There is an interesting new e-magazine out there for guys: The Good Men Project.  The editors describe what they are about: “We suppose we are difficult magazine to categorize, and that’s exactly how we like it. We’re not interested in…

…telling men how they should go about living their lives, nor are we intent on promoting a certain “image” of masculinity. We’re interested instead in creating a community where men (and the women who love us) can talk openly and honestly about their lives.”

One great sign in my book, is they have a childfree guys column, written by Ted Cox.  He interviewed me for his article, “Childless by Choice: My Parents Made Me Do It.”

I talk about what I learned from childfree guys as a result of interviewing couples for Families of Two.  While I primarily was interviewing childfree couples about their married lives, I learned lots about their backgrounds, and reasons for choosing not to have children. Many guys talked about their childhoods, and how in one way or another they saw their fathers struggle to provide for their families, and how they decided they did not want this in their adult lives.

While I did not set out to specifically study the motives of childfree men, I did want to hear from men, because up until that point there was very little if anything out there on childfree men.

In interviewing men then to today, I continue to observe this and other trends that were worth mentioning (which I discuss in Families of Two) and worthy of further study.

In looking at childless by choice research from the last decade as part of developing my next book, I see that childfree men continue to be understudied. So I applaud Ted and the Good Men Project for creating a place childfree men can go, and making it a priority to deepen the discussion about the childfree lives of men.

Childfree guys out there and those who know them, what else have you observed about how the backgrounds of men who do not want kids?