Voluntary childlessness

Childfree is a term that some who do not have nor desire to have children use to describe themselves. An alternative description is "childless by choice".

Etymology and usage

A person who has no desire or plans to have children is called childfree. The term stands in implied contrast to "childless." Since the suffix "-less" indicates some kind of lack; the term childfree has been adopted to differentiate those who choose not to have children from those who desire children but do not have them. Childfree persons assert that their lives are no less complete than the lives of parents.

The history of the word is somewhat unclear; it may have been coined in the 1970s by the National Organization for Non-Parents (now defunct). It achieved wider currency in the 1990s when Leslie Lafayette formed one of the first modern childfree groups, the Childfree Network.

Childfree is sometimes capitalized in regular usage, e.g., "He describes himself as Childfree"; also being frequently abbreviated as "CF".

Motivation

A range of motivations are cited for choosing a childfree lifestyle; individuals may adhere to one or more reason across the range.

===Lack of desire for children===

• Lack of a biological urge to procreate (not necessarily a lack of desire for sex).
• General dislike of the behavior of children.
• Desire to express care-giving urges in other ways such as charity or caring for parents or other relatives.
• Contentment with enjoyment of others' children through being aunts, uncles, educators.
• Dislike of gender roles and social obligations to conform to them.
• Think raising children a poor use of human intellectual capacities.

Personal environment and advancement

• Unwillingness to commit to increased financial responsibility or burden.
• Fear that parenthood, being an irrevocable state, will be disliked.
• Fear that maintaining a certain level of emotional intimacy and physical intimacy with partner will not be possible with the presence of children.
• Perceived or actual incapacity to be a responsible and patient parent.
• Maintaining freedom of personal choice:
  • Unwillingness to commit to reduced free time for leisure, hobbies, friends, second jobs.
  • Ability to change career or city of residence at short notice (spontaneous mobility).
  • Wish not to redesign home to fit a child’s needs and safety (for example, expensive houses, art pieces, and collectables).
  • Fear that childbearing would reduce career advancement.

Physical and health concerns

• A concern that pregnancy and birth can do significant, occasionally permanent, damage to a woman's body; widening of the girth of the belly, the development of stretch marks, stretching and elongating of the vagina, sagging of the breasts and widening of the areolas, the development of spider veins, scarring of a portion of the belly in the event of a Caesarean section, and a general increase in body weight.
• A concern that time limitations or lack of psychological desire may lead to mothers not maintaining the level of personal appearance and condition.
• Fear and revulsion related to the physical condition of pregnancy, the childbirth experience, and post-natal recovery.
• Concern for safety of parent or child:
  • The risk that an existing medical condition, such as diabetes, depression or the development of ectopic pregnancy could result in a dangerous or difficult pregnancy, or difficulty in raising the child.
  • Concern that the child would inherit a hereditary disease.
  • Concern over obsessive-compulsive disorder and attachment theory.
  • Low availability of high quality and affordable childcare.

Belief that it is a generous act not to bring more people into the world

• Belief that one can make a greater contribution to humanity through one's work than through having children.
• The world is full of suffering, and one cannot ensure that any given person will have a good life.
• Concern regarding environmental factors and/or overpopulation.
• Opinion that a career pursuer can never be a good parent, therefore choice over the former so that the child won't suffer for the parent's absence.

Statistics and Research

• A 2003 U.S. Census study found that a record number of women in the United States are childless; 44% of women in the age group 15-44 fit that category.
• The number of these women who are childfree is unknown, but the National Center of Health Statistics confirms that the percentage of American women of childbearing age who define themselves as voluntarily childless (or childfree) rose sharply in the 1990s: from 2.4 percent in 1982 to 4.3 percent in 1990 to 6.6 percent in 1995.
• Caucasian never-married women have childless levels more than twice as high as African American women. Regardless of marital status, Hispanic women had lower levels of childlessness than non-Hispanic women. [2]
• Overall, researchers have observed childfree couples to be more educated, more likely to be employed in professional and management occupations, more likely for both spouses to earn relatively high incomes, live in urban areas, less religious, less traditional gender roles, and less conventional. [3]
• David Foot of the University of Toronto concluded that the female’s education is the most important determinant of fertility. The higher the education, the less likely for her to bear children. [4]
• A statistical survey of the childfree found that common reasons for the choice to be childfree included not wanting to sacrifice privacy/personal space and time for children; having no compelling reason to have children; actively not wanting children around; being perfectly content with pets; and seeing the effects of children on family/friends.

Organizations

• No Kidding!
• The World Childfree Association
• Kidding Aside
• Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

Controversy

Controversy surrounding the childfree state segments into criticism based on socio-political or religious reasons.

The "Selfishness" Issue

Childfree individuals are described as being "selfish" for never having nor wanting children. The idea behind this is that, since raising children is a very important activity (childfree author Virginia Postrel calls it, with at least some irony, "the most important work most people will ever do"), not having children means living a hedonistic, consumption-based lifestyle that makes no contribution to the world, only to the self.

The assumption behind this idea is that the best way to make a meaningful contribution to the world is to have children. For many people this may be true, but some people with special talents choose instead to direct their energy toward improving the world that today's children will inherit.

Many childfree people are active in community volunteerism. Service groups, community theaters, and even youth centers, benefit from the many hours of work given by childfree people. Some childfree relatives assist in providing tuition assistance to nieces and nephews seeking higher education or specialized training in an area of interest or talent (music, swimming, acting, or horseback riding lessons, for example).

Overpopulation

Some of the childfree believe that overpopulation is a serious problem and question the fairness of what they feel amount to subsidies for having children, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (US), free K-12 education paid for by all taxpayers, family medical leave, and other such programs. Others, however, do not believe overpopulation to be a problem in itself; regarding such problems as overcrowding, global warming, and straining food supplies to be problems of public policy and/or technology.

According to Brian Whitaker, writing in the The Guardian on 6 November 2004, "If fertility levels remained unchanged at today's levels, the current world population of 6.4 billion would rise to 44 billion in 2100, 244 billion in 2150 and 1.34 trillion in 2300".

Government and Taxes

Some childfree people regard any governmental or employer-based incentives offered only to parents — such as a per-child income tax deduction, preferential absence planning, employment legislation, or special facilities — as intrinsically discriminatory, arguing for their removal or for their reduction to form a corresponding system of matching incentives for other categories of social relationship. Others observe that not all families are considered equal — that "only babies count." For example, the commitment of caring for sick, disabled, or elderly dependents can yield significant financial and emotional costs and should be subsidized similarly. This commitment often falls most heavily on single or married women, and it is not clear how this multigenerational caregiving contributes to the "feminization of poverty" in the U.S.

The focus on personal acceptance is mirrored in much of the literature surrounding choosing not to reproduce. Many early books were grounded in feminist theory and largely sought to dispel the idea that womanhood and motherhood were necessarily the same thing. Books and articles such as Burkett's The Baby Boon argued that childfree people face not only social discrimination but political discrimination as well.

Medical considerations

There has been a large improvement in contraceptives over the years. Some choosing to be childfree sometimes prefer sterilization, however many have difficulty finding physicians willing to perform sterilizations, especially when they are in their 20's. Some feel patronized about their reproductive choices with the additional suggestion that they will change their mind later in life and should leave this option open. This advice is motivated partly by the doctor's risk of lawsuits from patients who do change their mind.

Religion

There has been a debate within religious groups about whether a childfree lifestyle is something to be condemned. Some religious conservatives have stated that it is a rebellion against God's will. In numerous works, including an Apostolic letter written in 1988, Pope John Paul II has set forth the Catholic understanding of the role of children in family life. [5] The Southern Baptist author R. Albert Mohler, Jr. says, "Couples are not given the option of chosen childlessness in the biblical revelation. To the contrary, we are commanded to receive children with joy as God's gifts, and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." This position reminds web-author Austin Cline of Christian condemnation of homosexuality, gay couples, and gay marriage, particularly when childfree lifestyles are called an "epidemic".[6]. However, there are new churches being formed due to the child free movement. For example, a group called The Cyber-Church of Jesus Christ Childfree, a group of Christians who feel the call to have no descendants by fleshly means, just as Jesus had none.[7]

Political activism

These issues led to many childfree people setting up support networks, either to vent about others or draw strength from the knowledge that they are not alone; groups such as No Kidding! seek to provide social interaction and friendship free from social pressure to have children.

This discontent, though widespread among childfree people, does not translate into a unified political vision. This is largely because childfree people come from all shades of the political spectrum and temper their beliefs accordingly. For example, while many childfree people think of government handouts to parents as "lifestyle subsidies," others accept the need to help out parents but think that their lifestyle should be equally compensated. Meanwhile, other childfree people have been known to express bitterness about the need to fund public schools through general taxation.

There are suggestions of an emergence of political cohesion for example the Australian Childfree Party (ACFP) being proposed in Australia as a childfree political party, promoting the childfree lifestyle as opposed to the family lifestyle [8]. Increasing politicization and media interest has led to the emergence of a second wave of childfree organizations that are openly political in their raisons d'etre, with a number of abortive attempts to mobilize a political pressure group in the U.S.. The first organization to emerge was British, known as Kidding Aside. Despite becoming increasingly vocal and organized, the childfree movement has had little political impact and struggles to have its concerns taken seriously, more frequently treated as little more than as a human interest story.

Books

• The Baby Boon (ISBN 0-7432-4264-5) is a book by Elinor Burkett, published in 2000, which outlines a case against many privileges granted to parents (as opposed to non-parents) at various levels of society.
• Childfree and Sterilized (ISBN 0-304-33747-1) is a book by Annily Campbell, published in 1999, which describes the experiences of adult childfree women seeking sterilization in the UK.
• Maybe One (ISBN 1-86230-004-6) is a book by Bill McKibben, published in 1999, which describes the environmental impact of having children. While the book advocates one-child families, there is an obvious unspoken case for having no children.
• Reconceiving Motherhood: Separating Motherhood from Female Identity (ISBN 0-89862-123-2) is a book published in 1993 by Mardy S. Ireland PhD, a clinical psychologist, which explains why there is so much societal pressure to raise children and proposes new ways of theorizing female identity, beyond that of mother and how it can be viewed as an opportunity.
• The Childless Revolution (ISBN 0-7382-0674-1) is a book by Madelyn Cain, published in 2002, which describes the experiences of childless and childfree women, and their similarities and differences.
• Why Don't You Have Kids? (ISBN 0-8217-4853-X) is a book by Leslie Lafayette, published in 1995, an early treatise on the subject of modern-day childfreedom by the woman who founded one of its first groups, the Childfree Network.
• Without Child: Challenging the stigma of childlessness (ISBN 0-415-92493-6) is a book by Laurie Lisle, published in 1996, which probes some of the myths and the stereotypes that surround non-mothers.
• Childfree and Loving It! (ISBN 1-904132-63-4) is a book by Nicki DeFago, published in 2005, which deals humorously with the comments childfree people get and challenges the stigma attached to the choice to remain CF. First such book written from a UK viewpoint.
• Childfree After Infertility: Moving from Childlessness to a Joyous Life (ISBN 0-595-27438-2) is a book by Heather Wardell, published in 2003, which espouses the embracing of the childfree philosophy by couples who are medically infertile.
• The Chosen Lives of Childfree Men (ISBN 0-89789-598-3) is a book by Patricia Lunneborg, published in 1999. Based on interviews with 30 American and British men, challenges the stereotype that men without children are immature, selfish, and irresponsible. Finds nine main types, including workaholics, lifelong learners, early retirees, stress reducers, and men avoiding the mistakes of their parents. Argues that men should be active participants in childbearing decisions.
• Kindervrij Verklaard (ISBN 0-646-45361-0) is a book by Marije Feddema and Larissa van Berchum, published in 2005. This first-ever book on childfreedom that was published in Dutch, discusses the definition of the term childfreedom, pioneers and history, the taboo and prejudices, advantages and disadvantages, motivations, lifestyle and views on the future, and contraception and sterilization methods.
• Childfree Zone is a book by Susan J. and David Moore, published in 2000. An Australian book that contains the experiences and opinions of over 80 child-free people aged between 22 and 60. It is not an academic study or statistical analysis, but a practical, readable and often amusing discussion of the decision to remain child-free.
• Families of Two: Interviews with Happily Married Couples without children by choice is a book by Laura Carroll, published in 2005. it consists of interviews of over 100-childfree couples that demonstrate and assist in explaining the decreased desire to bring children into the world.

Other media

The Simpsons episode Marge vs. Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens, and Gays presented a scenario where people without children, including Childfree adults, squared off against the families of Springfield with children.

The web comic Buddies In Big Places prominantly features a child free couple, and catalouges a list of reasons in modern society why people might be put off having children.

Childfree slang

There is a growing corpus of slang terminology used by some childfree people, some of it borrowed from other groups or pop culture. The terms are often derogatory in nature, generally focusing on names for parents ("breeder"), unruly children ("crotchdropping"), and lifestyle choices ("baby rabies" as a reference to the strong desire to have a child).

See also

• Birth control
• Sterilization (surgical procedure)
• Voluntary human extinction movement

Antonymous

• Quiverfull

External links

• ChildfreeByChoice.Com
• Child-Free.com - Resources for the Childfree Community
• Kidding Aside - The British Childfree Association