From Mumbai: It’s a Blessing Not To Have Children

I love hearing from people around the world who are living childfree by choice. Recently Leena contacted me from India with her story:

I am Leena aged 34 from India and I would like to share my story about being Childfree by Choice.
In India the only reason you get married is to breed. The primary reason is to have an heir for your family name and going against such an orthodox society means (you) get shunned and looked down upon. But I and husband Alex (aged 40) now have been married for 12 loving years and we are so glad that we took the decision against all odds to remain Childfree.
In spite of the fact that we are in the so-called "developed megacity Mumbai" you still get the "stare" and "comments" from most of the society around. At my work place, mommies share their agonies and I am the one having the last laugh, though I can not share it openly with anyone.
But I just want everyone to know the life I and my husband lead is a blessing. The intimacy we have after 12 years of marriage is not comparable to any couple married for that long. This is just a glimpse of my life but it comes right from my heart. I am blessed to not have children. My life is more complete, I have more to give to the world today as I don't have to keep anything for anyone. I have more love, more compassion, more of Life!

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?

It’s a Girl Thing!

Periods suck! Particularly if you are like me and my friend Karen who have a tendency to have monster flows—the kind that can’t be absorbed by any measly super-sized tampon or pad.

Sorry guys. You can skip this post if you like. Naturally, girls talk about these things and recently my friend told me about an endometrial ablation treatment she was considering, marketed under the trade name NovaSure. Endometrial ablation is the medical term for a procedure intended to destroy, through minimally invasive means, the lining of the uterus, or edometrium. In the case of NovaSure, this is achieved in less than five minutes by use of wand inserted in the vagina which delivers doses of electromagnetic energy. The resulting scaring of tissue means lighter periods or no periods at all for many of the women who undergo this procedure. Karen didn’t know what to expect but she hoped this treatment would at least remedy the ridiculous flows that had left her anemic and listless.

Karen gave me a report about two months after the procedure. She reported that her recovery had been complicated by an infection, and the fact that the procedure was scheduled just before her period was due meant she had to have a D & C to clear out as much of the blood as possible before her doctor went in. Karen experienced a six week recovery phase during which her body was still expelling blood and tissue but after that she noticed a marked improvement—a much lighter flow and a shorter duration of her period. She was very pleased she had undergone this procedure. Still, I had some more questions for her:

What other options did you have besides the NovaSure procedure to alleviate your heavy bleeding?
My other option was to get on the pill, or to have an IUD that releases progesterone into my system. Either way, the options were going to alter hormones. Given that I’m a happily medicine-free person, I didn’t want to go on any pills and the idea of having a foreign body in me made me really squeamish. I would rather be rid of the problem area, than put something else in it. I’ve already had my tonsils and my appendix removed— what’s one more unused body part?

Was your doctor proposing a full or partial hysterectomy as an option?
Neither of these was proposed, partially because of my age, and the fact that they tend to upset women hormonally. And nothing in my condition was that dire.

How did your doctor qualify you for this procedure?
I found my doctor on the NovaSure site. She was listed as a preferred physician who has done a lot of these. So she knew what to ask. She took a complete history, with good detail about what my most recent monthly periods have been like. She did a Pap smear, blood work and a urine analysis, to make sure that thyroid, diseases or other items weren’t causing the problems. They also did an internal ultrasound to verify that it wasn’t cysts or things like that. She was very thorough. As far as qualifying for it, and having it covered by insurance, the message was, if it’s making you miserable and your quality of life is suffering because of it, it’s a good enough reason to do it.

Did she try to make sure you did not plan on having children?
She did ask me this, to be sure, because the procedure does significantly, if not remove, the chances of becoming pregnant. Give my age, 39, and my desire not to have children, we eliminated this as an obstacle.

Does this procedure interfere with egg production?
It does not. I still drop an egg. But because the lining is gone from the uterus and can no longer hold blood, there’s nothing for the egg to attach to.

Does it affect hormones?
No. Because I still cycle, drop the egg, have my ovaries, etc. I liken it to a telephone system. If an office building has 15 phones, and you unplug one, the other phones still get calls going in and out. The phone jack is still in the wall, but there’s no phone to ring anymore. My uterus just doesn’t get the call to store up blood anymore, and there’s no lining there to hold it.

Does it affect mood?
Yes, for me it has to do with lack of stress and discomfort. I’m no longer fatigued, bloated, nervous about accidents, or scared to wear white pants. And so it’s one (gigantic) less thing to worry about. It’s made me feel sexier, more desirable, and more confident – that plays well in the bedroom. And now, I don’t have to take 5-10 days off from the gym, so my energy level is up, and my weight is down.

Two important things to note. This procedure is not recommended for those women who plan to get pregnant after the procedure as pregnancy poses risks for both mother and child, and it is possible to become pregnant after this procedure which is why doctors recommend birth control for those women who are still in their childbearing years.

I’m not a medical expert by any stretch but I was very pleased to learn we girls had another tool in our arsenal to combat the Monster Period. If you want to find out more go to the FAQ section of the NovaSure website or ask your OB/GYN about NovaSure.

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

Two is Enough is Designed for Singles Too

Don’t let the title Two Is Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice fool you. I have designed the content of this book for singles too.

I recently received an email from a single woman who works in the social services field. She wrote: "I wanted to thank you for writing Two is Enough...Although I am single, the research was relevant to me as well. I'm glad your book corrected the myths that childless couples are selfish or do not love children. I do not want children for medical and environmental reasons, but I enjoy working with children. It is important to our society that women have more information like the research you provided."

I pleased to receive this email. I interviewed a number of single women and men in the course of my research for Two Is Enough. I found that the primary motives and rationales for remaining childfree are the same for singles and for couples. In Two is Enough I address the fact that singles have the additional challenge of finding suitable partners in a dating pool filled with candidates who imagine a life with kids even though they haven’t really given it much thought. How does that turn out? Read the profiles in Chapter Five of Two is Enough to find out.

Childfree Women: Could it be the Hormones? Asks Madison Mag

I granted an interview to Madison Magazine in Australia last year and they published a very good article in March posing the question: Why does society vilify women who choose not to have children?

There were many great quotes from women who had been harangued and criticized because of their choice to remain childfree and some interesting opinions from a sexologist who had made the suggestion that lack of desire for children might be inherited and have something to do with hormone levels.

This is what the sexologist Dr. Frances Quirk suggested may be happening, as summarized by Alexandra Carlton, the author of this article:

We’re equipped with a physiological arsenal of drives, urges, hormones and synapses that will us, continuously, to make babies. But just like someone can be born without perfect hearing or eyesight, or be good or poor at athletics or maths or drawing, some people are born with lower levels of certain hormones. In women, it’s thought low oestrogen levels or high testosterone levels could result in a diminished to entirely eradicated desire to have babies.

Of course, it’s not all about hormones. Dr Quirk suggests that for nature to influence our behavior, there needs to be a fair amount of nurture at work, too. A person’s upbringing, experiences or current situation will generally play a part in controlling their desire to have, or not have, children. Two of the women Madison spoke to for this story – Annabel and 31-year-old children’s model agent Nicola Allan – admitted that their own mothers had confessed that kids hadn’t exactly been in their grand plans. “My mum always said, ‘If I had my time again, I don’t think I’d have kids,’” relates Allan, who says she personally adores being around children – something she does every day through her work – but has no urge to have any of her own. “I don’t take what she said as an insult. She loves us to death and she’s a great mum. But I can see where she’s coming from. I’ve known from the age of 14 that I didn’t want kids either.”

Dr Quirk says Allan’s attitude may be an indicator that she’s inherited a low oestrogen level from her mother; as a result, each of them could harbour a low or non-existent desire to bear children. Or, “the daughter may be having a psychological reaction against being told that her mother didn’t want her” and doesn’t want to put another child through that feeling of rejection.

But most people who identify as childless by choice will refute the notion that there’s some subconscious, must-get-to-the-bottom-of-this, someone-call-Dr-Phil abnormality behind their decision not to reproduce. “People always think there’s some deep-seated reason for why I don’t want children,” says Jenifur Wale, a 34-year-old model and art teacher from Melbourne. “But it’s really not that complicated. I have a wonderful family. I love kids, especially my nieces. I have had meaningful relationships with men. It’s just that having a child has never been for me. I feel really fulfilled; I don’t need a sense of purpose and I’m not looking for something to fill my time. And I feel loved, so I don’t need a child to give that to me.”

So is it nature, nurture, hormones? What do you think?

The Truth About Parenting

Chris, one of my Facebook friends posted a link on the Two is Enough wall to a New York Magazine article titled All Joy and No Fun. It’s an extremely well-written overview of recent studies showing how and why the fun has gone out of parenthood. Studies reveal that parenthood is getting harder with each successive generation. Even with their tight schedules parents actually spend more time with their kids then their parent’s spent with them, on average, but they get less out of it.

But outside of academia people just don’t want to believe these findings:

The idea that parents are less happy than nonparents has become so commonplace in academia that it was big news last year when the Journal of Happiness Studies published a Scottish paper declaring the opposite was true. “Contrary to much of the literature,” said the introduction, “our results are consistent with an effect of children on life satisfaction that is positive, large and increasing in the number of children.” Alas, the euphoria was short-lived. A few months later, the poor author discovered a coding error in his data, and the publication ran an erratum. “After correcting the problem,”it read,“the main results of the paper no longer hold. The effect of children on the life satisfaction of married individuals is small, often negative, and never statistically significant.”

Yet one can see why people were rooting for that paper. The results of almost all the others violate a parent’s deepest intuition. Daniel Gilbert, the Harvard psychologist and host of This Emotional Life on PBS, wrote fewer than three pages about compromised parental well-being in Stumbling on Happiness. But whenever he goes on the lecture circuit, skeptical questions about those pages come up more frequently than anything else. “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t argue with me about this,” he says. “Even people who believe the data say they feel sorry for those for whom it’s true.”

Why is this important to the childless by choice? Well, the next time someone says, “You’ll regret not having kid.” or, “Parenthood is such a joy, you’re missing out” you can send them a link to this article.

Flickr photo by The Enabler