Posted on 02/28/2006 1:23:15 AM PST by beaversmom
Fascinating research suggests that as many as one in five thirtysomething British women is planning a child-free future.
When Jemma North was eight years old she had an epiphany. 'At school, someone's mum was pregnant. All the other little girls were really excited, but all I could think was, "You go through all that and all you have at the end of it is a baby?" I decided then that I would never have children.'
Of course, Jemma's pronouncement was dismissed, much as if she'd announced a plan to be a circus clown. But today, aged 32, married and surrounded by peers who are starting families, she is as adamant about her choice as ever. Yet everyone from family to complete strangers is constantly telling her: 'You'll change your mind.' If they do take her seriously, they warn her: 'You'll regret it.' It infuriates her.
'I don't want children, my husband doesn't want them and we're happy as we are,' she insists. 'The only thing that makes me unhappy is people questioning my decision all the time.'
In our society few objects attract greater pity than the childless woman. She is, we assume, old, unfulfilled, shallow, emotionally damaged, out of touch with the greatest truths of the universe. Almost daily, headlines warn about thirtysomething career women risking heartbreak by delaying pregnancy. Couples spend thousands of pounds to endure the physical and mental ordeal of IVF.
Yet for Jemma, who works for an engineering firm in Northampton, such a vision had no power to frighten. 'I am more put off by the image of being a mother,' she tells me. 'I'm not saying mothers are stupid, because, of course, a lot are far more intelligent than me, but that was my early impression. It seemed to be the thing you did if you had no other ambition.'
Jemma is far from alone. According to the Office of National Statistics, one in five British women in their thirties has decided not to have children. And it may be that a number of these have had less choice in the matter than they thought. Geneticists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge have demonstrated in mice that mutations on a certain gene can cause mothers to neglect their offspring. The same gene also exists in humans.
But whatever the social or genetic forces that play upon us, becoming a mother is still seen as a defining moment. Magazines are full of celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow gushing about how her Oscar means nothing compared to the delights of changing Apple's nappy. In contrast, rare are the voices of women such as the actress Helen Mirren, who has admitted: 'I didn't have that desire to be a mother and I don't think a lot of women do. A lot are pressured into it and they're miserable.' And whenever such comments are voiced, they are usually drowned out by a clamour of disapproval and disbelief.
'Oh, I am fed up of having to justify myself on this subject!' explodes Nicki Defago, a 39-year-old married and childfree (to use her preferred jargon) broadcast journalist. She is the author of Childfree and Loving It!, a book written after she discovered Amazon offered more than 1,000 tomes about what children eat but none about the advantages of childlessness.
'When you say you don't want children, you get the same reaction you'd have got 20 years ago if you said you were gay,' Nicki continues. 'I imagine it's a bit like you must feel if you don't go to church in America. A big section of society is appalled at the notion that there are ladies who don't want to have a baby, and quite a lot of people aren't judgemental but still just can't get it.'
Until I started researching this article, I confess, I fell firmly in the latter camp. Aware of the devastation children would wreak on my carefree life, I nonetheless always hoped to have them. So fundamental was this desire that I was sceptical of women who claimed they didn't want children. As far as I was concerned, they were just trying to put a brave face on the fact that they were unable to conceive, or had never found the right man, or had been bludgeoned by their partner into agreeing not to have them.
Nicki doesn't see it that way. 'You get a far better reception if you tell people you tried and couldn't have children, than if you tell them you don't want them,' she corrects me. But why are people who, for example, are supportive of gay rights, unable to get their heads round the idea that not everyone wants to breed?
Nicki thinks it is because the issue of children 'goes so deeply. A high percentage of us now think there's no God and if you add to that there's no need to reproduce then what on earth is it all for? Choosing not to have children gets to the heart of all those big issues.'
Existential questions apart, much of the debate seems to be fuelled by a baser jealousy. However much they love their children, most parents still yearn for aspects of their old lives.
To see a childless friend enjoying the orderliness, extra cash and spontaneity they have lost, with no apparent sense of 'missing out', can be horribly undermining. Recently the 53-year-old model Marie Helvin explained that her youthful looks were down to a life of no children and, therefore, no stress - a comment that sent a visceral pang through every mother slathering Touche Eclat on her eyebags.
'I know one father of small children who's always saying things like, "Ooh, it's not fair, you are going on holiday next week, we have to go in the school holidays,"' says Jemma North. 'He doesn't seem to appreciate that it's not a question of fairness, that I made a decision to live like this.'
For Regan Forrest, 30, a museums exhibit organiser from Leicester, the downside of children starts with conception. 'I'm uncomfortable with the physical changes of pregnancy and labour,' she admits. 'In my twenties I had body image issues. I've learnt to put up with that but the idea of putting your body through an unknown process is completely terrifying. The turning-point came at a work dinner when a colleague started going on about how his wife had disembowelled herself during labour,' she recalls.
'My partner's a doctor and the obstetric part of his training completely repulsed him. I'd never want him to be repulsed by me.'Equally daunting was the prospect of combining her career with childcare. 'I like to give my career 100 per cent. I don't think I could do the at-home mum thing.'
To parents, such misgivings may seem narcissistic and defeatist. But, Regan retorts, 'I'm demonstrating a degree of self-awareness. I may be selfish but at least I'm not going to let my selfishness affect another person. Anyway, what could be more selfish than propagating your genes? People say that on a biological level that is what we are here to do, but as a species we have transcended our biology. We don't live in caves any more and we don't need to breed.'
Like all women I spoke to, Regan is unconvinced by the arguments in favour of parenthood - the almost transcendent love you feel for children, the joy of watching them develop. 'Maybe women like us are mentally deficient,' says Regan. 'But we're so lucky to be born at this point in history. In the past, I'm sure, women felt like us, but they didn't have a choice.'
The polarity between the two camps could not be sharper. When I told friends who are mothers, or hope to be, about this article, they repeatedly said that - while intellectually respecting the position of the childless - emotionally they found it completely alien. Similarly, child-free women are politely disbelieving when they listen to friends describe a yearning for babies that is almost like a physical ache.
'I'd love to be sympathetic when I hear about women breaking their hearts trying to get IVF, but I can't. It's the opposite of what I feel,' says Anne-Marie Greenslade, 28, a mental-health worker from Warrington, Cheshire. 'I must look so callous when they're telling me, but I can't help it. I simply can't imagine being in their position.'
And there are compelling statistics to back up Anne-Marie's decision. Surveys show that people who choose not to have children (as opposed to those who desperately want them, but can't) tend to have better marriages, better finances and are no more likely to be unhappy in old age than parents.
Alison Townley, 55, a civil servant from Glasgow, toyed with the idea of becoming a mother in her twenties because it was what society expected of her, but felt unable to take the plunge. Today she has no regrets. 'The anguish I was warned about simply isn't there, which surprised me but in a wonderful way. My husband and I revel in our freedom and we resent implications that our life somehow has no purpose. When people have children they seem to give up on their own aspirations and pass the buck on to the next generation. I love the idea that I can still achieve my potential, rather than foisting all my hopes on some other sap.'
"When people say, "I can't be a good parent" what I hear is "I'm too lazy to put the time in to make myself a good parent.""
"Are you suggesting that MaDuce has a mental disorder? I wasn't.
I wasn't either, I don't even know her."
Ahhhh what a minute folks ... I'm a 41 year old guy.
I gotta put this rumor to rest quick!
MaDuce refers the one of John Brownings greatest contributions to the USA .. the .50 cal. BMG machine gun.
Well, at least they're honest. When one of these women does have children, they end up in day care and summer camp. When I see these families on weekends it so obvious the adults can't stand to do family things and the kids act out, screaming for attention.
"A high percentage of us now think there's no God and if you add to that there's no need to reproduce then what on earth is it all for? Choosing not to have children gets to the heart of all those big issues.'"
I'm not sure how high the percentage is, but its than line of logic that leads rock stars and the rich to commit suicide.
They realize that, following this logic and their conviction in the lack of a God, that beyond there being no purpose to procreation, there is even less behind eating, sleeping, consuming, fornicating, and then waking up again. Seems the thing to do after a while is to end the waking part.
Hey, people who don't want children are free to go down that path. I'm not going to force them one way or the other. But it's going to have a significant effect on society in the coming decades, with an ageing population and an increasing Muslim demographic.
One of God's first commandments, which He gave to Adam and Eve, was to be fruitful and multiply. Right now we're seeing less of that in Christian Europe, while the Muslims are breeding at a much higher rate.
Yeah, and I bet they don't turn down OUR kids when OUR kids are the ones wiping up their butts in the nursing homes because they don't have anyone left in the world to take care of them. In case they haven't figured it out all the folks their age will still be their age when they all get old.
Plus, if you don't have kids who's gonna sign you in to the old folks home?
LMAO
Yeah, but they lose a few to attrition as suicide bombers.
Muslim mother: "I remember Abdul when he was just an infant! *sigh* They blow up so fast...."
That is so BAD and so SAD! but I chuckled anyway.
Ahhhh what a minute folks ... I'm a 41 year old guy. I gotta put this rumor to rest quick!
Sorry, I knew I should have put a question mark there>
"Well, if you don't want that "God stuff" in the conversation, you must not mind if your spouse commits adultery, because the same God that said "thou shall not" said "be fruitful and multiply"."
Aw come-on, as soon as I start seeing GOD thrown around to justify this and that ... your arguments begin to break down. Its like saying the Great Pumpkin wants it.
There is nothing wrong with kids learning about religion ... it gives them a set of core values to build off of ... far better than them having nothing to believe in. But don't use GOD in your arguments as if everyone knows He exists, as if He could be sited like a news story from AP or Fox News.
I'll never forget about the time my 2nd step-father had a run in with a bunch of Jehovah Witnesses when I was 14 or so. He was in WWII and was a scout in a patrol that came upon the Buchenwald death camp. He was there for some time involved in forcing the local German folks to work cleaning up the camp and burying the bodies. He was telling these Witnesses about it in a loud voice with a far off look in his eyes almost in tears and shaking. "... IF YOU EVER SAW THE BODIES, THE PITS AND SMELT THE SMELLS OF THAT DAMN HELL HOLE ... YOU'D KNOW RIGHT THERE AND THEN THAT THERE IS NO GOD!!!" he yelled at them and they just about ran off. I'll take his word for it over the pie-eyed evangelicals.
So ... everytime I hear GOD mentioned to justify a point of view ... I know you've lost the argument. Just like the savages saying allah told me!!!
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