I Love the Kids in My Life. And I’m Raising None of Them.

The New York Times ^ | Sept. 7, 2024, 5:01 a.m. ET | Glynnis MacNicol

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Recently, a book tour gave me the opportunity to travel around America. Budgets being what they are, I primarily chose cities where I had friends who would happily provide me with places to stay. These were homes, almost without exception, filled with children. I have no children of my own, and this felt like a serendipitous chance to catch up with many of the kids in my life.

In America, there is a persistent, pernicious belief that the only way to be invested in a child’s life is to be a parent — and, for women, to give birth to that child. (Ella and Cole Emhoff, among others, would like a word.) In a country that offers so little support to parents, this often feels like a not-so-covert argument for taking women back to a time when they lacked control over their bodies and their finances.

Recently, the Pew Research Center reported that 64 percent of women under 50 who don’t have children say they “just don’t want to.” This has contributed to another round of hand-wringing about birthrates and childless cat ladies. What the seemingly inexhaustible discussion around this topic leaves out is that many people who say they don’t want to birth or parent children do have children in their lives — other people’s. We rarely account for that, nor do we give full weight to the fulfillment these relationships provide.

Which is not entirely surprising. So often we hear about the annoyance of other people’s children — babies crying on planes, kids fussing at restaurants. Rarely do we talk about the pleasure of these little people, or how transformative it is to have children in your life whom you’re not raising.

[Secret Agent Man]

Every taxpaying man is paying for other womens kids. Especially single moms.

[simpson96]

[Tacrolimus1mg]

When I learned in my teens that I had health problems which made pregnancy lethal for me (I was sterilized at 19), I sunk into a pretty deep depression over it, especially because my first job was at a daycare.

I mourn the fact that I can’t have children and that my financial situation won’t allow my husband and I to adopt or foster - We’re still living with family.

These articles infuriate me. I do all I can for the children in my life because I CAN’T have any - the author is just a self-centered t×atwaffle.

[DoodleBob]

The cats would run away from her…

After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it. Leaving felt less like a risk than a necessity.

What follows is a decadent, joyful, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment.

[lastchance]

Oh you mean like my daughter who is a loving Aunt to her nieces and nephews. They must not know she is a creep.

[lastchance]

Or the children could have been a whole mouthful of serpent’s teeth.

[21twelve]

Thanks for those sayings.

I met a guy that motorcycles all over the place. (I was doing work in Alaska - he had been on the road for some crazy number of miles - from the NE USA).

He said the happiest people he ever met were Africans living in small villages out in the middle of the desert.

[ichabod1]

But kamala is in no way a mother

mother f’er maybe (her favorite epithet)