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.

We Can’t Agree on Kids So We’re Breaking Up

Disagreement over kids or no kids can be a deal-breaker for couples. It doesn’t always have to be sad. So I love the fun and creative way this couple announced their breakup. Their music video is honest, raw, and playful. Kudos to them for having the courage to follow their dreams after five years of partnership!

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

Brave New Label

I recently got an email from Pamela S. who is about to turn 45 years old. Pamela’s an early articulator who knew at the age of eight that she didn’t want children but she has never truly adopted the terms childless by choice or childfree.  Here’s her story:

My decision to remain childless by choice was never really a decision, it’s just who I am. When my mother was alive she loved to tell friends (both mine and hers) about how, at age eight I went around telling people that I’d never get married and I’d never have children. Well, I did get married, for the first time at age forty-four! Still no children though; no regrets, either.

Throughout my teenage years I had to contend with the wedding and baby dreams of most of my friends and peers. At age 20, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, a painful, incurable condition that often robs many would-be-mothers of their fertility. I wasn’t one of those; I never wanted children but I certainly didn’t want endometriosis either. It also did not rob me of my fertility so I had to use birth control, but endometriosis was an excuse, something I could tell people instead of “I just don’t want them.” Over the years, various women have made offhanded comments about how “it’s lucky that you have that condition and not someone who wants children.” Seriously? I thought: How insensitive.

Many people (most of them women) have also theorized that there must have been some fatal flaw in my upbringing that would cause me to not want children because they believe that there must be something wrong with a woman who doesn’t want to be a mother. Well, let’s see…my parents were happily married for over 35 years, until the day my mother died of cancer. I went to a nice private school, have two College degrees and work as an English teacher. I have no criminal record, own my own home, recycle, pay my taxes, and maintain a good credit score.

There is, however, a bittersweet twist here; I was adopted as an infant out of foster care by my parents, who had tried to conceive a child but weren’t able to. My mother, who passionately wanted children, couldn’t have them. I’d never wanted children but had to rely on birth control not to have them. So here I was, a child who didn’t want children, given up for adoption by a birth mother who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) keep me, delivered into the arms of a woman who truly wanted a child. Maybe the universe really does work in mysterious ways.

Ultimately though it does bother me that the term “childless” seems to infer that having (or wanting) children is the normal, default position, while not having (or not wanting) them is somehow defined as “less” than that. I propose that we come up with a new term to define those who have consciously, happily chosen to remain without children. The term “child free” is marginally better, implying a sense of freedom that hey, let’s be honest here; parents just don’t have. Still, I would like to see a new term enter the lexicon; one that accurately describes the desire to remain child free by choice. Despite my multiple English degrees and many headache inducing hours spent trying to come up with a term, I just can’t. Perhaps I too have been unwittingly socialized to believe that children are the “natural” default. Or maybe there just are no words to describe what I feel in a language created by the same world that deems me and others like me “not normal.” I’m open to suggestions…

Flickr photo by Bashed