The Childfree Life

[CrossCuT]

Times magazine recently published an article titled The Childfree Life - Having it All Without Having Children. It discusses a new trend seen where women are choosing to spend their child bearing years free of children. 

The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest in recorded American history. From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which there's data, the fertility rate declined 9%A 2010 Pew Research report showed that childlessness has risen across all racial and ethnic groups, adding up to about 1 in 5 American women who end their childbearing years maternity-free, compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s.

 

Unfortunately I cant view the entire article because I am not a paying subscriber, but I found a related article written about it titled The 'Childfree' Life: The Latest Version of Having it All. This article gives a commentary on the Times in that women have always been viewed as the caregivers and nurturers of the two parents. Making the decision to go childless brings with it the possibility of being labeled as selfish and non-nurturing. They seemingly equate motherhood to being unsuccessful in professional careers and being unable to fully experience a certain type of life. This author argues that every decision comes with its benefits and losses. Childfree isn't perfection; rather while she is losing out on a bond with a child, she doesn't feel she needs or wants that. Similarly to how she will never experience that bond, mothers may never experience the same type of freedom she has in her childfree life.

 

 

 

No mother has the radical, lifelong freedom that is essential for my happiness. And I will never know the relationship with a child that she has. Losses -- including losses of possibilities -- are inevitable; nobody has it all.

 

The author states that as long as youre happy with your decision, there is no reason to regret anything.

 

 

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Again, mind sets with emphasis on women solely being responsible for child upbringing always leave me with a slight twang of irritation. I think the fathers should be just as involved! Is this the 1950s? Fathers can be nurturing!

I think traditional female stereotypes are still very dominant in society and while I think these articles seek to shed a new light on the subject and offer a new prospective, they are still in a way perpetuating the issue. I dunno. 

I like the idea of strong women! But I dont like the idea of cutting family out.

[hotpink]

Fathers can be nurturing, but lets be real, today most fathers aren't even around at all, if they are they bail before the kids are out of grade school.  Of the two parent families i know the burdan clearly falls on the mom...in the ones where both parents work it's her job that often suffers.  In one where just the father works, the expectations are still for the woman to take care of the entire house and the children and have a father on the weekends....if they aren't filled with "activities".  

 

The only time i don't see this done are if the rolse are completely reversed, with a working mother and stay-at-home dad

[CrossCuT]

Actually, I think today fathers are showing more and more that they CAN be nurturing and present/active with a child's upbringing. Its slowly steering away from the typical roles of the woman being at home, cooking, cleaning, raising children etc while the father works 9-5. We are seeing women with careers and fathers being primary caretakers etc. However there is still a strong notion that things shouldnt be that way. Women make the babies and women need to take care of them. So when a women does NOT choose that for herself, she is selfish and uncaring.

[Basilisa Marie]

I've been pondering over this question for a while now, so this is a little long, but I think it's too much to be encapsulated in a TLDR. 

I think someone said in another thread that we have this obsession with choice in our country.  I think that's pretty accurate.  For a long time, the women's movement focusing on getting women's rights in the workplace - and rightfully so, I should be paid the same as my male counterpart, I should have the same opportunities for advancement as he does, and was (and still is) a whole lot of sexist "good ole boys club" stuff that happens in business.  So the pendulum swung away from "motherhood" as chief concern for women and toward "career".  That was the 80s. Then in the 90s it started to move towards "having it all" - being the best Supermom, because why should you have to give up anything? Then in the 00s people started realizing that "having it all" really wasn't all that realistic for most people, so now in the 10s I think we're seeing another shift.  Now we're seeing more people being stay at home moms (or dads, but mostly moms), and being really proud of it and finding it super fulfilling (just look at the huge mommy blogger community and the recent obsession with homesteading/doing things homemade). But on the other hand, you also have this group of people that are admitting that they want to stay childfree, and I think for the first time there are people saying that that's okay.  Women who make the decision to be childfree are still dealing with the questions of what does it mean to be a woman if you choose to not be a mother (or to delay motherhood a long time).  Because before, you were either a good mom (stay at home), a bad mom (a working woman), or a super mom (both).  Women were usually defined by their relationship to motherhood.  But now, many women are trying to define themselves separate from motherhood, and it's a bit of uncharted territory.  

That uncharted territory stands as an important shift in the priorities of women (and thus, society at large).  I think it means two things - first, that women are starting to believe that children deserve a certain level of care and effort (i.e. supermoms, mommy bloggers, stay at home moms, etc), and second, that it's finally acceptable for women to admit that they don't want to make that commitment.  You see this personified in the pro-choice movement; trying to make every child a "wanted" child.  We have all of these people who grew up in homes that were broken in one way or another, and people who know that they were an accident or a mistake or unwanted, and they have seen the toll parenting took on their own parents. These people feel like they're in some way responsible for their parents' unhappiness.  These people don't want to do that to their own kids, so they decide that they don't want to have kids.  Now, obviously not all childless by choice women decide against children because they were in somehow damaged by the way their parents raised them. But it seems that most women who are childfree by choice do it because they see children as a huge responsibility, and they don't want to put the amount of effort into it that they think would be required to give their kids a happy life. 

But like I said above, this also signals a shift in larger society.  It shows us that society's priorities are no longer the steady job, owning a home, raising 2 kids in suburbia.  Today, society's priorities are all about doing whatever you think will make you happy (again - obsession with choice).  Many women are deciding that having a strong career, traveling, hobbies, art, whatever, are what is going to bring them the most fulfillment, and that kids just aren't in the picture. And for the first time, that's socially acceptable. 

So what does it mean for Catholics? 

I think now, more than ever, we are in need of a deeper theology of womanhood.  The secular world is starting to significantly re-define what it means to be a woman (i.e. separate from motherhood), and so the Church needs her theologians to delve more deeply into womanhood and motherhood.  What we already have isn't good enough, it doesn't adequately speak to the fact that women are seemingly successfully separating womanhood from motherhood, and we need to offer a Catholic alternative to the secular narrative.  We already speak to women who are physical mothers and spiritual mothers, but what about the women who chooses to separate herself from motherhood? What does that mean? I don't have many answers.  The one thing I do know is that society's shift in priorities means that now, especially, the world needs us to show them the priority of Christ. If we make Christ the first priority, answers to questions about womanhood and motherhood will certainly follow. 

[CrossCuT]

I like everything you had to say and I agree. Secular society is attempting to redefine it but what does the church say?

What is a womans role? Is she defined by motherhood or can she be something else and still have a fulfilling life in the eyes of the church?

I think these are all good questions to ask. I find it very exciting that all these things are happening however I dont fully know what moral implications may be in its path.

[Ice_nine]

these people bore the hell out of me.

[4588686]

these people bore the hell out of me.

 

 

Yeah

[God the Father]

The welfare state makes children a very very very poor investment, and ultimately dispensable. The places where this is the most true (i.e. Europe, increasingly the United States) are therefore dispensing with children, often after they've already been created.

[CrossCuT]

these people bore the hell out of me.

 

Who are "these" people. I think its an incredibly interesting topic. I especially like the input Basilisa had. 

[4588686]

It's just overdone, IMO.

[Era Might]

Planning kills culture. Nobody in their right mind would want kids. But that's the great thing about being young, you're too stupid to know it yet. And once you know it, you learn to love it anyway. But in a culture where everything is planned from womb to tomb, the ability to be surprised disappears.

[CrossCuT]

It's just overdone, IMO.

The article itself or the topic as a whole?

[CatherineM]

I never wanted kids. I'm on number 8 or so of other people's kids though. They just seem to find me. Like a cat finding the one person in the room afraid of cats.

[4588686]

The article itself or the topic as a whole?

The topic as a whole. I'm not sure there ever needed to be an article pointing out that life involves trade offs and that this is particularly true in the arena of the family. But if it ever needed to be pointed out surely the first few front page articles that were featured by major national brands sufficed.

[MarysLittleFlower]

Just a thought... I think sometimes when people try to reject motherhood or stay at home motherhood as something bad or "repressive", maybe they don't really see the true value of it. Men and women do have differences. Feminists try to show how they're not worse then men, but they try to do this by rejecting femininity and trying to be like men? isn't that counter productive? I think the best way to show that men and women have dignity is by letting each be themselves...

 

as for not having kids, - I think if someone's vocation is having a family, then it's good for them to have a family. If it's to be consecrated to God in some way and not have a family, then of course they wouldn't have one. But getting married and having this as your vocation and yet not having kids not for some sort of spiritual reason, or a physical impossibility, but just to have that "freedom" - I don't know to me that seems like our culture is getting really selfish? it's about responsibility, not "freedom"... freedom is not just doing what we want to, it's doing what we should do. It seems to me our culture is so focused on what "we want".

Edited September 6, 2013 by MarysLittleFlower