VIRTUAL FILM SCREENING & DISCUSSION: To Kid or Not to Kid (2018) with filmmaker Maxine Trump

TO KID OR NOT TO KID bravely plunges into an aspect of reproductive choice often considered too taboo to discuss, asking the question “Why can’t we talk about not having kids?” Tired of being made to feel like “a waste of a uterus,” one woman fights back for her right to decide whether to live a life openly without having kids.
Filmmaker Maxine Trump turns the camera on herself and her close circle of family and friends as she confronts the idea of not having kids. While exploring the cultural pressures and harsh criticism childfree women regularly experience, as well as the personal impact this decision may have on her own relationship, Maxine meets other women reckoning with their choice: Megan, who struggles to get medical permission to undergo elective sterilization, and Victoria, who lives with the backlash of publicly acknowledging that she made a mistake when she had a child.
Trump joins Thomas Allen Harris, senior lecturer in African American Studies and Film and Media Studies, for a discussion immediately following the screening. This event is part a series of screenings in conjunction with Harris’s course “Family Narratives/Cultural Shifts” (AFAM 216/FLM 433).