Journalist Kate Spicer:'Any woman who says she's happy to be childless is a liar or a fool'

[astridmyrna]

Not so long ago women without children, like me, were pitied. But now the world has caught on to the fact that, on the surface at least, we don't have such a hard life

Comments

[beoweasel]

[kitanabychoice]

I love this gif, just wanna say. *g*

[beoweasel]

This guy is like the best Joker Cosplayer I have ever seen. o-o

Too bad it's no longer accurate. D:

[world_dancer]

This is true, and yet, when you look at the list of reasons people have children -- carrying on the family name, someone to take care of me when I'm old, the desire that I should be unconditionally loved, feeling the urge to take the required "next step" etc -- they're all generally selfish reasons. (Not that there aren't unselfish reasons, but you only have to read this article to see how many of them the writer uses.)

Whereas childless by choice people generally have reasons -- I wouldn't be a good role model/caregiver due to XYZ trauma in my past, I don't have the time or money to properly take care of a kid, I just am uninterested in children and a child deserves to be cared for, I don't want to contribute to global overpopulation ...etc -- which are generally unselfish and community oriented. Not that there aren't selfish reasons like "I want to spend all of my money on me/I want all of my mate's attention/I want to focus on my career," but in general those aren't the high points of why it doesn't suit them to be parents.

[ebay313]

Not that there aren't selfish reasons like "I want to spend all of my money on me/I want all of my mate's attention/I want to focus on my career," but in general those aren't the high points of why it doesn't suit them to be parents.

In my experience those often are the first/main reasons given when people talk about not wanting kids. "I don't want to have to pay for kids", "I don't want to deal with crying babies/kids", "I want the free time of not having kids" et cetera.

For the most part I think people make the decision to or not to have kids based on what they get in their life out of it. Which isn't really a bad thing. Having kids because you feel you have an obligation to and not because you want kids is probably not the best motivation given how much time, energy and work having kids takes.
I think it's kind of silly to try to pain either choice as more or less selfish.

[elialshadowpine]

I'd suppose it depends on what circles you travel in. I have a LOT of friends who are survivors, or who have disabilities of one type or another. For them (and myself), the primary reasons are knowing that they would be horrible parents, and not wanting to pass on the family genetics. And for a lot of people with disabilities, "dealing with crying babies" isn't necessarily a selfish thing, but a spoons thing -- while not a baby, I have had to be awake on a two hour clock to formula feed rescue kittens, and that just fucked my pain levels to hell and gone because of the sleep interruption.

Which is sorta the problem with talking about the people you know -- because you will get VERY different responses from different groups of people, and if you think (not that I think you think this, but the author of the piece seems to) that the people around you are representative of, well, everyone... it's just not tru.

[skellington1]

I think it's usually both -- at least, for me, it's "I don't want to take care of a kid, so not having one is doing what's best for me (selfish?) and what's best for the non-existant kid (responsible)."

I think part of the oddity is that people often argue as if selfishness = lack of responsibility. That's not at all the case, here.

[poetic_pixie_13]

DAT GIF THO