NO KIDDING!

Get Ready for the Revolt of the 'Child-Free', Who Say it is Time to End Preferential Treatment of Parents in the Workplace, in Public Policy, and Even in How we see Each Other.

By Scot Lehigh
May 21, 2000

For years they've glowered as colleagues have come to work late, left early, or begged off on weekend or holiday assignments because of their children.

They've gritted their teeth as companies have offered increasingly generous benefits for co-workers with children but done little for them.

They've grimaced as oblivious parents have let unruly little terrors run wild through restaurants and museums, or lugged fussing newborns into the quiet sanctity of the movies.

And they've groaned as politicians and companies have engaged in a schmaltzy pedo-pander to pitch policies or products.

Now, aided by the Internet and a cogent new book that seems destined to become their bible, they are starting to fight back.

It's the revolt of the "child-free," coming soon to a workplace or neighborhood - Boston now has its own No Kidding! chapter - near you.

The tension between parents and nonparents has become palpable enough that in March, ABC-TV's "20/20" devoted a segment to the growing sense of grievance nursed by those without children. And recent episodes of "The Drew Carey Show" and "Ally McBeal" have sounded the same theme.

Still more backlash than genuine movement, the child-free, as those who have chosen not to have children call themselves, have as their manifesto "The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless." Elinor Burkett's new book contends that both government and corporate policies heap benefits on those with children while slighting those without.

Burkett, a former history professor and Miami Herald reporter, sees a demographic double standard at play, for though there is a baby boomlet underway in America, a significant part of the population - as much as 20 percent of female baby boomers, she says - are childless by choice.

But while politicians pander to parents, they ignore those who have opted off the procreation path, she says.

"In recent years, the United States has thrown itself into a family frenzy, offering tax credits, workplace entitlements, and other benefits to parents," Burkett says. For an old liberal like herself, she says, the inequity is doubly bothersome because so much of the benefit of Clinton-era "family-friendly" policy goes not to the needy but to well-to-do middle-class families.

In her book, she offers the example of a suburban Boston couple with a six-digit income who can nevertheless claim a $1,000 yearly tax credit ($500 for each child), a $960 tax credit for child care, and a $1,500 tax credit because one daughter is in college.

"It makes me and other childless people feel as though we are being asked to subsidize the child-rearing of already comfortable people," Burkett said in an interview.

In the workplace, companies that offer subsidized child care, pregnancy and parenting leave, or other aid or special treatment for those with children are conferring benefits on parents in a way that offends the child-free, she says.

"We now have companies that provide benefits packages to parents that are worth five, ten, even $15,000 more than those designed for nonparents, making a mockery of the concept of equal compensation," she avers.

One example she cites is Marriott Corp., which offers more generous subsidies for family health care plans than for single plans and subsidizes child care to the tune of $5,000 per child.

"So if Joe Smith and I do the same job, but he has two kids in day care and a medical plan that covers his whole family, his compensation is probably worth about $13,000 more than mine," says Burkett, who calls for tax and workplace policies that are more nearly child-neutral.

That means targeting government tax subsidies or benefits to those who truly need them and ensuring that workplace benefits for parents are matched by benefits for the child-free. Burkett suggests a fixed sum that employees can allocate among benefits they choose, from childcare to health insurance to 401(k) plans.

One corporate role model, Burkett says, should be Eastman Kodak, which not only has a flexible benefits plan but has transformed maternity or paternity leave into "personal unique opportunity leave." Child-free employees can apply for that leave to pursue interest of their own, from travel to education to volunteering, she writes.

Burkett's call for child neutrality in the workplace is forcefully seconded by Scott Wenzel, a federal systems designer and activist in the movement.

"One thing we see over and over is that parents either formally or informally have leeway to take time off from the workplace to attend to the needs of their children, whereas people without children who have pressing personal issues they need to address may not have the same latitude," Wenzel says.

He would prefer to see parenthood removed altogether as a consideration from the workplace. Whether someone has a child, he says, should have no more weight with a boss than if he or she owns a boat. But absent that, Wenzel says, "If a subsidy is made for one subset of the workplace, something else should be done for the people who cannot take advantage of that benefit."

That kind of talk is distressing indeed to parenting groups.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, chairman of the National Parenting Association, says the childless should realize they too have an interest in the next generation.

"Children are 100 percent of the future and we are all stakeholders in their future because they are the folks who will be paying our Social Security," Hewlett says. She goes even further: "If you are a childless adult you are kind of a free rider on the effort of raising children."

Which, in turn, is just the kind of rhetoric that makes the child-free fairly bristle with indignation. "There is a dramatic sanctimoniousness about having children," says Ilene Bilenky, a Boston psychiatric nurse and freelance copy editor. "I don't think anybody really says, `We had better have children because the Social Security system is tottering.' "

To Bilenky and others without children, a change in societal attitude is long overdue. She's especially exasperated with suggestions that people who choose not to have children have somehow made a selfish decision. To her, it's the other way around.

"The reason I hear from people who want kids are selfish: `I want somebody to carry on the name,' `I want someone to call me Mommy,' or the classic, `I want someone to take care of me when I'm old,' " Bilenky says.

"There is just an underlying assumption that for women, if you don't get married and have children, it is because you weren't able to," says Jan VanDenBerg, a Somerville real estate developer. "Or that you are this shrew who doesn't want to give to other people. It is so ridiculous."

Still others would just like a child-saturated culture to grow up a bit. inding a social milieu where conversation extends beyond babies, tots, and toddlers is the reason Jerry Steinberg started No Kidding! in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1984. He had no idea how many shared his views until 1995, when No Kidding! went online.

"For the first 11 or 12 years, it was Vancouver standing alone," Steinberg says. "Then we got a Web site, and people discovered us and it has just been phenomenal."

His organization now claims 45 chapters in Canada and the United States. Most, like the one in Boston, host regular social events.

"It is so we can get together with people . . . where you don't have to listen to diaper stories and breast-feeding stories and my school has this problem, my minivan has that problem," says Lori Copeland, a Boston paralegal.

If it's the Internet that has helped the child-free find one another, cyberspace has also given them a place to express their frustrations. At Brats, a Web site that bills itself as "a place for you to vent," and on Alt.Support.Childfree Moderated pages, the child-free regularly do just that. The postings there range from mild peeves to vitriolic rants.

The need to acquire, or preserve, a little child-free societal space is one constant of the complaints from those without kids. If restaurants can have smoking and nonsmoking, why not children and nonchildren sections? After all, is there anyone who wouldn't rather sit next to the US Olympic Chain-Smoking Team than to a leather-lunged little hellion who screams at a glass-shattering pitch throughout dinner?

Yet Burkett says nothing in her book has aroused as much ire as the notion of child-free sections of restaurants and child-free hours at supermarkets or health clubs.

"People get furious at the suggestion," she says. "It just seems to be such an easy and noncontroversial compromise."

Not to the National Parenting Association's Hewlett, who believes it is the nonparents, not the parents, who should strive to be more understanding.

"If you went through the effort of imagination to put yourself in the place of those parents who go out to eat once in a blue moon . . . I think maybe you would try a little harder to be accommodating," she says.

If the child-free were not, they would quickly realize this country is nowhere near as family friendly as they think, Hewlett maintains. And it is true that other cultures are more accommodating, either in offering more ample social policies or in acquiescing to an even greater level of public brattiness.

In Europe, most countries make much more generous provisions for child care, offer universal health care, and maintain free or nearly free universities, says Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University.

"So compared to Europe, we are light-years behind in terms of our support services," Wolff says.

Wenzel and Burkett remain unmoved, noting that those countries also pay taxes far in excess of what is politically palatable here. Instead of pointing to Europe, Wenzel says, parents would do better to look to US family and fiscal traditions.

"We need to remember," he says, "that the costs of raising children are the obligations of the people who chose to bear the children: the parents."