Childfree news roundup

My inbox is full of news from around the world of childfree people taking on our child-obsessed culture. Here are a few of my favorite stories.

In Canada, "Child-free women take on the mommy mafia." With a headline like that, who wouldn't want to read more? In the process I learned about this childfree women-only club, Babes Without Babes.

Although childfree-by-choice women have always endured criticism from other females, it's only recently that people like Semper have chosen to square off against the motherhood mafia: Baby-biased women eager to smother any whimper of dissonance in the ranks.

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From Michigan comes this article about how childfree couples (empty nesters as well as those who've forgone parenting altogether) are boosting post-Labor Day travel.

Gone are the days when summer tourism hot spots closed up shop after Labor Day.

In 2005, tourists saved more than 10 percent of their vacation time for September, up sharply from about 6 percent the year before, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

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And I loved this commentary from playwright Tina Howe, whose play Birth and After Birth, about a confrontation between a family and a childfree couple, is finally getting the attention it deserves more than 30 years after it was written.

When my brother's German wife shook her finger at me back in the '60s and said, "You're not a woman until you have children," I was speechless! Not a woman? What about my idol, Virginia Woolf? Or the countless other childless women who have excelled in art, science, politics and the boudoir? I was too stunned and insulted to reply, but having been married and childless for five years, part of me naturally wondered if she might be right.

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