{"id":908,"date":"2013-08-07T22:33:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T22:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/the-child-free-a-very-rambly-post.html"},"modified":"2013-08-07T22:33:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T22:33:00","slug":"the-child-free-a-very-rambly-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/the-child-free-a-very-rambly-post.html","title":{"rendered":"The child-free: a very rambly post"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Ugh \u2014 even that term is an irritant to me.\u00a0 We use the suffix \u201c-free\u201d when we promote the lack of something as a positive:\u00a0 fat-free, sugar-free, interest-free, debt-free.\u00a0 The \u201c-less\u201d suffix is fairly neutral:\u00a0 yes, there\u2019s homeless and jobless, but there\u2019s also effortless, for instance.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

People who promote the term \u201cchild-free\u201d ultimately show, not their claimed plea of being neutral about the fact of not having children, but their opinion that children are bad and that it is positive to not have children.<\/p>\n

And somehow it seems like lately I\u2019ve been running into multiple articles.\u00a0 There\u2019s Time\u2019s article on The Childfree Life<\/a> (link goes to a commentary on the article; the article itself is mostly behind a paywall).\u00a0 A facebook friend \u201cshared\u201d a link to this from a facebook page about \u201cGINKs\u201d (Green Intentions, no kids \u2014 here\u2019s their Twitter page<\/a>) \u2014 full of criticism of \u201cbreeders.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And the thing is:\u00a0 kids are a lot of work.\u00a0 Some moms are just born to be moms, and it comes naturally to them, and their kids are easy to mother anyway.\u00a0 Some moms aren\u2019t \u2014 and either become moms because, well, they had sex, and these things happen, or because of a belief that marrying and parenting are a natural part of adulthood.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

If we leave that behind \u2014 if, as a culture, the child-free, children are a nuisance mindset becomes the majority way of thinking, what then?\u00a0 In a world in which to have children is \u201cjust another lifestyle choice\u201d I imagine that\u00a0two frequent motivations for starting a family \u2014 \u00a0\u201cfear of missing out\u201d and \u201chaving children is a natural part of being married and being an adult\u201d \u2014 would fall by the wayside, heavily outweighted by the greater freedom, both in terms of finances and free time, the childless life provides.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The stats I cited from What to Expect When No One\u2019s Expecting<\/a> included the different birthrates for highly educated (1.6 TFR) vs. uneducated (2.5 TFR w\/o a high school diploma, 1.9 for high school graduates).\u00a0 Look, I\u2019m not a eugenicist, but what does happen when the rich stop having children and the poor pick up the slack?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Or maybe the increasing percentage of childless women (from 10% to 20% from the 1970s to 2010) will level off, once the part of the population that truly dislikes kids but in the past couldn\u2019t avoid parenting is accounted for?<\/p>\n

In any case,\u00a0it\u2019s another example of my prior statement:\u00a0 there\u2019s nothing magical about 2.0 (or 2.1) TFR and a stable population.\u00a0 Are we headed the way of German and Japan (or prevented only by the inflow of immigrants, who may or may not be educated enough to keep our economy strong, and may not necessarily care about providing for the native-born elderly)?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ugh \u2014 even that term is an irritant to me.\u00a0 We use the suffix \u201c-free\u201d when we promote the lack of something as a positive:\u00a0 fat-free, sugar-free, interest-free, debt-free.\u00a0 The \u201c-less\u201d suffix is fairly neutral:\u00a0 yes, there\u2019s homeless and jobless, but there\u2019s also effortless, for instance.\u00a0 People who promote the term \u201cchild-free\u201d ultimately show, not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe child-free: a very rambly post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ugh -- even that term is an irritant to me.  We use the suffix "-free" when we promote the lack of something as a positive:  fat-free,\" \/>\n<meta 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