Like It Is

You may have seen this already, but I just love this…

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-6497257644936185526&q=genre:comedy

This is one smart cat. Much smarter than its hillbilly owners.

Maybe. Maybe not. But even if I did, so what? Is it not my choice?

The career minded working woman who happens to be childfree is likely to face this accusation from a raft of people, but particularly women who have chosen to stay at home and raise children or, as they are called, stay at home mums. With a certain amount of smugness, they will accuse you of choosing money and God forbid – a career – rather than the lofty and saintly work of having and rearing children. The same accusation is almost never directed at men (with or without children), who are expected to have a career. Women are expected to make a career of their children.

To make matters worse, in most cases working women who have children are unlikely to be particularly sympathetic to the childfree either, after all they are having to slug it out at work, trying to keep up the balancing act of juggling work and career. And interestingly also putting up with the critical chorus of SAHMs who seem to also have an issue with women with children choosing to continue to work instead of staying home to raise children. As far as SAHMs are concerned, these women are Bad Mothers. Childfree women are even worse. We are Selfish Career Women with all the negative connotations solely reserved for women.

For most women, having children will impact their careers. Many have to give them up, with the hope of returning to the workplace once the children have grown up. At which time they may find it too late, the workplace has moved on. One has to wonder – do they then swell the ranks of the SAHMs, who feel that other working women should do the same, regardless of whether or not it is right for them? Alternatively, many women play the work-children juggling game, with work often losing out to children. They feel guilty being at work and away from their children, and guilty not being out in the workplace using their talents. Constantly torn in two from the responsibilities of both. What amazes me is that so many women seem unprepared for the impact that having children would have on their careers. So while I understand how hard it is, I find it rather hard to sympathise.

I believe that’s because many simply do not give the issue enough consideration. Or they fail to talk to the people who can tell them how it is. Or maybe they are listening to people telling them that it’s O.K, that having children is the be-all and end all for women anyway, far more important than any career. Or those who are telling them that giving up their hard earned career is “worth it”, a worthy sacrifice, after all are they not producing and raising the next generation? Who by the way are going to be supporting all those self-centred career women who turned their backs on motherhood. Or maybe it’s simply a matter of the biological clock drowning out any other consideration.

Of course there are also women who make a career out of having children. Having found their niche, they are only to happy to denigrate women who have decided that’s not for them.

But most childfree women and their partners do assess the impact of children on their career or ability to work. And it’s a part of the why we decide that having kids might not be such a good idea. We see our female working parent counterparts struggle, the guilt and exhaustion (the Second Shift is real) and think – no way is that for me. We enjoy our careers, have invested in them and want to devote time to building them up (The Mommy Track is also real). We also enjoy having economic clout.(a fact that SAHMs either ignore or conveniently gloss over). You are unlikely to be able to do any of the above if you’re a woman bringing up children. At least not without a lot of extra help. Regardless of what anyone says, it’s a myth that woman can have it all.

To be continued.

In England solo women news readers are as common a sight as their male counterparts. But reading about Katie Couric the anchor woman who will fill America’s most prestigious journalism seat as solo anchor, the words “Poison” and “Chalice” floated into my mind. Because CBS’s ratings for its evening news show have been heading southwards for several years now. 16 million in the 1980’s to around 6 million today.

CBS is hoping Katie Couric will help reverse ratings. She’s going to need plenty of help if her critics have their way. I was astounded to read that Ms Couric will be only the first solo woman anchor of an American weekday evening news show. She will also be the highest paid news anchor of any gender, her salary being $15 million. Yet even as this news is announced the gender bias in its reporting is apparent in the extreme. Men still dominate news reading in America, and so many are saying that Ms Couric is a “bit of a lightweight” for the prestigious role. How, they wonder, could this woman be suitable to hold a position once held by Walter Cronkite – a newsman. Or her other predecessors (all men)?

Some are even saying that Ms Couric’s appointment is the end of the entire news anchor tradition. Is there something wrong with this picture? Are we in 2006 or 1806? Are women not supposed to be treated on an equal footing with their male counter parts? It seems not. The bias is alive and doing very well.

The report I was reading made sure to mention that Katie Couric was 49 and single (oh, her husband died of cancer just in case you were thinking she was a Singleton – never married). Why not say she was a widow? And of all the quotes she made, the one that was printed was one where she mentioned that as a single mother with two children she wouldn’t be going to Iraq. She said she was quoted out of context, but now it’s out there. It was reported as an “own goal by Ms Couric”.

Had this been a man being appointed the focus would be on his track record and or accomplishments rather than his personal life. But when a woman is appointed to a role in one of the apparently last bastions of male dominance, the questions as always, are slanted differently. If she’d been still married they’d have made sure they mentioned she had a nanny. Lucky for her she has a couple of kids, otherwise she’d probably have faced even more disapproval.

And it gets worse. A poll released in the Pew Research Centre revealed that the qualities many Americans were using to describe Ms Couric were “fluffy”, “cute” and “perky”. No surprise that none of these words were ever used to describe her male rivals Brian Williams of NBC and Charles Gibson (ABC). Even her fellow reporters have been scoffing, telling The Times, among other things that “things might lighten up a little too much.” and that “[…CBS News ]is a dying institution, let’s hope she can do a strong job and boost ratings.” Some confidence in her reporting talent might have been a better show of support. But of course, they aren’t really supportive are they?

And it’s bordering on the ridiculous on USA Today where the focus of recent stories on Katie Couric have been on how she’ll wear her makeup, her hair colour, her toned legs, the merits of her “over-bubbly personality” and whether she’ll be wearing stillettos. Not a word about her accomplishments as a reporter. However old, handsome or balding her male counterparts are, I hardly think this would be the focus had one of them been appointed.

She will have to not only perform, but outperform her predecessors. If ratings at CBS News don’t increase, we know who’s getting the blame. You wait, it’ll all be the fault of her hair. Or the fact that she’s beautiful.

Good luck Katie Couric. Looks like you’re going to need it in buckets since your myopic peers still seem to believe your ability to do your job is wholly dependent on your hair, your legs, and your personal life.

Pat yourself on the back American journalism. Give yourselves a High Five. Wonderful to see your “progressiveness” in action.

Mainly because we don’t have any. But my dear regular readers, you already know that. So what’s with the post title Britgirl?

Well, the other day I did a couple of new things. One was that I joined Cocomment. I remember asking a fellow blogger Range some time ago about Cocomment after being impressed with it on his blog.

He had comments he made on other people’s site in the side-bar of his Wordpress blog, using Cocomment. I thought it was neat, and made a mental note to check it out. And then Wordpress launched “My Comments”. Great, I thought, no need for Cocomment – and started using it.

Trouble is, I discovered that it seems to only track comments I leave on WP.com blogs. Maybe I’m missing something (or maybe I’m only commenting on WP hosted blogs?). So, I thought, might be worth still checking out Cocomment because I wanted to see comments I’d left on any blog I posted on. I was forgetting to go back and visit. Signed up and I’m already a fan.

The other interesting thing was that I came across a blog called Alas, a Blog (I think via Blogher) where I (without really intending to) posted a comment to an article called “My Children Bore Me To Death. I have to say this quite an interesting blog for the sheer number of articles and breadth of views. The comment I posted was on being childfree in a pro-natalist society; comparing it to simply being criticised because you had said your children bored you.

I wasn’t sure of what kind of responses I would get (if any) but the responses I did get were very interesting. And revealing. It brought home to me again that there are many women out there who are childfree and who go through exactly the same crap I do, as many childfree people do, when it comes to the Inquisition and opinions of some parents and of society at large. Note emphasis because: a) I know not all parents are anti-childfree, and b) those that are are just waiting to leap down my throat and tear me off a strip for supposedly hating all parents and their offspring.

I am fortunate in that as a childfree person I have support, both in terms of my husband, and my No Kidding and other childfree friends, whom I can call up and say “hey, fancy going for a drink, watching a film, or a bite to eat? Comfortable in the knowledge that I’m not going to be asked, if I have kids, when am I going to have them, how many I have, why don’t I have them, and what the hell did I mean I am Childfree? Not everyone has the same support, and judging from some of the responses, being childfree in the society we live in, as we know, can be very lonely.

There were also some fairly predictable comments, that proved, at least for me, that what we experience from those who cannot accept women being childfree is totally and completely real.The impression that we sneer at parents, that we present our childfree-ness as a challenge to parents, that we flaunt it. Yes, the ignorant views are alive and well.

The other part of the conversation I found interesting was the flak that even parents receive – from other parents!

Rather than me talking about the comments, though I’d like to invite you to actually read them yourself and see what you think. Because now that I have Cocomment (which by the way I am still figuring out) I can link to the conversation thread right here.

I think being able to share experiences and learn something new like this is one of the greatest things about blogging. And worth talking about.

Read My Children Do Not Bore Me To Death .

Note: Click the profile icon which (expands and collapses the thread) to see my post and the replies to it.

“Don’t you want to leave your genes behind?”

“Who will carry on your name?”

“Don’t you want to leave your mark on the world (after you’re gone)?’’

Neither my husband nor myself care that much about leaving our genes behind or serial immortality (the concept of living on through your offspring), which is the other term for this inherently egotistical reason to have children. And if we did, it still wouldn’t be a good enough reason to have kids. This particular question from parents always makes me think of countries where female babies are killed because they are not male babies, meaning that the family name won’t be preserved or “carried on”. Male babies are needed for that in countries where this is still practised. And it is practised so that parents, can feel they are still here when in fact they’re gone.

It makes me think of where female children are denied an education, and relegated to 2nd class citizens because they are not the ones who will “carry on the family name.” Because they (it is assumed) will change their names when they get married, while males will not. In other parts of the world (and I mean the Western world) while doing way with female babies has been banished to the annals of history, and is a crime, the egotistical thinking behind the question of serial immortality persists albeit with more subtlety.

It isn’t the job of a child to provide feel-good future assurances ( or insurance?) for their parents. You get one chance at life, and when you’re gone, you’re gone.

When I get this question I also think of people who, even though there’s a chance they may pass on defective genes to a child, want a child so much that they go ahead and have the child anyway. Do they think of how the child may suffer for the rest of its life if born with a disability because of something genetic inherent in the parents? I wonder if it matters less than the fact that they want a child and feel they have to fulfill that need? Seems to me they are not thinking of the child, but of themselves.

Once when someone was saying to me that women are having children later and that there was still time, I queried her, asking what about the risk of Downs Syndrome. I considered the risks even if she had hadn’t, in her quest to convince me to reproduce. Neither was the fact that there would be serious challenges involved in caring for a disabled child enough reason for this person to consider that deciding against having children just might be a good idea.

It’s ironical that parents call childfree people selfish. Because when they (parents) ask the question of a childfree person “don’t you want to leave your genes behind”, or in other words “Don’t you want a child to reassure you that you’re still around even when you’re gone”, they are really revealing just how egotistical they are themselves. It’s all about them, not about the child.

It’s as good an example of selfishness as you’re likely to come across.

Apparently, a judge in the Philippines does.

Florentino Floro said that three mystic dwarves Armand, Luis and Angel had helped him carry out healing sessions during breaks in his chambers. Florentino Floro was appealing against a three-year enquiry that led to him being removed from the bench, saying he should not have been removed because of what he believed. Well, he had a point to an extent. But not to the extent of seemingly active mystic dwarves.

O.K. After I convinced myself that yes, I really was reading about mystic dwarves, on the BBC News website no less, I tried not to laugh. But it was no good. I found it so funny. Especially when I read that the judge “had made a covenant with his mystic dwarf friends that he could write while in a trance” and said that “he had been seen in more than one place at a time by several people.” And that he changed his robes every from blue to black Friday to “recharge his psychic powers”. It’s only fair to say at this point that he was found to be suffering from psychosis.

But the funniest part had to be the words he wrote in a letter to the court:

“”From obscurity, my name and the three mystic dwarves became immortal.”

Well, that’s one way of putting it I suppose. Not sure I’d like the good judge to preside if I was up in court!

Unsurprisingly the Supreme Court was unimpressed. Florentino Floro lost his appeal and was removed as a judge.

Edit: “Judge Floro” comments. No, really.

I came across the info below in the No KIDDING email digest the other day sent by Jerry Steinberg. I thought it was worth telling more people about it, particularly childfree people so I asked if I could post it here on Like It Is.  As childfree people we’ve made a conscious decision not to add to the overpopulation of the world. So it’s more than a little galling to learn how our hard earned money is being used. To help people produce even more kids. 

So here’s the news. Thanks to Jerry for circulating.

The government of Canada has been paying for ads on radio (and possibly other media) announcing that they are sending monthly cheques (Canadian spelling) for $100 for each child under age six to parents under the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB). In other words, parents are being paid $7,200 ($1,200 per child for six years) for each child they produce. That’s my money and your money that they’re receiving to make more babies. For more information, visit Universal Child Care. If you find anything interesting (i.e. upsetting) at the above website or websites linked to it, send it on to Jerry Steinberg, (the Founding Non-Father of NO KIDDING) via the link below so that he can refer to it in future interviews.

And for those of you who are wondering what NO KIDDING is, it’s the international social club for childless and childfree couples and singles. It’s great for meeting and getting together socially with like-minded childfree people. You can find out more at www.nokidding.net

See how you do.

Q1. Why is the US even in Iraq and the Mid-East anyway?

a) To set the people free

b) For the historical Bush family cronyism (ask yourself who built the infrastructure)

c) For the current Bush family cronyism (ask yourself who stands to lose if the Iraqis nationalise the infrastructure)

d) It’s the oil, stupid

e) None of the above, it’s what Jesus would do

Q2. Why is the UK even in Iraq and the Mid-East anyway?

a) To set the people free

b) New love is strong love, and bestest friends always stick together no matter what don’t they?

c) It’s the oil, stupid

d) Because Brits feel bad if Americans don’t have unlimited, inexpensive fuel for their millions of Humvees

e) Because Tony Blair always wanted to be T.E. Lawrence (that’s Lawrence of Arabia for those of you who failed your “O” levels)

Assuming that children actually keep you company when you need them to. Or that they provide a replacement for adult company. Do they? Certainly many parents become completely pre-occupied with their children to the exclusion of all else, as many a childfree person with parenting friends can attest to.

Or is the underlying assumption by some that having friends could never equal having children in terms of company?

Children, from the time they are born are absolutely self-centred and self-focused. That’s to be expected. You are there to serve them. They are completely dependent on you and their needs must come first. Also to be expected. Parents willingly oblige, often sacrificing their own needs. This is also to be expected. The children then go off and get their own friends and interests as they grow up and live their own lives, leaving the parent suddenly wondering what to do and who they are. This, to many non-parents is one of the most unappealing aspects of parenthood, the apparent abdication of one’s own life and interests to live through (or for) your child. Those interests include friends. Your child may become your friend, but is that really what they are for? Is that a reason to have children? To keep you company?

To gain all my validation through the life of my offspring? Not for me. That would be heavy load to lay on a child of any age. Yet many parents not only do this (and this is their choice), but criticise non parents for not being willing to do the same thing!

Actually, if the children leave home these parents are probably the lucky ones. More and more, grown up children are opting to return or continue living at home instead of face the reality of maturity and its attendant responsibilities and hurdles. If the parents don’t (or won’t) encourage them to leave, while they may have the companionship of adult children, they may also be supporting them both emotionally and financially, using up assets meant for their own retirement. They will also have added complications if, for example the parent has been divorced, a new relationship beckons and the children remain a large presence in the household.

In terms of feeling lonely, quite how children are expected to fill that need I’m not sure. And mothers of young children often say that they feel lonely and miss adult company when they are bringing up their children.

So are childfree adults lonely? I can say I most certainly am not. I have my relationship which is extremely important to me, and I also have like-minded friends as do many other childfree people I know. Because they are less likely to rely on children as a source of friendship (or for that matter, occupation), childfree adults tend to build meaningful relationships and friendships, either through networks or social clubs of like-minded adults. The relationships they build may also include various nieces and nephews as childfree people often play an important part in their lives.

They may not necessarily find their new friends on the same street or even in the same community, but for people to assume that being childfree means you must be lonely is just one more tiresome misconception.

No pun intended.

Muslim leaders are blaming the UK government foreign policy for the acts of extremists. Never mind that 9/11was planned and took place well before the US was ever involved in Iraq. They have written a letter to the government stating, in effect that the attacks will continue until and unless the government changes its foreign policy.

I may not agree with some aspects of UK policy. But the United Kingdom is a democracy as is the United States, as is Canada, and if I live in a democracy then I accept that the only way to influence policy, foreign or otherwise is by democratic means. If Muslims or anyone else cannot accept this, then they are welcome to leave and go and live elsewhere.

And the UK government needs to come out of its collective funk of handwringing appeasement within which they are transfixed and get back to standing up for its people – and our collective freedoms.