it's a shame their PARENTS didn't think that way...
Posted on 08/09/2013 7:54:11 PM PDT by Morgana
I miscarried my first child less than a month ago, so I see babies or lack of babies everywhere.
When the latest issue of TIME arrived at my home (it was free, okay, shut up) with the words “THE CHILDFREE LIFE” emblazoned across the cover, I just sort of rolled my eyes. “When having it all means not having children,” read the sub-head. I looked at the cover photo of a young, relaxed couple lounging on the beach. The woman wore giant sunglasses and a little Mona Lisa smile that I guess is supposed to communicate her disdain for her uterus and her utter satisfaction with her size-4, cellulite-free, vacation-filled life.
Cover Photo Lady has lots of company: the American birth rate has literally never been lower in our recorded history. That includes the Great Depression, when people were too busy being Greatly Depressed to have babies. TIME tells us that the birth rate declined 9% between 2007 and 2011, which apparently is like whoa.
In other words, more and more American women are looking at the motherhood and saying, “You know what? No.” And after exploring the many reasons why women might decide not to procreate (and it’s usually looked at as a woman’s decision, not so much a man’s), TIME‘s Lauren Sandler decides that this is a pretty cool decision.
So what are the reasons? Unfortunately, they are painfully obvious and, in my openly biased opinion, tiresome. “Our lives are so great already.” “My mom had 16 kids and she was always tired and her life sucked.” “I wanna do what I wanna do.” “I’m afraid I would be such a devoted and awesome parent that everything else would suffer.” Et cetera.
But in some of the women interviewed for the article, there are – surprise, surprise! – hints of regret. Take Leah Clouse, a 27-year-old Knoxille, Tenn. woman who keeps a “baby box” in the closet “with a pink tutu she once bought for an imaginary infant girl.” Her explanation is that the box is “indulgent of a life I have to grieve. If we decided to have children, we’d have to grieve the life we currently have.”
And what life do they currently have? Leah “commits her time to working on her own creative projects and starting up a bakery.” Her husband writes a blog and works in customer service at a credit card-processing company. Ahem. Ahem hem.
Does anyone else feel like one day Leah and Paul might find the grief for the family they never had far outweighs their grief over blogging and baking?
Hey, it may sound nuts to me to give up the most creative project of all – baby-making – to write blogs and bake, but then that’s me. Who am I to judge? I am one of those rare pro-lifers who doesn’t believe in forcibly impregnating women with the seed of country music singers and Republican senators and replacing all their highfalutin’ books with Bibles and recipes. I know most of you are totally into that, but hey, not me.
Look: if you don’t want to have a kid, no one is forcing you to. But even when I try extremely hard to be objective, I can’t help but think some of the reasons couples give for avoiding parenthood are deeply, deeply lame.
And guess what! This means I’m dumb. At least that’s what Satoshi Kanazawa at the London School of Economics says. He has “begun to present scholarship asserting that the more intelligent women are, the less likely they are to become mothers.” But don’t hang your heads yet, Mom: many of his peers have found fault with those findings. (And may I add, again: surprise, surprise.)
Lest you start thinking the childfree life is all fun and games, it’s not. It gets lonely, especially in your 30s and 40s. I can attest to that, although I am not childfree by choice but because I was kind of a late bloomer when it comes to settling down and having kids. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a wife and mother ’til I was in my late 20s. I spent most of that decade in creative pursuits and having both a lot of fun and a lot of decidedly not-fun. I’m sure my conversion, at age 28, to Catholicism from Semi-Pagan Agnostic Pantheist Hotmess-ism was instrumental in my recognition of my own desire for children.
In any case, at nearly 34 and no children yet, I can tell you it is lonely. It’s hard to find friends who can hang out, and when they can hang out, it’s usually at their place with their kids. Even if you love kids, maybe especially if you love kids, that can be hard after a while.
But the childfree-by-choice have chosen their fate. They don’t want kids. So it’s hard for me to shed a tear for their loneliness. After all, that annoying idea that children are a blessing is as old as time. It’s biblical, in fact. So, when you deny something that’s pretty natural, you may have to – and I say this with gentleness and love - get an app that blocks your friends’ babies from showing up on your Facebook and replaces them with fast cars or kittens or whatever you like. Because apparently that is a thing. And that thing kind of says it all.
See, some women claim they don’t have a maternal instinct. And maybe some truly don’t. But is that always an inborn characteristic – or lack thereof – or is it a result of living in a culture that is increasingly self-obsessed? This is a selfie society. Young people are being taught to share the highlight reel of their lives via Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, and kind of marvel at their own brand. In another time, all that oohing and aaahing would be directed at our children, not at ourselves.
Although Sandler’s article is dismissive of branding childfree-by-choice women “selfish,” I think she may be lacking objectivity. Whether it’s bad or wrong or what, it is most definitely selfish. ”It takes all of you, and I don’t know that I want to give it all,” said Leah Clouse of motherhood. Simple as that.
Furthermore, in my experience, there is far more of an anti-religion, anti-family, counter-cultural attitude to many of these women’s choices than TIME feels the need to explore. “Babies scare me more than anything,” says radical fauxminist Margaret Cho, in a delicious display of the pot calling the kettle scary.
I have known many young women who are self-described feminists, radicals, or liberals who delighted in disdaining babies and children and the desire to have them. In fact, in my 20s, I was one of those. Very deep down, I wanted children even back then. But in the circles I ran with, of actors and artists and filmmakers and punk rockers, wanting a baby was a weakness. It was for mainstreamers and sell-outs and church people. If you did have a baby, it was after getting pregnant by accident and considering abortion.
The article does not touch on how many of the couples interviewed use hormonal birth control to maintain their childfree existence, but I’d guess it’s a lot. I’d imagine there have been tubal ligations and vasectomies, too, and to be honest, the thought of human beings sterilizing themselves like animals irks me, and I don’t care if that makes me a lame church person. And of course, many people who insist on remaining childless have “oopsy-daisy” moments that lead to abortion. In other words, they’re not willing to sacrifice their comfort or convenience for a child, but they have no problem sacrificing a child for their comfort and convenience.
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
Still, if all these people were remaining childfree using a technique such as Natural Family Planning that didn’t end even the teensiest-weensiest human life, I’d probably still be bothered by it. (And, yes, it is okay to feel bothered by something other people do, even while accepting their right to do it.)
I’m all about people finding their own way and choosing their own happiness, but I find it difficult to believe that none of these people are going to wish they’d made a different decision. And that bothers me for them. I read between the lines of Leah Clouse’s interview, I picture her hiding her “baby box” in her closet, and I anticipate pain, regret, and loss. She already describes her feelings as “grief.”
It boils down to this: I’ve met lots of people who regretted not having children, but I have never met a single one who regretted her child.
It’s a great concept, until it’s time to collect your pension.
it's a shame their PARENTS didn't think that way...
Most homosexual couples are “child-free” and I imagine that is a LARGE part of their nearly extinct readership.
And, ooh they asked people in that subculture about their lifestyle and those people ... surprise, surprise ... in general had good things to say about it.
How is this different from a report on heavy metal rockers, or punks, or senior citizens, or children moving in with their parents, or millenials, or ...
Citizens of the US owe two things to their fellow citizens: general respect & gratitude for all of the things that they are provided by their fellow citizens, and being themselves so that they can happily go about doing those things they want to do and giving back as much as they can to their fellow citizens.
If choosing to be childless is "their thing" then I would rather have them freely choose to be childless than bullied or shamed into having children they don't really want.
Whether they are doing it for "good" or "selfish" reasons that is between them and their God.
I can't wait for the issue of TIME where they highlight the lifestyles of people who have kids because all of their friends are having kids or because they have been shamed/guilted into having kids and treat their children accordingly.
How inspiring will that be?
1) Get birth rates below replacement levels
2) Import culturally alien foreigners to pick up the slack
3) Allow balkanized society to fester
4) Collapse the nation
Who needs Time Magazine?
I learned long ago not to disparage blessings from God.
“4) Collapse the nation”
For a plethora of reasons discussed on other threads in FR, this nation is already in a state of collapse, morally, economically and socially. It’s not going to exist to the mid-point of this century.
Americans of childbearing age are choosing not to have kids for a variety of reasons. Mine would be that I wouldn’t want my children being ruled by Marxist tyrants in a drain-circling, morally decrepit mess of a country under rapid occupation by foreign invaders, not to mention increasing persecution of those who choose not to subscribe to the perverted mindset of popular culture. Between my wife and I (we’re a blended family), we put two offspring into the mix... but were we in our 20s, we’d be taking a pass.
I wonder when they'll do a cover story on the Timefree-by-choice.
I’ve wanted children, but not out of wedlock. this requires finding a similar minded woman, as I’m college educated, I’ve looked for similar... unfortunately, the women I’ve met in my life are those described in this article (typical for the liberally educated). one changed her mind... when she was in her mid 40s and reached out (a few years older then me). oh well.
still looking but the pickings are very slim (especially if you stick to some very basic standards)
I’ve considered looking outside the US, as I’ve found the women I’ve met in other countries to be more conservative in general
The apocalypse won't come from global warming, or from asteroids hitting the Earth. It will come from people living in cramped cities, choosing the abundant recreation of the city lifestyle rather than raising kids.
I am becoming more and more of a fan of John B. Calhoun. He was way ahead of his time in seeing how all this will play out. And the left is still spouting "overpopulation" nonsense from the 1960s. Birth control, abortion, gays, large cities, everything that causes the problem. The democrats are blind to the apocalypse, but we shouldn't be, and we need to be explaining this to the country.
No problem. Abdullah and his three wives will pick up the slack. I figure each bearded Imam could produce 30 children. This would easily cover for a least 20 Lena Dunham, Sandra Fluke types. Hey, what could go wrong with this.
It just another propaganda piece by the government using the media as a mouthpiece to curb population control
That pretty much makes the point for NOT having kids now... What you describe is the future of at least part of America, the other part under them Hispanic jackboot. The future for white Christians in this country is bleak.
“It’s a great concept, until it’s time to collect your pension.”
Which may be as good a reason as any to extend the retirement age to 68, vice the current 65.
My (now) wife and I dated for six years prior to marrying in September of 1986. Before we married, I made it clear that I didn't want children.
Lord only knows why, but she married me anyway.
Fortunately, we married young (I was 23 going on 24, she had just turned 22.)
When she told me she was pregnant we'd been married ten years. I was in my second week launching a new business, having quit a full-time job. I called her at work to tell her I'd be late getting home that evening. One of her co-workers answered her phone and told me she was at the doctor's office. I called her on her cellphone to ask if she was ok, hearing "congratulations Mrs. USC, you're pregnant" in the background.
I damn' near passed out. Here I was, having quit a secure job two weeks prior to launch an internet business.
It was a wake up call for me - either make this new business work and be successful, or I was in a lot of trouble with a new mouth to feed on the way.
Almost 17 years and two teenage sons later (15 and 17) I tell you I had absolutely no idea the JOY I denied myself and my wife for the first 10 years of our marriage. Our two sons are a blessing beyond words.
Yes, they are a gift from God, and thankfully he knew what he was doing, making sure I was mature and responsible enough to handle having children before we did. My only "regret" is that we didn't do it sooner, I'd be an empty nester by now at 50. ;-)
“Go away kid, you bother me.”
W.C. Fields
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.