Is your company too family-friendly?

The childfree are fighting back against family-friendly policies that wind up discriminating against those without offspring. This, according to a cover story in HR Magazine

"Childless singles feel put upon, taken for granted and exploited — whether because of fewer benefits, less compensation, longer hours, mandatory overtime or less flexible schedules or leaves — by married and child-rearing co-workers,” Ms. Wells writes.

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And this is interesting: apparently men are more "bothered" by childlessness than women are, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Koropeckyj-Cox speculated that some women may not be choosing motherhood because of the burden of how difficult the dual roles of mom and working women are. "Other studies have documented that men tend to experience pretty strong economic and social rewards from being a dad, whereas women experience more of the pressures and more of the demands of the immediate day-to-day reality of parenting and juggling work."

How about men don't have to get pregnant, give birth, or breastfeed? Having kids seems much nicer if you have none of those responsibilities.

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Here's another reason women may not mind not having kids:

GROWING numbers of childless women are becoming the dominant earner in their relationships as having children remains a serious earnings barrier.

New data from the 2006 census reveals the number of childless couples with a woman earning more than a man has leapt by 40 per cent over the past decade, from 174,910 in 1996 to 243,933 in 2006.

However the trend is reversed when women have children. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the number of couples with children under the age of 15 where the woman was the key breadwinner plunged from 191,095 in 1996 to 176,376 in 2006.

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Lastly, thanks to those of you who have stuck with this blog, even though my posts have been a lot less frequent. I've taken a full-time job and it doesn't leave much room for keeping up with blogs. But I will try to stay on top of it more. Cheers!

No kids? Yes sir!

Although people tend to think of childfree as being urban professionals, the truth is the people who make this choice come from all walks of life -- including, it turns out, military life. A few weeks ago, reporter Jennifer See wrote me asking if she could interview me for a piece about military spouses who are choosing to go without kids. I was more than happy to oblige.

Turns out quite a few military couples are making the choice:

Go on any military instillation, and it seems there are kids everywhere — in the PX and BXs, the commissaries, at unit family functions. Although it seems that most people in the military have families, according to a recent report from the Department of Defense, more than half of all active-duty soldiers — 57 percent to be exact — do not have children.

More and more women instead are focusing on careers, personal interests and their spouses. They are traveling and enjoying the freedom that comes with not having children. So why are they often made to feel like they are doing something wrong?

I hope you'll check out the rest of the piece online.
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Childfree Nader's latest book? All about parenting.

Erstwhile presidential candidate Ralph Nader may be childfree, but his latest book The Seventeen Traditions is all about parenting--specifically what his parents did right.

Here's a snip from a recent interview about the book:

Mowing the lawn was hardly a favorite childhood activity of yours, but you say that kind of hard work was foundational. Where I live in Southern California, nobody, much less kids, seems to mow their own lawn. Even friends who are struggling to pay the mortgage always have $60 each month to pay the gardener.

That's a pronounced difference in the generations. These kids are missing out. They're not exercising their bodies, they're not getting the discipline of manual labor, which is important. Maybe later in life they'll have white-collar jobs, they won't know what goes into mowing or raking leaves or shoveling snow. In that sense, too, there's a loss. It's creating a spoiled generation, even. The discipline of work is part of being raised.

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Yet another article about how childfree Japanese women prefer dogs to kids. I never get tired of reading these! Alas, the author of this piece is extremely judgmental. Check it out:

Weird as Japan's dog mummies are at first blush, they are more to be pitied than decried. Have they no real friends to take them aside quietly and tell them how ridiculous it is for a grown woman to play mother to a dog? Society in general also has to take some of the blame. Japan boasts the second largest economy in the world, but its huge shadow has almost eclipsed family life.

Don't you hate it when a perfectly good story goes to the dogs?
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From the mouths of French babes' mothers

When writing Baby Not on Board, I wound up consulting a lot of parents, asking them what they missed about their former childfree lives, their lowest moments of parenting, and so on. They seemed to appreciate the chance to talk about the dark side of parenting, and I got some excellent fodder for my book. I heard about the existential despair that comes when you spend 20 minutes carefully slicing grapes in two or never being able to use the phone again because your teenager has claimed it as her own.

But none of the parents I talked to quite went as far as Corinne Maier, who apparently dislikes raising her own children so much she's written a book titled No Kid: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children. Here's Maier quoted in a recent Times Online piece about her:

“Children are there to stop you enjoying yourself. It’s a child’s hidden face. Believe me, he will be very inventive in this area. He will be ill when you (finally) arrange a night out, he will bug you when you celebrate your birthday with your friends, he will hate it if you bring someone he’s never met back for the night, and beyond that you won’t dare tread for fear of traumatising him for life.” She goes on to list the things you will almost certainly have to give up after having children. They include: a full night’s sleep, a lie-in, deciding to go to the cinema on the spur of the moment, staying out later than midnight (babysitters have to be relieved), visiting a museum or exhibition (children start mucking about after five mintues), taking your holiday anywhere other than destinations where there is a beach and a kids’ club, taking a holiday during term-time and smoking in front of your children, now deemed a “crime against humanity”.

She certainly has some interesting points to make about how the French government promotes population growth as a way to pay for future pensions and how advertisers promote children in order to increase spending on consumer goods, like fancy strollers.

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Actress Helen Mirren defends the childfree lifestyle once more

Few childfree celebrities have been as outspoken on the subject as Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren.

Here's what she recently had to say:

"I am thrilled that I don't have children - I have the thing I love, which is freedom. In a funny way, if you don't have children, you can concern yourself more generously with the extended family and let other people have the children," Contactmusic quoted her, as saying.

She goes on to declare the expectation that women without children are sad "bullshit." Spoken like someone who doesn't have to worry about her kids getting potty mouth.
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Woman gives birth to her 17th child

I typically try to veer away from talking about parents and kids on this blog, choosing instead to celebrate the growing number of non-parents out there in the world. But every now and again comes a news story about parenting gone berserk that simply must be highlighted.

In this case, it's the story of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, who've just had their 17th child. That's right. One seven. And what's the first thing Michelle's mind after giving birth (one imagines the babies just fall out at this point)?

"We'd love to have more," Michelle said, adding that the girls are outnumbered seven to 10 in the family. "We love the ruffles and lace."

I suspect that the Duggar's are part of the Quiverfull movement, which believes that women should have as many babies as God gives them and therefore eschew all forms of birth control. You'd think 17 kids would actually be birth control--who has time to have sex with all those mouths to feed--but apparently not.

[LINK to article | LINK to the Duggar's Web site]

The baby workout? A myth.

I had this notion that if you had kids, you were always working out. After all they are heavy and keep getting heavier. And when not staring slack-jawed at the Teletubbies, kids must be chased! But, according to a recent New York Times article, if you really want to stay in shape, don't become a parent.

THEY count among their ranks former marathoners and Ironmen, beached surfers and scuba divers. They lay off red meat and trans fats. They stay current on annual physicals and take their medications as prescribed.

And yet, this group of the once-fit finds itself at risk of becoming unhealthy and stacking on the pounds, because of one threat to their physical fitness: children.

Parents have long griped that having children sidetracks their best-laid exercise plans. Now they have evidence.

A first-of-its-kind study released in May by the University of Pittsburgh concluded that parenthood demonstrably reduces physical activity, while marriage has only a negligible effect.

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