay, these are my people. Now the Childfree Reddit has its own challenges, let's just say that.

But I'm like, “Oh, there's a term for it.” And that was kind of how I, you know, how we picked that term. It's not saying, you know, it's the right one, but just kind of like, I don't know, it was okay. I mean, I also think there's a lot of people out there that don't have kids, aren't planning have kids, but don't even see themselves as childfree or childless. It's just kind of like they are.

00;10;52;25 - Katy

I 100%. I agree. I feel like for most of the people in my life, if I think about people who like, like decided not to have kids, I have never heard them identify self-identified as like I'm childless or talk about that or sorry childfree or like talk about any like label or term as part of their identity. And the times I have heard them talk about it, it's kind of like, oh yeah, you know, kids weren’t for us like, and then they just move on and it's, it's so it is interesting because I think part of the reason a lot of us have to grapple with this terminology issue is that when we are looking for community and we want to have conversations about the experiences that we have as people without our kids, we need to have terms to find each other and to have those conversations. And that's where it gets really hard because, you know, we haven't even mentioned yet that even within the childless, not by choice community, you know, my path to that was infertility.

And I would say if you want to get more complicated, there were other factors to that. I can say that, you know, that it wasn't just infertility, but that's not even mentioning the fact that a lot of people who wanted kids and don't have them, it was due to completely different circumstances too. Like not finding the right partner, having a partner who maybe one person wanted kids and the other didn't.

Maybe the person that you are with and you don't feel would be a good person to bring a child into that relationship with. Like they may not make a good parent. And so you don't want to have that. You may have, you know, trauma from childhood or a mental health issues that you don't just some kind of genetics you don't want to pass on.

You could have health issues like, you know, you could I guess this would be, you know, your wife. Often in this category, too, you could have health issues that really limit your ability or the safety and be able to have a child safely. There's so many. It's just not it's not like two things. Like there's so it's so complex and we don't often have space to talk about that complexity.

00;13;07;27 - Dr. Jay

Absolutely. And I think some of the complexity is our own like personal beliefs and, you know, and some of it we should share and some we shouldn’t. And that's your choice. And and there's this long continuum that starts with childless, not by choice. People that truly want to have kids and couldn't or didn't or whatever their perspectives are. To the far side, we have the antinatalists who believe nobody should have kids and there's just like we… and I just learned about this one now promortalism people don't… part of the antinatalism community, believe people should you know the suffering should end as quick as possible, let's call it that.

And I'm simplifying things, but there's just there's this continuum and it's this wide range. And I feel this is my own personal belief that out in public there is a lot of judgment right now. I think it's around political, cultural religion. I mean, I'm in Deep South, I'm in Mississippi right now. So I mean, that's really part of what I'm feeling.

But there's this judgment. If you're childfree, it's kind of like, you know, “Oh, you're evil because you chose not to have kids.” And if your childless, it's like, “Oh, I feel bad for you.” I mean, does that make any sense?

00;14;15;27 - Katy

It does. I definitely think that you're viewed differently because if society views having children as the thing that everyone should aspire to and, you know, it's put on this pedestal and this is what will give meaning in life. It's what brings you happiness. It is the end all, be all. If you're saying I want to opt out of that, then people are going to view that differently than if you're saying, I wanted to opt in and I couldn't, I at least tried to get there.

Right. And let me be clear. Like, I think both of those are totally messed up. I'm not saying I agree with any of that backlash that that comes to people without kids. It's ridiculous. But I think from a societal perspective, yeah, women who are and men and non-binary, everyone who didn't want kids get seen as, you know, why why are you opting out of the system that you're supposed to be wanting to opt in to for those of us who are childless, it's like you at least tried at least to try to get to the right place.

And it's interesting because I do see with I've heard people who are childfree by choice say, well, sometimes I'll actually tell people that I wanted kids and couldn't have them because I'd rather have the pity than have to deal with the bingos of of me looking like, you know, people saying I'm selfish or, you know, all the bingos that people who are childfree get.

And then I've heard people who are childless say, Oh yeah, I sometimes will just let people think. Or I'll say that I'm childfree by choice because I would rather get that stigma attached to me and deal with that than have to have people prying into my grief and asking me questions and giving me unsolicited advice about, you know, how to get a baby.

And so it's interesting that I think both communities get faced with different reactions from society, and they're all total B.S.. I think there's just so much misinformation, and people just aren't educated on what our experiences are like, whether we're childfree or childless. And that conversation, it's like it hasn't even started in the public eye yet.

00;16;42;29 - Dr. Jay

Yeah, I think people don't even realize we exist. I mean, like, you know, I do a lot of press and I have people go really? This exists and you can do financial planning, just these people, you know, and I think like I'm talking like six people. But the recent Michigan study. So they redid the study it we'll go to link in the notes but they found just about 20% of adults are childfree defined as “don't have kids and I'm playing on my kids by choice.” And some around 5% were childless and the definition was “not by choice there.” And the bottom line is it was at 25% of this population, you know, and whether or not Michigan is representing the whole country, it's close enough. Let's just go with it. 25% is childfree or childless, primarily childless.

And technically, in comparison in that population, seven point some 8% were LGBT. So we're talking about like three times the size of the LGBTQ million, but people don't realize we exist. And I'm like, you know, I'm not in the publicly please, I'm talking to financial people saying childfree people exist and our childfree people about finances and people like, “oh, well, you know, it's just a subset and you'll grow out of it.”

I hate that one. Or you change your mind or blah blah blah all. And I'm like, What the heck? But you and I had a good debate offline. We're talking about the percentage that are childfree versus childless and you had some thoughts about the the data. I mean, what do you think? I mean… By the way I don’t have data besides Michigan to go on.

But do you think, hey, that's kind of a right direction that, you know, four times as many are childfree as childless or what do you think?

00;18;24;25 - Katy

So I did so after we had our debate because I hadn't read the study, as you had told me those statistics. And so I actually read the study. So I did read the study. I listened to an interview with with the authors of the study and it totally made sense in the context of who they were asking. And so I think the reason you see different statistics, depending on what research site you're looking at, is that you have to look at how they're classifying people and who's in their dataset.

So in the Michigan study, from what I could tell, you know, it says adults, which I don't know if I found that exact age, but I'm assuming that meant that it could mean anyone 18 and above. And if that's my age, classified adults I could see. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't feel like an actual number. But in my mind, if you're saying adults, you're looking at 18 and up and I what I do think made sense with their study that that is lacking in most other studies when you're trying to find statistics is that they actually ask people if if not having kids was by choice or not like did you want kids or not? And that's and are you planning to have kids later? Because those definitions are really important.

So one of the things they brought up about the study was that in some classifications of childhoods, they're throwing anyone in there who had like a medical condition or infertility or who can no longer have kids because of age, you know, like women who are of childbearing years anymore and that kind of thing are all getting lumped into childlessness.

If there's a medical factor, even though some of those people may not want a kids anyway, and so they should have been classified as childfree, but in the study they may get picked up as childless because they said they had a fertility issue or a medical condition or something. So I think the numbers make sense. I think especially because you're including a lot of younger people like I don't know what what the age breakdown was of participants, but if you got younger people in there, it does seem like more Gen Zers are being more thoughtful about do I want kids or not?

And just having it be an automatic assumption of this is just what you do. I think a lot of people from my generation up, I'm a I'm on the cusp of millennial like Gen X. I'm kind of right right on the line. I don't feel like a lot of my friends and family members put a lot of thought into if they wanted kids.

It was kind of just like, yeah, you get married, you have kids, you buy the house, and it's like, you know, you call it the life script. You're following this life script and there's not a lot of thought put into it. Just kind of an assumption of like, yeah, of course I want kids, it's what we're doing. And I do feel like Gen Z is questioning that more and looking at structures that they're being given and saying, “Wait, is this actually a fit for my life? Is this what I want to do? Does it still make sense to go to college? Does it still make sense to buy a house then? It's like does marriage still makes sense? Does having kids makes sense?” I think they're just questioning all of those scripts that they're being given in ways that maybe previous generations haven't as much.

And I think that's a really good thing. So I can see why numbers would be higher if you're including people in those younger generations. I think studies that I've seen, if you're just looking at women who are past their childbearing years and seeing which of them have kids are not, those numbers seem to be different.

00;22;10;22 - Dr. Jay

Yeah. And I wonder if that's a generational thing or an age thing. Like kind of like as Gen Z gets to pass their childbearing years, does that hold true? I don't know. I mean, the bottom line in the data is there's a lot of us.

00;22;23;19 - Katy

There is a lot of us regardless. I mean, I think it's important to like I want to know where people are in in that spectrum. But at the same time, if just in terms of numbers, yeah, there's a lot of people who who end up being adults that don't have kids.

00;22;41;07 - Dr. Jay

Yeah. And so but let me ask you kind of a spin on it and we're going to do a separate episode on the life script and life plan because that's a whole separate topic. But I did a interview for Men's Health magazine that came out after the Michigan study, and they were talking about men who are childfree in this example.

And one of the questions they asked is like, okay, everything I see online is like women and childfree or childless. And your community I know is for women and non-binary, but why do you think? They asked me the question. I put my answer in the article. But why do you think that? I mean, if you look at most of the online archive is like 80% women or more depending on the community.

Why? What I mean, just are us men like just not talking about it, not welcome. I mean, what's your community? I wouldn't be welcome in your community because it's just for women and that makes sense. But does that mean, you know men who are childless, don't have the same issues?

00;23;36;14 - Katy

Okay. So you're touching on something that has come up a lot. I've had some conversations about this with with men in the childless community. So I'm going to for just for the sake of me talking about things that I actually have experience with, I'm going to just focus on the childless community because I have had conversations with people there.

I don't I don't have answers for the childfree community in terms of the gender piece because I just don't. I don't know, I don't have as many of those conversations, but so you are right in that the online community that I run is for childless women and non-binary people. That is specifically because I need that to be a safe environment for people to disclose things and to have conversations and, you know, it's just the fact that if there are men in that community, those conversations aren't going to happen in the same way.

And I have gotten some kind of I get predatory messages from men of like, “Oh, you're childless, let me get you pregnant kind of thing like that.” I consider women who are childless, not by choice and grieving, vulnerable population in the sense that they are… they're grieving. They're coming for emotional support. I don't want anyone catfishing in there.

I don't want anyone like and just the fact that like different conversations are going to happen if men are in that space. So we talk a lot about our bodies, like struggles with menopause, sex. It's not all we're talking about, but there are just certain things that it's women aren't going to feel safe talking about these things. If if men are in the room, it's going to create different dynamics.

So the online community. Yes, that is that is true. The rest of the work that I do, it is totally open to everyone. It might not look like it because men are not engaging with me. I can tell you from my Instagram account, I don't feel like my posts, most of my posts are not gendered, like the information what I'm talking about.

But 99% I can look in my in my like list of followers, 99% are women. And I think the other 1% are mostly bots. I do have a couple of guys that that follow me and that do engage with me and my content. And I've gotten a couple of messages. I think in the five years that I've been doing this, there is like less than ten men that I can think about that have done any kind of engagement with me, message me, liked my stuff, comment and on my stuff, attended one of my events, any of it.

And I did include some men at the Childless Collective last year speakers. And I'm really grateful that there are men who are talking about it. And I could go on and on all day on this, but I've gotten some questions on why, why, why aren't you creating content just for men? And it really bothers me because I'm like, well, most of my content isn’t gendered, so everyone can come and engage and have these conversations.

And I'm not going to go to like, I can't tell you how many conferences or events I've been to where it's an all male lineup of speakers. And I've never once been like, well, I can't engage in this conversation or none of this is going to apply to me. I don't listen to any of this because it's just guy saying it.

Like, I feel like there is kind of a sexism thing that it's like, I want to hear a guy say it because that's what I listen to. And if it's not a guy, it's not applicable to me. So I don't know.

00;27;37;27 - Dr. Jay

And by the way, you know, I met Katy because she reached out to me to be part of her event. And this was just about a year ago. And one of the questions she got was, well, you know, this guy's talk about childfree finances. Does it work for people who are childless? And I'm like, yes, my answers don't change based on which term used.

You know, my argument is once you've gotten if you're still trying to conceive, I'm not the right person for you. Once you've got a point, we are permanently childless or you're childfree, I can help you. But even in my Instagram and I don't do much but getting there I don't know it's high 80% women a lot of my client base, I've only once had a single male.

Everybody else is either been a single woman or a couple. And actually enough and this is bucking a little bit the financial trends. Women are usually the one reaching out, which usually in finance that is not the case. I'm not saying right or wrong, it’s just data. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, my, my take on it because I am male is that it's a bit easier for men to be childfree or childless than women.

And that might be an exaggeration or under statement depending on how you look at it. Yes, I get a lot of questions, but my wife gets ten times as much, you know, and that's the reality check of it. And if I talk to other men and say, hey, I'm childfree, they're like, oh, you got lucky. You know, where, you know, women don't necessarily get that same answer.

00;29;06;23 - Katy

Well, sorry. Go ahead. I have some more thoughts but you go ahead.

00;29;09;21 - Dr. Jay

I just think the challenges we need to what we need to do at some point is be okay talking about childfree and childless as one community and men and women as one community as part of that. But we also need our safe spaces for both. So like there's kind of like you can have that segment, but we also need to be able to support each other as a whole.

I mean, the 25% of us need to come together. And by the way, the data on that says actually for some reason, more men are childfree or childless than women in the data they found. Now, that might be a reporting error.

00;29;40;00 - Katy

I feel like, but I feel like what the what the researcher said about that is part of why they felt their results were different is that they found that more white men and yeah, more more men and and white men identify as childfree. And so a lot of the studies that are done around childlessness are focused on women.

They're asking women. And so by including men in the study, I think that is one of the reasons why you're looking at population overall. You have higher numbers than if you're just looking at women and you think there's probably societal factors about of that. But before we go on.

00;30;25;27 - Dr. Jay

Hold on Katy the census data, when they looked at child less, over 55 found the same thing. There are more men than women. So and that's specifically in people who do not have biological children. They also pulled out. People have stepchildren and other things. But that data there also says it's only like 1 or 2%. But there's slightly more. My point is online, you would you would never believe that.

00;30;50;05 - Katy

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. No, I. And you are right. So there are more. Yes, you are right in that. I guess what I'm saying is part of the reason in that the researchers of the Michigan study gave for why their numbers are higher of people who identified as childfree by choice was because there were more like men included in the study.

Whereas if you're just asking women and if you look at research that's just focused on women, those numbers tended to shift or, you know, could be how they classified it. But they did say in their research that, you know, part of the reason that more people are identifying as childfree was because there was because men were included. And that's fair.

But I do want to just say, before we move into a different topic, because I have had so many conversations with a few men who are in the childless community, and I don't want their voice to go unheard because I do hear a lot of, well not a lot, but I've heard from a handful of men that say this is really hard for us to and we don't have spaces to talk about it.

So there is a Facebook group called the Childless Men's Community, and there is it looks like there's about 300 members in it and it's run by two really incredible men in the childless community. And so if men are looking for support, that is a great, great resource. They are both awesome and so I highly recommend that to anyone who's looking for support, who is a guy who is childless.

And I do agree with what you said about just societally. I do think that it adds additional layers to be a woman without kids then, then to be a man without kids. And how we’re viewed and in the attachment of it is the purpose of your life to be a mom kind of attitudes that we get. I also will say that I think at least in a childless community, one of the reasons you don't get as many men talking about it is that there there are societal kind of rules or expectations that men are not supposed to talk about their feelings.

They're not supposed to be expressing vulnerability, talking about grief, talking about things that are hard for them. For men who went through infertility, there's also an attachment to like this is connected to your manhood and your legacy. And I think that maybe men have some different barriers societally to being safe or comfortable talking openly about those things. And that sucks. I see that and I do think that's another big reason, too.

00;33;37;19 - Dr. Jay

Yeah. And just for everybody listening, Katy and I literally can go on for days on this and we essentially have over time, like we've had these debates for hours on different things and messaging and structures and everything. I don't know what I'm trying to do is just start the conversation, you know, the terms, childfree or childless dash or not, whatever.

Who knows? One of the ones I'm doing and just kind of a little crazy this and you can all be involved on August 1st. It is International Childfree Day is actually the 50th anniversary of that and we are going to be hosting a billboard in Times Square, celebrating what it's like to be childfree. It's going to be hey, I celebrate my childfree life by.

And did you know today's childfree day? Did you know 27% of the US? What do you think? Is that going to rile people up?

00;34;29;03 - Katy

I don't know. I'm really excited to see the response. I, I have always been shocked that just by simply saying I don't have kids is like such a threat to people. Like, people can have very visceral response as to that and even if it's not anything about their life. So we'll see how that goes. I'm excited. I see how people respond.

00;34;52;19 - Dr. Jay

Yeah, I'm excited. And a little nervous. You know, you never know it. You will have to like then do one that says, you know, I'm celebrating my childless life and see how people respond to that differently. We get a whole sociological experiment on that, but where can they find a Katy? So if they want to engage the community, engage in the work you're doing.

00;35;12;04 - Katy

Yeah. So I'm just on Childlesscollective.com is my main website and people can go there. I'm definitely the most active on Instagram though, which is @childlesscollective. It's where you can find me.

00;35;25;01 - Dr. Jay

All right. Great. And Katy's going to join us a little bit later to look for the next episode. When we debate the Standard Life Plan, Life script and how it's different for child for your childless people.

00;35;34;13 - Bri

That's all for this week's episode of Child Free Wealth podcast. Be sure to follow Child Free Wealth on social media. Email us at podcasts@childfreewealth.com or visit our website www.childfreewealth.com.