Engagement. Baby. New home.

When everyone on Tasha's algorithm started ticking off milestones, Tasha felt like the odd one out: single, childfree, and wondering if she’d somehow got life wrong.

So she did something about it. She built @tashatakesaleft, a growing community for people living off the “right” path.

In this episode of Kaleidoscope Lives, we get honest about the long, messy road to deciding not to have children, the importance of community and friendships and the online backlash that so many in the 'childfree by choice' community have to face.

We dive into:

• Why social media can make you feel like the odd one out
• The journey to 'childfree by choice', and the grief that sometimes comes with that
• Why the old life timeline doesn’t fit today’s world
• Building a village without a nuclear family
• Dating, de-centring and what a partner would actually need to bring
• Adulthood used to run on one shared timetable. Kaleidoscope Lives is about what happens now that it doesn’t.

📬 Chloe’s newsletter: https://kaleidoscopelives.substack.com/
Discover more at: https://kaleidoscopelives.com/


📸 @chloealanawilliams

You got the degree. Built a career. Worked on yourself. So why does starting a family feel further away than ever?

In the first episode of Kaleidoscope Lives, I talk to journalist Anna Louie Sussman, author of Who Gets to Have Kids?, about the widening gap between the families people want and the conditions that make them possible. We unpack the forces behind falling birth rates and explore how the things that gave women choice (education, careers, financial independence) are closing the window on our imagined lives.

We get into:

• How student debt became a fertility issue
• “Project Me” before “Project Someone Else”
• Creeping non-choice: when you don’t decide, and life decides for you
• The gap between the families people want and the ones they end up with
• Why we all need to rebuild 'the village'

Adulthood used to run on one shared timetable. Kaleidoscope Lives is about what happens now that it doesn’t.

📖 Who Gets to Have Kids? by Anna Louie Sussman: [https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/who-gets-to-have-kids-creating-a-family-in-an-age-of-uncertainty-anna-louie-sussman
📬 Chloe’s newsletter: https://kaleidoscopelives.substack.com/
Discover more at: https://kaleidoscopelives.com/


📸 @chloealanawilliams