New study says parents more likely to have unhappy holidays

Ho ho ho! This new study from the American Sociological Association just in! Parents are more likely to suffer from signs of depression than unparents. I'm going to cite this study when people try to convince me that having kids will make me happier.

Parenthood is not associated with enhanced mental health, and, in fact, is more likely to be associated with symptoms of depression, according to recently published sociological research. The research finds that parents of all types report more symptoms of depression than nonparents. In addition, the research confirms that certain types of parenthood are associated with more depression than others.

Unlike other major adult social roles in the United States, parenthood does not present a mental health advantage for individuals, find sociologists Ranae J. Evenson, Vanderbilt University, and Robin W. Simon, Florida State University. Their article, "Clarifying the Relationship between Parenthood and Depression," appears in the December issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, published by the 100-year-old American Sociological Association.

Their analyses are from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, which was based a national probability sample of 13,000 U.S. adults. They oversampled blacks and Hispanics, single and recently married persons, and single and stepparents. Using 12 items from the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, the researchers went beyond looking at emotional well-being and researched the relationship between parenthood and symptoms of depression.
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Postpone birth, make more money

It's as easy as that, according to a new study. From an article about it:

Miller, an economist at the University of Virginia, had read Sylvia Hewlett's much publicised book, Baby Hunger, about the regrets felt by childless career women and wondered whether there was a rational basis for their decision to put off motherhood.

She found that young university-educated mothers earned significantly less over their lifetimes than women who began their families as little as 12 months later. For unskilled workers the age of motherhood made no difference.

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Baby Not on Board on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360!

If you were watching CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 on Thursday night, you may have caught a segment titled "Childfree by Choice." My husband and I and two other couples we know were given the chance to tell reporter Randy Kaye about our decision to remain families of two.
[LINK to transcript]

After the segment, they had a live debate between Madelyn Cain, author of "The Childless Revolution" and Albert Mohler, who hosts a Christian radio talk show. Mohler's beliefs on the subject are summed up in his article "Deliberate Childlessness: Moral Rebellion With a New Face."
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But while I find Mohler's view that every married couple has a moral obligation to have children irresponsible and absurd, I do agree with one point that he made during his CNN debate. He said, "if everyone in society even thought about this for an extended period of time, you know, we would not have any children."

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Pooch pouches = "nothing more than papoose substitutes for the childless"?

Carrying your miniature dog around in a snazzy purse does indeed appear to be at trend, but is it only faddish among the childfree? This, from a recent trend piece from New Zealand:

"It's clear that these bags are nothing more than papoose substitutes for the childless," says Matthew Morris of the Blue Ribbon Dog Company, a pet-accessories emporium in New York.

"These dogs are treated like eternal babies, which is kind of unhealthy, both for the dogs' development and definitely for their owners'."

Unhealthy? Maybe. But BNOB does content that dogs and babies are not as different as one might think. A canine child substitute can be a wonderful way to satisfy those stubborn nurturing tendencies. If those twice-daily walks with the plastic bags and the slobbery ball seem like a bit too much, cats, plants, hamsters, and Sea Monkeys make also make fine child substitutes.

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Hard to have a baby? Ha!

My childfree pal Stephan Cox directed me to this hilarious humor piece in McSweeney's by Wendy Molyneux.

An excerpt:
If there's one thing I'm tired of, it's hearing about how hard it is to have a baby. I hate to break the news to you, but people have been having babies for literally billions of years. In the olden days, women would have their babies right out there in the field, or on the back of a dinosaur, or, when we were still fish-people, right there in the stream. Then they would put the new baby in a crib made of stones and let a brontosaurus watch it or whatever.

But ask any modern pregnant woman whether she'd let a dinosaur watch her baby and she'll freak out as if you've just said the most outlandish thing ever. I guess irrationality is just one of the many so-called symptoms of pregnancy.

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Childfree S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis, author of the Chronicles of Narnia, had no children himself but was so disturbed by the "lack of imagination" he saw in the current generation, he was inspired to pen his now famous series.

Quoting a recent piece in the Seattle Times:

During World War II, a group of children was sent to the British country home of a professor to avoid the London air raids. It's easy to picture the wonderment with which these city children arrived, to a big, quiet house and a bookish bachelor professor who eyed them like strange creatures from another world.

That professor was author C.S. Lewis, who, like many of his compatriots, opened his home to evacuee children during the war. He was struck, he wrote in letters to his brother, by these "modern children's" lack of imagination, and their inability to keep themselves amused.

These thoughts weren't new, but the presence of the children in his home brought a new urgency. In 1935, he wrote to a friend: "I often wonder what the present generation of children will grow up like. ... They have been treated with so much indulgence yet so little affection, with so much science and so little mother-wit. Not a fairy tale nor a nursery rhyme."

He's not the only major children's author to not have progeny of his own. Dr. Seuss was also childfree. Both are perfect examples of how people who don't have children can have a huge impact on the next generation, and the one after that, and the one after that.

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No babies? Here's a reason to feel smug

John Thackera writes at the Doors of Perception blog:
I learned at the university of Cincinnati last week that 98 percent of all US households containing babies use some disposable diapers, and that an American child can run through 8,000 to 10,000 of these products before becoming fully toilet trained at age three or later.

This is in contrast to a baby born in East Africa where poor families use zero disposables and and "dryness is accomplished by five or six months". The context for this discussion is that disposable nappies (as we call them in the UK) are not "disposable" at all.

As a classic 1988 article by Carl Lehrburger and Rachel Snyder in Whole Earth Review explains, "we throw about 18 billion of them away each year into trash cans and bags, believing they've gone to some magic place where they will safely disappear - when the truth is, most of the plastic-lined "disposables" end up in landfills. There they sit, tightly wrapped bundles of urine and feces that partially and slowly decompose only over many decades. What started out as a marketer's dream of drier, happier, more comfortable babies has become a solid-waste nightmare of squandered material resources, skyrocketing economics, and a growing health hazard, set against the backdrop of dwindling landfill capacity in a country driven by consumption".
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Of course, for environmentally minded the alternatives--going diaper free, early potty training, etc.--require a huge investment of time and effort.

Or you could not have children and feel good about the fact that Mother Earth is cleaner and sweeter-smelling thanks to your wise decision.

And speaking of diapers, I've just discovered a horrible new trend: diaper cakes. Apparently, some genius thought it would be fashion these planet-polluters into wedding-style cakes. I'd rather not imagine what passes for filling.
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Chicago Tribune article on the decision to remain childfree

I was interviewed for this feature on the decision to go childfree. Here's an excerpt:

When Tina Roggenkamp and her husband, Mark, decided to keep their marriage free of children they took a lot of things into account.

They considered their desire for greater freedom, something that enabled her to get a graduate degree and start a small consulting business. There was also their enjoyment of what she called "smaller things," such as being able to sleep late when they wanted and to dine out whenever the mood struck them.

There were larger issues too, such as environmental concerns and worries about an overcrowded planet.

"We worry about global warming," said the 25-year-old who lives in Charlotte. "We worry about what the world will be like in the future. There's so much uncertainty, and I can't see bringing a life into such a world."

Growing numbers of American couples are electing to have child-free relationships.

Current Census Bureau figures show that about 18 percent of women age 40 to 44 do not have a child. The percentage has risen since 1976, when the bureau found that 10 percent of American woman in that age group reported not having a child.

Many groups have formed that seek to connect these couples across the country. No Kidding! and The Childfree Ring are among the most active. Some offer bumper stickers. One reads "If I want to hear the pitter-patter of little feet, I'll put shoes on my cat."

Some childless couples report that not everyone is comfortable with this trend.

Jennifer Shawne, 32, author of "Baby Not On Board: A Celebration of Life without Kids," said she has been accused of being un-American for making the choice not to opt for motherhood.

"There is this assumption that all women have a biological clock that one day is going to start ringing, and we're going to become baby maniacs who have to give birth no matter what," Shawne added. "But that's just not true."

[LINK signin: jennifer@babynotonboard / childfree]