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Friday Funny- Why No Kids? Black Thumb.

August 30, 2013 by 1 Comment

Hopefully this explains everything:

photo-35

Also this: (Who kills succulents??? Me.)

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In 2002, I had a cactus for almost a month! Eleven years later I decided to try again with little success.

In 1998, I got a puppy! In 1999, I gave it to my folks.Good news: fourteen years later they are not so eager for grandkids!

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Phew! It’s good to be childfree! Also, it’s probably for the best that I don’t have any living things to look after.

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Filed Under: Childfreedom, Comedy, Why No Kids? Tagged With: , ,

The Happiness Project – “Lighten Up” on the Childfree

April 29, 2013 by 1 Comment
Cover of "The Happiness Project: Or, Why ...

Cover via Amazon

The NYTimes bestseller by Gretchen Rubin is a year-in-the-life exploration of a writer trying to live her life happier. What does that mean? Each month is broken into a theme: energy, love, play, etc. April’s theme is “Lighten Up” with a subtitle: Parenthood. Hmm. Maybe that means you don’t need to “lighten up” if you don’t have kids or you are already pretty enlightened?
Nope. Not according to the author. Rubin cites a study that says “child
care” (check out worsley nursery as they guarantee your child’s well-being ) is only slightly more pleasant than commuting, and one that says
marital satisfaction declines after the first child is born (picking up
again after they leave the nest). Then she disputes these findings, all
the while complaining about her kids and marital satisfaction mostly
relating to fights about her kids.

“Now as a parent myself, I realize how much the happiness of parents depends
on the happiness of their children and grandchildren.”

Really? But then again the kids did give Rubin a reason to write a bestseller.
We at WNK believe that by being childfree, everyday is a project in
happiness.

From the Happiness Project Blog:

Do your children make you happy? Some research says NO! I say YES!

Read the article here

Hey WNKers have you read The Happiness Project?

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Filed Under: Advice & Tips, Childfree by Choice, Happy Without Kids, Marriage, Motherhood, Myths, Why No Kids? Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Childfree Friday Funny – Sh*t My Kids Ruined

April 26, 2013 by 1 Comment

At the end of each week we try to lighten the mood with some childfree humor.

This week let us introduce you to the hilarious  Sh*t My Kids Ruined

After all everyday is a Friday to the childfree!

 

Filed Under: Childfree Humor, Why No Kids? Tagged With: , ,

Childfree Celebrities: Famous Hollywood Edition: Actors and Musicians– Women’s History Month

March 27, 2013 by 18 Comments

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Cropped screenshot of Marilyn Monroe from the ...

Cropped screenshot of Marilyn Monroe from the trailer for the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Time for another fun list of childfree celebrities. We could list many famous women who do not have kids but these women have something to say about being childfree and proud!

This time we celebrate our favorite actresses,

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo (Photo credit: aclbraga)

comediennes, TV personalities and musicians:

Oprah Winfrey – Media guru

Dolly Parton – Actress, singer-songwriter

Betty White – Actress

Janeane Garofalo – Comedian, actress and political activist

Eva Mendes – Actress

Tallulah Bankhead – Actress of the stage and screen

Paulette Goddard – Actress and Broadway performer

Stockard Channing – Actress

Sarah Brightman – English classical soprano, actress, songwriter and dancer

Shirley Manson – Scottish singer and actress, lead singer of rock band Garbage

Claudette Colbert – French-born American-based actress

Lauren Hutton – American model and actress

Mary Chapin Carpenter – American folk and country musician and winner of five Grammy Awards

Mary Pickford – Actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Daphne Zuniga – Actress

Ginger Rogers – Actress, dancer, and singer

Cameron Diaz – Actress, model

Kathy Griffin –  Comedian, actress “It seems like kids don’t have the rights they need. For example a prison sentence for a child molester is so so incredibly low and yet in a way, kids are running the world (in many ways) it revolves around these kids but I don’t feel like we’re really protecting them. I want to really protect kids. I want to give them rights they need, I don’t want to give them the right to annoy me in a restaurant, I want to give them the right not to get molested.”

Caitlin Moran – British TV Personality  “No one has ever claimed for a moment that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer, and crippled by it.”

Christine McVie – Singer Fleetwood Mac

Nanci Griffith – Singer, guitarist and songwriter

Bo Derek – Actress, model and animal welfare activist

Bonnie Raitt – American blues singer-songwriter

Jean Arthur – Actress and major film star during the 1930s-40s

Julie Christie – Actress and Academy Award winner, starred in Doctor Zhivago

Lily Tomlin – Actress, comedian and writer

Jaqueline Bisset – Actress

Lara Flint Boyle – Actress

Mae West – Actress and sex symbol

Jean Harlow – Actress and sex symbol

Helen Mirren – Award-winning actress

Marisa Tomei – Actress

Dusty Springfield – British pop singer

Janet Jackson –  Singer, songwriter and actress

Billie Holiday –  American jazz singer and songwriter

Katharine Hepburn –  Actress and winner of four academy awards

Marilyn Monroe – Icon,  actress, singer and model

Liza Minnelli – Actress and singer

Janis Joplin – Singer and songwriter

Stevie Nicks – Singer, member of  Fleetwood Mac

Portia de Rossi – Actress

Bessie Smith – Blues singer of the 1920s and 30s

Debbie Harry – lead singer of Blondie

Pam Grier – Actress

Gloria Gaynor – Singer

Mary Pickford – Actress and co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Bettie Page – Pin-up girl

Ashley Judd – Actress, women’s rights activist “Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it.”

Zooey Deschanel – On kids from a Marie Claire interview:  “Don’t hold your breath waiting for Deschanel to announce a pregnancy, either. “That’s never been my focus,” she said of having children. “I like kids, and I like being around kids, but it was never an ambition, something, like, I need. I like working. That’s what I like doing. I like to work.”

Ava Gardner – Actress

Greta Garbo – Actress

Ellen Degeneres – Television host, actress and stand-up comedian

Margaret Cho – Actress, comedian, women’s rights activist and LGBT rights activist

Maria Callas – Soprano opera singer

Leah Dunham – Writer, director, actress

Kim Cattrall – Actress

Jo Frost – British nanny and television personality, better known as Supernanny

Julia Child – American chef, tv personality and author.

Rachel Ray – TV Chef

Quite an accomplished list! Did we miss anyone WNKies?

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Filed Under: Celebrities Without Children, Why No Kids? Tagged With: , , ,

Childfree Celebrities: Famous Authors Edition – Women’s History Month

March 18, 2013 by 3 Comments
Cover of "The Second Sex"

Cover of The Second Sex

As a children’s author I once wrote a post about Dr. Suess and other famous kiddie-lit authors that didn’t have kids.

 

You can read it here.

 

Notable female childfree children’s authors include: Margaret Wise Brown, famous for “Good Night Moon,”  Beatrix Potter of “Peter’s Rabbit” fame, and Louisa May Alcott, author of “Little Women.”

 

Here is a list of other famous female writers, authors and journalists who made their mark on the world with their words and not their offspring. It’s quite an impressive club:

 

Elizabeth Gilbert – Author, “Eat Pray Love”

 

Marie Colvin – Award-winning American journalist for the British newspaper The Sunday Times

 

Dorothy Parker – American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

 

Anaïs Nin – Author

 

Melanie Notkin – Founder of SavvyAuntie.com, Author of “Savvy Auntie: The Ultimate Guide for Cool Aunts, Great-Aunts, Godmothers and All Women Who Love Kids” (Morrow/HarperCollins 2011)

 

Rachel Carson – Conservationist and author of  “Silent Spring”

 

The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anita Brookner – British novelist and art historian

 

Amy Tan –  American writer best known for her book “The Joy Luck Club”

 

Harper Lee – Author, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

 

Marian Keyes – Author

 

Maeve Binchy – Novelist

 

Virginia Woolf – Author

 

Hilary Mantel – Novelist

 

Simone de Beauvoir – Author, “The Second Sex”

 

Charlotte Bronte – Author, “Jane Eyre”

 

Edith Wharton – Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist

 

Jane Austen – Author, “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility”

 

Isek Dineson – (pen name Karen Blixen) author of “Out of Africa”

 

Gloria Steinem – American feminist, journalist and political activist

 

WNKies do you know any other women that should be added to this list?

 

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Filed Under: Celebrities Without Children, Nulliparity, Why No Kids? Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Childfree Celebrities: Artist Edition – Women’s History Month

March 15, 2013 by 4 Comments
Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait, 1940. See discussi...

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait, 1940. See discussion of her works below. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

So I’m an artist and a woman and I’m a little annoyed that there isn’t an Artist’s History Month. I will celebrate Women’s History Month and bemoan the fact that it’s during crappy mud season, but hey, women are used to getting the shaft. Let’s make a pledge to have Women’s History Month last all year. Let’s celebrate our freedom to make choices and use our voices. We are still questioned about our childfree status and told we can’t “have it all” (which to many means career and children and a happy life). My career, happy marriage, and childfree lifestyle is everything,

 

and my art is my legacy. Here is a list of fabulous female artists (fine arts) who chose to have it all – just not kids! This month I will be including women from other fields who are my childfree (s)heroes!

 

Georgia O’Keeffe – Painter

 

Frida Kahlo – Painter

 

Mary Cassatt – Painter

 

Lee Krasner – Painter

 

Zaha Hadid – Architect “I have not sacrificed my private life. It was not an issue for me. It wasn’t a choice. I don’t think one has to get married. Nor are you obliged to have children if you don’t want them. I didn’t think Oh dear, I can’t have kids – it was never like that, it was not a sacrifice. If I had been with the right person and I’d had kids I’m sure I could have managed”

 

Tracey Emin – Artist. Emin once said that being childless is difficult because “you’re treated like a witch.”

 

Cath Kidson – Designer

 

Coco Chanel – Designer

 

Edith Head – Costume Designer

 

Jessie Wilcox Smith – Illustrator

 

Kate Greenaway – Illustrator

 

Beatrice Wood – Artist

 

Hey WNKers: Can you think of others?

 

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Childfree Travel: No Kids Allowed

February 22, 2013 by 4 Comments

While we at WNK are pleased to see that the childfree travel discussion is happening more publicly and frequently, we are frustrated with how the questions are framed in many of these types of interviews that make the quest for quiet and serenity seem discriminatory. The participants in the following video actually question the legality of childfree travel destinations. While virtually every hotel is child or family friendly and there are plenty of kidcentric places: Disney World, Chuck E Cheese, etc., we wonder why it is such a problem to have a few adult only hotels, floors, pools or even sections of hotels?

Childfree Travel Questions

The following childfree travel questions come from the article at NECN.com:

Is it really right to ban children from hotels and other establishments?

o While it’s not precisely legal in the US (it is in other parts of the world-so during international travel in hotels and on certain sections of airlines, do check), some establishments advertise themselves as “adults only” (but not in that sense). Restaurants led the way on this, but now many hotels are joining in.

What is driving this change?

o The biggest source is changing demographics. We have many more DINKs than ever before (Double Income No Kids) who have the resources to want to travel in the lap of luxury.

o Additionally almost 20 percent of women today won’t have kids-a number that has basically doubled since the 1970s. This means that some may be less tolerant of children than before, and that this new/growing market segment wants tailored services.

Is not allowing children in hotels and other establishments really the best strategy?

o Probably not. How else will children ever learn to behave properly unless they are exposed to these situations?”

As you take your February break we’d like to hear your thoughts on childfree sections of planes, hotels and restaurants. Please share your favorite escapes for childfree serenity!

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Filed Under: Childfree by Choice, Happy Without Kids, Why No Kids? Tagged With: , , , , ,

Another One Bites the Dust: Kim Kardashian No Longer Childfree

January 29, 2013 by 2 Comments
Kim Kardashian - BlackBerry Porsche P'9981

Kim Kardashian – BlackBerry Porsche P’9981 (Photo credit: Hollywood_PR)

Just over a year ago Kim Kardashian accepted her role as doting auntie. She was content not having her own kids. We celebrated here at WNK.

“At first I was like, I want six kids. Then I went down to four, then I was down to three, and now I’m like, maybe I won’t have any,” she says glumly. “Maybe I’ll just be a good aunt…at this moment in my life, I feel like maybe I’m not supposed to have kids and all that,” Kim says in a December 6 Glamour Magazine article (source Us Magazine)

All that changed when the reality star started dating Kanye West. Bump watch began immediately. Kanye and Kim and all 8,000 Kardashians recently konfirmed that KK and KW had indeed made a baby. So now we get to hear about it for the next six months. Kongrats!

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Am I trying too hard to be the cool Auntie? (Giving gifts to the kids in your Childfree life)

January 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Production poster for the original Broadwa...

Original Annie on Broadway (Credit: Wikipedia)

UPDATE: For some reason this post got lost in the holiday mail!

I’m too excited to sleep! On Saturday I’m taking my goddaughter to see Annie on Broadway for her 9th birthday. It’s going to be the best birthday ever – just like it was my best Christmas gift ever when I was nine and my parents took me (31 years ago)! I think. I hope.

Am I trying too hard because I don’t have kids of my own? Nope. I just want to be the cool Auntie, like my idol the Savvy Auntie. I want to be the best godmama in the world every time I see my godchildren (four and counting). There is no way that I could sustain this level of pressure 24/7.

Am I forcing my own wants on this little girl that I love to bits? Perhaps. Last year I bought a rare Barbie – because I loved/loooove Barbie! The year before it was art supplies and jewelry and a fancy dress, all things I craved as a kid and still do. No complaints from the recipient so far.

Am I trying to buy love with gifts? Maybe. I had a cool aunt who bought the best gifts and she was my favorite until she had little girl of her own. (Me? Jealous?)

Am I trying to influence this poor child into becoming more like me? Ha! Isn’t that what “real” parents do? (I still want to be my mom when/if I grow up.)

Still, I can’ t help thinking: what if it’s the worst birthday ever and she winds up in therapy because she really wanted to see Mary Poppins on Broadway instead but, no, I MADE her see Annie? Gah! To be continued…

Hey WNKsters what did you get your nieces, nephews, godchildren this year for Christmas/Hanukkah?

UPDATE PART 2: No one cried or died! Hooray! Success. Now how do I top it?

Filed Under: Family, Hot Topics, Why No Kids? Tagged With: , , , , ,

My Bestie is Having a Baby: Green Baby Gifts

August 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For the millionth time, just because I don’t want kids doesn’t mean I don’t like kids or don’t support my friends having kids. I have three amazing and perfect godchildren and I’m a children’s author – I need kids!

Still, when my besties started having babies I can’t say I wasn’t worried about things changing – I knew that they would. I’m genuinely excited and nervous about our new roles and how I will fit in. I want to be a loving “auntie” and hope that my childlessness isn’t a cause for concern. If people want gift baskets from Broadway Basketeers, they can check it out here!

While I’m trying to be a good prenatal buddy, I’m just not sure if I doing it right. Do I ask too many questions about pregnancy? Not enough? Am I offering too much help? Not enough? Is it bad if I still want to talk about reality shows instead of strollers? I’m afraid that I can’t still be myself and admit that I’m little jealous of junior.

But my biggest fear of all is: What if the babies don’t like me?

My solution? You can also choose any color of your choice! Buy the best baby gift like this black stroller here! At WNK we promote an environmental agenda and prefer when people decide to have children they consider their carbon footprint by having green babies. In the past I’ve mentioned buying cloth diapers for my favorite green mama. And I just bought a personal website for a Christening gift. Unusual? Yes. Green? Absolutely!

For other green ideas check out environmentally friendly baby products from celebrity eco-parents like Jessica Alba and Soleil Moon Frye: Green gifts.

Of course nothing says you care like a signed book by your favorite kid’s author.

Hey WNKs what is your favorite baby gift?

Filed Under: Advice & Tips, Celebrities Without Children, Childfree Shopping, Comedy, Environmental, Hot Topics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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