Free Republic

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...

The fly-over woman understands her womanhood and motherhood deep in her bones and doesn’t see maleness as a goal to achieve or person to conquer.Adherents of radical feminism are five decades into a powerful campaign that seeks to shape the way American women think. Politics, fashion, Hollywood, academia, and media propagate a singular vision of womanhood, relying on savvy use of optics, messaging, and even make-up. These radical feminists have done a remarkable job of silencing or sidelining their critics. Ironically, whether they know it or not, feminists’ unspoken premise insists men are superior to women and women must become...

Traveling with kids can be fun, crazy and sometimes a little loud and chaotic. Even the most devoted parents occasionally want a few minutes… or hours… or perhaps even days of a peaceful child-free experience. Adults-only destinations and resorts are hardly a new concept, but over the last few years, a “no kids allowed” policy has been spreading beyond resorts to airplanes and, most recently, Viking Cruises. To get a feel for the current state of “no kids allowed,” here’s a list of major airlines, cruise lines and resorts that children aren’t allowed to travel. If you usually travel with...

Oonagh Dalgliesh is the first to admit she feels broody. She is enchanted by the idea of watching a baby grow up, of marvelling at that first crooked smile, those tentative first steps and the fledgling attempts at independence that melt most mothers’ hearts. Even so, she has decided she will never experience the joy of discovering she is pregnant. At 32, Oonagh is certainly of child-bearing age. With a well-paid job as an events manager, she is financially solvent. And for the past year, she has been in a serious relationship with a man who is longing to become...

Women aren’t having kids because of the president – according to one “motherhood clarity” therapist. On May 31, The Washington Post weighed in on the “child-free life” and “Why so many American women are deciding not to have kids.” Inside the piece, columnist Petula Dvorak outlined multiple reasons, including President Trump. Dvorak centered her piece on a recent report by the National Center for Health Statistics that showed a “sinking” U.S. birth rate. In 2017, only “3.8 million babies were born,” she wrote, which was the “lowest number in three decades.” There are “plenty of reasons,” wrote Dvorak, from the...

The speed with which the German population is shrinking seems to be even too much for the statisticians of Destatis, the official German bureau of statistics, who posit that by 2060, with a zero level of net immigration, the German population will have declined to 60.2 million. However, our research team has found out that this number is far too optimistic: in 40 years Germany will have a population of 52.6 million people, a considerable 34% drop from the current 81 million inhabitants, and by the end of the century the native German population, the indigenous people without a migration...

According to government statistics, an increasing number of women from the millennial generation are opting out when it comes to having babies. Instead, it appears they’re finding an alternative more to their liking. Why the trend for young couples becoming “child-free”? And what have they found to fill the void? There’s an important distinction to be made between a “childless” couple that has no control whether or not they hear the pitter patter of little feet in their home, versus others who refer to themselves “child-free.” The latter is an intentional lifestyle choice not to have children. There is a...

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...

One evening when she was 14 years old, Laura Scott was washing dishes in the kitchen with her mother when she decided she didn't want to have a child. At 26, Scott got married and waited for her mind to change. "It never happened," she says. "And I realized I was going to be fine." Now 50, Scott is more than fine: she's fulfilled. And she's not alone. The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest in recorded American history. From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which there's data, the fertility rate declined 9%. A 2010...

A growing movement is pushing for flights with no children on board. A recent survey by a travel fare-comparison site showed that 59 percent of passengers support creating special sections on flights for families. The idea even has its own Facebook page, with 670 members and counting on the "Airlines should have kid-free flights" page. Kristen Wince said she might have been one of those members - before her son was born. "Yes, having been flying with no children, it seems like a good idea," she said. "Flying with children, it seems like a really bad idea."

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)...

Women are waiting longer to have children, and more women than ever are choosing not to have children at all, according to a new Census Bureau report. Twenty percent of women ages 40 to 44 have no children, double the level of 30 years ago, the report said; and women in that age bracket who do have children have fewer than ever — an average of 1.9 children, compared with the median of 3.1 children in 1976. “A lot of women are not having any children,” said Jane Lawler Dye, a Census Bureau researcher who did the report, which looked...

Today's liberalism is completely wrapped up with the notion of self. ... For dramatic proof, go to the streets of a liberal enclave like San Francisco, Seattle or Vermont. There will be plenty of expensive boutiques, antique dealers, health spas, sushi bars and upscale coffee shops. But you won't see very many children. The reason is not that right-wingers have dumped buckets of birth control pills into the San Francisco municipal water supply. The simple fact is that many on the liberal left today just don't want to have children. A 2004 U. S. survey showed that a typical sample...

As a single childless woman, I share the fear of my readers, above, and no amount of financial preparation for a prolonged old age calms me. For sure, my long-term care insurance policy will buy me a home health aide and pay to retrofit my house if I’m able to remain here, or contribute to care in another setting. I have the luxury of savings and a mortgage that will be paid off by the time I’m 70. If I need a geriatric case manager, I’ll probably be able to afford one. I count my blessings. But, having witnessed the...

Her diva demands and well-known love of excess is usually guaranteed to send even the most accommodating celebrity haunts into a frenzy. So staff may be breathing a sigh of relief that pop princess Mariah Carey says she doesn't want to have any kids in the foreseeable future. Perhaps there is just not enough room in the world for two Miss Careys. But in a somewhat bizarre explanation, the singer has claimed that having children would leave her feeling 'violated'. "It's hard to have kids in this world," she told OK! magazine. "I don't think I could properly educate a...

Civilization depends on the health of the traditional family. That sentiment has become a truism among social conservatives, who typically can't explain what they mean by it. Which is why it sounds like right-wing boilerplate to many contemporary ears. The late Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman believed it was true, but he also knew why. In 1947, he wrote a massive book to explain why latter-day Western civilization was now living through the same family crisis that presaged the fall of classical Greece and Rome. His classic "Family and Civilization," which has just been republished in an edited version by...

These days, if Rian Romoli accidentally bumps into a child, he quickly raises his hands above his shoulders. "I don't want to give even the slightest indication that any inadvertent touching occurred," says Mr. Romoli, an economist in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif. Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. "Being male," he explains, "I am guilty until proven innocent." In San Diego, retiree Ralph Castro says he won't allow himself 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...