Childfree by Choice

Some childfrees have to put up with people who are less than well-meaning. One woman who merely mentioned the word 'childfree' in a general introductory thread was immediately called a bitch for it; a childfree man received an email from a stranger who expressed the desire to tear him limb from limb. Neither of these people had insulted or made derogatory remarks about children or parents; all they said was that they didn't have, or plan, kids of their own. Such deep, unreasonable hatred towards the childfree is frightening and difficult to fathom; and what kind of example are they setting for their own kids, these people who feel that hostility and threats are a justifiable reaction to someone else's lifestyle choice?

I think some of this hostility stems from these peoples' presumption that children are a necessity - not just for themselves, but for everyone else. People ask themselves and their partners 'When shall we have kids?' or 'How many kids should we have?' but so many don't ask themselves 'Why do I want kids?' or 'Am I the right sort of person to be a parent?' Why don't people ask this? Bringing up a child is one of the most difficult and important things anyone can ever undertake, so why do so many people do it unthinkingly and even automatically? Our world is suffering from overpopulation. Our society is suffering from child abuse, child pornography, child neglect and children who commit crimes seemingly unthinkable in such young people. It's also suffering from children who themselves give birth to children - 12-year-olds having babies they are not equipped financially to support. So many people have children they can't afford; more than 12 million children are below the poverty line in the US, and more than 360,000 families live in poverty in the UK. Why is this happening? Why aren't we making more efforts to stop it?

I would like to see a world where every child is a wanted child; where every person feels able to stop and question whether they are able to support the huge cost of a child in financial, emotional and physical terms, whether they have the patience, the moral fortitude, the understanding, the compassion to bring up a child, educate it, teach it about ethics and responsibilities, keep it from harming itself and interfering with others, and bring it up to be a responsible, productive, happy citizen. I want to see a world where people who haven't made the definite decision that they want a child practice birth control and don't end up bringing unplanned and unwanted babies into the world (and where more research is put into providing safe, effective birth control that doesn't fail). Every unwanted child not born today increases the world's chances of a better tomorrow.

Answers to Common Questions Posed to the Childfree

'So do you hate children?'

It's amazing how many people accuse childfrees of being 'child-haters'. I don't hate children. I have friends and relations who are parents and I'm fond of their children, and I find kids quite fun to talk to and play with when they're reasonably intelligent.

I do get very annoyed at having to put up with badly-behaved, loud, undisciplined, destructive, rude children - but I blame the parents who don't discipline them, rather than the children themselves. I get annoyed at badly-behaved, loud, undisciplined, destructive, rude adults too, probably more so.

'It's natural to want children - denying that urge is unnatural'.

If we stuck to what's 'natural', most females in the Western world would be almost continually pregnant - which was their fate in previous centuries when reliable birth control was unavailable. Most of the people who use this line wouldn't want to bear twelve or fifteen children over the course of their lives. We humans are denying nature in so many ways, and have prevented many of nature's own ways of keeping the population of our species down with our increased health, longer lifespans, modern medical abilities, prevention of disease, etc. Isn't it then up to us, rather than nature, to keep our population at a reasonable level?

'You're being selfish'.

I've been thinking a lot about this, since the last time I was accused of being selfish. I've always thought that the definition of 'selfish' is a person who deprives others of something in order to have that something themselves. Precisely what am I depriving other people of by being childfree? Surely nobody believes that there are poor little disembodied unborn children floating about, desperate to get into my fallow uterus?

Another definition of selfish is 'putting one's own best interests before those of other people'. First piece of news: this is something everyone does, all the time; it's a competitive society where we vie against other people. What do you think job interviews are all about? Second piece of news: parents do this too, only instead of it being 'me first', it's 'me and my kids first'. I think the point of this 'selfishness' argument is that parents are unselfish because they put their children's interests before their own. We all know that not all parents do this, and certainly not all the time. What about the man who shoplifted batteries and hid them under his child's jacket, then when confronted by the store detective blamed the child for the crime and hit him? What about the father who refuses to let his kids have any kind of sugar, but happily scarfs down $25 worth of lollies every week, in front of the kids? That's quite aside from the people who abuse their own kids... real paragons of selflessness.

Let's face it, everyone has both selfish and noble instincts, parents and childfrees alike. Just because I choose not to make the sacrifices that parenthood involves, that doesn't mean I'm selfish. By the account of most parents, I'm missing out on a lot of joy and fulfilment by not having children - I think it would be more selfish of me to grab for that happiness without proper consideration to the consequences. And many of the reasons people trot out to persuade me to have kids are what I consider selfish - 'to carry on the family name', 'to have a baby of your own, that belongs wholly to you and loves you unconditionally', 'to look after you in old age', etc.

Many of the childfree people I've met online work in thankless and underpaid professions like nursing and teaching; others care for elderly parents or disabled relatives and spouses and give up a lot to do so. Many of them volunteer large amounts of time or money to aid causes they care about. One regular poster to alt.support.childfree offers a scholarship for disadvantaged kids to learn music. And of course, there are those of us who merely live our lives quietly without harming or interfering with other people. What's selfish about that?

'If everyone did what you're doing, the human race would become extinct!'

Everyone is not doing what I'm doing, nor is everyone likely to. And with the earth's population increasing at a rate of 250,000 per day (or three per second), I doubt that the human race is in much danger of dying out through lack of procreation. The majority of people still have kids, so what's the big deal with some of us not having them?

'We should all have at least three children so that there will be enough people paying taxes to pay for our old age pensions'.

So each of your three children has to have three children, and those 9 grandchildren have to have 3 kids each, and so on - by which time the world is hopelessly overcrowded, natural resources of oil and coal have been completely drained, quality of life is extremely poor, arable land is scarce and famine is rampant. Don't you care that your great-grandchildren enjoy a quality of life at least as good as the one you enjoy? By contrast, childfree people are in an excellent financial position to plan and invest for their old age, so they won't have to make claims on the public purse.

'If we don't keep increasing the population, the economy will slow down and everyone will be out of work!'

Yes, probably. Fewer consumers means fewer jobs and a slower economy. But it will have to slow down eventually anyway, because we are running out of stuff to consume. We are running out of coal, gas, oil, arable land and even producing a strain on clean water - check the Milennium State of the World Indicators to see just how quickly this is happening. We can't keep on endlessly producing more consumers when in the future there will be nothing less for them to consume. We can face this problem gradually now, or leave it for some decades years for the grandchildren of today's children to cope with, but it will happen.

'You're going to end up a lonely old person with no-one to visit you and look after you'.

Talk to anyone who works in a nursing home and sees many of the elderly people there dress up every weekend and wait for family visits that never come, and you'll quickly discover that having children is absolutely no guarantee you won't be lonely in old age.

'You just aren't good enough (brave enough, mature enough) to aspire to the noble and holy calling of parenthood'.

Maybe. But from the number of children in this society who are tortured, abandoned, neglected, raped, abused and generally mistreated by their parents, I'd say a good many people who do have kids aren't 'good enough' either. The mere ability and desire to give birth (or father a child) doesn't constitute moral superiority, holiness or 'goodness'.

'You're not a real woman (or really grown-up) until you've had children'.

Go jump. This is ridiculous and purely subjective. I might as well say that you're not a real woman if you haven't been to university, drunk yourself legless, had sex in a car, been chatted up by a tram conducter, read 'The Female Eunuch' or handwashed your boyfriend's socks. Just because I have the equipment doesn't mean I have to use it in order to be a real (or 'fulfilled') woman.

'What if your parents had been childfree?'

Well, I wouldn't be here, would I? That doesn't matter. The world would not stop turning. It doesn't fill me with terror to know that if my parents had been childfree I wouldn't exist - I'm not that egotistical!

'You were a kid yourself once, you know'.

Well, duh. But I don't understand how this is supposed to prove I'm wrong. In fact, if anything, it makes me feel that I'm making the right decision. I did not enjoy being a kid and had to put up with a lot of shit from other kids. Knowing that a child of mine would probably inherit some of the personality traits that those kids picked on, as well as my timidity in the face of verbal abuse, would mean I'd be condemning a child to a childhood of misery. No thanks.

'You'll change your mind'.

Do you know how many times I get told that? Do you know how patronising and arrogant a statement that is? Let's turn the tables for just a second, shall we? 'Do you want kids? Yes? Well, you'll change your mind.' See? Irritating, isn't it?

This statement is incredibly annoying, and anyone who makes it just isn't thinking. We hear it all the time, even from people who know absolutely nothing about our lives or circumstances, even from people we've only just met. Yes, there are some people who change their minds and decide they want kids further down the track. There are also those who remain happily childfree throughout their lives. I don't know whether I will change my mind or not. I can't see the future. But I can't see any reason why I would change my mind, and people who tell me I will just make me want to dig my heels in and remain childfree forever. There may be those who remained childfree and now regret not having kids (I haven't met any myself) but I would certainly rather regret not having had kids than resent having had them.

'If you saw the way my sweet little baby looks at me, it would change your mind in a second!'

You know, it's awfully strange that so many parents assume that no matter how many cute widdle kiddies a childfree person has seen, their cute widdle kiddie will be the one to instantly transform the childfree person into someone just aching to have a sweet widdle kiddie all of their own. And while I'm prepared to admit that I have seen some babies and thought 'Ahh, isn't that cute and sweet and innocent!', it still doesn't make me want one of my own.

'How could anyone possibly not want children?'

This is such a silly question. It's like asking how people can not want to buy a dog, or live in America, or work at McDonalds, or eat popcorn, or wear green. People are different. Different people have different needs, wants, and lifestyles.

The childfrees I've met online have a wide range of reasons. Some people dislike kids and don't want them around. Others feel that they wouldn't be good parents and would make themselves and any kids they had miserable. There are those who work with kids and feel that's enough kid-input for them, and those who were forced to bring up younger brothers and sisters and feel they've done enough parenting. Some are already bringing up the kids of partners and feel no need for their own kids. Some don't want to pass on genetic flaws. Some are childfree for environmental reasons. There are many reasons for not wanting to have children, and no two of us are exactly alike in our reasoning.

My own reasons for not wanting children include, but are not confined to, the following:

• I need quiet and solitude, and I can't see myself getting much of that with kids around. I don't mean that I just like quiet - I mean that I need it, or I get grumpy and snappy.
• We like our lifestyle the way it is. Certainly there are a few things we'd like to change, but generally we're happy. Having kids would constitute a huge change to that lifestyle, with no hope of ever going back to the old ways if we wanted to - you can't send a baby back where it came from!
• I can be very impatient, which wouldn't be good in a parent. And I'm emotional enough now, and far too much of a worrier, so I'd probably be too overprotective of any children I had.
• A family genetic disorder means that there is a chance we might have a disabled child. Having seen what that does to families, we don't want to take the risk.
• World population is growing fast and contributing to the destruction of the natural environment and the rapid disappearance of natural resources. We're doing the environment a favour by not reproducing. Nothing I do - recycling, buying second-hand, using biodegradable, whatever - nothing like that will bring anything like the environmental benefits of simply not bringing another human being into this over-consuming Western world.
• My partner and I don't want children. It's that simple. We look inside ourselves, search our feelings, and find no desire to procreate whatsoever. So we don't do it. End of story.

Please note: These words aren't intended as criticism of anyone who has children, planned or unplanned (and I say that because one of my visitors evidently took them as such). I'm not sitting in judgement here. This is an explanation of some of the general thoughts that led me to believe that being childfree was a relevant and valid lifestyle path, and an explanation of my own vision of a happier world. I doubt that it'll ever come about, but I can dream, can't I? I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't have children. I'm not advocating compulsory sterility or a one-child policy. I'm not saying that people with children are bad, or that the decision to have a baby is bad - bringing up a child is probably the most important and difficult thing anyone can do, and I admire those who dedicate themselves to this task in an intelligent, sensible, considerate, compassionate manner. All I want to see is a world where every child born is wanted and loved and cared for properly, and where the decision not to have children is accepted as normal and respected as a valid lifestyle choice. I'd like to think such a world is possible.