Learning something new with every childfree article

At this point, I've read a gazillion articles about being childfree, nevertheless I'm constantly learning something new. For example, from this new article in the Telegraph:

--Beautiful, intelligent actress Helen Mirren is childfree! I didn't know! She has been immediately added to the Childfree Hall of Fame!

--If there was a childfree gene hall of fame, this would be an entry:
According to the Office of National Statistics, one in five British women in their thirties has decided not to have children. And it may be that a number of these have had less choice in the matter than they thought. Geneticists at the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge have demonstrated in mice that mutations on a certain gene can cause mothers to neglect their offspring. The same gene also exists in humans.

There's more. Check out the story!

Incidentally, if Nicki Defago, the awesome childfree British author from England is reading, you and I need to compare notes!
[LINK]

Regrets

It's something we who celebrate the childfree lifestyle don't like to talk about much, but the truth is there are some people who don't have kids only to regret the decision later. I have a friend in his 50s who has two stepkids and now stepgrandkids, but never had any children of his own. He recently told me he wishes he had every day of his life.

In this essay, "Duped out of Motherhood," writer Kate Mulvey reflects on turning 40 and being without child. It was a choice she made repeatedly over the years, but clearly regretting:

Grief and loss. These are two emotions that have become commonplace in my emotional repertoire of late. It can be frightening to yearn for a child, and it is hard to fathom the desperate urgency that comes with thinking that maybe, one day, I could be a mother.

But after that party, I had an epiphany. In six months' time I will be 40, and after a great deal of soul searching, I have decided that I am bowing out gracefully from the baby race. I cried myself to sleep for weeks. No child. Not now. Not ever.

People look at someone like me - a woman who is still attractive, has her own career and doesn't have children - and think that either I am an unfeeling monster or a tragic failure. Sometimes they say it to my face.

Just last week, a well-meaning friend stood triumphant with her twoyearold on her hip and told me: "Well, Kate, you don't like children do you?"

I lost my rag. I made it clear that I hadn't made a choice not to have children. I am not one of those women who sat down at 30 and categorically factored out babies from their life plan. I love children and share all the motherly instincts of most women.

But it is a painful modern truth that there is a growing number of women - the proportion of women under 50 without children has doubled over the past two decades - who have simply forgotten to have a baby.

Personally I've never found regret to be a useful emotion. I mean, people who have children surely regret thier decision too. But just because we don't want to regret things doesn't mean we won't. I think Kate's piece does raise some interesting points about how difficult, complicated, and personal the decision not to have kids is for some people. People like to imagine that all childfree people are smug, hedonistic baby-haters. Clearly we come in all different types of packages and with all sorts of different reasons for why we don't have offspring and a whole range of feelings about that choice.

[LINK]

It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)!

In the interest in making news sound more relevant than it really is, the media often trumps things up a bit. I noticed a couple of recent headlines that makes me think that's the case when it comes to the growing number of childfree households.

It's a "fertility crisis" declares one Canadian paper, which presents readers this post-apocalyptic scneario:
The sound of children's chattering voices, once common, will be rarely heard.
Baby-making may come to be regarded no longer as the private prerogative of consenting adults, and more an act of national duty.
A national duty to procreate? Scary stuff!
[LINK]

It's a "baby shortage" and it "threatens our future," according to the Observer. The writer explains:
While greater life expectancy and immigration have kept the population growing - Britain's 60 million population will rise by five million over the next 20 years - the lack of babies at one end, and growth of retirees at the other, creates a top-heavy, disproportionately ageing population and a serious economic challenge.
[LINK]

The answer to this so-called crises is always the same: Women Must Have Babies! Never does anyone seem to say, if women don't continue to procreate at the "replacement rate" (which, frankly, makes us sound like a bunch of caged breeders, perhaps performing our national duty), how must society itself change to address the problem? In other words, why not focus on solutions rather than challenges. Or how about actually addressing some of the policies that make women not want to have kids rather than saying we should just suck it up and start popping them out even if we lose our jobs, can't afford daycare, have no time for our spouses or friends anymore, and feel undervalued by society for doing so? Why not an article on how the childfree pay for public schools but never actually use that resource, in essence putting more into society than they take out?

But, of course, headlines like: "Grown-Ups in Abundance" or "How Childfree Couples Make the World a Better Place" don't sell fear and therefore newspapers.

OK, end of rant. Word to all the childfree out there: When you see fear-mongering headlines like the above, write a letter to the editor pointing out the bias and showing some of the upsides of a decline in fertility rates.

Preserving your photographic legacy

This article in the Australian Euroa-Gazette makes a very important point:
Pictorial records of single or childless people are often wasted because there is no direct descendent to treasure them.

Not that those with children are guaranteed to have someone looking after their legacy, but for the childfree who wish to preserve their legacy, this may be something to consider.
[LINK]

Living Kid Free on NPR's Marketplace

BNOB was thrilled to be included in Alex Cohen's fascinating report on the economics of not having kids.

There's a new American dream. The picket fence is still there. So is the hope of a nice career. But, you might not find the 2.5 kids playing in the backyard. Alex Cohen reports.

[LINK]

Childfree cavement, fighting Baptists, Destiny's Childfree and other fun stuff

Was a recently discovered frozen stone age man a childless outcast? Scientists seem to think so. Seems like the childfree have been getting the short shrift for longer than I thought!

A Stone Age man found frozen in the Alps some 5,300 years after he was murdered under mysterious circumstances may have been a childless social outcast, a new study showed.
Italian anthropologist Franco Rollo studied fragments of the DNA belonging to Oetzi, as the mummy has come to be known, and found two typical mutations common among men with reduced sperm mobility, the museum that stores the "iceman" said.
[LINK]

A fellow Southern Baptist is taking issue with Albert Mohler's stance that married couples who choose not to have kids are sinning.

A bitter response was written for ethicsdaily.com by Miguel De La Torre, a fellow Southern Baptist minister, alumnus of Mohler's seminary and father of two who teaches social ethics at the Methodists' Iliff School of Theology in Denver.

He protested that whether Mohler realizes it or not, his "full-quiver" theology is "white-supremacy code language advocating for the increase of white babies." Presumably, his fury stemmed from the fact that Mohler's Southern Baptist Convention is predominantly white. But Mohler urged childbearing upon all right-thinking Christians, not just whites or Southern Baptists.

De La Torre also thought Mohler's viewpoint would forbid birth control, since if children are a blessing then "the best that humans can do is have as many children as possible." However, Mohler didn't oppose contraception, nor did he define the number of children a Bible-based couple should have.

Those not familiar with the "full-quiver" theology, may want to check out this Web site.
[LINK]

Pop star Beyonce Knowles is beyond baby's. In fact, she's what we at BNOB refer to as a "cool aunt."

And although she's Crazy In Love with rapper Jay-Z, Bey admits she's not ready to be a mum just yet.

"I love my nephew so much and I'm like, I would love to have a baby but then I keep him for a day and I'm like: 'Oh no!' I've got a long way to go."

Sounds like Destiny's Child should be renamed Destiny's Childfree
[LINK]

Newsday article providing advice to the childfree

Newsday writer Pat Burson's latest article provides great advice to the childfree, including some from yours truly:

If you choose to be child-free, expect a lot of questions - and, in some cases, hostility - from family members, friends and strangers who don't understand or embrace your decision, the experts say.

"There's so little in our culture that supports people who choose not the have kids," says Jennifer L. Shawne, a San Francisco-based writer and author of "Baby Not on Board: A Celebration of Life Without Kids," (Chronicle Books, $14.95). Her book includes pages of humorous illustrations depicting life with and without kids and cheeky advice, ranging from coping with OPCs (other people's children) to finding appropriate "child substitutes." (She and her husband have two cats.)"

People who have made this decision need to pat themselves on the back for making a very tough decision," says Shawne, 32, who is married and child-free. "Be open about it and celebrate."

[LINK]