Letters to the Editor
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Re: Motherhood ain't for sissies
It's one thing for individual women to decide that motherhood isn't for them. It's a perfectly rational life choice for an individual.
But when those women characterize ALL mothers as dumpy, idiotic breeders and ALL children as repulsive brats, that's when the logic gets a little weird, in my view.
Every single adult on this earth, even the most adamantly childfree, had a mother and was, at one time, a child. Are those who criticize all mothers and all children also damning 1) their own mothers as idiotic breeders, and 2) themselves, in earlier phases of their lives, as repulsive brats? Are they saying their own mothers should have been childfree, and their own childhood selves should not have existed?
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People without children, you've already won the war
It's official--people no longer think you need to have kids in order to have a happy marriage. I suspect this illustrates a wider notion that kids aren't the ticket to a happy life. You've won the war, and according to you all, you have such absolutely fabulous jet-setting lives, that I wonder why the continuing resentment of us fat, ugly, and miserable parents?
How about dropping the hyperbole for a while and facing the realities that most parents, like everyone else, are multifaceted people whose parenthood really doesn't define their entire lives? It's true that YOUNG children are extremely needy--and yes, it often takes a while to socialize them. (Not all kids are brats, by the way--children are human beings, just like anyone else, so they have about the same distribution of awful, dull, and delightful as the adult population.) However, the period of neediness is incredibly short, and most parents, if they choose, and if people give them the option, are more than capable of weathering this period and living reasonable public adult lives. Parenthood may be forever, but the time in the trenches is not.
I expect that many of you who don't have children have people in your life that you care about and nurture, just like everyone else. I give the same respect to the person taking care of his or her aged aunt or infirm partner as I do the person caring for his or her toddler. Why can't we get together on this common ground--i.e., people have lives and loved ones and our jobs and such should honor all of these obligations?
I think also that the notion that people who don't have children have SO much more money and fun than everyone else is quite silly and limited to a tiny segment of the mass-affluent population. Many people eschew children because they can't afford to raise them, and poverty is actually a risk factor for female infertility here in the US.
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"once you have a child, you become a non-person"
I disagree. But hey, what do I know? I'm a non-person. It's not like I've actually been through it or anything.
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kaiserinamanda is right about one thing.
She is certainly right that there are very good reasons why some people should not reproduce. She is the textbook example. If she is remotely sincere in what she writes, she would turn out to be a "Mommy Dearest" of epic proportion.
Lest anybody get the wrong idea, let me state for the record that I firmly believe in discipline and good behavior for children, and make it quite clear to my own that it is required. After having removed my child from situations in which he stepped grossly out of line, he knows I mean business. The difference between me and kaiserinamanda is that I don't mistake the solution to poor discipline to be refraining from reproducing entirely.
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Who's stereotyping?
OK, I'm officially over it. I'm childfree, childless by choice, however you what to phrase it. But I'm not a breeder-basher. I'll vent and complain about the antics of some parents and their offspring, but I don't make generalizations about ALL parents.
But the parents posting here imply that all childfree people call parents ugly names. You mommies and daddies (especially you, canukistan bob!) also think we're all rich. Guess what? We're not. I'm poor. That's right folks, CF and poor. Get it into your thick heads that rude stereotyping is not exclusively on the non-parenting side of the fence. You're doing it, too. Probably more than we are.
I'm poor for a couple of reasons. A serious injury in early adulthood maimed not only me, but my career plans. I've bounced back to some extent, but I am still poor because I am helping someone else pay for the overwhelming costs of supporting his child. The result is that I'm poor enough that if I were to have a child of my own, every working person in America would be helping to finance that child's upbringing.
Yea, I'm referring to welfare. Go ahead, call me a selfish jet setter with a chichi dining room. I live in an apartment so small that I don't even HAVE a dining room. I'm just trying to survive. Another mouth to feed simply doesn't fit into my grand financial plan of being able to afford groceries every week.
I'm barely skating by so that a child who is already on this planet doesn't go without. Why on earth would I make one of my own?
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I finally made it down to Canuckistan Bob's letter
And I recommend it to everyone. Here is a man who truly, truly hates being a father. This is what that state of mind sounds like. It pours from every sentence. Did you take what he said literally? It was a slightly more educated rant on the order of "I work my fingers to the bone! I work nights and weekends and holidays, and all my TAXES go to the WELFARE QUEEN! And she rides around all day in a PINK CADILLAC! Heh, but you know, I'm going to heaven someday. Yeah, that's right. That gives me real hope, man. You just watch! My reward is coming. I'll be up there in heaven, forever, man! And that welfare bitch, she's gonna fry."
I know what a lot of other people have done with that hatred, and it runs the gamut from emotionally abusing their children, cheating on their wives, family violence, misconduct on the job, financial irresponsibility, and petty crime, to withdrawing from friends and family, and drowning their sorrows in drink. I wonder what Bob will end up doing.