La Vie Childfree

A colleague passed me this piece by Jessica Handler the My Turn section of  Newsweek earlier this year, “I Won’t Roll the Biological Dice.”  Ms. Handler decided not to have children because she knew she had a 67% chance of passing on an illness that was responsible for her sister’s death. 

Most of the comments from the piece applauded her decision (that’s her on the right) as a responsible one and I agree. She is like so many of the childfree people I have interviewed–they take the decision about parenthood very seriously and make the best decision for them.

A few comments criticized her for being fearful, which I find seriously off the mark. 

Continue reading “Justifying the Choice Not to Have Kids” »

Check  out this research. It is not the first I have read about how childfree can be discriminated in the workplace.  Madelyn Cain deals with it in her book the Childless Revolution, and here some more recent research by UK researcher Dr. Caroline Gatrell. 

She spent six years researching women in the workplace, and explains in the article , “Childless Women vilified by boss’: Why NOT having a family could ruin your career” that “Women who explicitly choose career over kids are often vilified at work and face enormously unjust treatment.”

Childfree women have told me that …

Continue reading “Women: Damned if we do Damned if we Don’t in the Workplace” »

The Huffington Post’s Laura Stepp did a piece about a Guttmacher Institute survey of 1,800 18-29-year-olds, that showed 53 percent of men and 52 percent of women  said that ”if circumstances allowed it, they would love to have a baby right now.”  Two-thirds of those over 25 gave this answer. The study also showed that more than a third of the men and almost half of the women they weren’t using contraception regularly.

One of my questions is — what do “circumstances” mean to them,  e.g., they are married, they are emotionally and financially ready, they are ready to trade in the life they have now for a new one?

Having interviewed hundreds of people from their 20 to 70s on the decision to become parents or not, I’ve found that those that don’t end up secretly regretting their decision to have children are those who …

Continue reading “New Study Says 20-Something Men Want Babies — Now” »

I was just in Zihuatanejo, Mexico for several days. At the local market you see many women running the produce, poultry and meat stalls. There and just walking the streets—all over—you see so many young women who are already mothers, some already with more than one child. 

Now I know this is not an uncommon sight. The culture is different, and more women there get married and begin having babies much earlier than young women here.

But is that so? Lori Bradley’s piece on the Married No Kids site on Bella Online, “Images of Pregnancy are Ubiquitous in Media Today.”  discusses how the barrage of celebrity pregnancies can affect lives, namely the “seemingly sudden embrace of motherhood by very young, unmarried women.” With the influences of celebrities, movie roles like Juno, young women are getting pregnant, and do not necessarily raise the child with its father, but rely on help from their parents or grandparents.

Continue reading “Childfree Celebs Part II: Young Mothers and the Media” »