Families of Two: the childfree a decade later

I learned of a great new organization called Jantaloans. It enables poor families to invest in their children’s education through microloans and scholarships for their primary, secondary, and vocational education. 

Research tells us that the more education women have, the fewer children they have.  With education they learn they have choices in life, especially around one of the most important decisions they will make-parenthood. They have more power to choose how many children they want to have and when, and can learn that not having children is an alternative choice. Education opens the door to taking control of their reproductive lives.

This could happen for Daizimani. She is 11 years old, and lives in Assam, India.  Daizimani wants to be the first in her family to complete high school and become an engineer someday.

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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. 

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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 …

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