Take Me To Your Tweeple

I’m feeling like the aliens shown above because I’ve just created my first Twitter account CbyCproject and I feel like I am on a different planet.

The Childless by Choice Project social media outreach began with the Childless by Choice Project website, a Squidoo lens, a blog (first as a contributor of Purple Women & Friends and now this blog), then the Facebook Page for Two Is Enough, and now Twitter.

I was reluctant to sign up for Twitter at first because I really didn’t have the time and I didn’t know how I might use it. Then a month ago I signed up for a class on social media at a writer’s conference and began to understand where twitter fits in an outreach program. I realized this was another way to connect with other childfree folks and to continue to learn and share.

There is no possible way one book or one documentary can encompass all there is to know about the childless by choice demographic. We are not one homogeneous blob. So I like to go beyond my survey respondents and the participants of the Childless by Choice Project and hear from childless and childfree people from all over.

I was recently contacted by a woman from Argentina. She found me through Unscripted, the ezine for the childfree, after an online search and she wondered if there was a Spanish language version of Two is Enough or the documentary. Unfortunately no, not yet. However she reminded me that childfree people exist in every corner of the world and in every corner of the web.

If you are a twitter user please tweet me at CbyCproject and let’s start a conversation.

Flickr Photo courtesy of State Library and Archives of Florida

Are You Invisible?

Wallflower would not exactly describe me, but for decades I have conveniently blended in to the crowd as a childfree by choice woman of childbearing years. Allowing strangers to make assumptions as to my family status has been easier than a long, intimate conversation with someone I may never meet again. Truthfully, no one is owed an explanation, not even the curious.

Life is different now. I live in a suburban town with rural roots. Because of my volunteer work with a local nonprofit and my husband's five generations of family connections in that same town, I cannot go to the grocery store without recognizing someone I know. I like that, and they will get used to me. I've accepted the fact that I may never fit in, even though I may make a significant, unrecognized contribution to this community before it is my time to leave. As my sister-in-law put it,

"Childless people have more energy to contribute to all of the world's people. They also have the time to treasure good friends."

Outside of our family choices, we childfree folks are as diverse in our reasons as we are in our pursuits, using the time that is not devoted to the upbringing of the next generation.

I have explored the invisible nature of being childfree in a few different contexts--on a personal level in intimate settings (expecially hard when people don't already know, love and accept you); in the blogosphere, where we are often not a large enough a self-identifying group to warrant our own affinity category (marketers cannot sell us something specific as we are too diverse and lack unity), and within society at large via the good ol' U.S. Census (Do We Count?).

On November 15, 2007, I even staged an online event called "Purple Women Count" due to my frustrations in trying to find some way to be unified with others like me and counted in the larger context of the modern woman's experience, not necessarily that of a mother. Sadly, I let the anniversary pass last year, without so much as donning a purple sweater!

Because I administered a blog on the topic of being childfree for two years, I drew the attention of reporters who were looking for an interesting story to sell their editors. I am of the opinion that it is almost impossible for a newspaper reporter to capture the experience of a childless by choice individual and draw parallels. Their job is to find an interesting angle, and "early articulators" have been most often covered, those with regret in their decisions a close second. (See White Picket Fences post 10-09-07). Those content with their choice, may be the least interesting and most invisible among us.

Do you have a story about being invisible?

Flickr photo by pericomart (cc)

The Journey to Me

We all start out child-free and somewhere along the way paths diverge, and mine lead to being childless by choice, even though I had to have a life-altering surgery at the tender, single age of 27, that rendered me incapable of bearing fruit. Fruit of the womb, that is.

It has been a long journey to becoming childfree me. I don't like to have my choice taken away from me. After the surgery, I walked the infertile couple path. We were not rich enough to even consider adoption or in-vitro. I felt trapped by my lack of options and by the horrible, emotional experience of wanting something that you cannot have. Something as complicated as love is never quite this simple, but looking back, I think my infertility was merely a trigger for the collapse of my first marriage. His drive to be childed was simply stronger than mine, though I could not articulate it at the time. I was just misarable. So, I exited stage left to explore this option solo.

A decade later, I thought for sure the conversation with my new boyfriend, the one I was slowing falling in love with, would be heart-wrenching. I knew that I had an obligation to tell him I would not be his "baby-mamma" before we went any further. To my surprise, he had already determined for himself that having children was not high on his list. After we married, I discovered the motivation for his decision was based on a lesson in over-population that he was exposed to as a sophomore in high school. His parents had taken the whole family to the world's fair in Spokane, Washington in 1974. A bell rang every five minutes, indicating that another child was born. This conscious-raising stunt had a profound impact on this thinking young man. He realized that the world did not need more children. Perhaps the message rang a little strong with him since he is one of five children. The product of two large traditionally Catholic families. Now, I love to hear him tell this story to a receptive audience.

My personal journey to childfree included blogging about it exclusively for two years at Purple Women & Friends. I didn't like the terms others applied to my brand of childlessness, so I created my own nomenclature around the subject. At the time, my husband and I found ourselves in the social petrie dish of being an expat in Canada. I was also turning 40 and had lots of time on my hands for life review and the blogosphere was my medium. In my 30s, I was still looking for childfree role models and I interviewed and befriended many. Along the way, I discovered and read several books on the subject, some humorous, some humorous only to some, all enlightening. We can definitely use more thoughtful exploration, both fiction and non-fiction in this arena, and I for one am really looking forward to the book and documentary film being produced by my friend and former PW&F co-contributor, Laura Scott, the owner of this blog.

All the online journaling and the childfree adult friendships I made along the way have made me less susceptible to thoughtless comments made by others about my chosen childless by choice status. But still I was a little unnerved when I was invited to be a panelist and moderator at the 2008 BlogHer Conference in San Francisco at an experimental Childfree Women Bloggers session. During my "purple" years, I created a reputation for being a reasonable voice on this often hot topic and an even-handed moderator of this multiple-voice team blog. I had actively lobbied BlogHer and other social networking sites for inclusion in our own separate category, since mom bloggers seemed to dominate all conversations. There never seemed to be a proper category to fit our uniquely focused blog. It was hard to promote, and our chance to gain more readers and expand the conversation was dampened by this reality. So, to be invited to participate in such a panel was an achievement of sorts, and I simply could not refuse.

Laura joined me on the BlogHer "Childless in the Blogosphere" panel. It was a good experience. The panel was attended by more than 50 women bloggers. At the end of the day, I realized I had become the role model I was seeking. My Purple Women blog is now closed, though the content is all there and searchable by topic, but my journey is far from over and I am happy to join this blog as contributor so I can continue to explore the role and phenomenon of childfree adults in our society.

Next post by Teri: Invisible Citizens - Childless by Choice Adults

(Or, let us know what you'd like to read about!)

Introducing Teri Tith

I've very happy to introduce you to Teri Tith, a new contributor to the Childless by Choice Project Blog. Teri is new to this blog but she is a veteran blogger who has embraced her childless by choice status in the most marvelous way, sharing this experience with others in the blogosphere, and beyond, as you will see in the next post.

Teri introduced me to blogging over two years ago when she invited me to contribute to her blog Purple Women & Friends, and since then I come to appreciate her both as a writer and a friend.

I trust you will too.