Child-free by choice

I sometimes wonder how it happened that I grew into a person with so many elemental differences from the accepted norm. Nothing visible: I have the usual number of pieces and parts. Nothing dreadful: I'm not a homicidal maniac. Nothing freakish: I'm not inclined to go about in a Star Trek costume 24-hours a day, or such-like.

But here's the thing. I am:
1) an atheist,
2) a recluse, and
3) never had a desire to procreate.

I've blogged about the first two oddities before, especially about my atheism which becomes, more and more, an important issue for me.

But I don't think I've ever blogged about my decision not to have children. Maybe that's because it's something that's been part of me for so long, it'd be equal to me blogging about, oh, I don't know, the odd little moles I've always had on the side of my neck that I call my "vampire bite."

I was inspired to write about my child-free status by the cover story run in this week's Maclean's magazine ("The Case Against Having Kids," Aug. 10, 2009). I just couldn't pass up buying this one. The article is about people who choose not to have children. It says that only about 6-7% of women in Canada make this choice (and slightly more men, interestingly). I find those numbers surprisingly low, considering all the women I know who express no desire to breed. Either some of the women they surveyed were lying, or I have an unusual group of friends and acquaintances.

I can't remember a time when I really yearned to be a mother. For my entire life, it's been pretty much a non-issue for me. As I got older, I explained it away by saying that I'd had enough of parenting by taking care of my younger brother while my (divorced) mother was at work all the time. That may have something to do with it, but then I think about those other women I've heard about who came from huge families and, as older daughters, were tasked with a large portion of the childcare in the family and still went on to be crazy about kids and couldn't wait to have a passle of their own. This discrepancy makes more sense when you consider that the lack of urge to breed may be genetic, as proposed by at least one scientist quoted in the Maclean's article. It would explain why so many of us child-free advocates cannot remember a time when we didn't feel as we do now.

I shouldn't say that I NEVER had a desire to have children. For a very brief time (about three months) in 1993, when my ex and I had been in British Columbia for a little over a year and were slowly "going hippy" in the dewy air of Salt Spring Island, I considered having babies. It seemed like a nice thing to do. Must've been mold growing on my brain from the damp. The ex and I discussed it, and I went off the pill and we dutifully used condoms for a month or so while my body regulated itself. I had horrible visions of three-limbed babies happening if I got pregnant while still infused with anti-baby hormones. (In hindsight, I realize that this brief flirtation with parenthood was a symptom of a crumbling marriage. As many couples mistakenly think, maybe we could save our marriage if we had a child to love.)

During that misguided time, a very fortuitous thing happened. My then sister-in-law loaned me her six-year-old boy. He was a lovely child. Well-behaved, quiet, affectionate and very obedient. But by the end of the weekend I was a wreck. The simple necessity of having, Every. Single. Second. to know where he was and what exactly he was doing, absolutely preyed on my mind every moment. It was exhausting! Even while he was sleeping peacefully in the very next room, I worried. I was so glad to give that kid back to his parents on Sunday afternoon. And very soon after that, I was back on the pill. Nope, this gal just ain't cut out for birthin' and raisin' no babies!

I've been very comfortable with my decision not to have children. And I'm very lucky in that my family has never been one of those families who constantly pester their offspring to get married and then constantly pester them to produce grandkids. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it's got something to do with a little factoid I read in the article. Anne Landers once asked her readers, about parenthood, "if you had the chance to do it all over again, would you?" An astounding 70 per cent of respondents said no. 70 per cent! Holy crap! What does that make you think about those people who do have kids? Are they hiding a deep dark secret from us? Do they really feel they wish they hadn't done it? Makes you wonder, eh?

So, maybe my own mother never bothered me about getting married and having kids because it didn't work out so well for her in the end. She got divorced when I was very young, and then had to work three jobs at time to support herself and my brother and I all by herself. My brother wasn't the easiest child to raise. I was an angel, but even an angelic child is a burden when you're raising her all on your own. That'd leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth about child-rearing. I guess my mother just decided to let me make up my own mind about it and leave it at that. She's mentioned a couple of times that she would have loved it if I'd had kids, but she manages to say it in a way that isn't an accusation. Just a simple fact.

I used to say "I don't like children." But then one day about a year ago, in the elevator of all places, after being imprisoned with one exceedingly cute, and charming little girl for a couple of minutes, I realized it wasn't that I didn't *like* children. I'm simply not interested in them. Not in the slightest. I am practically immune to them. I don't fawn over them. If I stare at them, it isn't with the usual "awww, look, isn't he darling?" It's usually more of a "good grief, if he keeps on screaming like that I'm going to go postal." Even when they're quiet and sweet, I have little interest. Occasionally I see a very cute one that's kind of nice to look at. But mostly...meh. Oh, and I HATE HATE HATE it when people bring their new babies into the office and expect everyone to drop everything and go fawn over the little snip. Deliberately ignoring the whole ridiculous scene makes me feel like a grinch, but who cares. Offices aren't for babies...or for anyone under the age of 12 who can't sit quietly and wait however long it takes for their parent to be ready to leave.

Put it this way: Put me on an elevator with a person who has a friendly-looking dog, and I'm all over the thing, petting, scratching, talking to it, asking the owner its name. I recognize my fellow apartment dwellers more by their dogs than by their own faces. Then put me on an elevator with someone who has a small child in tow. I creep as far into the corner as I can. I either studiously ignore the urchin, or I steal apprehensive glances at it, worried that it'll be one of those kids who has an annoying confidence in his own appeal to the female sex, and will stare at me unrelentingly and try to engage me in some kind of nonsensical exchange until I can escape from the elevator and make a dash for it before I'm forced to stand and wait for the family (always burdened with slow-making heaps of ankle-biter paraphernalia)holding open the door to the underground garage. See? It freaks me so much I'm reduced to run-on sentences!

So no, it's not that I actively dislike children, mostly, it's just that they hold absolutely no interest for me. I qualified that statement about not liking kids with the "mostly" because, there *are* times when I do actively dislike them, and I'm sure you all know those times I'm talking about. Most specifically, I'm talkin' about Walmart and restaurants.

I'm not one of those people who shuns Walmart for the small-business destroying, community munching behemoth that it is. I'm lazy. I like the idea of a store where I can find everything I need at decent prices, and only have to get past one cashier to get out. But, remember when I said I wasn't a homicidal maniac? Well, when I'm in Walmart, I usually *feel* like one because of all the bloody children screeching at the tops of their lungs, and the vacant, distracted parents who completely ignore (or have become deaf to) the din and commotion the fruit of their loins are causing to all the other paying customers.

But I almost expect it in Walmart, and accept that, if I want to shop there, I'm going to have to put up with welfare moms and other equally offensive parental types who can't be bothered to control their children. When I go into a restaurant and am faced with the same decibel level though...THAT REALLY PISSES ME OFF. That's when I go into offence mode...or to the parents who are victims of my ire, offensive. I'm too much of a wuss to actually say anything, but I have honed my death-glare to a fine edge on such parents who will blithely sit there enjoying their meals, while their offspring go red in the face, throw things on the floor and create an atmosphere more suitable to an insane asylum than a peaceful place to escape from work for an hour and read a book. I don't blame the kids. I blame the parents, and it's the parents who get the full bore of my death glare when their kids go unattended and unsilenced. Where did these people get the idea that it was acceptable to allow their children to ruin a perfectly good meal for a whole roomful of people by allowing their children to run around freely, throw their food on the floor and give voice to a noise level that can only be equalled by a troupe of angry baboons?

Excuse me. I vent. Back to the topic at hand.

To be honest, and quite simply, I'm mystified why any intelligent adult person would actually want to procreate. In the time it takes for a spermatozoa to bust through into an egg, you go from being an independent, freely moving, self-directing individual with a lifestyle you've fashioned to suit your own inclinations and interests, to a baby-tender whose entire life revolves around the comfort and welfare of a pint-sized tyrant who doesn't even have the good graces to wipe his own ass. I watch young parents in public and think "you used to be someone I might have enjoyed sitting down and chatting with. Now you're so wrapped up in that little parasite you're growing that you wouldn't even recognize yourself anymore. Why would you do that to yourself?"

People who've suffered criticism over deciding not to breed say that the main attack is usually in the form of being accused of being selfish. Selfish?? How selfish is it to refrain from doing something you know would not be in your own best interest or, especially, in the best interest of any potential children you might have had had you relented to the criticism and reproduced. Remaining child-free when you know you're not cut out to be a parent, when you have no interest in children, that's not selfish, it's wise beyond imagining. Even if we *do* like children, we are doing the world a favour by not creating any when we recognize that we would not be good parents. When we acknowledge that we are not willing to give up every moment of our waking lives for the next 18 or 20 years to care for and groom this bit of life we've created. When we acknowlege that our own peace and freedom is more important to use than changing shitty diapers and arguing with surly teenagers about curfews.

I adore dogs, but I'm smart enough to know that I should not have one because I am not the type of person who's going to be willing to walk a dog four or five times a day. Is it selfish of me not to adopt a dog when there are so many of them on the verge of euthenasia in shelters? Better a dog be euthenized than to be adopted by someone like me who would love it but probably neglect it or at the very least, resent the effort I had to put into its care. And that's exactly why people like me shouldn't have kids. It's not selfish, it's smart.

To close, I'd like to mention another point in the Maclean's article. I must go get the magazine from my bedroom, to get this right...uno momento...

Here we go. Did you know that there is actually a movement afoot in the world to eradicate the human species from the planet by "voluntary human extinction?" These people (and in a way I agree with them) feel the earth would be better off without us, and have formed an actual movement to propel us toward that goal. I have one word for them: Muslims. The child-free by choice movement is almost exclusively confined to the native population of North America and Europe. Those 2.3 or so kids we child-free folks are not having? They're being made up for in spades by the 7 or 8 children the average immigrant muslim family tends to have.

You do the math.