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In 1972, childfree activists Ellen Peck and Shirley Radl founded the National Organization for Non-Parents (NON), the first organization dedicated to defending the rights of the "childless by choice." Emerging at the nexus of identity politics and environmental activism, NON promoted childfree living as both a socially respectable and politically responsible reproductive choice. This article traces NON's evolution from a grassroots movement to a professionalized activist organization. Beyond arguments about the urgency of population control, NON offered a sophisticated critique of the marginalization of childless citizens in an intensely pronatalist society. Childfree activists faced fierce opposition from those who believed that reproduction and parenthood were defining features of the American family. By embracing the language of reproductive choice, NON was able to ameliorate some of the controversy that surrounded its childfree crusade and bring voluntary childlessness into the mainstream of American thought.
OBITUARY: MOTHERHOOD. Died, as a symbol, a life role, a sacred institution, sometime in the early nineteen-seventies. Causes of death: concern for overpopulation; and the desire of many to live as free individuals, not nurturers of young.1
This curious proclamation appeared in The New York Times on May 13, 1972, the day before Mother's Day. The accompanying editorial, written by journalist and self-proclaimed "childfree" activist Ellen Peck, called for a wholesale abandonment of the motherhood role. Although Peck's prediction of motherhood's demise might have been premature, she was not the only one challenging the centrality of motherhood and reproduction in American life. Only a month before, the Nixon-appointed Committee on Population Growth and the American Future denounced the outmoded tradition of American pronatalism and encouraged all Americans to embrace fertility control.2 Abortion activists across the country, meanwhile, were fighting for freedom from mandatory motherhood and the legalization of a woman's right to control her own reproduction. For many, the 1970s marked the beginning of a radical reconfiguration of reproductive behavior in American society. The time had come to embrace alternative reproductive roles for both women and men.
And so Peck, along with environmental activist Shirley Radl, founded the National Organization for Non-Parents (NON) in 1972. NON was a non-profit organization dedicated to defending the rights of Americans who were childless by choice. Members were almost exclusively white, middle class, and heterosexual.3 Although...