There are a few conversations that smart people know never to bring up at the dinner table when certain people are around. Politics, divisive mutual friends, exes — we’re all aware of bombshells that should never be dropped, lest you spend the rest of the evening sitting between two warring factions.
Chappell Roan just dropped one of those bombshells. Speaking on the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper, the 27-year-old pop star got onto the topic of motherhood, saying: “I don't know a single person who is happy and has children, at this age.”
She continued: “All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I have not met anyone who is happy or has light in their eyes who has a child under five, at this age, I have not met anyone who has slept.”
Roan’s comments have, predictably, angered a lot of people — especially mothers. Older mothers argued that Roan’s stance “was not an accurate or healthy message to peddle, particuarly when the birth rate is down.”
Another commenter said: “May the friendship of narcissistic childless women with no sense of loyalty ever find me.”
Putting aside the strange assertion that a pop star should be in any way responsible for the birth rate (maybe lobby your politicians for that instead of your pop stars?), some of these mothers have a point.
Not in what they’re saying, but in how they’re acting: look at how quickly this lightning rod can divide two sets of women. Two sets who are probably on the same side of many other political, social and economic arguments. But when it comes to the decision of whether to have children? And who’s happiest, based on that decision of whether to have children? Oh, that’ll cause female infighting every day of the week.
What Chappell Roan has done here is started a war. A war between two of the most annoying subsections of society: self-righteous childless women and die-hard mums.
You might balk at my use of “self-righteous” when describing childless women there, but unfortunately, there are quite a few of these women out there. Those who feel they need to assert their way of life as the best, the most progressive, the most choice-driven.
For some reason or another, I joined a “Childless and Carefree” Facebook group a few years ago and never left. Every time I have been on Facebook and seen the posts from that group, the members (all women) are seething with rage against women who have chosen to have children.
Sometimes, it’s because they’ve interacted with a mother and come up against judgement, or they’ve “lost” friends to motherhood — both of which are tough, I get that — but sometimes they’re just angry at the very existence of mothers, posting on Instagram, raising a family, seemingly happy. Insisting that you’re happiest while posting to a Facebook group and dumping on other people doesn’t seem that “childless and carefree” to me.
But let’s not get this twisted. I also don’t know a single childfree friend of mine (who plans to be childfree forever) that hasn’t endured the crushing, needling criticism of her family, asking her every other month if she’s “changed her mind” yet. As if being childless is a phase, or an act of youthful rebellion akin to getting a septum piercing or deciding to do a gap year. Imagine if we treated the (life-changing, financially draining, irreversible) prospect of motherhood the same way?
Then there are the mothers who look at childfree women like they’re unfeeling aliens. Like they must have been born missing something. Like some women are blessed with selflessness and others just... aren’t.
All of this infighting is driven by a lack of empathy and, to be honest, jealousy. The call is coming from inside the house. Both of these factions are defensive for the same reason: they’re scared they made the wrong decision. So they want everyone to know they’re the happiest they could be. They’re the ones that got it right.
Unfortunately, Chappell Roan happens to be fuelling this divide. Maybe she doesn’t know it. It’s a very easy, entry-level radical feminist view to have: babies = bad. Babies = lack of power for women. Motherhood = limiting. And it’s not new. When writer Shulamith Firestone published her feminist manifesto, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, in 1970, she argued that feminism was impossible until pregnancy was abolished.
I get where Roan and Firestone are both coming from. Roan is also relatively young and known for her straight-down-the-line semi-radical feminist takes, not her nuanced debates. Again, she’s a pop star, not a politician. But, really, in 2025, the most radical thing you can do is shut your mouth and let your friends do whatever the hell they want. And maybe don’t put them on blast on a podcast.
To baby or not to baby is only a question for you, and you alone. And, as a general rule of thumb, the happiest people are probably not the ones commenting on other people’s decisions.
Maddy Mussen is a London Standard columnist
