Melanie Notkin: It's Time to Stop Calling Career Women Without Children "Delayers"

Melanie Notkin: It's Time to Stop Calling Career Women Without Children "Delayers":

"Any woman who didn't have a child by the time she hit 30 used to be called a 'career woman' until someone knocked on 2011's door and said that careers for single women, even married women, even moms, are not so much of a choice these days.

So now you've got a new name: 'delayer.' 'Women with a college degree are experiencing a 'delayer boom,' the Census Bureau states in a report, 'giving birth at a later age than other women but still having fewer children overall by the end of their childbearing years.'

Although the article is pro-childfree, I do take umbrage with its purported representation of the single set. I am sure there are plenty of single folk just looking for love. I do quite enjoy marriage, and my life wouldn't be as good if I didn't have someone who knows me better than anyone, who is always there at the end of the day to laugh with and talk about nothing to. But guess what? That's a product of who I am, and the way I am wired. It is not universal. There are also people who love nothing more than coming home to a peacefully empty apartment, or some cats, or perhaps an iguana.

I think one of the biggest lessons the world needs to learn about the world is that people are different. Just because kids are the best thing that ever happened to you doesn't mean that I'd like having them. Of course this realization has implications far beyond parenting - it applies to every single facet of life from where we live to what we watch on TV. That's one of the reasons the childfree often make such great advocates for singledom and gay marriage. Having opted out of what the world tells us in almost a singular voice is the greatest joy to be had, we are forced to recognize that there is pretty much nothing that everyone *should* do; no happiness that is universal.

Heck, I even know someone who doesn't like chocolate.

Technorati Tag: childfree