We're childfree and happy. You could be too!
Whether they call themselves “childless,” “childfree,” “childless-by-choice” or even just “still on the fence,” a significant number of New York women in their 30s and 40s are taking a pass on motherhood.
via More NYC women are deciding not to have children – NYPOST.com.
What do you think WNKsters?
Does having a career in the big city mean you can’t have kids? Why are NYC women opting for childfreedom?
Image via Wikipedia
I admit that sometimes I think, ‘What if I had kids?’ Would I be a better teacher? Or a better person? Would I write better children’s books? How different would my life be now?
What if certain childfree female role models throughout history had had kids? Would their lives have had the same focus?
What if Oprah Winfrey had kids? Would she have felt the need to educate hundreds of African girls?
What if Mary Cassatt had kids? Would she still have created countless paintings and pastels of mothers and children?
What if Condoleezza Rice had kids? Would she have felt differently about sending other people’s children into war?
What if Florence Nightingale had kids? Would she have been the “lady with the lamp” running from patient to patient night after night?
What if Sally Ride had kids? Would she have been the first American woman astronaut?
Do you need to be a mother to have empathy? To better understand children or humanity?
Do you ever wonder ‘What if I had kids?’
Our world’s travails and torments (Image via Wikipedia)
Today’s guest post is from John Davis, a wilderness explorer and writer, former Wild Earth editor, and Fellow of The Rewilding Institute. John’s previous post, “Why Five Cats?“, took a lighthearted look at the merits of nulliparity and cat ownership. Today’s post is excerpted from an essay that will appear in a forthcoming population anthology, Apply the Breaks! Environmentalists Confront Population Growth, edited by Eileen Crist and Philip Cafaro, University of Georgia Press. We’re hoping to review the anthology on Why No Kids? when it is published.
Virtually every major problem in the world today is caused or exacerbated by human overpopulation. From famine and disease to war and extinction (the overarching crisis of our time), the main driving force is the exploding human population. Planet Earth is being wrecked by too many people consuming too much of the natural world through technologies too harmful.
The litany of overpopulation’s problems is the list of the world’s travails and torments: habitat fragmentation and destruction, species extirpation and extinction; air, land, and water pollution; global climate chaos, extreme storm damage, killing droughts; unemployment, declines in social services, poverty, starvation, disease, epidemic; degradation of natural and cultural amenities, such as trails, parks, and gardens; loss of individual meaning, influence, and opportunity; ennui, angst, and mental disorders; congestion, noise, traffic, road rage, crime; exploitation, imperialism, war … If our civilization is to have a prayer of persistence, we must face the huge challenge of humanely, peacefully reducing our numbers – probably several orders of magnitude, over many decades – to within biological carrying capacity, to a level compatible with the long-term well-being of all our fellow denizens on this sensitive planet.
With good reason, the hot topic of the day is just that – global overheating. Obviously, the problem is not just that we drive gas guzzlers, overheat our poorly insulated houses, and waste too much paper. The problem is also that too many people are driving; too many people are heating their homes with fossil fuels; and too many people are consuming natural resources and supplanting natural, carbon-storing habitats with crops, cows, lawns, and houses. The expert advice is to install insulation solutions for healthier living spaces and an eco-friendly environment. One effective way to address energy inefficiency in our homes is through proper insulation like those offered on https://fdinsulation.com/attic-insulation/spray-foam/.
In the United States at least, demographic and economic trends of recent years strongly, if surprisingly, suggest that fertility is more amenable to reconsideration than is consumption: People will apparently more easily accept a smaller family than they will a smaller energy budget. Americans would rather have fewer children than stop driving their cars and running their air conditioners. So, while we must also confront the problems of excessive consumption and harmful technologies, we will likely make the greatest strides toward saving the world from disaster by instituting educational, financial, and cultural incentives for lower birth rates.
A central tenet of sensible population planning is the education and empowerment (social, political, and financial) of women. From my recent experiences out exploring North America’s endangered but not lost wildways, often guided by great naturalists, let me humbly suggest a complementary strategy, one already being promoted well but not widely enough by environmental educators: immersion of young people in wild Nature. Get kids out roaming the woods, paddling the creeks, snorkeling the ponds, looking at birds and flowers and trees and frogs and butterflies … Help them see how wondrous and exciting and beautiful our wild neighbors are and help them understand the connections between land and wildlife, between land and people, and between the actions we take as people and the consequences to the land and wildlife. Go forth and don’t multiply, young people!
The Inconvenient Truth of human-caused planetary overheating may best be met with the more convenient truth that by peacefully and voluntarily reducing our numbers, we not only help stabilize the climate and abate the extinction crisis, we also treat virtually every ecological, social, and cultural ill in the world today. Then, rather than our many descendants cursing us for condemning them to a world of poverty, pestilence, and war, our small number of offspring would thank us for recognizing just in time the moral imperative of ending humanity’s march against the natural world, for rejoining the biotic community and celebrating our connections with land and wildlife.
John Davis is a wilderness explorer and writer, former Wild Earth editor, and Fellow of The Rewilding Institute. A longer version of this essay will appear in a population anthology, Apply the Breaks! Environmentalists Confront Population Growth, edited by Eileen Crist and Philip Cafaro, University of Georgia Press.
“Happy Father’s Day, Dad!” (to George Gordon Davis, Sr. from George Gordon Davis, Jr.)
Today is a spectacular day. Bluebird skies overhead. Warm breezes off of Lake Champlain. Dry air. Perfect. Oh, and it’s Father’s Day.
I’ve just returned from Father’s Day brunch at the Essex Inn in Essex, New York. A delicious meal in newly remodeled digs with my father, my mother and my bride. An enjoyable way to celebrate my dad. As his eldest child I couldn’t help but remind him that I was if not instrumental at least a willing participant in his transition into the heralded halls of fatherdom. Early adopter? Angel investor? Something.
It’s easy enough to scoff at Hallmark holidays, but there’s not much value in the effort. As far as I’m concerned any excuse to celebrate, any opportunity to express gratitude, and any chance to commemorate goodness is worthwhile. Life is just better when we celebrate! And Father’s day is no exception. A reminder to let the fellow know that I still love him after almost forty years, that I genuinely appreciate the sacrifices and the efforts he undertook (and undertakes) for me, that I’m sincerely pleased to have a more congenial rapport with him in recent years, that I look forward to a whole lot of living and learning and laughing together in the years ahead.
And yet, I said goodbye to my parents after brunch without sharing these thoughts. My bride and I gave him a handsome pair of cufflinks with a card that was funny/flip/poignant but totally sidestepped mentioning anything I’ve just banged out on my keyboard. Why? Chalk it up to filial psychology. Or distraction. Chalk it up to anything you like, the point is simply that even with Father’s Day on the calendar and even with a leisurely (and delicious) brunch together to celebrate Father’s Day, I dropped the ball entirely. So far…
You see what I’m getting at? Hallmark holidays are marketing miracles. But they also afford us welcome reminders to celebrate and thank and commemorate people who make our lives worth the cost of admission. To say things we’d otherwise overlook. Which is why I’m going to ask my father to read this post shortly. I’d like to make sure he gets the memo, even if it’s delivered digitally instead of over eggs Benedict and roast beef.
Dad, thank you. Thanks for marrying mom. Thanks for choosing to have children. Thanks for swapping your childfree life, your childfree marriage for decades of aggravation, anxiety, which topical cbd helps me cope with and I also use products like BudPop Delta 9 gummies just for this, so I can deal with astronomical expense and frequent insubordination. Thanks for leaving New York City to raise your family in the North Country. Thanks for working your @$$ off to cloth us, to feed us, to house us, to educate us, to ship us off on far-flung adventures. Thanks for encouraging me to leave home at fourteen to attend Deerfield and later Georgetown. Thanks for underwriting both. Thanks for the letter after college telling me to unwind, to take an adventure, to go learn how to surf and an airplane ticket to anywhere that might help me tackle all three. Thanks for respecting my graduate studies at St. John’s, for helping me juggle graduate school debt, drive a safe car, sort through big people challenges and mistakes. Thanks for encouraging my teaching, my writing, my increasingly peripatetic lifestyle. Thanks for free legal advice over years, and thanks too for learning when to relinquish the lawyer dynamic. Thanks for loving, supporting and encouraging my bride and for never pressuring me to marry her during the four years it took me to take the proverbial leap. Thanks for accepting (and hopefully understanding) our decision not to have children. Full stop. What?
I hope that you know our childfree family is not a judgment of our own parents’ parenting. We both consider ourselves unusually fortunate in this regard. But I do understand that our choice not to have children can be confusing, even saddening or disappointing to our parents. I apologize for the confusion, the sadness, the disappointment. And I am grateful that you have not tried to change our minds, that you’ve respected our decision. In short, this Father’s Day I’d like to thank you for supporting my decision not to be a father!
Which brings me back to the title of this post, “Happy Un-Father’s Day”. With the exception of today, every other day of the year must be Un-Father’s Day, right? Looking to The Unbirthday Song from Alice in Wonderland for logic or at least inspiration, I’ve decided that there are three hundred and sixty four Un-Father’s Days each year. Now that’s reason to celebrate! (Though it’s not the only reason to remain childfree…)
Childfree? Really?
Common questions and comments (Part 3)
“When are you having kids?”, they usually ask. Not “if”. And here are more of the most common responses to my answer:
6) “Who’s going to take care of you when you’re old?”
I’d like to say “me”. I’m responsible for myself. It’s my obligation to invest in my brain and my body and strive for healthy and happy. If or when I can’t, I should have saved enough money or given enough love to ask for and receive help.
Instead I say we’re open to adopting adults from the next generation of non-breeders, or blurt something else unfunny, dishonest and/or swarthy, while wondering:
How can I get an unborn heir to agree that, in exchange for me handling fatherly responsibilities, they will one day owe the same commitment to me?
How could I dare make my health another’s responsibility unless I managed my own body, diet, alcohol and nicotine consumption perfectly?
It’s already too late for that, so rather than saddling someone else with the burden of the bongwater I drank in my twenties, I hope that the economics of living child-free allow enough room for a giant TV and a smiley, shapely nurse with soft hands and a deep appreciation of the History Channel and eighties music.
Or maybe we’ll just invest in Long-term care insurance.
http://personalinsure.about.com/od/longtermcare/a/ltcguide.htm
7) “Go to doctor what’s his name. He’ll get you pregnant!”
This happens more often than you might think. People are understandably presumptuous, and sincerely charitable when your spouse is a gifted teacher and children’s book author. (Touchtheart.com)
So when we lived in New York, parents of her students were eager to offer recommendations and referrals, assuming motherhood was an obvious goal for someone so nurturing and bossy.
Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
In Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, she writes that the term matrimony comes from the Latin word for mother. She explains that while she is childfree by choice, many women throughout history have chosen the same path, or maybe nature has allowed for it to be so. Gilbert notes that, at any given time in history at least 10% of women are childless worldwide. And during the Great Depression, in America, the number was up to 23%. Today the number hovers close to 50%.
Does nature know something that we’ve all but ignored? Does it really take a village to raise a child? Gilbert wonders if maybe there are extra women around to be “sparents” – “spare parents” to help out.
Savvy Auntie by Melanie Notkin
The popularity of author and blogger Melanie Notkin suggests the answer is a resounding yes. SavvyAuntie.com celebrates the childfree women who lend a hand. It is, “the first community for cool aunts, great aunts, godmothers and all women who love kids.” I am a proud member of this auntie brigade, with three gorgeous godkiddies. Savvy Auntie instructs kid-free aunts on everything childfriendly, from the perfect birthday present to how to save for a niece’s education. A review from Kirkus says it best: “A chic guide for new and experienced aunts that establishes their valuable family role. Challenging the cultural stigma associated with childless women, Notkin creates a distinctive voice that draws attention to the value of an aunt’s role in families…Communal childrearing at its finest.”
Of course the stories of the famously heartbroken and lonely “old-maid” aunties persist, and are part of our literary history. But Gilbert writes that these are merely creatures of myth, “recent studies of nursing homes comparing happiness levels of elderly childless women against happiness levels of women who did have children show no pattern of special misery or joy in one group or the other.”Hence, it is always better to visit https://burzynskilaw.com/ as they can help you legally to resolve issues irrespective of being women of child or childless women.
Perhaps several works of fiction wouldn’t even exist without the help of aunties. Childless aunties helped raise and influence notable artists including: Coco Chanel, Virginia Woolf, Truman Capote, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
From Gilbert we also learn that J.M. Barrie’s inspiration for the spirit of his forever, youthful fictional character, Peter Pan, was found “in the faces of many women who have no children.” That would be me. And I only hope my own role as a Peter Pan makes me a valuable auntie and an excellent “sparent”…
I’m flying!
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Ever wonder...
Doing my best Andy Rooney impersonation:
Did you ever notice how almost every book for women these days is about weddings and babies? I remember when women couldn’t even have books.
OK enough with the old man voice. I’ve been noticing a recurring theme with many of my steamy beach reads that is not so sexy – the main characters can’t decide if they should have kids or NOT! The stories are not the fun and tempting reads that the back cover teases. These fence-sitting literary couples struggle to find themselves and survive debt, betrayal and various inane obstacles only to come together and live happily ever after. Then they go and ruin things by making baby plans.
The two chick-lit novels below include the “Should we? Or shouldn’t we?” theme:
Baby Proof by Emily Giffen
Fans love her sorbet colored titles on marriage and the great void that happens next. In this story, Ben, the husband who vowed he’d live a childfree life suddenly wakes up one day and – yikes — changes his mind. Now what?
Nanny Returns by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
Four million readers loved The Nanny Diaries but when Nanny returned more people went meh? Not so much. Nan is back and fate has her crossing paths with her former charges, but can she handle a little cutie pie of her own? And will it tear her against-all-odds relationship apart?
A friend of mine mentioned that the childfree conundrum makes an appearance in Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. (A pre-Oprah Book Club copy is sitting on my shelf.) Franzen would likely freak out if he discovered his name on the same page as “beach read” or “chick lit” or “books for women”. Which brings me back to Andy Rooney…
Did you ever notice that people without kids have way too much time to read books?
A poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, The Vagina Monologues
is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. Celebrated as the bible for a new generation of women, The Vagina Monologues… gives voice to women’s deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman’s body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again. (Random House)
Childfree vagina? Forbidden zone? Mystery?
Full stop. Catch your breath. Exhale. Inhale. Yes, today is April Fool’s Day or as we WNKers call it, We’re Not Kidding Day. Uh-oh, double entendre time. We’re not having children. And, no, we’re not pulling your leg. About having children. Or anything else. So… Despite the uncanny appearance of the “Childfree Vagina Monologue” blog post on April Fool’s Day, I’m really not kidding. I’m taking you into the mystery, the forbidden zone of the childfree vagina.
I’m ill equipped, you say? Not a very well qualified tour guide? Perhaps. That consideration for another blog post. For now, rest assured that our guide, Julia Tew, is quite well qualified for our tour into the forbidden zone. Soon enough, I hope, you’ll agree with me. View the “Childfree Vagina Monologue” blog post now!
Over a million folks have watched this baby gibberish video.
Or else somebody working in the YouTube stats department has a twisted sense of humor.
In either case, don’t watch this video. Maybe a couple of seconds. That’s enough. If you watch the whole video, I’m guessing you have kids. And think this sort of stuff is funny. And beautiful. And you’re thinking I’m a misanthrope. A curmudgeon. Judge at will…
What’s funny about the video? Oddly red cheeks on one baby. Clown ambitions? Ostensibly the babies are twins, but Two Socks seems to be taller. Bigger. More assertive. More vocal. Funny is fast forwarding to their teenage years when little One Sock hits a growth spurt and leap frogs past Two Socks. Funny is the day that One Sock lifts Two Socks over his head at the end of the dock. In May. And flings his startled brother out into the still frigid Lake Champlain water bellowing, “That’s for the time you put my sock in the freezer and mom recorded the inane dance that followed and I blushed cherry bright and over a million people all around the world cooed over me in my soggy diaper!” That’s funny. Stay tuned. It could happen.
“When are you having kids?”, they usually ask. Not “if”. And here are a few more of the most common responses to my answer:
4) “Your kids would be so cute though…”
Oh, if the gene pool was really only skin deep…
On the outside, maybe, our offspring could look fine; but the inside could be very messy. So take a good look at the size of my cranium compared to my wife’s petite body, and hold your endorsements until we all have genetic codes tattooed on our sleeves.
Somewhere on my bicep you’ll then find addiction, male pattern baldness, acne, a degenerative eye disease, and the undiscovered gene for mouth breathing. Sure, my wife’s line brings artistic ability and great teeth, to have great teeth like her you can can also consult Floral Park dentist to repair crooked teeth and all dental related problems or you can also see the website to sort out any kind of dental related issues.well, but my wife has angry ovaries and OCD . Somewhere in her tattooed code there must be mysterious genes that cause older members of her family to mispronounce the most common names and brands and retell the same damn stories every week.
If the gene pool was really only skin deep…
If we were crazy or careless or lucky enough to bring a child into the world healthy, it would likely be a clumsy, athletic, tone deaf, heroin addict with back hair and enough artistic ability to paint a self portrait, but a head too big to fit on the canvass.
5) “The world needs more intelligent people to have babies!”
Really? It’s a reproductive arms race? Is this about Politics? Ideology? You’re going to breed yourselves to victory? Cars run on IQ points? With every additional baby the ice caps are unmelting?
Can you provide some evidence that intelligent = happy? Have you never met smart, peaceful people with stupid, violent children?
So how does the race end?
Does Thomas Malthus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus) earn a very posthumous Nobel Prize? For economics or peace? Who wins if a lot of smart people live in bankrupt countries run by fertile descendants of Osama Bin Laden and Mitt Romney… ?
Can’t we just distribute birth control and sign the non-procreation treaty already?!
