Viewing Childlessness Through A Wider Lens
The November 2025, episode 80 of the Full Stop podcast is with Michael Barnett, an activist, writer and community advocate. He has spent decades campaigning for LGBTQIA+ rights in Australia, supporting multicultural queer communities, and raising awareness of youth wellbeing and suicide prevention. Michael was awarded an Order of Australia Medal and the Monash LGBT Leadership Award (along with his husband, Gregory) for their extensive community work.
Yet, Michael described how people rarely ask him about his childlessness. Not because they’re unkind, but because they assume that he never wanted children in the first place. He spoke of the silence around his hopes, losses and efforts; the questions he longed to be asked but never were. So many of us know the sting of being overlooked, but Michael’s experiences show how deeply rooted assumptions about sexuality can erase someone’s story before it’s even told.
In our recent interview with LGBTQ+ activist Michael Barnett, we were struck by something that has stayed with us ever since: the quiet loneliness he described as a gay man who is childless not by choice. As childless people, we are familiar with the isolation that comes from not being a parent in a world that centres parenthood. But hearing Michael speak so honestly reminded us that while our griefs may sit side by side, some people carry layers of invisibility that many of us never see unless we choose to look.
What resonated was the way Michael described how people rarely ask him about his childlessness. Not because they’re unkind, but because they assume — as they do with many LGBTQ+ people — that he never wanted children in the first place. He spoke of the silence around his hopes, losses and efforts; the questions he longed to be asked but never were. That landed heavily for me. So many of us know the sting of being overlooked, but Michael helped the Full Stop to understand how deeply rooted assumptions about sexuality can erase someone’s story before it’s even told.
Listening to him made all three of us presenters reflect on how often loneliness is doubled for LGBTQ+ people who don’t become parents. Many experience the same societal exclusion we do — being left out, misunderstood, or pitied — but they also face cultural narratives that position queer people as outsiders to family life altogether. Michael’s story revealed how painful it is when both identity and childlessness become reasons for people to look away. And yet, he spoke with such generosity about still wanting to make the world safer and kinder for young people who might otherwise feel the same pain he once did.
We have experience in diversity training and that got us thinking about what it means to truly build inclusive childless spaces. It means recognising that we are not all standing in the same place, even if we meet at the same crossroads. Michael’s openness gave us a gift: the chance to see our community through a wider lens. And in that wider view, it becomes clear that meeting each other in the middle is not just possible — it’s essential. Our experiences differ, but our need for understanding, compassion, and shared humanity does not.
As we continue to grow our Full Stop Community, we want to invite all of us to carry Michael’s words onwards. To remember that childlessness isn’t one story but many. To gently challenge assumptions (our own and others’). Every kind of childless person must have spaces in which to speak their truth without having to fight to be heard. Because when we honour each other’s stories — including those that society overlooks — we build a childless community that is not only diverse, but deeply connected, hopeful and whole.
