Childfree Women will be at the Forefront of a Creative, Cultural Renaissance, says Futurist

Faith Popcorn, a New York –based Futurist Marketing expert and author, says the SHEvolution is coming and childfree women will be taking the lead, redefining family, exploiting their gifts, following their passions. Here is an excerpt of her Huffington Post article:

With more opportunities in education and careers, women are eschewing traditional family structures. The old "college, marriage, home-ownership, then parenthood" sequence has been shaken up, turned upside-down, and transformed. We are customizing our own life timelines to do what satisfies us at a particular moment. 

Women are opting to have kids later: The number of children born to women 35+ has increased 150 percent, and egg-freezing is up 28 percent. Soon, egg-freezing will be a commonplace graduation gift for young women starting their careers.

Many of us are choosing not to have kids at all. The number of women between age 40 and 44 who remain childless has doubled in a generation. In 1976, it was one out of 10; by 2006, it was one in five. More and more women will decide that children are not for them. 
We call this group Childfree by Choice or CxC. These females shatter the stereotype that not having kids is sad, shameful or pitiable. Because they are free to spend more time focusing on their own goals, CxC women will be at the forefront of a cultural creative renaissance, starting more companies, leading more social initiatives, creating newer and better solutions. They are becoming the envied class.

When my book Two is Enough was published in 2009, there was still significant stigma associated with childlessness, chosen or otherwise. However as more women delay or forgo parenthood, they will be increasingly be recognized for their contributions outside of the role of mother.

In recent years, Female entrepreneurs drove the economic recovery here in the U.S. as they started new companies and grew existing ones. They continue to be in control of the “purse strings,” but now the purse has turned into a portfolio. Women under age 30 earn, on average, more than their male peers in the U.S. A. and they are savvy investors.

They bought homes, got degrees, and were voted into office. They retired then began again, in an “encore” career (some of them as volunteers) making a difference in their communities and ensuring their legacy as women leaders, business people, professionals, educators, philanthropists, humanitarians and humans BEing.

As I always say, in reference to the demographic we call the childfree by choice, “this is a trend, not an aberration. This is not a ripple, this is a wave; a cultural tsunami.

Are you going to going to nod and take notes or are you going to get on your board and surf this?!

"Not a Mother" Mindfulness

Last month a received an email from Maaike, a woman from the Netherlands who shared one of her blog posts with me.
I was very impressed and touched by the way she honored her decision not to have children. I will share an excerpt here and invite you to click here to see the whole post:

"Everywhere I go, everywhere I am, I set up altars for the woman in me who will not be with child and will not give birth to a child. A choice. My choice. Every day I take a little bow to this choice and to the woman that I am today. And every day I check with myself if this choice still feels right, making sure that this is my path - that this is my life I need and want to live. Then I take a deep look in my husband’s eyes – he is inextricably linked to the choice that I made – and I know it’s right. I won’t wake up one day regretting this choice and blame him or myself for it. 
"Honoring the importance of this choice I decided to make this choice every single day all over again. But it is since a little while that it feels different. It's not just a choice anymore. It's changed into the realization that I will not become a mother for sure. Not only because it's my choice, but also because I am a woman of 39 and I truly feel that I am too old to become a mother. After losing a close friend earlier this year – this new awareness hit me really hard.
"I share all of this with you my fellow sister, because I need you and other women to read this - to know this. This is important. Choosing to become a mother is a choice for the rest of your life but so is the choice to not become a mother. Regret is too high a price to pay - either way."

I, too, reaffirm my decision not to have children even though that option for me is past. It feels good to check in with myself again, and again, and know it still is the right decision for me. How about you?

A Norwegian study on Well-being and Childlessness Challenges the Myths

Recently, a team of researchers looked at the relative psychological well-being of parents and those who remained childless and this is what they found:

Contrary to popular beliefs, having children doesn’t increase the overall quality of life – not even in old age. A Norwegian survey of 5,500 individuals aged 40-80 shows no indication that childless adults have reduced well-being compared to adults with children. In the subsequent paper they wrote:

"Both the results reviewed and those presented do not support the old myth that children make people substantially happier or that not having children jeopardizes well-being in later life. Although infertile persons may go through a phase of finding life empty and unfulfilling (Callan & Noller, 1987), there is little to suggest that involuntary childlessness may cause a continuing sense of loss, as some have suggested (Beets, 1996; Matthews & Matthews, 1986). Childless adults appear to adapt well to their situation, finding companionship, support, and a sense of meaning and significance in other ways (e.g., Rempel, 1985). Overall, childlessness seems to be “easier,” and/or parenthood less “advantageous,” than people tend to assume."

In fact the authors of this paper noted that “Partnership status has a much stronger bearing on psychological well-being than parental status.”

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.

Childless in Babyville: Navigating In a Pronatalist World

Childless in Babyville is the title of a chapter in my book Two Is Enough: A Couples Guide to Living Childless by Choice. It’s a chapter that acknowledges that if you are single or in a committed partnership you will at some point feel the stigma of remaining childfree. I have yet to find one person who has not been second-guessed, challenged, or perceived as odd or seriously flawed because they have chosen a childfree life.

Recently I received an email from a 26 year-old woman whom I’ll call “Bella” who had seen me in a segment titled “Childless by Choice” on CNN’s Joy Behar Show:

I just wanted to say that I have just recently discovered your website after seeing an interview on one of the news networks and very much wanted to share my feelings about this. Let me start by saying this has given me confidence in myself knowing that I am not the only woman who shares these feelings about remaining childless.

I have no desire to have my own children and I have known this since I was 10 years old. I didn't realize until later in life how much this decision would ultimately affect me and could actually be a little stressful.

I work in the design department for a baby clothing company. I love my job and love the people I work with but there is this stigma that there is something wrong with me because I do not share the same interest to bear children like the rest of the woman I work with. And I don't understand why I am questioned so often as to my personal decision not to have kids. Sometimes I am afraid that it is going to affect keeping my job. Just because I don't share the need to have kids doesn't mean I don't like designing clothing. I am a creative, talented person with a lot to offer.

When ever having or not having kids is brought up I am always asked “why?” Sometimes I just didn't know how to respond without sounding strange. I am often told I am "weird.”

When I found this site and started reading the blog, it made me feel so much better about my choice (even though I have never questioned it). I am so glad that there are other people out there that share the same view.

I am not the only "weirdo" :)

Bella is right, she is not alone. There are millions of people who feel exactly as she does and struggle to find ways to navigate in “babyville.”


Flickr Photo by Ex.Libris

You Won’t Know You Want a Kid Until You Have One

“You won’t know you want a kid until you have one.”

We’ve all heard a version of this. It’s the kind of warped logic that comes up when you say “I’ve never wanted children.”

The BBC New Magazine challenged this assertion in an article titled “The Women Who Choose Not To Be Mothers.”

This piece quotes a childfree step-mom who doubts her preferences will change with the arrival of a child, and a therapist who acknowledges that childless and childfree women can, and do, live very satisfying lives, despite the lingering stigma:

Julia Wallace, at 40 a step-mother to three children who live elsewhere: "They say, 'you don't know what you're missing, you won't know until you've had a child that that's what you wanted to do'. That's a hypothetical question - if you've got no motivation to have a child in the first place, why would you do it? I wouldn't chose to become a nurse on the chance I might love the career once I get there."

Beth Follini counsels women agonising over whether to reproduce. It's a decision she herself has struggled with. Until her early 30s, she hadn't wanted children and told her partner so. "Then I just started to feel this urge. I spent a year or two battling it out and in the end I decided I wanted a child. But I know that if I hadn't, I would have a very different but equally fulfilled life."

Many of her clients do not want children but feel pressurised. "Often this pressure comes from friends who have had children - 'you don't know what you're missing' or 'you'd make a great mum'. Or joking that you hate children. Sometimes it's from parents hoping for a grandchild."

But it can be the most passing of acquaintances who pass comment.

“Many people assume if you a single and child-free that you haven't met the right man yet. But if you are in a relationship, they ask 'when are you taking the next step?' A woman's fertility status is still very much considered public property.”

Follini is right. For some reason, people feel compelled show childfree folks the error of their ways. But is anyone really swayed by this?

Do U.S. labor markets favor single and childless women?

A recent article in the New York Times made this observation:

The last three men nominated to the Supreme Court have all been married and, among them, have seven children. The last three women — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Harriet Miers (who withdrew) — have all been single and without children.

The author of this piece, David Leonhardt, notes that even though we now have many more women in the workplace, and we are moving toward better female representation in our Supreme Court, women who take time off the career path to raise children or switch to part-time hours still fall short of their male peers in earnings in the U.S. labor marketplace. He cites a study titled “Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors”:

A recent study of business school graduates from the University of Chicago found that in the early years after graduating, men and women had “nearly identical labor incomes and weekly hours worked.” Men and women also paid a similar career price for taking off or working part time. Women, however, were vastly more likely to do so.
As a result, 15 years after graduation, the men were making about 75 percent more than the women. The study — done by Marianne Bertrand, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz — did find one subgroup of women whose careers resembled those of men: women who had no children and never took time off.

As a freelance writer, I have been outside of the corporate world for some time now but had I pursued that corporate career track I might have been one of those women. Are you childless and on an uninterrupted career path? If so, do feel like you have the same labor incomes as your male peers who work a similar number of hours?

Flickr Photo by mirimcfly