Why People Feel Compelled to Challenge Your "No Kids" Status

Anna Goldfarb, writing for the New York Times, shares her experience of people asking "intrusive" questions about her childfree status after she married her boyfriend of many years. Most of us who are childfree have experienced this when we partner up and reach the age where most couples choose to have a family (usually the 30's in the United States) and it always made me wonder, "Why do they care so much if I choose to opt out?" Who am I hurting by making this very personal choice?"

Anna believes that when we make this alternative choice, it challenges a very primal belief system, and people become upset. I agree. It's a clash of values and beliefs. You think having a kid is an important milestone, critical to your maturity and happiness, and I beg to differ....

Here Anna's thoughts from the NYT article titled: "What to Say When People Ask Why You Aren't Having Children." 

For some, staying childless contradicts their worldview

When people push back about it, they seem to be more upset at having their sense of order questioned. Sometimes that can lead to interactions that feel hostile. 

Many people assume that having children after marriage is the natural progression of life. They may even see my reluctance to have kids as a personal affront, as if I’m criticizing their choices. 

Not only is it exasperating to justify myself to people who have no stake in the process, but people have rarely been enthusiastic about my decision unless they’ve decided to be child-free too.

As far as how we might respond to these intrusive inquiries. Anna responds with some restraint, particularly with people she doesn't know well:

When strangers ask about my plans for a child-free life, it can come off as if they’re really asking what kind of person I am. 

It takes effort to keep my cool. After a few deep breaths, I run through my usual answers in a measured tone: Yes, I love children, but I don’t feel an urgent need to have my own. No, it’s not because I’m a selfish jerk. Then politely assert that my husband and I are making decisions based on what’s right for us as a couple. I don’t elaborate more than that if I don’t want to.

Personally, I usually make light of it and say "Most of my friends couldn't imagine a life without kids, and I couldn't imagine a life with them!" and then laugh.

How do you respond?

An Australian Politician Advocates for the Childless/Childfree

This is my speech on childlessness; it's gone 'viral', as they say. I delivered it in the period leading up to passage of the government's 'No Jab No Pay' legislation. In it, I point out just how much taxpayers' money parents of children receive, money they ought not expect. I go on to thank the childless, who pay more tax, receive less welfare, and worse, get no thanks for their generosity.
Posted by David Leyonhjelm - Liberal Democrats Senator NSW on Sunday, November 22, 2015

David Leyonhjelm, a Liberal Democrats Senator from New South Wales, Australia took the opportunity to speak in support of the "No Jab, No pay" (legislation that would deny government family support payments to those parents who refuse to immunize their children) to say a hearty thank you to the childfree/childless persons in Australia who generously support families through their taxes and get "No thanks for their generosity.

When it was first released this video went viral, and I trust this video will open a dialog around appropriate uses of taxpayer dollars, and shed light on the many ways that the childless and childfree contribute to the common good.

What would you say if you had the lectern for a few minutes and could speak to the law and policy makers in your country?

Parents Supporting Their Childfree Children

I have been very fortunate in the fact that both my parents have always supported my choice to remain childfree. This is not always the case for childfree folks, as I documented in my book Two is Enough and the documentary film The Childless by Choice Project. Some parents do put a lot of pressure on their children to produce the grandchildren. Other parents just can't understand why.

I had a really happy childhood, with a Mom and Dad who were excellent role models for Parenthood. Yet I chose to remain childless by choice, not because I didn't know how to parent but because I didn't think parenthood was a good role for me.

I can't tell you how many times people have told me, "Oh, you would be such a great mom!" And maybe I would be but I am convinced that had I been a mother I would have experienced many  unhappy and frustrating days wondering why I had chosen this path when other paths seemed so much more appealing and natural for me.

This is why I was glad to see Barbara Walters, one of the hosts of  the current events show The View defend her daughter's decision to remain childless.  As a career television journalist, Barbara Walters knows more than most women how difficult it can be to navigate motherhood and career and clearly she is very proud of her daughter, saying that she's very caring and loving, particularly to old people like herself.
 
One of the other women on the panel already had a child but was planning for more and couldn't wait for the opportunity to breast-feed a baby. You could tell by the faces of the other women on the panel that breast-feeding an infant was definitely not something they were wishing for as they lay their head on their pillow at night. And this is why The View's panel of five women works so well and why we tune in. These five women are a diverse group from all walks of life and they have a variety of experiences and opinions about issues that concern us all.  Yet they can agree that parenthood is not for everybody and recognize that although they would happily choose parenthood for themselves they can understand why some women and men may not want what they want.

If these five women of The View wanted the same things, believed the same things, and held the same opinions  we wouldn't be watching the show.  
 
Lucky for us, and lucky for the networks who profit from these shows, we respectfully disagree!

The Childfree Life featured in TIME Magazine

The Childfree have made it to the front Cover of Time! Four years after my book Two is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice was published and one year after the release of my documentary The Childless By Choice Project, I finally feel like the childless by choice have been recognized as the important emerging demographic that it is.

As I have said repeatedly, the rising numbers of childfree couples is a trend, not an aberration. The trend to postpone or ultimately forgo parenthood is a global trend that is likely to continue in the short term, as competing opportunities for women expand. It was nice to see that media outlet like TIME took notice and did such a great job of documenting this trend. And it just happened to coincide with the inaugural celebration of International Childfree Day (August 1) Kudos to Time and staff writer Lauren Sandler!!

Why are (Most) Successful Women in the USA Childless?

A recent blog post published in The Huffington Post attempts to explain why (most) successful women in the USA are childless. While the author  Kristen Houghton doesn't cover all the reasons why this appears to be true, she does make an important point:

to succeed, you need to focus on what you want without distraction. To do that, you need to put what needs to be done high on your list of priorities. Men have been doing it for years without anyone thinking less of them. Whether in the corporate, financial or even artistic realms, to reach the top in your career requires a single-minded drive, dedication and passion.

True. And that single-minded drive is often, intentionally, not directed to the role of parent. However, there are mothers who have developed very successful careers as Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg effectively documents in her recent best-seller Lean In. However, Sandberg has this to say:

Women rarely make one big decision to leave the workforce. Instead, they make a lot of small decisions along the way," Sandberg wrote, according to a book excerpt on Time.com. "A law associate might decide not to shoot for partner because someday she hopes to have a family. A sales rep might take a smaller territory or not apply for a management role. A teacher might pass on leading curriculum development for her school. Often without even realizing it, women stop reaching for new opportunities."

In my interview's for the Childless by Choice Project, I saw evidence of this series of "small decisions" in the process of ultimately deciding to remain childfree. Women deciding to postpone childbearing. Women turning down a proposal from a man who clearly wants to start a family. Women rejecting the idea of being a single mom.

Women who intend to be mothers make the same series of decisions that limit their ability to compete or succeed in the top ranks. Some women have been quick to blame the glass ceiling or discrimination for the lack of women CEOs or COOs in the USA, but that's only one piece of it according to Sandberg. I tend to agree. As a coach I help my clients make these decisions and we go through a process of overt discernment when covering all the options. The trick to values-based decision-making is to make these decisions consciously with a clear sense of your wants and values, with eyes wide open, knowing that every choice you make excludes another competing option.



 

Mother Speaks About Her Regret Over Agreeing to Have Two Children She Didn’t Want

Because the source is the UK's Daily Mail, I am not sure this "first person account" attributed to Isabella Dutton is entirely true as they have a tendency at this paper to misquote for effect. However, this article is making the rounds of the childfree blogs and creating quite a stir. Sure, some of us love it because it validates our decision to remain childfree and makes up for all the times we have been told "You will regret not having kids."

Yet, somehow I can't take any pleasure from this. The life and reproductive decision making coach part of me just wishes this woman would have had the help and support of a coach. The residual guilt, regret, and the assumption of parenthood is evident and it's clear these emotions and assumptions influenced her decision making.

Here's the opening paragraph of this article:

My son Stuart was five days old when the realisation hit me like a physical blow: having a child had been the biggest mistake of my life.

Even now, 33 years on, I can still picture the scene: Stuart was asleep in his crib. He was due to be fed but hadn't yet woken.

I heard him stir but as I looked at his round face on the brink of wakefulness, I felt no bond. No warm rush of maternal affection.

I felt completely detached from this alien being who had encroached upon my settled married life and changed it, irrevocably, for the worse.

When she tells her husband she has is sorry she had given birth to her infant son, He just said, “Well we have him now. There's nothing we can do about it. You just have to get on with it as best you can.”

It’s hard to read this article without wincing. And if you scroll down and read the comments many of them are brutal. I feel bad and sad that this woman agreed to have two children she clearly didn’t want out of a sense of obligation and guilt. I admire her because, despite her aversion to the role of parent, she fulfilled her duties as mother as best she could. I admire her honesty too.

I wish this 57-year-old woman would have had the support and courage to say “No” back then. She would have been happier, she wouldn't have to live with these terrible feelings, and she likely would have experienced the "peace" she so longed for. Her daughter Jo, 31, has chosen not to have kids. She has MS and is being cared for by her parents, and I understand that even without her debilitating illness she would be inclined to make this choice for herself.

Because she can.

Stop the Fear: Childless Women Not to Blame for Outdated Economic Models

Amanda Marcotte, a writer/blogger for Slate magazine, hits the mark in her post titled America Is Doomed Unless Women Start Having More Babies. How Convenient.
She notes the curious trend of blaming childless women for any number of challenges that we will face, globally, as a result of an aging demographic. Marcotte accurately observes that many writers and pundits conveniently point fingers at all those selfish childless women for all the imagined ills that will befall us. She questions those who claim:

the only solution to save capitalism is to clip the wings of half of the population so they can spend more time laying eggs.

I'd argue instead that if the system is set up so that it fails if women don't start popping out more kids, then it's a broken system and should be reworked to account for the reality of America today. If women don't want to have more children, then instead of abandoning women's equality as a goal, we should rework our economic system so it doesn't rely on a steadily growing population to function. After all, the point of society is to serve the people in it, not to reduce us to cogs in a machine that serves no one at all.

People are having less children. We are living longer than we could ever have imagined. Our economies and our social safety nets were not designed for this shift and our leaders and politicians have been very slow to respond to what demographers have been predicting for many years. Our polititians, law makers, and policy and opinion leaders have behaved like the ostrich putting his head in the sand. They sit on their hands, they ignore, they marginalize, they worry, then they blame and demonize.
That's not leadership. That's cowardice.

Lowest Birth Rate Ever! What Didn’t Get Reported…

When the National Center for Health Statistics reported the lowest birthrate ever recorded in the US in 2011 many media outlets went into alarmist mode with this new data. An example of this is the editorializing done by Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe who warned that

when birth rates decline this is what materializes: economic stagnation, dwindling innovation, a declining lifestyle, the exploding health and pension costs of an aging population, and the ever-heavier taxes needed to maintain the government safety net when there are fewer workers and entrepreneurs…And intergenerational conflict and loneliness.

Well we’ll see about that. However, what was not widely reported was that there was some very good news in this report — births to unmarried teens hit a record low and the age group that was having more babies than previously reported was the 35 to 44 age group.

Why is this good news? I think most people would agree that it's good for women and it's good for society if women postpone childbearing until they are ready, both financially and emotionally, to care for the children that they choose to have. Though OB/GYNs and most healthcare professionals will counsel women to have children early—while they are in their most fertile years—the fact remains that women in their late teens and early twenties generally don't feel ready to have children or they have yet to find partners with which to raise a family. And though it's true that you should start procreating early in life if you're planning on having a large family of five + children, increasingly that is not what women, and men, want for themselves. Studies show that only 33 percent of Americans consider the ideal family size to be three + children. That's a huge change from the 1940s to the 1960s, when roughly 70 percent said that three or more children would be desirable.

When women postpone childbearing they generally do so by choice, even though it may not be a conscious day-to-day choice. And when they make those series of decisions to hold off on parenthood until they feel they are ready they become the intentional parent. The one who prepares the nest, physically, financially, and emotionally, is engaged in a conscious decision-making process that happily welcomes a child into the world. Sometimes it will take a woman many years to get to that point —where motives, desire, and resources meet. And, as these new birth stats show, that point might be in your late thirties or early forties.

The good news is we now have an age 35+ population that is healthy enough to carry a baby to term, although with the 40 + group it remains fairly risky and rare. But it is still an option for some of those 40 + women. And we also live in a country where there is the option to postpone parenthood until we are ready to raise our children or to forgo children altogether.

According to this report, it looks like that's exactly what is happening.

Essure—Laura Scott Talks to Dr. Carrie Panoff about the Non-surgical Alternative to Tubal Ligation

I was invited by the public relations team representing Essure, a non-surgical, hormone- free permanent birth control procedure, to do a Q&A with Dr. Carrie Panoff, an OB/GYN in Rockland County, New York who has been doing this procedure for four years. Here's a summary our conversation:

Q: What do your patients see as the benefits of this procedure?
A: It's hormone and surgery-free and no recovery time or incision
risk. It's a five or ten minute procedure.

Q: Are any medications offered or recommended for discomfort during or after the procedure?
A: I use Motrin 24 hours before the procedure and Motrin during the procedure.

Q: In your experience has there been any instance where a pregnancy occurred after this procedure?
A: No. Three months after the procedure we perform a test that confirms the blockage.

Q: Which patients are the best candidates for this procedure?
A: Any woman is a candidate.

Q: Do you have any reservations about perform this procedure on a childless woman under the age of 30? If so, how do you handle patients who fall under this category?
A: Patients under 30 years old have a tendency to change their mind so I may give them other options. They have the right to make the decision but I would have to be adequately convinced that have had this decision for a long time and have evaluated all of the options.

Q: Have any of your childless patients changed their mind after having the procedure?
A: No.

To get more information about Essure, visit the FAQ page at http://www.essure.com/what-is-essure/common-questions. Click at the top right-hand side of the page to find doctors who perform this procedure in your area.

Childless by Choice with Kids

More than a few times I have been contacted by someone I had interviewed for the Childless by Choice Project who has emailed to say “Hey, I've just become a stepmom (or foster parent), am I still in the club?”

I always respond with a hearty, “Yes you are!”

I guess because people make the assumption that all of us who choose to remain childless hate kids they are surprised when they find out that some of us happily choose to have children in our lives. We teach, coach, mentor, babysit, foster, or marry someone who has children from a previous marriage, and sometimes we even adopt. These actions do not negate the choice we made to live a life without biological children. Life brings opportunities and some of these opportunities include caring for and loving other people's children.

We can choose to embrace those opportunities as childfree persons or we can choose to say no. It all depends where on where we are on the kid loving/hating spectrum and what we feel we can do, or desire to do, at that moment. Here's an excerpt from an e-mail that I received recently from a couple who, until previously, had only furry four-legged children.

An update on us: we celebrated our 8 year wedding anniversary this year! It’s amazing how 11 years together goes quickly.

I want to also tell you something interesting that happened to us. Although we hadn’t planned to, and still have not, had our own children, my husband’s cousin was not able to care for her children any longer and we decided to take them into our home. I think if we had our own kids, this arrangement would not have been possible and these kids would have ended up in foster care.

My husband and I struggle daily with becoming ready-made parents but we think about the service to society we are contributing by bringing these kids up in a home with strong values, plenty of means, and a home where these kids can see that having kids is a choice. Their mom had them before she was twenty and she struggled (obviously). Feel free to take us off your list since we no longer meet the minimum requirements, lol.

Lisa Steadman, who wrote this article titled Why You Don't Need to Have Kids to 'Have it All' shared a similar experience of fostering her husband's niece. Her choice to remain childless, and her choice to be a temporary foster parent, led her to the realization that “having this child come into my life and my house does not feel like having it all. In fact, I feel like I have less now than I did before.” Less time, less sex, less money, less travel. And although she “gets” that there is value in the special moments with children too, Steadman still felt compelled to write:

Instead of judging each other's choices or condemning another woman who has made different choices as being incapable of having it all, wouldn't we all be better off to broaden our definition of having it all and celebrate what that looks like for each and every woman we know?

To me, this is the new woman's right to choose. And while we may never agree, I would hope we can adopt the new definition of having it all and honor each other's choices for the complex and unique women of the world we are.

flickr photo by Benjamin Lehman

“The Planet Doesn't Need Your Babies”

So says Caitlin Moran, a comedian, feminist, and mother of two, in her book How To Be a Woman. Lisa Hymas writing for Grist.org highlights some of Moran’s funniest entreaties for those who are thinking of having kids.

If you take a moment to consider the state of the world, the thing you notice is that there are plenty of babies being born; the planet really doesn’t need all of us to produce more babies. Particularly First World babies, with their ferocious consumption of oil and forest and water, and endless burping-out of carbon emissions and landfill. First World babies are eating this planet like termites. If we had any real perspective on fertile Western women, we’d be jumping on them in the streets, screaming, “JESUS! CORK UP YOUR NETHERS! IMMUNIZE YOURSELF AGAINST SPERM!” …

Moran presents a compelling cautionary tale in which she describes her scary transformation from do-gooder environmentalist to consumption junkie, a transformation she attributes to becoming a mother.

Before I had my kids I may have mooched about a lot but I was politically informed, signing petitions, and recycling everything down to watch batteries. It was compost heap here, dinner from scratch there, public transport everywhere. … I was smugly, bustingly, low-level good. Six weeks into being poleaxed by a newborn colicky baby, however, and I would have happily shot the world’s last panda in the face if it made the baby cry for 60 seconds less. The cloth diapers … were dumped for disposables; we lived on ready meals. Nothing got recycled … Union dues and widow’s mites were cancelled — we needed the money for the disposables and the ready meals. …

This lady is seriously funny. I can’t wait to buy this book and read her take on modern womanhood. Based on what I've read so far I'm sure she can be trusted to slay a few sacred cows… or pandas.

What sacred cows, or assumptions, around womanhood would you like to slay?

The Impact of Kids on IQ

When I do posts like this one, I feel like I am preaching to the Choir. I know through my research for the Childless by Choice Project that some of you are well aware of these costs and that awareness may be one of the reasons why you chose not to have kids. However, this clever graphic from EarlyChildhoodEducation.com showed me something that even I had not been aware of before, and that is:

The IQ's of parents dropped 12% after having kids.

Okay I get it, high doses of hormones, hours of baby talk and kiddie shows, and attempts to connect with your kid at the level of a three year old can have serious consequences. But I was shocked that is was 12 percent!

What do you think? Are you smarter for not having had kids?

Created by: EarlyChildhoodEducation.com

How the Childless and Childfree are Transforming Neighborhoods

I was recently interviewed by Marilyn Lewis, a reporter for MSN, who wanted to know what the childless and childfree wanted in terms of neighborhoods. The resulting article titled Grownupville: Neighborhoods for the New Childless Majority takes a fascinating look at how the childless and childfree are transforming neighborhoods, some formerly blighted, into meccas for no-kid households.

Having lived in or visited three of the top 10 communities profiled, I have to agree that the new majority, the childless household, is having a significant influence on the way we think about building a community. The childfree typically look for neighborhoods that are vibrant, stimulating, with easy access to restaurants, entertainment, workplaces, and services designed to support active and healthy lifestyles. They are not looking for the best school district, playgrounds (unless it's an off-leash dog park), or access to other families. In fact the opposite is quite true, as I was quoted saying here:

The impulse to form communities of childless people may seem inexplicable to outsiders, but it makes perfect sense to Scott. People who want to reproduce and cannot often find life among families lonely and painful, she says. Also, childless people can feel left behind when old friends focus on their young families. "They're so busy with their kids and they've got a new bunch of friends they've found through their children."

For nonparents, the key to a rich life is in building a tribe, a family of affinity, Scott tells clients. "That's hard to do when you're living in a suburb surrounded by families and kids."

My experience of living in South Tampa, first in the Harbour Island neighborhood and more recently in Ballast Point, is exactly what I had hoped for: ethnic and racial diversity, easy access to restaurants and entertainment, good city energy but still peaceful, a mix of families, retired folks, and childfree neighbors, and an urban lifestyle that invites me to leave my car in the garage and walk or bike to my destination.

What has your experience been in the neighborhood in which you live? Would you nominate your neighborhood as the best place to live for current your lifestyle?


Photo credit: Richmond Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau

Why are We Still Fighting over Birth Control?

Recent outrages and political skirmishes over birth control access in the USA have opened up a dialogue about why we are still fighting over the right to have access to effective birth control 50 years after the birth control pill was made available to women in the US.

The recent dialogue focuses on the fact that the people who are making moves to limit access to conception are men. Why is that? And where are the women? In her article published in AlterNet titled Why Patriarchal Men are Utterly Petrified of Birth Control and Why We’ll Still be Fighting about it 100 Years from Now, Social Futurist Sara Robinson offers her unique perspective on why men remain in the forefront of the push to limit access to birth control:

Until the condom, the diaphragm, the Pill, the IUD, and all the subsequent variants of hormonal fertility control came along, anatomy really was destiny — and all of the world’s societies were organized around that central fact. Women were born to bear children; they had no other life options. With a few rebellious or well-born exceptions (and a few outlier cultures that somehow found their way to a more equal footing), the vast majority of women who’ve ever lived on this planet were tied to home, dependent on men, and subject to all kinds of religious and cultural restrictions designed to guarantee that they bore the right kids to the right man at the right time — even if that meant effectively jailing them at home.
Our biology reduced us to a kind of chattel, subject to strictures that owed more to property law than the more rights-based laws that applied to men. Becoming literate or mastering a trade or participating in public life wasn’t unheard-of; but unlike the men, the world’s women have always had to fit those extras in around their primary duty to their children and husband — and have usually paid a very stiff price if it was thought that those duties were being neglected.

Robinson makes the point that a woman's ability to control her fertility challenges historically entrenched patriarchal systems. For women this is seen as a positive development but for some men… not so much.


Flickr photo by WeNews

I Don’t Want Children. Am I a Freak?

This great blog post from Gala has been making the rounds on the Two Is Enough and Childless by Choice Project facebook pages and has been so well received that I felt compelled to share it with you, my dear blog readers, as I am certain there is something here that you can totally identify with!

Pour yourself a cup of tea, a cola, or a glass of wine and be prepared for some adult spit up as you laugh out loud.

Flickr photo by Dr Case

“Unnatural and Undervalued”: Childless in Australia

The title of this recently published article out of Australia pretty well sums up the findings around the stigma and perception of childlessness: ‘Unnatural’, ‘Unwomanly’, ‘Uncreditable’ and ‘Undervalued’: The Significance of Being a Childless Woman in Australian Society. And while I agree with their findings, I was disappointed to read that the co-authors Stephanie Rich, Ann Taket, Melissa Graham and Julia Shelley based their observations on interviews with only five childless Australian women (please, it’s a large country, surely there’s a few more women out there to interview!).

Small sample aside, I was interested that they did note one important curiosity—that childlessness for women is considered normal at young adulthood but “abnormal’ for women in their late thirties or early forties. So true! So why does childlessness move from being perceived as normal to abnormal over the passage of say ten or fifteen years?

Is the assumption of the “maternal instinct” so prevalent that we are all expected to be a mother or in baby lust by a certain age, and those that are not are then seen as “abnormal”?

Or, is it that while some folks can understand why a woman or man would wish to postpone parenthood, there is very little sympathy or understanding for those who indefinitely delay parenthood, or very publically opt out altogether?

I suspect is may be a bit of both, as is noted in the abstract for this article: “While childlessness is increasingly acknowledged, it is still not completely understood.”

Where is the “understanding gap” in your experience?

Flickr photo by Amandabhslater

Are Childless Woman Untrustworthy as Workmates?

A 2009 article titled “Why bosses are right to distrust women who don't want children... by a VERY outspoken mother (and ex-boss)” that appeared in the UK’s Daily Mail and was recently posted on the Childless by Choice Project facebook group page is generating a lot of chatter amongst the childfree and childless members of this group (BTW, this is a closed group but you are welcome to join us, just click here).

You really have to read the entire article to understand why but here’s just one of the many statements made by Carol Sarler, the writer of this piece, that got us all a-flutter:

In my experiences both as a colleague and an employer, I have found that mothers almost always bring something extra to the job, to the benefit of all.
It's not the mothers, for a start, who are going to turn up late and hungover after a night on the razz; they'll have been up, dressed and alert for hours, having cooked a family breakfast and delivered their children to school. On time.
It's not the mothers, usually, who run the office bitch-fest.
They're not there to compete for the attentions of the male executives; they're there to get out of the house; they're there because they genuinely enjoy some adult company; and they're there because they have mouths to feed other than their own and shoes to buy for someone else's feet.

She parrots the stereotype noted in the study she cites that childless woman lack an “essential humanity” and goes on to say “we actually need our children; they complete us as women, they are our light and our love and our legacy.”

This last statement alone speaks volumes. First there is the word “need” which is a red flag for me as a life coach. Then “they complete us as women, they are our light and our love and our legacy” which indicates a core belief that women must have children to feel complete or whole which is unfounded and, in my personal experience, untrue.

So to support her belief that childless women are weird and cold and undesirable as workmates, she points to a study that shows that these tired old stereotypes and assumptions are shared by others like her. This is just sad. It’s like saying “Yes, me and my buddies down at the factory believe that people who own cats can’t be trusted, have bad work habits, and are just plain weird. The fact that so many people believe this must make it true!”

What also raise alarm bells for me is what is not said here--her omission of childless men. Are they untrustworthy too?

Flickr Photo by Massdistraction

Sitcom Childfree Women at Odds with Reality

Jessica Grose, writing for Slate wrote an excellent article titled Child-free on TV about the childfree characters on some of our favorite situation comedy shows. Grose points out that these characters tend to exhibit masculine traits and send the message that women who don’t want kids are somewhat flawed or dysfunctional:

This message was driven home this week by the way two prime-time shows—How I Met Your Mother and Whitney—dealt with female characters who say they don’t want children. While this may be an uncommon choice on an American sitcom, it’s of course not an uncommon choice in America; the share of American women who don’t have kids has doubled since 1976. But neither of these characters—Robin (Cobie Smulders) on HIMYM and the titular Whitney (Whitney Cummings, also the show’s creator)—was allowed to fully embrace her desire not to have kids. Though Robin’s conflicted feelings about baby-rearing were treated in a much more enlightened way, it’s telling that on both shows, the characters who don’t want babies are women who like shooting guns and talking dirty, but who are grossed out by feelings. These shows are implicitly saying: Of course only a woman who’s not really feminine wouldn’t want to be a mom.

This article merits a full read as it highlights so much of what is wrong about the portrayal of childfree characters in our most popular media. If these characters bore an actual resemblance to the childfree women and men I know I might not be concerned but the reality gap between the sitcom childfree and the childfree that I see and know is so wide and troubling that it can’t be ignored or condoned.

Photograph by Chris Haston/NBC.

Some Parents Just Don’t Get It

Melody Moezzi's blog post titled "Childless by CHOICE—Get it?" on the Ms. Magazine site last December elicited over fifty comments, many seconding what Melody wrote in her post:

Not long after we started dating, I informed my husband that if he wanted kids, I wasn’t the girl for him. He thanked me for the heads up and said he could easily do without them as well. Relieved, we continued dating for several years before we got married, both in our early 20s.

From the moment we announced our engagement, the pressure began: “So, when can we expect to see a little Melody or Matthew running around?” Matthew always smiled and changed the subject. I, on the other hand, confronted the question head on. “Never” was my standard response, and it always evoked laugher. Nobody could imagine that someone would choose not to procreate. But we stuck to our guns, and now, in our early 30s, people are slowly realizing that we weren’t kidding.

As a result, many have come to view us differently—as selfish, cold, narcissistic and unwilling to take on responsibility, despite all that we’ve done personally and professionally to counter such claims.

Melody and her husband continued to feel pressure from friends and strangers to have kids even though Melody has been firm and open about the “never.”

However, a woman who posted a comment to this blog challenged Melody suggesting the busybodies Melody documented were “mythical” and that Melody was “an unreliable narrator using exaggeration to get attention for her blog posts.”

This woman could have just been a troll, but her comment set off a flurry of responses from other women who documented their experiences of being pressured and disparaged by parents who just didn’t get it. This is real, they said, this really happens.

Having surveyed and spoken to hundreds of childless by choice people over my years working on The Childless by Choice Project , and having encountered more than a few of them myself, I too can say “yes, it does. The busybodies are real.”

Flickr Photo by Miguel Pires da Rosa

The Adoption Option

Author Stefanie Iris Weiss recently wrote a post titled My Uterus is Officially Closed for Business in HuffPost Living. Is she childfree? No, Stefanie is planning for children:

As a woman who often cries at the sight of infants and coos at her friends' little ones, having biological babies always seemed like an inevitable step. But once I fully wrapped my brain around the relationship of overpopulation to climate change, especially in the West, I made a big decision: I won't bring more kids into the world. I learned that even if I spent the rest of my life recycling, having even one child would increase my carbon legacy by 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide. I still crawl around on the floor with toddlers when given the chance, and go ga-ga for goo-goos, but my uterus is officially closed for business. I'll be adopting kids when the time is right.

When I was interviewing childfree couples and singles for the Childless by Choice Project, I saw a pattern. When I asked the question, “What happens if you change your mind and decide you do want children?” the most common response was “I am not going to change my mind on this.” The second most common response was “I/we will adopt.” This was true even for married women who were still in their fertile years and very likely could have had a biological child if they chose.

There seems to be a movement or shift towards adoption. It used to be the adoption was the last resort for infertile couples, now it appears to be both a viable and desired option for conscious decision makers who are either environmentalists or hold a strong belief that we need to take of the souls who are already on this earth. Or might there be some other motives to adopt? You tell me…

Flickr Photo by nik_donna