The stigma of childlessness?

[BeardofPants]

An article by Sarah-Kate Lynch, a New Zealand writer, journalist, and columnist. No online source as of yet.

There were three of us sprawled on a sun-soaked sloping lawn in the Botanic Garden. It was one of those Wellington summer days that make you never want to live anywhere else. The year was 1984 and the empty bottle of Moët lying at our feet had cost just $20. Life was good.

Suddenly the idyllic silence was split by the ear-piercing caterwauling of an infuriated toddler, its elder sister poking it rudely with a stick as its raddled mother brought up the rear shouting at both of them, the baby she was pushing in the pram just starting a curdling squeal.

“I am never going to have children,” pronounced Hattie. “Me neither,” I agreed. “That goes double for me,” Bridget added. Fast-forward 20 years, however, and my house is the only one without The Wiggles in the video player.

Bridget decided after her father died that she wanted to add a new generation to her family and had a child in her late 30s, while Hattie changed her mind much earlier and now has an eight-year-old and two adopted Russian children. “But I can’t remember why I wanted them,” she says now. “I can only remember why I didn’t.”

So why do people have children? Is it to have someone to love them when they’re old? To pass on their fabulousness? To please their own parents? I’m interested in the answer because I’m quite often asked, sometimes by total strangers, why I don’t?

The old-fashioned answer is feck off and mind your own business. But the truth is that being a happily married couple in our late 30s (well, my husband still squeaks in, even if I don’t!) we are now something of an oddity in our childlessness. And I mind people asking why a hell of a lot less than I mind their attempts in infect me with their own limitlessly joyful parenthood virus – something friends and family would never do, but people I’ve barely met can’t seem to resist.

“Ooooh, but you’d make such fantastic parents,” a mother-of-three cooed at us over the dinner table a while ago. Her eyes were hanging out of her head with tiredness, she had baby vomit on her shirt, her cleavage was the depth of the Clutha and she checked her watch every eight seconds, her eyelids flickering as she calculated the escalating cost of the babysitter.

“No wine for me,” she said sternly, “I’m breastfeeding. And no potatoes either, thanks. Trying to get that girlish figure back. Darling, it’s your turn to ring home and check that everything’s okay. No, do it now. I said now. So, where was I?”

Truly, I am happy that little Olivia has the reading age of Methuselah and James is so gifted he doesn’t feel the need to spell and the wee one is sleeping through the night except for the four o’clock feed and Hannah is sitting on the potty even if she isn’t doing anything. But I am also perfectly content that none of these things is happening at my house, which has breakable objects, by the way, stored at knee height and a pantry sadly lack in treats but happily full of vodka and gin.

In fact, overseas studies suggest that we childless folk might actually be happier than breeders. At Professor John Gottman’s “Love Lab” research facility at the University of Washington in the United States, for example, a six-year study of 82 newlywed couples found that marital satisfaction took a steep dive after the birth of the first child, while levels of marital satisfaction stayed the same with couples who did not have children. Yet some parents seem to think it’s impossible to lead a full and satisfying life without a clutch of snot-gobblers.

“You should be passing on the best bits of you and your husband to a future generation,” insisted a passionate new father over a whine or two a few years ago. “Don’t you want to see that?”

“I’ll tell you what I don’t want to see,” I told him. “The world’s fattest, most sarcastic ginger (BoP notes: writer’s husband).” Nobody wants to see that. And it’s Russian roulette predicting what genes get passed on from what I have seen so far.

“So did you decide not to have kids or is it a medical thing?” some willowy blonde I had never met before once asked.

“Well, what with all the shopping for Robert Clergerie shoes and flying to New York to eat at four-star restaurants, I guess I just plum forgot.”

The thing is, if childlessness is due to infertility, that is a terribly distressing situation and not one to be chatted about over cocktails with people you’ve just met. And, if childlessness is a choice, you are perceived as being heartless and selfish and probably the sort of person who cuts children up into tiny pieces and feeds them to your cats, which are in no doubt in plentiful supply and have proper names like Susan and Derek and Irene.

Either way, if you’re of a certain age and not doing the school run, you can feel the need to explain yourself and it is not pleasant. “I actually get quite angry that people feel they have to feel that way, if you know what I mean,” says Dr Jan Cameron of Canterbury University’s sociology department, who has researched the subject of men and women who choose not to procreate. The results of her project were published in 1997 in a book called Without Issue.

“I used to get quite a head of steam up about it,” she says, “and I have children, but I used to get so angry when people who didn’t were made to feel as though they had to account for themselves. I mean, no one has ever come to me and said, ‘Why do you have children?’”

You see? That question just does not get asked. The other one does though, and according to Cameron’s research is quite often accompanied by a warning that the choice not to have children will be regretted. Yet none of the people she spoke to said that this was the case.

“It is far more serious to regret having a child,” says Cameron. Not that you will find too many who admit to that. “Although I suppose there are some brave people around who say that, if they had their time again, they wouldn’t have them. But that’s not to say they regret the ones they’ve got.”

So, that’s one myth dispelled. Another one she encountered in her research and similarly dispelled was that people who choose not to have children don’t like them. In fact, it can be quite the contrary. These childless folk often love the company of the younger generation and may even connect with them in a way that their parents can’t. They just don’t necessarily want to have any at home where they can fret about them breaking their bones on the jungle gym, or worry that they won’t get School C (BoP notes: out-dated formal exam that seniors used to sit at the age of 15) or whatever it’s called, or give them the keys to their shiny new VW Golfs. In fact, most people without children are very good baby sitters if you over-protective parents out there would just stop arguing about hiding the knives and go out once in a while.

cont...

[BeardofPants]

Yet another myth is that childless couples are sad and lonely when they’re old. Not true. A University of Florida study of nearly 4000 elderly men and women last year found that those who had never had children were no more psychologically vulnerable in older age than those with families. In fact, the findings suggested that sometimes the childless were better off because they ad built up other networks over their lives.

So, while all the crumbling old parents are crying into their bifocals at the rest home because their useless, good-for-nothing offspring have abandoned them, the wrinkled childless will be playing gin rummy for money with their card groups, and paying strapping young bucks to push them along the Milford Track with all that money they didn’t spend on university educations.

And as for that wanting to pass on the good bits of yourself thing… “Yes, that whole notion of immortality is fascinating,” agrees Cameron, “and more than a bit arrogant.” The other side of that coin, after all, is that you are lumbering some sweet little unborn munchkin with you as a parent. Besides, speculates Cameron, it could be that there are some among us who spend their lives making a difference to the world in a wider sense and so don’t feel the drive to produce a child to extend themselves into the ever-after.

More disturbingly, what Cameron’s research definitely revealed – and she does not believe the climate has changed since her research – is that it is simply not cool to admit you chose not to have children. “It’s like coming out if you’re gay,” says a friend of mine (not that there’s anything wrong with that to quote Jerry Seinfeld). “Up until now they’ve let people assume they couldn’t have children and now a few of them are saying, ‘ Actually, I don’t want them.’”

“The coming out analogy is totally appropriate,” agrees Cameron. “I certainly talked to some people who told me that they got sympathy from people who assumed they were infertile. And they said it was easier for them to put up with that than the alternative: that pity was easier to bear than scorn.”

Well, excuse me, but how much does that stink? It’s a queer old world when we’re pretending our reproductive organs are munted just so people won’t hate us. I mean, whatever happened to “To each his own”?

The thing is, I know that what Jan Cameron is saying is true because when I started writing this story I was perfectly happy to out myself as someone who had chosen not to have children but in the course of researching it, I got the heebies and changed my mind because I didn’t want people to think I was a mean old bitch who hated babies. Now, obviously, I’m changing it back again because I’ve remembered that I’m not a mean old bitch. I love babies. I just could never think of a reason to have one of my own. And anyway, what’s wrong with not having children? “Bloody nothing, if you ask me,” asserts another friend of mine who has two pre-teenage boys and is most certainly not one to harass the childless to follow in her footsteps.

“I had no idea what I was getting into when I had my babies,” she says. “It was a nightmare. I hated every minute of it. No one had prepared me for how hard it was, how tired I would be, how much I would argue with my husband. In fact, I would have left him if I’d thought he could look after the kids, but he couldn’t so I didn’t. Any anyway, I was too bloody knackered. So looking at it like that I suppose you could say that those little shits kept us together. But now when I hear people bleating on about the prospect of having children I tell them not to. I say, ‘Don’t do it,’ go to Paris instead.’”

While that may seem harsh, it makes a refreshing change from being urged to jump on the parental bus, and it does seem as though we should be making childlessness more of an appealing option. There is so much pressure on everyone to breed yet, even at fertility clinics, not having kids is offered as a viable alternative.

“Obviously, some who come in are clearly determined and fairly sure that this is the avenue they want to pursue,” says Joi Ellis, a counsellor at Fertility Associates in Auckland. “But for others who are wondering whether they would want to go down the treatment road or what the options are, then that would be one of the options.”

And they don’t bring out the black arm-bands and treat it like a bad thing either. In fact, they encourage people who make this choice to consider themselves child-free as opposed to childless. But, though this is a much jauntier term that definitely accentuates the positive, there is another more grim reason for making the distinction.

“Infertile couples will tell me they meet with quite a lot of anti-feeling because people don’t know about their infertility and think they’ve made a choice and it was a selfish decision.”

So once again the child-free are the cat people with sharp knives!

I suppose it is something to do with liking everyone else to do what they’ve done because it sanctions their position,” says Ellis of the pressure on the childless to breed.

So what we really need, upon reflection, is for society simply to be more accepting of people who don’t have children and to shove their stick beaks up their own jacksies when it comes to the reasons why. It should not be an issue.

Overseas studies show, after all, that childless couples are happier than couples who are parents – and argue eight times less. And if the childless wife didn’t shop at Trelise Cooper (BoP notes: successful NZ clothes designer – expensive!) and bring her purchases home in a sale bag, even though they weren’t on sale, why, they probably wouldn’t argue at all.

We don’t need pity, you see, and we don’t deserve scorn. We are just quite well dressed and sleep in a lot.

Forgive the typos, had to type the whole bloody lot out myself! Anyway, I just read this in the week-end newspaper (NZ Herald), and I wanted to share. Thoughts?

[Wayfarer]

I like children.

You've just got to use the right herbs and spices.

[BeardofPants]

Wayfarer, you silly git. Go start your own cannibalistic thread.



Just interested to see other's POVs on this issue.... And stories. I've got a few myself (mostly involving drunken "moms" at christmas dos giving me lecturers on why I should have children, and how wonderful her own scallywags are )

[Wayfarer]

Oh, well in that case.

I can't say I've ever felt stigmatized for not having children. I can't really imagine ever wanting them.

Maybe if I could build some...

[Nurvingiel]

You can build children, you just need... no, I'm not going there.

It's not an issue to me whether or not people have children. My parents aren't the "So when are those grandkids coming along" sort. They just want us to be happy. They also don't stigmatize others for not having kids.

I don't get stigmatized for not having kids because I'm only 21. But if I do... I'll probably tell the person to "feck off and mind their own business" as the clever writer of this article put it. Thanks for your effort there BoP.

[azalea]

I have two young kids, but have no problem with people who don't want any. I have a married uncle who has never had kids, as well as a couple that are old family friends who are childless. So growing up, I always knew that there are some people who just don't have them. In fact, if people don't want them, it's better that they don't have them, because it is difficult. I look at it as a "challenge." I enjoy a challenge (when my husband and I first discussed it, I said "Let's live on the edge!")

My advice is of course people should NEVER feel pressured to have them because other people think they should, and always discuss children BEFORE marriage (and if both want children, all the issues surrounding raising them, like discipline). That being said, a nice compromise is to have one child. It's much easier than two or more, trust me. (That is, assuming the child doesn't have a behavior problem! )

I wanted kids because being a mother was something I looked forward to. I like having a family, but there are times I want to just leave and have an "adventure" on my own. I think it's that way because I can't just leave. It's like in "When Harry Met Sally," I can't just jet off to Paris, and yet had I ever just jetted off to Paris before I had kids? Of course not! And of course there will come a day (it goes by quickly, let me tell you!) when they'll be grown up, and I can jet off and have adventures for the rest of my life. So I am enjoying the short time I have with them, and then I can really enjoy the time after that for myself (I'll be 48 when the younger one turns 18, still young enough to enjoy myself for many years, I hope!)

[inked]

BoP,

In my professional career, I have counseled quite a number of folks who did not wish to have children and have heard them express these sentiments. It is entirely a decision that each couple comes to on their own.

As a parent my own children are now teenagers. Insanity is hereditary and you get it from your teenagers. I have also opined that teenagers are BEST argument for retroactive abortion that I know! ! (My true stance on this topic is on the abortion thread, but there are moments when I have seriously considered a change of heart in regard to my own;however, since the negation of the Roman concept of the absolute right of life and death by the paterfamilia, this would be gravely denounced by society ! So I have a little ceramic jar on the 'fridge that is labelled 'ashes of obnoxious teenagers' as a consolation .

Parenthood is not for the fainthearted. Whether legitimized by marriage or out-of-wedlock or achieved at great lengths by medical technology or adopted, children (and anyone else you love, really) will break your heart, your bank account, and any serenity you may have achieved! I console myself with the realization that my mother's curse has come home to roost - "I hope when you grow up, you have one who acts just like you!" This, I have discovered professionally by asking parents for >20 years, is a universal curse of mothers upon their offspring. And I have a book mark (anticipatory for years, I hope) that states: Happiness is watching your grown up children have teenagers of their own!

There are endearments, too, to children. And I am told that it is a great satisfaction to have them mature into adults who can engage in rational conversation as any other adult might. We shall see, we shall see...........

[The Gaffer]

Believe me, BoP, if ever there was a stigma born out of envy, this is it.

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Believe me, BoP, if ever there was a stigma born out of envy, this is it.

Lol!

Actually, this is not only funny, but probably true.

Some people might subconsciously feel the need to justify their having children even though they're lousy parents. So they tell themselves it's selfish or wrong not to have children. Really, I think it's very selfish to have children for the wrong reasons.

[Starr Polish]

I was only recently informed of the child-free lifestyle, and at first I was appalled. This is only because the people I met (online) who labeled themselves "child-free" basically assumed that all children are terrible and every woman who has children can't keep her legs closed.

I now understand why someone would want to not have children, however, and I am personally unsure of whether or not I want them.

I've mentioned this to a few people, including my mother. She keeps saying "Oh, you'll change your mind, you're only eighteen." Which I suppose is a possibility, but at the moment I really can't see myself having kids. I am impulsive and impatient, and have had my fill of little kids. I was long considered "the most responsible kid that isn't yet an adult" in my extended family, and at stepfamily gatherings often found myself hearding several children and making sure they didn't kill each other while the adults watched T.V. and sometimes drank. I've perfected diving to save falling plates of food, kissing boo-boos, and mediating fights. It's tough work, and I only have to do it for hours at a time, not 24/7.

There are other reasons I'm considering staying childless. My body is not well designed to carry a child. I have very narrow hips and am underweight. I have trouble keeping weight on, actually. My mother had problems carrying my sister and me due to an incompetent cervix. I also have faulty genes and don't want to pass on high chances of depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, cancer and heart disease to another generation. Adoption most likely will not be an option because I don't think I'll ever get married. ::shrug::

My mother doesn't need to worry about never having a grandchild, though. My older sister inherited more than her share of maternal instinct, and absolutely loves babies and little kids. She wants one terribly, but she and her husband are going to wisely wait a few more years.

More power to people who choose to have kids (and truly act as parents), and to those who do not. Kids are not for everyone.

edit: I'm not sure why there even is a stigma, actually. The world is already overpopulated. Some people may call those that are child-free "selfish," but one of the big reasons people have kids is so they can have someone to love them and take care of them when they get older. ::shrug::

[BeardofPants]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

Some people might subconsciously feel the need to justify their having children even though they're lousy parents. So they tell themselves it's selfish or wrong not to have children. Really, I think it's very selfish to have children for the wrong reasons.

Yeah, the journalist mentioned that briefly - the notion of justifying that hard work! And yes, people should have children because they WANT to, not because society expects it of them.

Originally Posted by Starr Polish

edit: I'm not sure why there even is a stigma, actually. The world is already overpopulated. Some people may call those that are child-free "selfish," but one of the big reasons people have kids is so they can have someone to love them and take care of them when they get older. ::shrug::

You may notice it as you get older, starr. I've definitely had people rant at me for not wanting kids. It's not "normal" for a woman to not want to get married or have lots of babies. And whilst population numbers certainly aren't in decline, the population IS starting to plateau out, with less people in the western world having kids. If it's not monitored, we might start having problems of another sort; those related to small population sizes, which could lead to genetic stagnation.

[Starr Polish]

No, I KNOW there's a stigma. I'm just not sure why.

Call me naive, but I'm not too concerned about genetic stagnation in my life time. I know plenty of people that plan on having several children (including my ex-boyfriend. He wants four...if I ever have kids, that's way too many).

[inked]

I hate to diabuse youse guys, but the reality of underpopulation is the reason for emigration into Europe of large numbers of 3rd worlders (most of whom are Muslim). This is the reason that the secularisation of Europe will be replaced by the Islamization of Europe - emigration not decapitation.

[johnnyrod]

Yeah, right, come back with some facts and objectivity.

Back to the kids thing. I've hit the sort of age where everyone from school seems to be breeding, and despite long consideration I've decided I'm far too selfish to be a proper dad, and I wouldn't want to inflict my clones on the rest of you. Doesn't seem to bother a lot of people with their people carriers etc. of course. I like my friends' kids but thank God I can give them back at the end of the day.

I tried spent an evening learning how to fly a glider once, which was good fun but it wasn't for me. Kids are kind of the same, why should everyone like the same thing? Just because you can doesn't mean you have to. Do you think a lot of the stigma thing is probably historical? Women should be in the home and all that crap.

[Nurvingiel]

Kids aren't all the same! LOL They are human beings with personalities that differ from one another as much as adults. I like kids, and someday, when I'm ready, I want kids. Not because anyone thinks I should, but because I want to.

There's nothing wrong with not wanting kids, and there's also nothing wrong with immigration! It's a global village.

[Valandil]

Each time I notice this thread, I keep wishing it was:

The Stigma of Childishness

[inked]

O, Johnnyrod, to disabuse youse,
I got facts and figures as you asked!

On the Islamization of Europe:

Muslim Europe

By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com

May 11, 2004

“Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam.” So declares Oriana Fallaci in her new book, La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason). And the famed Italian journalist is right: Christianity’s ancient stronghold of Europe is rapidly giving way to Islam.

Two factors mainly contribute to this world-shaking development.


*The hollowing out of Christianity. Europe is increasingly a post-Christian society, one with a diminishing connection to its tradition or its historic values. The numbers of believing, observant Christians has collapsed in the past two generations to the point that some observers call it the “new dark continent.” Already, analysts estimate Britain’s mosques host more worshippers each week than does the Church of England.

*An anemic birth rate. Indigenous Europeans are dying out. Sustaining a population requires each woman on average to bear 2.1 children; in the European Union, the overall rate is a one-third short, at 1.5 per woman, and falling. One study finds that, should current population trends continue and immigration cease, today’s population of 375 million could decline to 275 million by 2075. To keep its working population even, the EU needs 1.6 million immigrants a year; to sustain the present workers-to-retirees ratio requires an astonishing 13.5 million immigrants annually.

Into the void are coming Islam and Muslims. As Christianity falters, Islam is robust, assertive, and ambitious. As Europeans under-reproduce at advanced ages, Muslims do so in large numbers while young.

Some 5 percent of the EU, or nearly 20 million persons, presently identify themselves as Muslims; should current trends continue, that number will reach 10 percent by 2020. If non-Muslims flee the new Islamic order, as seems likely, the continent could be majority-Muslim within decades.

When that happens, grand cathedrals will appear as vestiges of a prior civilization (the jahiliya?) – at least until a Saudi-style regime transforms them into mosques or a Taliban-like regime blows them up. The great national cultures – Italian, French, English, and others – will likely wither, replaced by a new transnational Muslim identity that merges North African, Turkish, subcontinental, and other elements.

This prediction is hardly new. In 1968, the British politician Enoch Powell gave his famed “rivers of blood” speech in which he warned that in allowing excessive immigration, the United Kingdom was “heaping up its own funeral pyre.” (Those words stalled a hitherto promising career.) In 1973, the French writer Jean Raspail published Camp of the Saints, a novel that portrays Europe falling to massive, uncontrolled immigration from the Indian subcontinent. The peaceable transformation of a region from one major civilization to another, now underway, has no precedent in human history, making it easy to ignore such voices.

There is still a chance for the transformation not to play itself out, but the prospects diminish with time. Here are several possible ways it might be stopped:

*Changes in Europe that lead to a resurgence of Christian faith, an increase in childbearing, or the cultural assimilation of immigrants; such developments can theoretically occur but what would cause them are hard to imagine.

*Muslim modernization: For reasons no one has quite figured out (education of women? abortion on demand? adults too self-absorbed to have children?), modernity leads to a drastic reduction in the birthrate. Also, were the Muslim world to modernize, the attraction of moving to Europe would diminish.

*Immigration from other sources. Latin Americans, being Christian, would more or less permit Europe to keep its historic identity. Hindus and Chinese would increase the diversity of cultures, making it less likely that Islam would dominate.

Current trends suggest Islamization will happen, for Europeans seem to find it too strenuous to have children, stop illegal immigration, or even diversify their sources of immigrants. Instead, they prefer to settle unhappily into civilizational senility.

Europe has simultaneously reached unprecedented heights of prosperity and peacefulness – and shown a unique inability to sustain itself (one demographer, Wolfgang Lutz, notes that “Negative momentum has not been experienced on a large scale in world history”).

Is it inevitable that the most brilliantly successful society also be the first in danger of collapse due to a lack of cultural confidence and offspring? Ironically, creating a hugely desirable place to live would seem also to be a recipe for suicide. The human comedy continues.


END


These things must be true, eh, in a book and internet news, not to mention the recent killings of Jews in the Netherlands and threats by militant Islamics against political figures? Or is it idle chatter from Italy to the Netherlands?

[Insidious Rex]

my goodness what naked racist clap trap. so just because muslims are moving into europe in significant numbers this is cause for an all out crusade to stop them? is this another "fear the non whites" rally to arms? or is this just about christianity vs. islam? I wonder what percentage of all these new muslims are in fact out shooting and stabbing people on the streets of the Netherlands exactly. cultures evolve. humans migrate. its the nature of things. the world will not look the same as it does now in 100 years. in 1000 years. do not be distressed by this. this is normal. im sure the american indians got a little worried too when them white skins started coming over in droves and taking over their land and living theyre bizarre life styles and not even TRYING to assimilate into the "local" culture. Im sure the Celts felt the same way in old Europe. And then the Anglo-Saxons and then the Normans in turn. Cultures mix into the next. Its how the game is played. It doesnt signal the end of the world and a need to strike back. It simply shows us that things are proceeding normally. Its not as if the Turkish Empire is back and christians are being beheaded by the thousands just for being there. its an almost entirely peaceful "invasion". And there is no grand conspiracy behind it. Just nature and math.

[Starr Polish]

I know I'm not a mod, but could we PLEASE keep this on topic? I'm getting very tired of the hijacked threads here.

Nurv - I'm quite aware that kids aren't all the same and I quite like some of them. I think it's more the thought of me being fully responsible for another human being for 18 years scares the crap out of me.