[turbojenn]

I haven't picked up the new issue yet, but I'll pick it up this weekend, and let you know...

[nickclick]

so what did you all think of the article in the newest issue, "Newborn Free" ?

parents who get uptight about their children hearing swear words in public, janet jackson's nipple, or seeing lingerie displays at victoria's secret need to chill. it's an adult's world and parents, as adults, need to prepare their children, as future adults, to make good choices. and tell them what's for adults and what's for children.

actually, i'm psyched about become a parent in the future. i'm afraid that future generations will be overpopulated with uptight pansy aliens that have been shielded from the real world. i want to raise a smart freethinking adult (like me!).

[missladyj]

thanks turbo

[doodlebug]

I don't think parenting is necessarily any more or less exhausting or difficult than other occupations - and yeah, I did my share of childcare duties when I was younger, both with a roommate (who frequently depended me - with a definite air of entitlement - to pick up the slack), and also when I ran a 24-hour dayhome (which I did for 2 years, and it was the final nail in the motherhood coffin for me).

I think working two jobs is exhausting, and when women have to work a paid job and then do the "second shift" at home, that's exhausting.

BUT parents aren't the only ones who put in that kind of time and effort, either. (AND I also think women need to keep demanding equal participation from male partners, b/c they're still not getting it.) Many childless people are looking after disabled/sick/elderly relatives and friends, and/or work more than one job, and/or do community service work, and/or do a thousand other things.

On the other hand, some people are full-time parents and homemakers - that's their only job. How is being a full-time homemaker inherently more exhausting or difficult than having to work three or four jobs to pay the rent and buy groceries? I don't buy that. At. All.

On the other issue...if parents and childfrees are becoming polarized, I think it's just a microcosm of larger society....we are all becoming more and more polarized - politically, socially, economically....I wish I knew how it could be fixed.

ETA: all of this reminds me of a discussion I had with a colleague a number of years ago....it was when I was still coasting on the idea that "women with families" (i.e.: women with children) were somehow different or more special, or more entitled, than "other" women. And my colleague said, "Well, don't you have a family?" And you know, at the time, I was dealing with a father who had Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, who was a mental child by then, and who couldn't be left alone for a half hour lest he set fire to the house. And while there are all kinds of daycare subsidies for families with children, at the time, you could only get 2 hours per month of subsidized home care for situations like my father's. Plus, being a small community, no outside day facilities existed for people with my father's condition. Yet I had somehow formed this concept that my version of "family" and "family responsibilities" were somehow "less than" those of women whose families contained children....

[turbojenn]

missladyj - you are definitely entitled to feel insulted by that parent...that was rude no matter how you slice it. And really, teaching is an *exhausting* job...I bet most parents would struggle to maintain control of a classroom for a full day, let alone teach lessons while maintaining a proper learning environment. I'll give you a (((((round of applause)))) for doing the work you do...I couldn't do it, cod knows.

Syb, I think you're right, that the parenting and non-parenting worlds are getting further apart, and that it makes things challenging sometimes to bridge that gap. As my friends here in the city are starting to have kids, we're definitely seeing them less, but still trying to find occasions to hang out with them both with child and without, and I'm not opposed to the odd night of babysitting...I'm just glad they've got the parenting responsibility and not me.

And you're totally right, there is waaaay too much pressure on parents and families these days - from the glares in the grocery store, to having the latest in learning tools for your child...when did things suddenly get so complicated, and why?

Another reason I'm glad to be childfree: Not passing along my extensive list of food allergies to my children, and then having to police food intakes to make sure they don't get sick...honestly, sometimes its enough just to scrape together dinner for myself.

[missladyj]

just because I don't have kids doesn't mean that those with kids and can assume that I don't have alot going on . The assumption that can't have a fully, busy and tiring day and that is what upset me about the comment from this coworker.

while my responsibilities don't include child care and all of the entrapments of childcare that doesn't mean that I can't feel tired. I am just so sick of hearing people with kids complaining all the time about how hard it is . I am sure it is but they made the decision to reproduce and yes I understand that we live in a world that doesn't truly support famlies.

I get it thanks for asking .

I will not tolerate being subtly insulted ( because that is how the comment felt to me) because I don't have kids. That is bullshit.

[pollystyrene]

I'm the same way, luci. You wouldn't like me when I'm sleep or food deprived. It's ugly.

[lucizoe]

ha, uplate, I see your Park Slope and raise you Brooklyn Heights If you're still in New York, there's a thread in Friends & Family...not too active, but there if you need the locals.

So, I thought of another reason this morning. My very short temper. I would probably hurt a child. Case in point: I woke up at 5:20 this morning, having been made aware by a really weird dream involving my period, that I had gotten my period, with raging, crying, whimpering, ready to puke cramps. I didn't want to wake the mister so I went downstairs to make raspberry tea and huddle on the couch with the heating pad.

Two-and-a-half hours later, the cramps finally subside enough to sleep when his alarm clock starts blaring. The thing is violently loud, right next to his head, and he's not waking up. Meanwhile, I'm getting angrier and more frustrated (the bedroom is up in the loft, which is open, so the alarm clock is in the same room as the couch), so I storm up the stairs all banshee she-devil like and start beating the shit out of the alarm clock and snapping at Mr.Luci to wake the hell up.

Then I started crying. I was tired and crampy and hungry and cranky and I felt immediately guilty for yelling at him when he was freaking sleeping. I am bad meanie wife and he is a lovely saint of a man.

But see? Sleep-deprived Luci + crying baby = felony. Bad.

ETA - I agree with every sybarite just said. I never do that. Word.

[sybarite]

It seems to me that the childfree and those with kids are becoming increasingly polarised from each other, to what might be an unprecedented degree. I think one reason those without children are becoming so annoyed at kids and their parents is that society is becoming more child-centric, which means that kids have less behavioural boundaries than they used to. I also think parents (in couples and single) are under more pressure than before, not only to earn enough but to be 'good' parents. Somehow parenting itself became accountable to others.

One reason I don't want kids is because, in the US and UK at least, now is an odious time to be a parent. All that pressure, on everything from stroller choice to TV watching to food to schools and more. I admire and applaud parents who can resist that pressure and trust to their own instincts and experience.

A result of the stress of that pressure, however, seems to be a lack of discipline/ boundary enforcing, leading to badly behaved kids in public places, which in turn reinforces the childfree's perceptions of childrearing as difficult and small children as noisy and annoying.

I don't want kids, partly because I don't want to face all that pressure along with sleepless nights and loss of freedom and agency in my own life. I do like some kids though, and lately I admire the nice kids I've met all the more, because, to be honest, I wouldn't want to be growing up now. Too confusing and too much entitlement culture.

I guess what concerns me is that the childfree and the child-rearing are getting very far away from each other ideologically, which makes sense when one half is perceived to be getting benefits (greater flexibility at work for example) that the others lose out on simply through not having kids. My bottom line though is that most people who are parents (excluding the wealthy, with staff and other help) probably have it considerably harder than I do. While bratty kids annoy the hell out of me, lately I'm trying hard to see the big picture.

/leaves soapbox...

[uplate6674]

Oh yes, the strollers-as-battering rams. When I lived in Park Slope I called them Yuppie Attack Strollers.

[missladyj]

faire - I agree with number 3 on your list. How the hell anyone can afford childcare and gradschool is beyond me!


the number one reason I love being childfree is hubby and I can screw whenever and where ever we want!


about the parking spaces. I have never seen parking especially designated for pregnant women or for parents. but I wouldn't have a problem with it at all. I was in a parking lot at whole foods and was parked next to a woman who was getting her kids bucked into the car. She apologized to me because she saw me waiting to get to my car. I told her no problem take your time. How could I get pissed off about a mom doing what is right for her kids? It is a lot to handle sometimes and I don't mind having some patience for that.



I was at an extra long day at work ( parent teacher conferences for four hours after teaching for a full day of school) and I was saying how tired I was only to be told by a mom that I just don't know what it is to be tired. So because I haven't popped one out I can't be tired? I told her just because I don't have kids doesn't mean I can't be tired.

It really pissed me off. I have a lot shit going on I work full time, teach excersize classes partime, grad school, tutoring, swim team practice, etc. It takes alot of nerve to think that just because you have kids that you are so much more entitled to being busy and exhausted. Besides which having kids is a choice, you choose to get pregnant and I choose not to so don't fucking tell me that I just don't understand how exhausting it is. screw you!


I also find the stupid stories about the precocious things your boring children said, did, as tiresome things and only for the sake of polietness I endure them. You do not need to repeat the lame ass story because I wasn't in the room and you have nothing else to talk about. These stories are not interesting to me and no I don't want to look your power point presentation of your ugly baby.

I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN !

there I said it

thank you

rant over.

[katiebelle2882]

you live in NYC just like me luci and i TOTALLY know what you mean about being bullied by strollers! I have a friend who pointed the whole thing out to be to begin with. He was like just bc they procreated doesnt mean they always have the right of way, or the right to hit other people in an attemp to move the giant thing around.

also, I am thinking about heading back to academia too. except going and getting the old Phd in political science with a concentration in international humanitarian/womens issues. thinking about doing the masters in europe since THEIR educational system doesnt require you to pay loads of money to take the GRE and a GRE class. but i digress.


i hate the idea that if you dont like kids you are exactly like a racist/bigot. they are in NO WAY similar. ugh.

[lucizoe]

Well, to be fair, any blog is obsessive navel-gazing, isn't it? And the internet is the internet is the internet, so if you choose to post chunks of your life online, you need to accept you're opening yourself up to unsolicited opinions and potential mocking. After all, mocking is fun. I skimmed it KB, and I get what you're saying. I had to stop after the picture caption listing the three really pretentious names.

I haven't heard from a couple I used to know back in East Nowhere for months and then boom! Damn ugly baby pictures in my inbox. Seriously ugly. I know newborns are beautiful to their parents, but damn. Wrinkly, red, splotchy, dry patches, drooling. This infant looks like an old naked sick chihuahua. And why? They stopped talking to me before I even moved, too wrapped up in the pregnancy to answer phone calls or emails, or even to actually show when we managed to connect and make concrete plans. Incredibly rude behavior on their part and now I'm supposed to what? Coo over this grizzly thing they've graced me with? I'm confused by this turn of events to be honest. Am I allowed back in their lives now as a repository for baby pictures and stories?

Blah.

My personal reasons for not having kids, in no particular order -

1. Big old fuck you to the fundies
2. Serious mental illness; no wish to inflict that on a child
3. Money
4. Environmental concerns
5. Pressure on mothers in my culture enormous. I'm already fucked by just being a woman and I'd rather not invite further scrutiny and unrealistic expectations and scorn.
6. Other parents.
7. Time - Thus far I have spent much of my life starting and stopping, starting and stopping, starting and stopping. I don't want to give that freedom over to anyone.
8. I don't much care for kids at certain ages. I have no experience with them and no attraction to them and being around them makes me feel uncomfortable and self-conscious. I guess we could call this part of the social anxiety disorder.

At Thanksgiving at my mother-in-law's house I had this distinct feeling of being very closely watched around the little kids, like I was being tested as a woman based on how I behaved with them. Maybe I was being paranoid, but this is a very kid-focused family filled with SAHMs and once or twice comments were made about our future reproductive plans, and I felt very uncomfortable. I mean, I do not know these people well at all and they feel it's appropriate to discuss my body and health and - in a way - our sex life? It's weird and presumptuous and not a little bit rude.

I was wondering about this idea that people who don't like dealing with kids are akin to racists and sexists and that really makes me bristle. To my mind there is a tremendous difference between not liking (or downright hating) someone because of their secondary sexual characteristics or skin color, and not liking being around people who are developmentally and socially incapable of acceptable behavior in certain situations. I guess I'm just trying to say I could give a crap if other people want to have kids, but it would be nice if people would keep them away from places at which they do not belong, and not act all shocked and put-out that some women might not be as enamored of kids as others.

I'm currently contemplating ditching theater and going back to a more academic path, namely women's studies. A tiny part of me wants to be the voice of dissent in those discussions which invariably make Women's Issues synonymous with Mother's Issues. While the latter are obviously important for many reasons which have been discussed to death, and the two necessarily overlap, it really chaps my ass that in general they are not viewed as separate.

I have to say I am really fucking sick and tired of being physically bullied by people with those enormo-strollers. They're not battering rams, people! Whatever happened to those folding umbrella strollers? Are they not safe anymore? Stupid yuppie neighborhood.

I'm hangry and starting to foam. Must eat something and calm down.

[doodlebug]

Heh. I have an entire website devoted to my decorating projects and pictures of my cats. Speaking of obsessive navel-gazing! I'm thinking of switching over to a blog format, actually.

humanist, I agree - it's always shocking to learn new aspects of these things...I think what really shocks me, though, is that our governments here in Canada have let it go on so long...it's only because of people like Debbie Palmer going to the women's movement and to the media - and she's spent years and years trying to bring attention to Bountiful - that any investigations are starting to happen at all.

[katiebelle2882]

these people are snooty on top of everything else though. I just think it shows you really need something to do with your time. its one thing to email pics out, alot of my cousins do, but its another to show an extreme amount of overinvolvment in your kids life to the point of telling him birthing stories about when he was born on his "due date anniversary". i just see it as so painfully cheesy. apparently, alot of other people on the email list do as well bc i have gotten a few random emails about it.

[turbojenn]

I dunno, I don't think there's anything wrong/silly/indulgent with blogging about your child...if your role is primary caregiver, and that's what's happening in your life - then its no different than any other blog in my mind. Blogging is a pretty navel-gazing affair, but if you're sharing the blog with your family and parents, I think its an easy way to stay in touch, post pictures of the tot as he grows up...I think its kind of nice. I wish my SIL had a blog or somewhere that I could see piccies and hear about my neice and nephie, since I only see them at Christmas, and they grow so much between the times we see them.

I don't really see a family blog as anything different than all my single friends jabbering on about their lives via blogs and live journals...or on bust, for instance.

[katiebelle2882]

i am a mean person. I got an email from my cousin about her going to see santa with her kid and in her email she included the link to her friends blog which is all about......her one son jack. yes thats right, this woman blogs about her single and only child (from as far as i can tell). she celebrates his "due date" anniversary which should not be confused with his actual birthday.

SO LAME. So lame in fact that i must include it here for my favorite women's reading pleasure if you have a moment.

http://littlemanjack.blogspot.com/

[pollystyrene]

This site has a nice list of benefits of remaining childfree.

[faerietails]

Yeah, that list wasn't in any particular order. But come to think of it, I think I've always thought of being childfree in global terms, even when I was a kid myself. I remember being little and watching a special on 20/20 about the kids in Romanian orphanages and just being horrified. It was cemented pretty early on in my life that if I ever had kids, they would be adopted. Actually, after watching that special, I'd decided that if I ever adopted kids, they'd be from a Romanian orphanage. Everything I ever read about those places gives me nightmares. Then you read about children in Africa and India and China and the problems being caused by consumption of global resources--and really, just about the way this world is generally going to shit--and I couldn't in good conscience bring a kid into that.

But really, I just don't want kids. If my brother or sister died and left me their hypothetical children, then hell yeah I'd step up and do it. Outside of that scenario, though, I just can't see myself with children. I feel 100% the same way as you when you say that you feel there are so many more important things to do. And I have other interests in how I'd like to spend my discretionary income (like animal shelters)!

total subject change...I know it's a fictional tv show, but have any of you seen "Big Love?" All that stuff doodle wrote about the fundamentalists reminds me of the bad guys on the show (fundamentalists who live on a fundie compound). In one episode both the dad and one of his wives tells Bill Paxton to slap around their daughter a little bit when she talked back because she was too "strong-willed." She's a total bitch on the show, and I'll admit there are times I'd like to smack her myself, but it still makes me shudder to think that that's the advice parents would give to keep their daughter in her subservient place!

[humanist77]

That's horrifying, doodle! Again, it's not that I've never been exposed to this way of life, but to be reminded of it is like learning about it for the first time.

Faerie, I love all your reasons so far! And I agree, that overall, the most important reason for not reproducing is overpopulation. But that's just me thinking on a global scale. The second one, pertaining to global issues, is definitely that there are millions of kids in orphanages waiting to be adopted. It really breaks my heart. If there were EVER the tiniest, nano-possibility of me changing my mind, I would only adopt. There is 100% zero possibility of me ever having my own. Anyway, thinking personally, I think the most important reason is that I feel I have so much more important things to do, for myself, others, and the rest of the world (what though, I have not figured out yet) than to raise children.

I'll keep track of the list : ) Soon enough I will hurl up a wealth of my own reasons~