Childfree News Roundup

It seems like everytime I turn around, I'm reading or seeing a news piece about being childfree! Here are just a few good ones.

Rapidly declining birthrates in Europe have some fretting over the future.
[LINK]

A parent defends the Chicago restauranteur who put a sign up saying that only well-behaved children were welcome in his establishment.
[LINK]

Howard Stapleton has invented bonifide teenager repellant. The device emits an annoying sound on a frequency that adults over the age of 30 can't hear.
[LINK free subcription required]

Former Wham bandmember has declared himself childfree for life.
[LINK]

For those who don't get why people get all excited over newborns

The Onion has posted a hilarious "news" story about a baby that has no friends. Descriptions, like this one, of how the newborn behaves are dead on:

Visitors to the Goldsworthy home often report having negative first impressions of Joshua. Out-of-the-blue crying fits, the tendency to yank at loose hair and earrings, and copious drooling are just a few of the antisocial traits he displays. Neighbor Lena Osterberg said that, two weeks ago, she cut a visit to the Goldsworthy home short after the self-interested infant committed a "gross" indiscretion.


[LINK]

Childfree seating at restaurants?

Many unparents fantasize about the day when they can walk into a restaurant and ask to be seated in the childfree zone. Well, in North Carolina some childfree activists have stopped dreaming and started taking action. A petition is currently circulating asking upscale restaurants to divy up their space into Romper Room and Dining Room.

The petition reads:
“WE, the childless and childfree people of the United States, hereby request that there be childfree sections set aside in your bars and restaurants immediately. Just as no-smoking sections offer non-smokers the option of dining without being forced to breathe cigarette and/or cigar smoke, we feel there should also be childfree sections where patrons can enjoy their dining experience in a peaceful, relaxing, and relatively quiet environment.”

Amen!

Bella Online (link below) is asking for diners whose meals have been spoiled by spoiled brats to write in with stories about their misadventures. I say take it another step: Start a similar petitions in your own town!

[LINK]

Childfree Scotland

A growing number of Scottish women are saying no to having kids.

According to this article in the Sunday Herald:
A third of Scottish women in their early 40s have never had a child. They aren’t infertile, they simple don’t want children … and their number is growing.

A study published last week by the NHS revealed that childlessness is not a slim social phenomenon of a few women dedicated to their careers or experiencing fertility problems. It is a mass social change: 31.2% of Scottish women born between 1960 and 1963 do not have children, and the generation behind them will probably exceed that. If the current trend continues, 40% of women born between 1970 and 1973 will not have children.

Only around 7% of childless women have not had a child because of medical reasons. The story behind the statistics is one of choice.
[[LINK]]

Restaurant in Chicago says kids must behave or leave

I often hear unparents opine that there aren't any childfree restaurants or flights. Well, here's some tantalizing news. The owner of Chicago restaurant A Taste of Heaven has placed a sign on his door saying: "Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices." Angry parents who feel that it's unreasonable to ask their children to behave in public have responded by taking their business elsewhere, in essence creating a childfree restaurant. Bon appetite!

[[LINK to New York Times]]
[[LINK to local coverage]]

New Childfree Hall of Famers

Hollywood hottie George Clooney has made a bet that he'll stay childfree and single until he's 50, six years from now.
[[LINK]]

Uber-prolific writer Joyce Carol Oates answers the question of whether she would have written so much if she'd had children :
"No, I don't think so, but then I was never strongly maternal. My brother also doesn't have children - it could be genetic, but it could be that I was so very interested in writing that I just didn't have time, although I do like children. My role models were childless - Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës."
[[LINK]]

"No children, no apologies"

Jane Ganahl may be a parent, but that didn't stop her from saying some very kind things about unparents and "Baby Not on Board" in her column for Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, "No children, no apologies."

Be that as it may, the decision not to parent creates its own set of problems -- especially for single people looking to date other like-minded folks and create a DINK (dual-income-no-kids) family. Anyone can tell you that the parenting question is one of the deciding factors of any relationship. Should it be approached directly or indirectly while dating? According to a charming new book, "Baby Not on Board: A Celebration of Life Without Kids" by San Franciscan Jennifer Shawne (Chronicle Books, $14.95) there are ways to find this needle-in-a-haystack person efficiently.

In the section "Catching a Non-breeder," Shawne notes that "you're going to have to filter out a lot of family-minded suitors to find that ideal person." She advises looking for personal ads that read: "No kids. Not now. Not ever. I mean it, dammit!" She recommends looking for likely mates in apartment complexes that ban children, in bars and cafes between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., in "bad school districts" and in the outpatient waiting room for a tube-tying clinic.

Read the rest here.

Childfree news roundup

Links to recent news stories that will be of interest to unparents:

A new review of Baby Not on Board in the Cleaveland Plain Dealer!
[[LINK]]

Troubling piece in the Hartford Courant on one childfree couple's difficulty planning their estate. Seems their nephew was asking for a piece of the pie before the couple was even dead. As those who've read my book know, I'm a firm believer in being a cool aunt or uncle, but there's definitely such a thing as being too cool and if doling out your hard-earned cash before you've kicked the bucket to your nephews and nieces doesn't qualify, then I don't know what does!
[[LINK]]

Maureen Dowd's fascinating essay on feminism's successes and (more so) failures, points out an interesting statistic:
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and the author of "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children," a book published in 2002, conducted a survey and found that 55 percent of 35-year-old career women were childless. And among corporate executives who earn $100,000 or more, she said, 49 percent of the women did not have children, compared with only 19 percent of the men.
[[LINK]]

In BNOB terminology, we call these gals Career Champs:
Why struggle to juggle career and family? For you, true balance is picking one and sticking with it--and youv'e opted for the one that pays. Your resume will never be stained with grape juice or maternity leave. Your annual presentation to the board of directors will not be marred by Johnny's drawings of turtle turds, nor will your ascent to the top be interrupted by teh need to go pump breast milk in the women's restroom.

Lastly, the Fort Wayne, Indiana News-Sentinal weighs in on the fact that more and more educated women living in industrialized nations are choosing not to have kids. As one expert explained: "Children are no longer an economic asset - to work the farm, for example. 'In fact, you could argue they are an economic liability.'"
[[LINK]]