Pregnant Journalist Attends No Kidding Event, Thinks Parents Should Stop Pressuring the Childfree

Honey, where are the kids? Not here!

Columnist Anne Hart attends a meeting of a local chapter of No Kidding!, a social group for single and married adults who are non-parents.
. . .
The kidless-by-choice folks have heard it all from diaper-whipped parents, who, upon hearing about such child-free commitments, go into zealot mode and try to convert them.
. . .
Those of us in the motherhood mafia, or on the verge of being inducted, need to stop trying to persuade non-parents over to our side of the playground. Life is not, after all, a big Red Rover game. Not only should we accept their decision, but also encourage them to talk about their choice, if they're feeling chatty.

After all, the child-free are increasing. U.S. census figures show 18 percent of women 40-to-44 were childless in 2002, compared with 10 percent in 1976.
. . .
Often physicians won't perform a tubal ligation on a childfree-by-choice woman before her late 30s for fear she will regret it.

"There is less of a concern among medical professionals about a man deciding not to have children than a woman,'' Lauri said. "Men are a lot more likely to get their vasectomies than a woman is to get a tubal.''

Which may be just another example of child-free women having to justify their decision not to have kids.

While those of us who do don't have to justify ours.

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