More Childless Women

Amanda Marcotte, who blogs at pandagon.net and rhrealitycheck.org and identifies as a "progressive" said she was surprised by a recent Pew Research Center study showing that the share of American women who are not becoming mothers has nearly doubled since 1976, from 10 percent of the population to 18 percent. She writes in "The Real Reason More Women Are Childless"…

Personally, I was happy to see that more women feel free to forgo childbearing.

Why? You don’t want new labor, inventors, investors, managers, artists, engineers, taxpayers, and soldiers to keep things going? You'd rather American culture be replaced? Yes, it is nice for them to know they have the choice not to become mothers. But that fewer Americans with the capabilities to be good parents are having children is not a good thing.

But there seems to be a pushback...

According to Pew, 38 percent of Americans now denounce childlessness as bad for society. That's up from 29 percent just two years ago.

That some people never have children is fine. If just about everyone didn't have children, isn't it self-evident that it would be bad for society? It isn't good for a team if most of the team dies off and isn't replaced.

So what's behind the increase in women choosing the non-mom route? According to social conservatives, legal abortions are to blame for declining birth rates.

Somewhat, sure. Unless you believe that, even with contraception around, women are getting pregnant at such higher rates than when abortion rates were much lower (say, 40 year ago) that the increase in abortions among previously childless women can't offset that increase. Abortion is the symptom, though – it doesn't explain why women don't want a child (except when abortion damages her emotionally, or physically, so she can't).

My guess is that 1) we've turned children into more of a liability instead of an asset, and 2) women are now more self-centered.

However, that doesn't mean that the passage of Roe v. Wade had no impact on the upturn in childless women. Defense of legal abortion led feminists to create a national discourse around the concept of "choice," which helped legitimize the decision to remain childless. This created a space for women who never wanted children to embrace their true desires.

Yes, talking about what a horrible drag children are – so much of a drag that dismembering them is the best option in millions of cases - can have that effect.

Part of this new self-awareness might mean that women are forsaking motherhood because we're finally admitting that it isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Maybe it isn't, if you're bad at it, or you're bad at picking a father for your kids - or you were delusional about what it was going to be like. Your parents downplay the "negatives" of having children until after they are born, because they want grandchildren. Then once they have their grandchildren, they respond to your complaints about what you don't like about how your life has changed with "Oh.... yeah... well, that happens when you have kids."

As last week's New York magazine cover story documented, parenthood is becoming increasingly miserable because of the exploding expectations placed on mothers—making the child-free lifestyle seem all the more attractive.

Motherhood has always been hard and consuming. Where are these new expectations coming from? Ah, that's right. Feministas who tell mothers they need to have careers, too, and the people who encourage women to raise children without a man, drive husbands away, neglect husbands, or divorce good husbands. That brings on more obligations for a mother.

In 1988, only 39 percent of Americans disagreed with the notion that the childless "lead empty lives." Now a majority-59 percent-disagree that childlessness automatically means you're unfulfilled.

I do agree that someone can be fulfilled without ever raising children. But as Dennis Prager points out, they haven't experienced the most they can. That's true about a lot of things in life, but parenting is a much bigger thing.

Still, a woman who chooses to remain childless continues to face a series of negative stereotypes, from claims that she's selfish to implications that she's too career-minded and self-centered to remember to breed before it's too late.

There are people who have children for selfish reasons as well as people who don't for selfish reasons. And some people have children because they are lazy and had sex without caring enough to do something to avoid conception. That's just reality.

But clearly there are upsides to childlessness. Just looking around my own apartment, I can see the value in furniture that's gone unruined, cats that have gone unbothered, and a distinct lack of toys cluttering up my floor.

That's it? Can’t you come up with more? I sure can. More free time and money, more freedom in general/fewer obligations. Everything is a trade off, though. I'll take my son's laugh over preserved furniture any day.

Gayle, age 30, drolly observed, "My ovaries do not stir when I see a baby."

I hope for her sake she feels the same way when it is too late. Even if she regrets not having kids, it will be better than if she had kids and then neglected them. But I'd prefer everyone be happy with not having had kids if they didn't, and having kids if they did.

Most believed that it wasn't harmful to society and could, in fact, be beneficial. But few spoke about benefits to the environment or women's pocketbooks. Instead, childless women argued that increasing childlessness is good … for the children.

"Honey, me not giving you a diamond engagement ring is good for the ring." How can it be good for a kid for the kid to be aborted, or for the kid to not exist in the first place?

Dana, age 34, made this case forcefully. "Many children are treated bad or abandoned. Some live their entire lives in foster care."

But this doesn't explain why Dana chooses to be childless, unless she's saying she would be abusive or neglectful.

Natalie agreed that her attachment to her disposable income could be considered selfish but said, on the other hand, "When I ask friends of mine who have/want kids what their reasons are, the answers range from 'I don't know' to 'I want someone to love me' to 'I want someone to take care of me in my old age,' which are not only also selfish but poorly reasoned."

I agree. Like I said, some people have selfish motivations either way. However, whether from a Darwinian or a theistic paradigm, having children is not inherently selfish. It is how we continue our society.

Could these childless women be harbingers of a new world, one in which parenthood is considered an active choice and not simply the default state of adulthood?

Uhm, hasn't it been that way for decades now? I chose to have kids. I actively made that choice. There was a time when I considered not ever becoming a father.

Cindy Krischer Goodman also wrote about this. She is CEO of BalanceGal LLC, "a provider of news and advice on how to balance work and life."

A look behind the numbers reveals more of what this trend reflects - a generation of women who are not necessarily choosing career over kids but rather finding that time has passed and their focus has been elsewhere. Women are starting businesses in record numbers, advancing in corporate arenas, and blazing career trails in male-dominated industries. They are the bulk of people getting advanced degrees, and they are getting married later in life.

That’s all fine. I'd rather a woman not have a children only to have that child raised by strangers and MTV.

Many of these women say they are happy and fulfilled.

Good for the ones who are.

Some have made work a priority, but others discovered by the time they found the right mate and decided to have children, they couldn't.

And a lot of those women were playing around with guys who weren't "the right mate" for a good chunk of the time, and a many of those could have found the right mate if they’d really wanted to... they probably even rejected him or he avoided her because she was with some jerk.

At the same time, childless people in today's workplace often feel their personal time is less valued. "If you have a pet in distress and need time off, it's not viewed the same as a child who needs to go to doctor," Lauby said.

Nor should it be. I'm a pet owner, but pets are not humans.

I'm encouraged that women are increasingly exercising their right to choose the circumstances under which they have children.

Who isn't?

While I am a father and enjoy my kids, I'm not one of those "everyone should have kids" people, nor someone who thinks women shouldn't have careers. No woman (or man, for that matter) should have children unless they want to and prepared to be good parents. In fact, I think that women who do get pregnant and don't want to be mothers should give their child up for adoption. I don't want to "punish them with a child" as some would way. Let someone else be blessed by being able to raise that child.