Assumptions About Childfree People
30 07 2007We all love to find nice neat little names for things. Especially groups of people. When we choose our own names or title or whatever, we’re comfortable using them. Take Childfree for example. For us (and by “us” I mean childfree men and women) we choose to use this word because it means we have made a deliberate choice not to procreate. The reasons for our choice are irrelevant, the fact is we have made a choice.
On the other hand, many childed people have great difficulty even articulating the word “childfree” when referring to those of us who have made the decision not to pro-create. To them, Childfree means something negative – except when they want to use it to describe their time away from their kids.
Instead they prefer to call us “childless”. We are still in the process of educating the childed and it will take a while, however childless denotes a lack of children – as in wanting them either now or sometime in the future. Childless is easy for the childed to articulate because of course everything possible must be done to reverse the lack, and those that lack are somehow to be pitied. As in “Those poor childless people.” It also makes a not very subtle assumption – that the being together of two married people implies that there must be a child as well, if not currently present, definitely in the making.
I’d tell them to save their sympathy for those who really do need it, it’s wasted on the childfree unless you count the sympathy we deserve having to put up with nosy busy-bodies who have so much interest in why we don’t wish to procreate. But any childfree couple can attest to the sudden upsurge in questioning, once they get married, as to when they are going to have kids/produce grandchildren/do their duty/supply new taxpayers,etc, etc.
There’s nothing subtle about that.
I found this NBC article rather grating. Doesn’t matter how much the media writes about childfree-dom, there almost always seems to be an undertone of “how dare they not have kids?” to be found somewhere in the article. Part of the problem is that they never get a childfree person to write the article, so the bias is apparent, at least it is for me.
So what got my goat about this one? I mean, it talks about childfree-ness being a “growing trend” doesn’t it? Isn’t that a good thing?
Well,when I think of a trend I think of something that’s fashionable for the moment, only to be gone after a while, while the next trend to take it’s place. While more and more women (and indeed couples) are deciding that having children isn’t for them, it isn’t just because it’s a new “trend.” Couples deciding to be childfree isn’t new. Yes, it’s true that it was taboo to talk about not having kids 50 years ago, and it’s somewhat easier now. But trend? Doesn’t sit well. It sits very nicely with room for change further down the road, though. What do you think?
I would like to think we are a growing demographic with a voice, rather than a trend.Trends go up and they go down. Childfree is here to stay.
More annoying though was that the trend is called a DINKS trend. To me one of the more annoying acronyms used by the childed for childfree people.
But why be annoyed at such a term?
Because, if you examine it closely it conjures up a picture of something missing. Ever so subtly. But it does. The term makes an assumption that if you are married, and even better have two incomes, you should be having kids.But in this term we have “No Kids.”
It assumes that if you are not draining spending your income on kids, you are spending it on yourselves and that is A Bad, Selfish Thing, and you are Bad, Selfish People. You should be struggling and spending it on kid related things, like a bigger house, a bigger vehicle, childcare, baby stuff and so on.
It also makes the odd assumption that the level of income is irrelevant. So, as long as you are both working and bringing home an income, even if that income just about pays your mortgage, bills and enables you to have a life, the thing missing is the kidz. If you don’t have enough, there is welfare to top it up. Now I think when the childed are referring to dinks they are referring to well off, middle-income and high income earners. The kind that, in their mind (and as we are told) should be breeding. And, as always, the childed always seem to believe that all childfree people are rich because they don’t have children.
While some of us may have more disposable income, not all childfree people are rolling in it. But hey, assumptions.
You don’t have to be an economist to know that unless you are both earning top whack, or one of you is working all the hours God sends in order to bring home that top salary, a dual income is not a guarantee of wealth. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on the bread line either. And in many cases dual income earners can be just making ends meet. Or living as comfortably as they wish working enough hours to have a good life rather than to exhaustion because they have dependent mouths to feed. In either case bringing a child into the equation can tip the whole balance.
Of course the childed will assure you that thinking about something as mundane as finances when it comes to children is cold and heartless. After all, look at all the joy children bring. They blithely ignore the fact that children cost money. A lot of money. They will encourage you to “just have them… when you do you’ll wish you’d done it earlier…finances will take care of themselves….these things have a way of working themselves out.”
While these same people will add up every dollar before they buy a house, that they can reverse, they appear to spend little or no time doing the same calculations of affordability before having kids.
So when people decide to call childfree couples dinks, and talk about “the DINK way of thinking” I feel it carries an undertone of censure as well as tells me we have yet another ignorant assumption being made and broadcast as a mass media article. I won’t even talk about the comparisons between the parents in the articles…. the childfree “parents of cats” and the parents of the “pride and joy kids.” Lovely. Yes, we are still very much in the childed world view here.
I never use the term myself to describe childfree people. What people decide to do with their hard earned income is their business.What we as a couple do with our hard earned income isn’t anyone’s business except ours. I should say though that a good chunk of it goes into supporting those who do have kids through the taxes we pay, whether we’re earning six figures or five.
The societal straight-jacket that dismisses marriages and long term relationships as less important, no matter how stable and loving they are because they have two incomes and don’t need kids in them needs dismantling.
Because it’s simply wrong.
Technorati Tags: Childfree, childless, DINKS
When they call me “childless,” I call them “child-burdened.” Fair’s fair!
I love cats and I have cats but I don’t like to call myself a “parent of cats” or call my cats my “children”. It seems rather strange.
The article was ridiculous. So what if some dipshit named Paul Johnson thinks “being a dad is the best thing in the world.” I might love nectarines and think they are the best thing in the world, but I’m not going to bicker if someone else says they don’t like them.
The whole “Selfish” meme riles me no end. How does the simple decision of not wanting children make me selfish? Does nothing else in my life count? I give to charity. I work and pay taxes. I do the most of the household work during term-time because my fiancee has enough to cope with because she’s a teacher. We do all these things but noooo, that’s not enough, we have to do the Hardest Job In The World (TM) as well? Just because we don’t want to be parents, we’re deemed to be selfish? As lazy generalisations go, this is one of the laziest. Grrrr….
AMEN
I never really found “DINK” to be offensive, especially before we had officially decided to be childfree and were still giving society at large the benefit of the doubt. I saw the “double income” part as more of an indicator that both people were pursuing careers, but now I can see how it has an undertone of implied selfishness. I guess I’ll be rethinking my feelings on the term.
My husband and I got to the point where we were totally willing to give up our discretionary income in order to have a child, if we had a peace about becoming parents and felt that was the right thing for our lives. We completely ruled out money as a deciding factor. However, the peace still didn’t come. I HATE being called selfish by people who don’t have a clue who I am, what I’ve been through, or where I’m coming from.
@Phoena - In fact the more I think of the article the more idiotic I think it is. I think it was meant to ridicule childfree people and place them as less than parents - while “pretending” to herald a new “trend” as a step forward. Parents of cats indeed! The subtext is, of course that, everyone wants kids (deep down, ) and if they don’t have them, they must have a substitute. Pets! And I agree with you about the Paul Johnson quote..who cares? But of course they just had to include it.
JSD - I hear ya! But don’t forget most childed people will tell you they are selfless - or self sacrificing - which is really funny because having a child for most of the reasons they give is completely selfish.
Shelley, Initially when I first heard the term DINK I didn’t find it offensive either. But then I noticed that whenever it was used it was to put childfree people, or the childfree lifestyle down in some way, particularly it was used to imply that we are selfish (all that money and no kids?? Why? What are they spending it on, if not on kids?). It’s odd that people who know nothing about a person see fit to make a judgement on their lives as soon as they find out they don’t have kids. I never will understand that.
I’d read that article before you posted it here and didn’t really think about it until after reading everyone’s comments. The more I think, the more frustrating it becomes, mostly because of the way they portray it as “Some wacky people CHOOSE to NOT have children! Can you believe it?!”
There’ve been people who have chosen to NOT have children for as long as there have been people having children. Those people who have chosen to NOT have children are also able to express deeper reasons than “my cats are my babies” (which also drives me nuts to no end). For anyone to claim it’s some sort of “trend” is just spewing a steaming pile of condesending B.S.
I have never considered DINKs an insulting term, and still don’t find it anymore offensive than yuppies or guppies, or SINKs or whatever else the media throw out. “Trend” is not the incorrect term here either, mainly because it implies that there is a movement towards something or a tendency to change, and I do believe that more and more families are opting to consider not having children. There are many reasons for this- advances in technology make permanent birth control more possible, access to greater education and careers has also provided men and women with more options, and there has always been a link between the higher education of women and a reduction in reproduction. As well, the waning influence of religion in our society and the move towards urban areas have also removed some pressure for those who may have felt the same way one or two generations ago (or more) but couldn’t do so without being ostracised. Is it a surprise that this means more and more decisions to change that number to zero?
As a long-time vegetarian, I have to tell you that a lot of people thought I was quite crazy almost twenty years ago for refusing to eat meat, and there was condescension and ridicule among many comments I received. I don’t think the numbers would be wrong if being vegetarian was also marked as a growing trend, and I don’t see that as insulting either. Things change, people feel freer to exhibit behaviour that diverge from the norm, and sometimes things change to reverse those trends. So to close, a drastic example here to illustrate the possibility of trend reversals, a la P.D. James in The Children of Men: what if the human population were threatened with extinction? Would everyone who was currently childfree remain so? I think we forget sometimes that many of our choices are created because conditions are such that we can exercise them freely. I know I would never have even considered being a vegetarian in this country a hundred or two hundred years ago- it would have been pretty impossible to survive because we did not have the global food transportation networks to allow me that choice.
Maybe we could start using acronyms for people with kids… TWAT (Two Wage-earners And Tykes) or SWAT (Single Wage-earner And Tykes).
“So to close, a drastic example here to illustrate the possibility of trend reversals, a la P.D. James in The Children of Men: what if the human population were threatened with extinction? Would everyone who was currently childfree remain so?”
Yes, I would remain childfree. Simply put, humanity hasn’t really done much to make this planet any better. Were we to drive ourselves to possible extinction, it seems to me that we wouldn’t DESERVE a second chance to repopulate. There would be some pretty drastic environmental and/or social reasons why humans would be rendered extinct and to bring an infant into that situation, when your life as a parent, and the life of humanity on the planet is faced with such a dire and unsurvivable threat, would be cruel and thoughtless to the extreme.
I have no problems with allowing humanity to go extinct, escpecially considering that extinction level event would most likey be as a result of our own folly.
i would say let humanity fry.. we havent done anything worthy enough to save ourselves.. the next species up the ladder they cant do a worse job than us.
in 40,000 years of civilisation, we havent changed much.. we still kill for stupid reasons, we still die due to famines, before we couldnt destroy ourselves in great numbers now we can.. what is there to save us..
we havent made our lives better.. we have more stress more deaths than in the labour intensive times..
humanity is a disease.. we just take and destroy.. regardless of everything else. like a cancer cell or a disease that reproduces over and over and kills the host..
@Anne-Marie -”I think we forget sometimes that many of our choices are created because conditions are such that we can exercise them freely. ” what about the fact that there have been many women that were childfree even when it was more unpopular than it is now. I know that now it is somewhat easier today to exercise the choice to be childfree - however I disagree that the conditions create the choice. The choice has always been there, the decision to exercise that choice may not have been acted on. To use your example as being a vegetarian - I don’t think it’s quite the same thing… you need to eat or you die. Deciding to be childfree has no life or death implications.
“So to close, a drastic example here to illustrate the possibility of trend reversals, a la P.D. James in The Children of Men: what if the human population were threatened with extinction? Would everyone who was currently childfree remain so?”
Currently childfree? That sounds a bit like we could change at any time. I most certainly would remain childfree - since I didn’t base my decision to be childfree on propagating the human race. Most of what humanity has done is to ensure that many other species are made extinct in the process of satisfying their every need, from fur coats to expensive designer furniture, to gas guzzlers. Not to forget by breeding too. And we’re more than happy to let almost entire continents waste away because of starvation… while in other parts of the world we dump wheat into the ocean and create butter mountains - because farmers have produced too much for their subsidies.
As Feh and merc say - if the human race was going to be extinct it won’t be from lack of having babies that’s for sure. It’ll be the grownups all the way.
‘DICF’ — it’s not so catchy, really. But yeah, I’m a DICF ;-).
Never thought about the DINK acronym before either — good points, Britgirl.
in the past there wasnt the technology there is today to stop becoming pregnant, but it was there, in the really old herbal books a lot fo herbs were for “purging”.. it happened in roman times, in egypt..
there was childfree then, and there was the same things then as now.. just a little less advanced.. even in nature there are childfree.. one example wolf packs, only the alphas breed, everyone else cant have children. that equates to us but instead of chemicals making us not have puppies, we have a brain that tells us not too.. animals will eat their young, will breed to excess then kill themselves off.
in todays pro natalistic world, there seems to be less choice, less options, due to societal pressures, pharmacists refusing to fill in prescriptions for birth control..
but there are still herbal remedies,
OK I give up. What is a DICF Christine?
Emma I like think both TWAT and SWAT can be very apt descriptions
Double Income Child Free
What a dip. “I think being a dad is great”…okay, so that’s what you think. That doesn’t mean people have to agree with you. I like sushi too, does that mean there’s something wrong with people who don’t? Yeegads people are stupid.
OK hmm on one hand I like to think of me and hubby as DINKS ESPECIALLY as we were SINKS for a while so THIS IS an improvement!
On the OTHER hand…!
First of all I hate how my mother of three colleague seems to think the childfree are dripping in money and should all have gorgeous figures just because she had kids and we didn’t. I wish this WAS true but I’m sorry, honey, I’ve had slight weight problems all my life!
Yes, it’d probably be WORSE if I had kids but just because I don’t doesn’t make me look like Kate Moss! Some women have babies and seem to go back to their skinny selves.
Some other women have babies and get really HUGE!
Some other women have no babies and STILL get really huge!
In all while my life I think is way better than if I DID have kids, it’s not like I’m living in a mansion with tons of sports cars in the driveway!!
And yes, I totally agree, OK having kids may have been a wonderful joyful experience for some people. (And BY the WAY, sometimes that joy turns to sorrow and pain when they become teenagers or adults!) But that DOESN’T mean it’s that way for EVERYONE and it CERTAINLY DOESN’T mean it would be that way for me.
It’s a crap shoot.
And I’m NONE too fond of THOSE!
Finally, once I posted on yahoo answers are there any other childfree couples or singles in my city. WELL one person REALLY got his nose out of joint about it just because I’d used the term childfree he thought you know I hated kids and so on.
You have your parent friends and groups for kids and families, I’m sure, Mister, let me have my childfree groups PLEASE!