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

Some people marry at 25. Some at 45. Some never. Some have children at 40, and some have none at all.

The shared timetable of adulthood has gone. I want to understand what’s replacing it. Demographer Paul Morland wants to bring it back.

In this episode of Kaleidoscope Lives, Paul and I get into falling birth rates and what happens to a society when fewer people marry and have children.

We cover schools closing for lack of pupils, dating, housing, the cost of raising a family, and whether adulthood is simply arriving later or turning into something else entirely.

Paul believes partnering up and having children should stay the default expectation of adult life. I push on what that default means for everyone whose life goes another way, by choice or by circumstance.

We dive into:

• Why falling birth rates are all over the news but missing from everyday conversation
• Schools closing for lack of pupils, and why decline takes decades to feel
• Dating, and why the places people used to meet have gone quiet
• Housing, childcare and the real cost of raising a family
• Egg freezing, "keeping the option open" and the two clocks women live between
• Is adulthood arriving later, or turning into something else entirely?
• Paul's case for parenthood as the default, and Chloe's challenge to it

Kaleidoscope Lives explores what happens when adulthood stops following one shared timetable.

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

Connect with Paul: https://www.paulmorland.co.uk/

📸 @chloealanawilliams