Wise Counsel Podcasts

Ellen Walker, Ph.D. on Living Child-Free. Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. Psychologist Ellen Walker, Ph.D. is the author of the book, Complete Without Kids: An Insiders Guide to Childfree Living by Choice or by Chance, written in reaction to her own decision to forgo having children and consequent awareness of many people who have made the same choice. Social pressure to have children cause this choice to be stigmatized unfairly. In response, she uses the term childfree rather than childless to emphasize that the choice to not have children can be a deliberate decision and not an absence. Childfree adults can be organized into three categories depending on their motivation to become childfree: deliberate choice, happenstance (where the person might have been happy to go either way) and circumstance (where the option to have children was blocked). Though there are many advantages to not having children (i