 Hello everyone. There has been a rapid increase in the generosity of pro-Natalist public policies in Poland. However, some individuals remain childless in the country. And to explore when and why family policy doesn't work sometimes, we invite Dorota Szalewa from the University College Dublin in Ireland. She will let us know more about motives and welfare attitudes among child-free persons in Poland. I'm Roderick Silva and today let's talk about social inclusion. Dorota, welcome to our episode. Hello, hi everyone. So the first question for you is why is this topic important? So I would start with saying a few words about recent research on welfare state and family policy. So as you rightly pointed out, there has been a lot of new family policy tools, not only in Poland but in other countries that are right now struggling with demographic decline and that's how it is often labeled. And so there has been a lot of focus on families with children, both in research and in social policy welfare state practice. And of course in Poland, that's a very specific case because you have this very explicit pro-Natalist policies being implemented. And that's why I think in this context, we sometimes forget that there is this growing group of people who are voluntarily childless. And I also use in my research the label child-free in this article as well. So my point was to try to explore what are the motivations of these groups? What are their experiences? How do they feel in this atmosphere and in this context of growing support for families with children and this very, very explicit pro-Natalist policies? How are they receiving this type of policies and this very specific discourse in Poland? And so going a little bit further on that, so when you started this research, what were you hoping to find? What were your expectations with your research? First of all, I thought that we need to, because we know so little about this group, it's so understudied, we have to explore this topic a little bit more. So my research strategy was to actually do interviews, qualitative interviews with this group, and I wanted to ask them about exactly about their motivations, about their experiences, and about their needs, about their societal roles. So I wanted to explore this topic a little bit more. I just wanted to be open for whatever I will find. And the second bigger question I wanted to ask them was about their attitudes towards these family policies, exactly how they feel, how was their reception of this increasing support for families. And I wanted to treat them as welfare state contributors because they are taxpayers, they contribute to welfare state. And in the bigger welfare state research, there is also this question of welfare state legitimacy. So are they supporting these policies? What type of family policies they are supporting? What are their expectations towards welfare policies? These were my hopes, they were big, but at least I wanted to start with this particular research. I wanted to start exploring this, I think, understudied topic. Of course. And now let's jump into the findings. So what are the most important findings of your research? So I would, basically, I would divide them in three topics. First of all, this is about the something that I was interested in very much about the welfare state support. So the support of the child free growing population of child free persons for particular welfare policies and family policies in particular. And one could think, that was my hypothesis at the beginning, that if they are child free, if they're not interested in these policies, they would not support it because they don't need it. They don't need a kindergarten, they don't need childcare, they don't need family benefits because they don't have children. But what I found was that actually, they're not against these policies, they are very supportive, but they have very specific opinion about these policies and they prefer a certain type of policies. So they prefer if the state invests in early childhood and care services, if the state supports female employment. So these were their preferences that came very strong from these interviews. And at the same time, they had a lot of critique against generous cash transfers and any types of cash for care instruments in Poland, especially. And that's important in the Polish case because a couple of years ago, the government introduced a huge, very generous program of cash transfers for families with children. So they opposed this program very much and instead they supported any type of policies that would help and support parental employment. The second result was more about their own experiences. So that was the explorative part, that was the part when I wanted to ask them how they feel in this pro-natalyst context and society, how they feel of child-free persons. And they said that the acceptance for their lifestyle is limited, but this is changing and some wrote examples from their family and societal pressure, friends' pressure, while others argued that they are completely accepted in their circles. At their workplace, sometimes they said they are perceived as more available, more ready to work, untypical hours or on demand. And that was somehow raised as if work-life balance policies are only for parents and not for a child-free person. So that was something that some of them raised as well. Some also had other caring responsibilities, so they were arguing, although we are not parents, we don't have children, we still have caring responsibilities and they can take care of their parents, of their brothers, sisters, so they also sometimes do have the same struggles as parents do and tensions between a family and work obligations. And the third thing I was asking them, the third type of result that I got from these interviews was that I asked them this question, would they change their mind if they were offered a very generous family policy package or if they were living in a perfect world, would they change their mind? And all of them said, maybe with the exception of one person, that they would never change their mind, that they would definitely stay with this decision not to have children and one person said that even if I was offered one million dollars, I would never have a child, I would never decide to be a parent. So I guess that can be, these were the main results of this study. Absolutely, three very distinct findings in your research. Can you let us know how this research can have a real life translation? So how does it impact individuals, people's public policies, etc.? Maybe I will start with the other issue I mentioned, so that family policies don't work. And this is also in the title of my article. I think it's important and sometimes policy makers just assume that if they apply certain family policy instruments of welfare state tools, if they reform policies, people will react immediately. And I guess what comes from this study is that there is an increasing group, growing group of persons that would not react to this increased support for families with children. However, and this is like the second issue I wanted to talk about in this context, these people also have their own needs. And they were often mentioning that sometimes they feel left out by welfare policies, as if welfare policies are only for families with children. So they expect the state to be more inclusive, the welfare policies to be more inclusive. For example, they mentioned that there was in Poland this holiday voucher available only to families with children. And that was to boost the tourist sector, especially after COVID. But they were asking, why don't we get this type of support as well? We would use it. We would also like to feel supported. And we are also part of this society. Some of the female respondents, they were also referring to access to reproductive health services. They were saying that they are almost always treated as potential mothers, for example, by gynecologists that are not respecting their child free choice, the nine agency. So there were several, I would say, demands. Maybe this is like two big words, but there are some expectations on the side of this group for the state to react. They feel they are taxpayers, they are contributors. They contribute to society in many different ways. So they also want to sometimes receive some support from the state just as families with children do. Of course, because they feel a bit overlooked when compared to the other group. What do you think now it's left now to research? So what doors does your research open for future work? I realized that actually, first of all, this was restarted, was conducted in Poland. So that might be one limitation of this study. So the Polish context is quite specific. There's political domination of the right wing conservative party with their conservative attitudes towards gender roles. As I said before, quite intensive pro-nationalist policies and politics. So I would say that because I'm also doing normally comparative studies, there is opportunity to conduct similar study in a comparative context to see how these welfare attitudes of child free people may differ in various welfare regimes in different cultural contexts. Or maybe this group is very similar. Maybe this group is also internally differentiated. This is something that I didn't have opportunity to explore. But the results may be different with regards to gender, class, age, ethnicity and so on. So I would say quite many opportunities for further research here as well. Of course, still a lot to explore in this topic. Just the last question for you would be do you have any additional resources, articles, materials to share with our listeners about this topic? And of course, some self-promotion is authorised if you want to. Well, I mean, I would just, my contact with the child free community, let's say, started on Facebook. And there is this Polish group that also helped me a lot to recruit my respondents. The web page called Bezdzietnik, and I don't know how to translate it into Polish. But there is this person also who wrote the whole book about her experience as a child free person. And this book is unfortunately only available in Polish. The author's name is Editha Broda. But also I would, I mean, I had contact with the child free communities on different types of social network, fun book pages. And this is how I, well, recommend to have the first, I would say, contact with the real people who tell their stories. There are also podcasts, like We Are Child Free, Apple podcast. There is not so much research done, but I think this is something that, you know, we can just try to fill in this cup in the future. Absolutely. This episode that you just listened to is available on Let's Talk About Social Inclusion website, on Kozhichatu's YouTube channel, as well as in podcast directories. Dorota, it was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you very much.