Whenever I see a genealogy chart—the kind with names, dates, and lines connecting the generations—my eye always moves to the names that form the end of their branch on the family tree. The ones who didn’t have children.

What’s their backstory? How did they craft their lives and integrate their circumstances? In my own family branch, I’m the only one who doesn’t have children. If I go back to my grandparents’ generation, many branches on the Kaufmann family tree end with no names below, just like mine. I even knew some of these great-aunts and uncles, though I was a small child at the time.

Our language is lacking when referencing those who don’t have children. Current terms relate to our relationship to the children we don’t have, not to one another. Childless implies a loss, the desire for kids unfulfilled. Childfree suggests a liberation, a chosen circumstance. Rarely in life is the distinction this stark, with many of us shifting between the polarities over the course of our lifetimes.

I’m more interested in our shared circumstances and how we might expand our networks of relatedness. But there isn't a word that describes who we are relationally distinct from progeny or the lack thereof.

Then the term........

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