Letters to the Editor
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What's the problem, Carol?
I am childfree. To me that isn't an "identity"-- its just a descriptive term like "brunette" or "slender". I say "childfree", though, because the alternative word "childless" implies that I am missing out on something, and in our child-obsessed culture, I do feel it is worth making the point that not having children is exactly what I want and planned for.
That said, I have no trouble understanding why other women might want to have children. I have nothing against children and I love my nieces and nephews. (This is not defensiveness, Carol-- some childfree people really and truly dislike children; I'm not one of them). I don't however feel any need to impose my choices upon others.
This is why I am totally bewildered by people like Carol get so worked up into a lather over my not wanting what they want. What's the problem? Why is it so hard to accept that not everyone has the same desires or shares the same path? Why is it so hard to understand that life is filled with experiences that expand one's soul and that having children is *only* one of those experiences (and I would add, not necessarily the best one)? In other words: why do you have to perceive my decisions as an attack or challenge on yours?
To me the whole thing feels like prtesting too much. Parents who gets hinky over the idea of someone calling herself "childfree" strike me as people who deep down probably aren't very happy with the choices they have made and don't like being reminded of the road not taken. Get over it already.
Oh, by the way, there are PLENTY of men out there who identify as "childfree" and they feel just as strongly about it as the women. If you only see the women, that is your selective vision.
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From a child-free gay couple
Lloyd wonders why we aren't hearing more about or from men who are choosing to be child-free ("childless" conveys a sense of disability - like "headless"), so let me offer my perspective as a gay (white, upper middle class with a doctoral degree) male in an 8 year committed relationship. Let me reveal all my cards upfront: I don't like children. I have no use for them. And no, I don't think that "your" children are cute/smart/angelic/amazing/special/funny/likeable. But ironically, I don't believe that children should be seen and not heard. In fact, I don't hate children at all. I hate that our fucked up culture has fucked up childhood and turned most children into overcommitted stressed-out borderline narcissistic neurotics, making them into mini-me versions of the overcommitted stressed-out borderline narcissistic neurotic adults who raise them.
That being said, my partner and I have decided to let biology take its natural course - to my knowledge as a physician, no biological male has ever become pregnant by another biological male. And you would think that in NYC, two gay men who remain child-free, would not raise many eyebrows. We are gay after all - we are supposed to be selfish and hedonistic and interested only in the newest skin care line from Aveda. But you would be wrong. In the mainstreaming of gay relationships, there has been absorption of many of the assumptions which pervade heterosexual culture, including the assumption that having children is the natural order of things. Of course, gay men have to resort to adoption or surrogacy in order to "create" children. In spite of these added steps, gay men who have the education, resources and access are increasingly becoming expected to open their relationship, but not to some hot threesome after a night out at the bars, but to a precious little "bundle of joy."
For those of us who refuse to be governed by heterosexist assumptions such as the "naturalness" of children, we are subjected to the same judgmental furrowed brows and questions like "Why not?" and - most annoyingly - smug and self-satisfied predictions like, "Oh, you will." Mind you, we are choosing not to have children not because we want to be able to party until 4am every Fri/Sat/Sun. Don't get me wrong, nothing comes between me and my Tanqueray dirty martini. But in addition to being able to afford premium booze, we are also able to afford trips to Guatemala, Ecuador, and Cuba. We are able to afford graduate degrees and educational loans. We are able to afford organic meat and professional cookware. We are able to afford jobs that pay less than what we are worth, but for which we have true passion. We are able to afford the time for volunteering for our causes.
Going hand-in-hand with the assumption of the naturalness of having children is the assumption that those who don't have children are selfish and only interested in fulfilling their own materialistic desires (for fancy trips, food, clothing, etc). But before those with children get too comfortable on their high-and-mighty podium, we don't have to look too hard to see the orgy of mindless consumerism which has defined parenthood and childhood. (It is the holiday season, after all.) Products as diverse as juice boxes to cars to electronics to, yes, even cruises are marketed to that demographic known as the holy heterosexual nuclear family.
So, yes, those of us who choose to be child-free will be defined by our seeming "lack." But this is not of our own doing. What "choice" do we have when it is assumed that the "only natural choice" is to have children?
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this stuff is endless
Jeff, good for you.
I had one child, for the wrong reasons. I never liked kids, nor had any use for them - and having one didn't change that.
As you might imagine, having a child and saying you don't like children REALLY raises eyebrows (and begets horrified stares) even though the child is now 32 and hugely happy and successful. Becuase I have one, I'm supposed to magically become the cuddly, nurturing worldmum who loves ALL kids, and coos incessantly over spud-like burbling infants at the grocery store.
I don't like the terms childfree or childless, simply because they suggests that 'child' is the central element from which all else flows. One has children, or one is, well, an individual not needing description.
Jeff has my complete sympathies - next even the dead will be expected to procreate.