Free Republic

While vapid, childless celebrities like Chelsea Handler disseminate weird propaganda through corporate media to reassure themselves and their peers that their lack of reproduction is somehow an enlightened act of self-fulfillment, objective reality says otherwise. It turns out, researchers have quantified the proportion of childless women whose status was intentional, and the number is extremely low. ... Who are the childless and how many of them wanted children? The closest we can come is a 2010 meta-analysis by the Dutch academic Prof Renske Keiser, which suggested that only 10% of childless women actively chose not to become mothers. That leaves...

The world is ending because we’re running out of people. Or at least, one world—the one where people think babies cause problems. In this bleak dystopia—i.e., Current Year America—only half of women under age 45 have children. But this is only half the story. The other half of the story—the weird half—is they think those numbers are good news. More women avoiding motherhood? That is progress now, dear.

Stories about parental regret might get clicks, but BuzzFeed acting as a PR machine against motherhood might also influence people’s decision to become a parent.As BuzzFeed contemplates its future, the website should reconsider its approach to motherhood. The media outlet is rethinking its news division because it loses money, offering voluntary buyouts. BuzzFeed would likely gain some mom consumers if it changed its tune on motherhood. In April, BuzzFeed ran an article headlined, “Mothers Are Revealing How They Realized They Regret Having Children And How They’re Coping Now, And They’re Such Nuanced And Valid Feelings.” The first mom the article...

Let me put this as William F. Buckley might have said it – as a patriotic conservative, it is your duty to call upon that booty. Last week the census report came out and it is a lights n’ sirens red alert emergency –America’s population grew at the smallest rate since the Great Depression. Down this road to extinction just a few years ahead of us are the morally and culturally exhausted nations of Europe which have not seen their people hitting replacement rate in a generation. The problem is that Americans are not making babies, and we need to...

Pandemic policies at tech companies have created a rift between parents offered more benefits and resentful workers who don’t have children. When the coronavirus closed schools and child care centers and turned American parenthood into a multitasking nightmare, many tech companies rushed to help their employees. They used their comfortable profit margins to extend workers new benefits, including extra time off for parents to help them care for their children. It wasn’t long before employees without children started to ask: What about us? At a recent companywide meeting, Facebook employees repeatedly argued that work policies created in response to Covid-19...

Because Europe’s top political leaders do not have children, they do not know what it means to be a mother or father and therefore have “no reason to worry about the future of the continent,” reported the Gatestone Institute. The institute specifically cited the childless European leaders German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. “Merkel's childless status mirrors German society: 30% of German women have not had children, according to European Union statistics, with the figure rising among...

This was not the headline that the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics gave its recent release of provisional fertility data for 2012. But for the first time, in 2012 Russia’s birth rate actually exceeded that of the United States. This is a significant reversal from the past when the US had a birth rate that was as much as 75% higher than Russia’s. The speed and scale of the convergence is impressive. Since 2008, the Russian birth rate has increased by about 10% while the United States has slumped by about 9%. [snip] Essentially, Russian wages have never been...

Time – The Overpriced News Brochure ($4.99 for 60 pages) - had an intense erotic experience with the cover story in its August 12th issue, "The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children." Please note the choice of words – not childless but childfree, like cancer-free, as if children are a life-threatening disease, which is pretty much the way the contraceptive left views them. The organ of elite opinion begins by telling us that today "one in five American women will end their child-bearing years maternity-free, compared to 1 in 10 in the 1970s." In this and...

My husband and I choose to be childless in Seattle, writes editorial columnist Sharon Pian Chan My husband and I just ended our debate about having children. To breed or not to breed, this was the question... We have decided we have other things to give to the world. We won’t be having kids. We choose to be childless in Seattle. ... Feminism empowered women to talk about motherhood as a pursuit that deserves as much attention as men’s work. In the past 20 years, women have bravely spoken about struggles to conceive, which helped educate a generation about fertility....

Nearly one in five American women in her early 40s is childless, according to a report that shows a striking increase in women who don't have biological children. The trend was much less common in the 1970s, when one in 10 women did not have children by 40 to 44, the age bracket researchers use to designate the end of childbearing years. The report, released Friday by the Pew Research Center, cites social and cultural shifts behind the change, including less pressure to have children, better contraceptive measures and expanded job opportunities for women. (snip) Overall, the report found that...

Laura S. Scott loves her husband. And that, she says, is enough to sustain a marriage. They don't need children. "Two Is Enough" is the name of her book explaining a couple's guide to living childless by choice. "I think I knew very early I didn't want to be a mom," Scott tells me. "I never imagined myself a mom, even as a small child. I never played with dolls. I was 15 when I told my mom, and she suggested things might change with my hormones. Nothing changed." Scott is 47. She's too young to conceive (excuse the pun)...

ANAND, India - Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15 pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape of soft hills. A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere else but are common here. The young mothers of Anand, a place famous for its milk, are pregnant with the children of infertile couples from around the world. The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile couples with local women, cares for...

Carolyn Moynihan | Wednesday, 5 September 2007 Dogs in prams Childless Japanese women push the country's culture of cute too far. It is not unknown for little girls to try and dress the family cat or puppy in baby clothes and wheel it about in a pram. Mostly they don't succeed but the instinct is understandable enough. A live pet is much more interesting than an inanimate doll, having the warmth, cuddliness and cuteness of a real baby, and it makes playing mothers so much more fun. It seems perfectly natural and predictable behaviour. An adult woman trying the...

Most little girls play with dolls when they're young, miming the age-old role for women: marrying and building a family. And, for some, there is a stigma around women who don't want to have children. Old stories and fairy tales paint single women without children poorly -- as spinsters or witches. It seems odd that these stereotypes would continue to live today, suggests Madelyn Cain, author of "The Childless Revolution: What It Means To Be Childless Today." Making The Decision Despite the potential negative reaction from friends and families, many women, such as teacher Samantha Henderson, make the decision to...

Send in the assmonkeys Behold the latest environmentalist fad: going childless Jonathan Kay, National Post Published: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 Last Tuesday, I wrote a column for this space entitled "At a restaurant near you, the war between Daters and Breeders." It was one of those airy, self-indulgent pieces of cultural commentary that otherwise self-important op-ed pundits publish every few months to "show their human side." (See: I eat in restaurants with my kids --just like you!) My basic point was that restaurant diners shouldn't go hard on parents whose kids emit the odd yelp at dinner time. I...

It was time for the "Childfree Landslide News." Christine Fisher leaned forward and announced this in a soft voice that would sound surprisingly strong when it aired as part of her weekly (at least on Mars, she says, where weeks are 13 days) online show, the "Adult Space Child Free Podcast." She had just put in a day at the pharmaceutical company where she works and was home in her Newark apartment, shoes off, with her husband flopped on a sofa reading in the next room and her two cats roaming underfoot. She started the podcast, a medley of commentary,...

No, no, sorry. I don't have any . . ." Why does this always seem to be the first thing I'm asked? It takes my breath away, yet why do I feel the need to apologize for my reply? Looking vague and embarrassed, my questioner glances over my shoulder for someone else to talk to: someone with whom he or she has more in common, someone with children.... Just as some women talk of a visceral urge that propels them to have children, others speak of an equally visceral urge that propels them not to. Laurie, a transplanted southerner who...

PISCATAWAY, New Jersey, JULY 22, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Life without children is a growing social reality for an increasing number of American adults. This is the conclusion of the 2006 edition of "The State of Our Unions" report on marriage, released last week by the National Marriage Project. The project is based at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Up until recently, for most people, the greater part of adult life was spent with young children forming part of the household. A combination of marrying later, less children and longer life expectancy means, however, that a significantly greater part of...

Hey, you moms and dads out there showing off the latest photos of your kids and bragging about their recent achievements. You might not want to be quite so smug: Parents are more depressed than adults without kids. Despite the joys you think parenthood may bring, a study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior reports that having children does not make you happier.

PROVINCETOWN-- Its year-round population declining and its economy sagging like a wet beach bag, Provincetown has a new worry: It's getting old. With its colorful art galleries and Bohemian personalities, Provincetown has long been a mecca for gay travelers. But town officials worry that its population is graying and that it needs younger visitors and their disposable incomes to pump up the local economy. In the last year, the Provincetown tourism office has begun running flashy ads in gay and lesbian magazines that cater to readers under 40, such as Instinct, Genre, Curve, 411 Magazine, and Out Traveler. It has...