Russian Childfree Community: Reality and Illusions

The article studies national peculiarities of "childfree" ideology, spread by the representatives of "free from children" movement, people who voluntary refuse from being parents. Besides some typical behaviour and motivations for "childfree" all around the world, native non-parents show specific national characteristics and reasons of their choice. The focus group research was made to determine the attitude of the representatives of modern Russian youth to the "childfree" phenomenon. The study revealed negative attitude to the phenomenon. Those who made decision, often mistakenly position themselves as the special group, qualitatively different from other people on the basis of their exclusiveness. However, "childfree" ideologists are in fact minority groups that have nothing to do with real elite, but are simply self-isolated, put out of the standard tradition and are actually social outcasts. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.