Kat | A Black Feminist Upbringing

Raised in a Black feminist family of highly educated women committed to service, Kat Calvin grew up without the pressure to marry or have children. Single and childfree, Kat channels her time and energy into projects that make a difference - building a life of purpose, freedom, and joy.

• TRANSCRIPT

  Kat (00:00):

  I was raised in a family where the expectation was, well, you're a girl. You're going to go to college. You're going to be really educated. You're going to be part of the community. You're going to work really hard. You're going to buy your own house. You're going to do all these things. I literally had a book called Feminist Fairytales. I have so many women in my life who never married or don't have children. I want people to understand you can live a really joyful, fulfilling, wonderful single childfree life.

  Nandita (00:47):

  That was today's guest, Kat. Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me. My name is Nandita Bajaj and I'm the host of Beyond Pronatalism, Finding Fulfillment With or Without Kids, an interview series in which through intimate conversations with women and men from diverse backgrounds, I explore how they are courageously and creatively navigating pronatalism - the often unspoken pressures to have children, whether from family, friends, or the culture at large. In each episode, I dive into personal stories with people who are forging unconventional pathways to fulfillment, including redefining what family means to them, whether that means being childfree or childless, having biological kids, adopting or fostering children or animals, or creating close-knit communities of friends and loved ones. Hi Kat, and welcome to Beyond Pronatalism. It is awesome having you here. Thank you for joining me.

  Kat (01:45):

  Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to be talking to you. So thank you for having me.

  Nandita (01:50):

  Absolutely. And we both met probably six or seven months ago at a online childfree event where we were both speakers. I think we both had a moment where there was just this mutual curiosity of wanting to get to know the story behind each other's lives. And it has been wonderful getting to know you personally, and I'm excited actually to dig a lot deeper about everything that brought you here.

  Kat (02:19):

  Me too. I mean, I was lucky because you are on my podcast first, and so I got to learn all about you. So now the tables have turned.

  Nandita (02:27):

  Yes. And please introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about what you do, where you live, anything that you think would be helpful for our listeners to get to know you.

  Kat (02:37):

  Sure. My name is Kat Calvin. I live in Arizona. I just recently moved here from Los Angeles to do a thing that the single, childfree women and families often do, which is family caretaking. I run a nonprofit called Spread the Vote and Project ID. And what we do is we help people around the country get government-issued photo IDs. I realize you're in Canada. I'm in the States, and it's not a problem that you have in Canada. And then we also work during elections to help them vote. And then politically, I work towards changing policies and hopefully eventually getting a bill passed in Congress that would expand access to IDs across the country. And so that's what I do professionally. I'm 40. I'm obviously, as I said, single and don't have children, and that's all I can think of at the moment.

  Nandita (03:31):

  That's very cool. And of course you have a book, a recent book that you wrote that was also about the same thing, and I see it's right behind you, American Identity in Crisis. You want to tell us a little bit more about that?

  Kat (03:45):

  Sure. Yeah, it's called American Identity in Crisis. It came out late 2023, and it's all about the ID crisis that we have in America. There are 26 million American adults who do not have photo ID - without which they can't get jobs, housing, medical care, et cetera. It's about how we ended up in this situation, which spoilers 9-11, and what it really looks like every day for folks who don't have ID, how our organization works with them, and ultimately what the solution to the problem is, which spoiler is passing my bill. So that's my book. That's the work we do. As we mentioned, I have a podcast called Choose the Bear, which is all about mostly women but not entirely living single and childfree.

  Nandita (04:29):

  And I can tell you that having been on the podcast and talking to you about all the wonderful things that you explore, it's a fabulous podcast and I highly recommend people check it out. Such impressive work that you're doing, Kat. Thank you for all you do, and thank you for joining me today to share all of this with our listeners. I'd like to start by exploring what it was like for you growing up in terms of the pressures that were put on you as a young woman around fulfilling certain roles, whether it was family, community, culture, et cetera.

  Kat (05:07):

  So I didn't realize until I was in my thirties how unusual my upbringing was, but my family expectations for the girls in the family, the boys too, but it's a very matriarchal family, which is common in black America, because we lose black men to so many things, is that you will go to college. It's not an option. I didn't even know until high school that there were people who didn't go to college, and my mother was like, well, it doesn't matter. You will go to college. You can go into any field that you want to, but you will use whatever field you are into work towards the betterment of the black community and the country. My great grandmother was Sioux, actually and became a chiropractor at the University of Chicago. My grandmother on the other side started college at 16, then got her master's degree and became a librarian.

  (06:00):

  Most of the women in my family have graduate degrees and most of the men served in the military because we have a lot of wars, there's a lot of drafting. And even when there wasn't, I mean, I'm an army brat, most of the men served in the military. A lot of the women in my family served in civil service or education or whatever, but the expectation was, you'll get an education, you will serve the community. Nobody cares if you get married or have children. In fact, it's better if you don't get married because men will ruin your life. My great-grandfather had two daughters and I think four or five sons, and the boys were of course always going off to war. There's World War II and the Korean War, et cetera. And so he decided his daughters were going to college, wouldn't let them work.

  (06:40):

  They owned a farm and everything, and he sold moonshine and he sent them both to college. And my grandmother went to grad school and she had some different jobs. And when she was 29, she met my very hot grandfather and got married and then literally the next day got pregnant and then getting pregnant until the pill was legalized after the third kid. And even though he was Catholic, they immediately got the pill. But my grandmother never stopped working. She always made more money than my grandfather, and he passed away when my aunts and mom were 13, 12, 11 and seven or something in 1972. And my grandmother just bought a house, raised the girls, never got remarried, lived a great life, traveled the world, retired when I was born. She's retired longer than she was working, which is a thing that only the greatest generation and older boomers can do, but always just was a very independent woman.

  (07:34):

  She was a community leader. She did all these things. And so I was raised in a family where the expectation was, well, you're a girl. You're going to go to college. You're going to be really educated. You're going to be part of the community. You're going to work really hard. You're going to buy your own house. You're going to do all these things. And mother went to a women's college in the seventies, so literally, I think my first words were Gloria Steinem. Gloria Steinem and Mary Lyon were my whole life Mae Jemison has been my hero since I was a little girl and Sally Ride and Maria Tallchief. I literally had a book called Feminist Fairytales. And so I was always raised with these stories of these women who did extraordinary things and like Mary Lyon with the velvet bag so that she could start the first college for women, which is where we went. I went to the same women's college, my mother went and et cetera. And so that was just always the expectation. Now I have done everything. I'm a lawyer. I've written a book. I'm very successful. I've bought a house, I've done everything that my family wants except my mother is so disappointed because I haven't been on Rachel Maddow yet. That's the one thing - not that I haven't been married, not that I haven't had kids. She's thrilled about all that, but that is the disappointment.

  Nandita (08:49):

  This is such a cool story. I think this is maybe one of the only stories of people that I've met who actually never had to navigate pronatalism or the pressure to be married and who have generations of examples of being an independent and self-sufficient person, and especially a woman. That is really, really neat.

  Kat (09:14):

  It's funny because there were so many things that I didn't understand about women and women's perspectives and things they would say. And it really wasn't until I was in my thirties and I was like, oh, I was raised really differently and things started to make a lot more sense. And now even during the podcast and I just talked to so many women who they were pressured to have kids or not having kids was a tough decision or whatever. And it's so foreign to me. Even like I said, my aunt, she's everyone's favorite. She never got married, never had kids, and she was 19 when I was born, and I'm the oldest grandchild. And so we've always been really, really close. I have so many women in my life who never married or don't have children that I always looked up to those women. And because I was from a young age exposed to so many heroes, like Gloria Steinem never had children and married when she was later in life.

  (10:13):

  And Mary Lyon never married or had children, and Mae Jemison never married or had children. All of the women I grew up with absolutely worshiping, never married or had children. It was always so obvious to me. And even when you look at female world leaders, mostly they're either unmarried or they don't have children, or they did it later in life, or they had kids really, really early in life, and then they grew up and then they were able to do things. I remember I was seven years old and it was late eighties, early nineties. Whitney Houston, The Greatest Love of All, was on the radio every five seconds. And I remember listening to one day and she said that I believe the children are in the future. And I was like, what about women? And I had this whole feminist debate in my head, and then I decided I'm never getting married and having kids.

  (10:58):

  And I told my parents, and I mean I was seven, they were like, okay, whatever. That was like a really defining moment for me. And certainly you get older and you think you change your mind or this or that, but really 90% of the time I've been pretty set. And by the time I got to being a professional adult and the work I do now, the whole first year, I spent 11 months of it on the road driving across the country starting my nonprofit. I could not have done that if I had kids. There is nothing about the work that I do now would have been possible. Even now, I can't imagine. And I have friends who have kids and run nonprofits, and they're always exhausted and stressed out. I don't know how they do it because it takes up everything, and I wouldn't be able to have moved here to be able to take care of my grandmother and all these things.

  (11:47):

  So like I recognize more every day and more as I'm doing this podcast, how fortunate I was. But also it was so not a thing that it's so hard for me to understand, just the idea of anybody caring if you have kids. And even, it's funny because I'm now in this town and there's a lot of retirees. It's very sort of small rural town in Arizona. And whenever I talk to an older lady say, oh, do you have kids? And I say, no, and I'm not married. Good for you. It's always the response. I have never had anyone, even a stranger say, Really, why don't you have kids? I've never had that. And it's crazy to me that so many people that they have the opposite experience. I always get a like 'good for you'.

  Nandita (12:34):

  Honestly, you sound to me like you're from a different planet and definitely not the United States of America and like you're saying, some really insular community that you were insulated for that long until your thirties, that it took you to realize that you were raised differently. So I know you said within the black community there isn't as much pressure. Is that really true for generally?

  Kat (13:00):

  There is a real divide, and you can look at it statistically. For black women there are a very high percentage of black women who are unmarried and have children, which is largely because of our prison industrial complex and some other things. And then there is also, but if you are a black woman who has an education, it is very unlikely that you are married or have children, and it is far more so than women of any other race. I think another reason that took me a long time to realize that I was weird is because most of my friends are unmarried and don't have kids. I have some friends who are divorced and have a kid, maybe some married friends. But really, even in my social circle, the vast majority of the people I talk to every day either are single and don't have kids, or a couple of my best friends have one.

  (13:50):

  And that's black women, but also women of other races and the occasional dude. But like I think a lot of it has to do with education and privilege. I mean, I'm so wildly privileged really for women of any demographic. To have this many women in the family who both have college degrees and graduate degrees and back to my great-grandmother is very unusual. And so the privilege of having a great-grandfather who was forward thinking enough to say, my daughters are going to college and was willing to do the work and sell moonshine and whatever else to make sure that happened. That didn't happen for most women regardless of what race they were or where they came from or anything else. And I think that that speaks a lot to the type of mindset that is part of my family tradition. That is the reason my grandmother is the way she is.

  (14:45):

  He fully supported her when she applied for a civil service librarian job that took her to Okinawa and et cetera, her career, everything he was so supportive of. His parents were slaves. And yet his daughter went to grad school and had a career and he could not have been more supportive of her, more supportive of my mom and aunts, and he passed away long before I was born. But I think that when I look at the demographic, it really goes two different ways. We have Spelman College, which is a very old college that is specifically for black women, and it has always been notable for its academic success. It was not a marriage mill for Morehouse, which is the black male college that is right next to it. There's Spelman women go and they graduate at far higher rates than the men at Morehouse College.

  (15:36):

  And so it has always been an educational institute very much specifically to be sure women are educated in the black community. Women have always had leadership roles, again, because even during slavery, very frequently married couples were sold away from each other. And usually if the men were sold away, the women left with the children or women and children were sold away, whatever. And so for a very long time. And then we had black men who go to prison at incredibly high rates or who are killed at high rates, et cetera. And so we have a society in which black women have always taken the lead, and you can always see that historically. And so that leads us to go two ways. I have a lot of black female friends who may not have as much of a sort of detached family as mine of like we really don't care if we get married or not, but who don't put a lot of pressure, who like education is really important and it's understood and expected their black girls will be very successful because we have that.

  (16:40):

  But there is also a side which I think follows a lot of the same mindset as a lot of Jewish communities have around, well, you have to have more brown babies because they're not a lot of us. We're also, I think people don't realize how small a percentage of the country we are. We're really only about 11 to 13% depending on what census you look at. We're loud and we're very active and we're very visible leaders. And so people think there are a lot more of us in this country than there actually are. And then when you add interracial marriage and educated black women not having children, et cetera, we're getting smaller and smaller. And so there is also that perspective of, well, you have to have more black babies because there aren't a lot of us. So I think it can go two really different ways.

  Nandita (17:28):

  Right. And since you didn't have all of this pressure surrounding you of the expectation to fulfill a certain role, did you personally ever think about taking the path not taken by the women in your family of finding a partner, getting married or having kids?

  Kat (17:47):

  I can't think of a time when I've wanted children ever. So the thing that I've always said, I don't date. I've never been on the apps except to laugh with my friends when they're swiping. I don't pursue relationships at all. What I always say is I love my life. I have so much to do. I have so much to pursue and work and et cetera. I could not be less interested. And I have, by the time you're 40, you've seen your friends go through and deal with horrors and stupidity and danger. And I mean just the amount of violence and abuse and assault that I've seen, and I'm just not interested, but I value myself and my life and my happiness so much more than I value the hope of a relationship, right? And I don't want to waste my time looking for a thing that is statistically wildly unlikely to happen, and that all of the time and energy and money that I spend in that pursuit is probably just going to be miserable, and that's not worth it to me. Even I have so many friends who are happily married, but they still end up doing, they're doing 90% of the child work, they're doing 90% of the housework. They're exhausted all the time. And I'm like, this is a happy marriage?

  Nandita (19:14):

  I just think that it's such a great example for how people could be raised and could grow up in a kind of culture where that degree of freedom is afforded, where people can actually escape a lot of the nonsense that this misogynist, pronatalist culture puts on people, especially on women.

  Kat (19:37):

  I think too, it's valuable to remember there are also boys in the family, and they were all raised in the same culture. They also expect that women can do all of these things because they were raised by these women in the same family. And so I think that it lifts all of us to raise children of all genders to see like, oh, we just have the same expectation. And I just think if we raised everybody like that, because one of the questions I constantly have that I just don't understand, men have mothers, and I don't understand how you could hate women so much unless you hate your mother. You've got a grandmother, you have a sister. How do you hate women so much? I don't understand it at all. This whole trad wife trend just terrifies me. How are we raising kids at home? And so when I talk to my friends who have no idea who Mary Lyon is, or didn't learn about Gloria Steinem until they were in their women's 101 class in college, or don't know who the first women were in space or whatever, and I'm like, this explains so much about your lack of confidence and your lack of belief, et cetera, because you weren't raised learning about all of these women in history or even who were doing things at the time that you were alive, who should have served as great inspirations for you and who should have shown you women can be all of these things.

  (21:10):

  And look, most of these women don't have kids and aren't married. That's not actually mandatory. So Marian Anderson was this very, very famous black singer in the twenties, thirties, forties, something long time ago, and she wanted to sing in Washington DC at Constitution Hall, which was run by the Daughters of the American Revolution, which is a historically wildly racist organization. And they said no. And so she said, fine. And she went to the Lincoln Memorial and she had a massive concert there that to this day is one of the biggest, most historic events that we still talk about. But again, when I say for black women, when you look at why we tend to be so much more assertive and why we're much more representative in culture than our numbers would indicate that we should be, et cetera, it's because those were our examples. It was Marian Anderson and it was Fannie Lou Hamer and it was Diane Nash.

  (22:05):

  It was all of these women who had no choice but to stand up or in the case of Rosa Parks sit down. And that was the example that we had. And so that's how I grew up. That's how a lot of us grew up. And it's the same thing where I've had several friends who are Asian women say, God, I wish I'd been raised like you because I was raised by my Japanese parents and I was supposed to just sit there and shut up. And you see the difference. And if every girl and boy had feminist fairytales growing up and had parents who told them about great women as well as great men, we'd see very different women and men. We wouldn't have this trad wife trend for one thing, and the misogyny would be so much lower, and I don't understand why men hate women this much.

  (22:46):

  What are we still doing? How does this misogyny still exist? I don't understand it. I didn't download TikTok until Covid when I was bored at home like everybody else. But I was like, what's this thing? What are kids doing now? And I saw all of these videos from all over the world of these girls saying like, oh, I just want to live the soft life and this and that. I was like, what is happening? And then that turned into this rise of the trad wives and all these things, and I was just watching it like, why are these 20-year-old girls saying they just want to be a stay-at-home girlfriend? What is happening? And it was so shocking to me. And the reason that Project 2025 and Germany's terrifying move to the right and whatever's happening in the UK right now and et cetera, the reason all of those things worry me is because the way for them has been softened by this social media movement that has been for years giving men wildly misogynistic messages.

  (23:42):

  I know several people whose husbands have so completely changed their personalities after starting to listen to Joe Rogan that they've had to divorce them, that become absolutely horrible men from listening to a podcast. And we see women and young girls particularly on this path. And so that's what worries me because it's like, oh, well, the way's been softened, so now we can have all of these right wing politicians gaining power in all of these different countries, and these kids aren't going to fight it as it's usually children who lead the revolutions, right? It's always young people, but they're not going to fight it because they've been softened by social media and YouTube and podcasts, et cetera. And that's what scares me.

  Nandita (24:27):

  Yeah. Well captured, well said. And as we're kind of coming to the end of the conversation, you've talked so much already about what it has meant for you to have the liberty and the freedom to be able to live out your life as a single childfree person. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to share in terms of where you are today and what has it meant for you to be able to live out a life that is not freely available to most people?

  Kat (24:59):

  It's funny. When I talk to my friends, a lot of times they'll say like, oh, thank God I don't have kids. And sometimes it's that you're sleeping in on a Saturday or starting this awesome new project. I just got this new fellowship that I'm really excited about. It's going to require a lot of regular travel to Virginia, which is pretty far. Again, if I had kids that could never do that, but there's also other things like I'm a Broadway geek. I majored in theater. I love Hadestown. The original Broadway cast is doing unlimited run on the West End. I saw it on Instagram, and they were opening up tickets the next day, and I swear it was like buying Taylor Swift tickets. The next morning I was up early, it was whatever England time. It was early in Arizona time, and on the waiting list for hours in the queue, whatever.

  (25:45):

  I got, I swear, one of the last tickets. And then I was like, oh, I guess I'll go to London next month. And I have two friends who are single and don't have kids who will be in London randomly, and now I have this vacation coming up super random. Not a thing that you can do if you kids or a husband or whatever, but I'm going to go see the original Broadway cast of Hadestown. It's worth it. There's always just moments like that. And I think for anyone who questions or worries about, will I regret not having kids or will I be lonely or whatever, there are just constantly moments like that when you're just like, oh, I get to do this awesome thing. Or, oh, I get to sleep in, or I love video games. And Zelda Echoes of Wisdom came out. I was like, I'm taking today off.

  (26:31):

  I'm just playing Zelda all day. Right? But it's also when you're older, I know the other thing that people get all the time, which is who's going to take care of you? Because apparently children are just around to take care of you when you're old. My grandmother's 94, she just in October, had an issue. We took her to the emergency room and then she wasn't home for two and a half months. So I spent two months in this freaking nursing home, watching Murder She Wrote and trying to get my grandmother to go for a walk, and I walked through the hallways of that recovery ward every single day. And it was rare that anyone in any of the other rooms ever had even a visitor. And I can guarantee you the majority of the people in that ward have children, have grandchildren, probably great-grandchildren, and they were always alone.

  (27:25):

  And we would hear sometimes people shouting from rooms help, help, right, or whatever, and there's never anyone there. And that, for me, it was such a stark reminder of the fact that having children is not an indicator of whether or not you'll be cared for when you're old. But I also know my friends who don't have kids or who have, because all of my friends who have kids only have one who if they're in the hospital, I'm getting on a plane and I'll be there no matter how old we are. I know that they have chosen family and networks and friends and whatever so that we won't be alone. And that is something that we can build, but depending on, well, I have a kid, they'll be here, that is not the case. And the reason I started the podcast is because I recognize that I'm just ridiculously lucky and an outlier in how I was raised, and I want people to understand that it can be so joyful to live alone, to not have children if that's what you want.

  (28:33):

  If you don't, fine. Although there's climate change and stuff, so maybe think about it, but if you do and you're feeling pressure and whatever, I want people to hear examples of just people, particularly women, because we face the most pressure just living joyful lives. There's this new group in LA that I love, and it's called Parallel, and it's a social group for dinks and sinks. We need more of that, right? We need more of people realizing, particularly for folks who are coming from cultures and families and religions where there's a lot of pressure that you're not alone, and that you can live a really joyful, fulfilling, wonderful, single childfree life, or just childfree and partnered or whatever configuration you want, and to experience that for yourself rather than letting the pressures get to you.

  Nandita (29:26):

  Well, that seems like such a nice message to end this episode with. I loved your contagious energy and yeah, all the excitement of living the amazing life that you're living, sharing all of that with the rest of us. It is so beautiful to have examples like yours to see how different the scenarios can be when your circumstances of upbringing are different and freer. Kat, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your amazing story, and thank you for all the incredible work that you're doing in the world.

  Kat (30:01):

  Well, thank you for having me.

  Nandita (30:03):

  That's all for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. What did you think of this episode? Do you have your own story you'd like to share? Check out the show notes to see how you can get in touch with me. Whether you'd like to share feedback about the show or a particular episode, or whether you'd like to join me on the show to share your own story, I'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much again for joining me today as we collectively discover and celebrate the many different pathways to fulfillment beyond pronatalism. Beyond Pronatalism is brought to you by Population Balance, the only nonprofit organization advancing ecological and reproductive justice by confronting pronatalism. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Nandita Bajaj, with the support of my production team, Josh Wild and Alan Ware.

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