Like It Is

Or, welcome to snobbery, Stepford Wives style. This unbelievable piece of tripe that passes for “journalism” is so dismaying that it’s almost funny. Almost.

Called What is an ideal husband these days? it appears in The Observer Comment section on Sunday 11 March.

My first impression was that the writer Cristina Odone was being humorous, and I looked for the punch line. Alas, there was no punch-line. It looks like she’s deadly serious.

She begins with reminiscing over the fact that her mother wanted her to marry a doctor. Because of the prestige, good salary, gratitude and deference doctors engendered.

Particularly the good solid income, just right for securely supporting a wife and children she might spawn. She then says that the recent reality of doctors being amongst the unemployed has rather upset the apple-cart somewhat. Doctors are no longer a safe bet – certainly not for the guaranteed income. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Stepford Wives, wife

Seems Feminism is to be blamed for the latest bout of navel gazing. A little while back in the US Rush Limbaugh was lambasting Feminism for selling women a bum deal when it comes to children and career. Now it’s the turn of the UK. Courtesy columnist Oliver James, for Times Online.

Recently, Britain has been slammed as having the least happy children. Bottom of the league. Probably because their parents work and stick them in childcare instead of staying at home with them. There is even talk of naming and shaming “bad parents” on a website. Ugh. Sounds not very nice at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Feminism, UK, parents, childcare

Plainsfeminist raised an interesting point when, on my post

Childfree Rejecting Those Myths she commented that:

“…speaking from the U.S., we don’t do much to help parents. We act like we do, and we pay a lot of lip service to it, but when you get down to it, we’ve set things up so that parents who have jobs (which most parents need to have) are screwed, and their families are screwed.”

Interesting comment. Being childfree in the workplace was a topic I’ve been meaning to write on for quite a while. But it is so huge that I can really only touch on it, so probably one post alone won’t do it justice. But it’s something I feel pretty strongly about as you’ll see from my reply to the above comment.To a point I agree with PlainsFemininist. I also disagree.

Here’s why.
I agree that working life today (as in well paid jobs with benefits or any job) does not make it particularly easy for people with children to raise children and hold down a well paid job.

Life must be juggled adeptly to accommodate job and children. The demands of the workplace can’t be taken lightly. There are very few places where you will not be working as part of a team, and your team mates rely on you as you will rely on them. The demands of work are ever growing, hours are long, and the pressure to deliver to shareholders and to compete shows no sign of letting up. It’s compete or die – unless you work in the public sector. Anyone who thinks reduced working hours and flexible working is going to get them to the top of the tree (earing substantial bucks) is living in dream-land and does need to wake up and smell the coffee. But, I’m getting a little ahead of myself… Read the rest of this entry »

After decades of family friendly policies, particularly policies to promote childbearing and large families, France has overtaken Ireland as the European nation with the highest breeding rate birthrate. The Times Online reports that more babies were born in France in 2006 than in any year since 1981, almost meeting the 2.07 children level per woman said to be required to replenish generations. The European average is 1.52 children per woman. Britain’s is 1.8 children.

Officials have hailed the high birth rate as confirmation that the expensive schemes to encourage couples to produce more children while also remaining in the workforce have succeeded. French women now give birth at an average age of 30 and, interestingly half the children are born outside marriage. The French workforce is almost 50% women and most don’t have to resort to part-time work. So how do they do it? Read the rest of this entry »

“Emma Burnstall had her first baby in her 20’s, her second in her 30’s and her third in her 40’s”. The question the Guardian article asked is “What are the pros and cons of having three children over three decades?” Good question, although nowadays when I hear of people having more than a couple of children I sincerely hope they don’t in the next breath start blathering on about the environment, how it’s in danger and all they are doing to “save” it.

Burnstall does talk about several pros and cons, but I changed the question around and instead asked “how many fuckwitted, selfish reasons for having kids can you identify in this article?” But I offer you some assistance dear reader, (although you probably won’t need it) in identifying above mentioned fuckwittery and selfcentredness of Ms Burnstall.

I have selected excerpts that leapt out at me and really had me going as I read them. I’ve also added some thoughts responses of my own. The next time anyone calls a childfree person selfish, they should really be told exactly where to go.

You can read the original article in its entirety here courtesy The Guardian Online.

Here’s the quick and dirty summary:

She had one baby. Husband didn’t want another, but she talked him into it. Then she badly wanted a third baby so she “talked him into that one” too. And readers can now admire her or pity her (depending on your viewpoint) for having three kids in three decades even though she feels overall the kids have been the losers.

Following are the excerpts that I chose from Emma’s story. My responses are in bold and I’m sure you’ll have your own, feel free to add them in the usual way.

“My husband and I chose to have big gaps between our babies. It’s not that we sat down in our early 20s and planned out three children. Rather, our firstborn was a surprise, Read the rest of this entry »

Being single and surrounded by couples can make shaping a successful social life very difficult. It’s even harder if you are childfree and surrounded by couples and children, or even singles and children. Friendships with with those who have children can become strained or broken as it becomes increasingly apparent you have less and less in common.

I find this is particularly the case with new parents. New parents want to talk about their new children and everything to do with their experience of becoming a parent and that’s to be expected. If you’re not a parent yourself however, there is little you can contribute. Given that most friendships are based on common interests, if you’re not bored from the get-go, and feel that your friendship is worth the changes in many cases as friends the chances of drifting apart are high. Read the rest of this entry »

Deciding to live childfree includes putting to rest the potentially active ghost of second-guessing. For good. Being childfree is a choice, which means more than likely there were other choices we could have made. Continually saying or thinking thoughts like: “Should we have?”, “Could I have?” “Will I regret it later?” “What if we made a mistake?” is second-guessing.

Why waste hours, day, years - even a minute – berating yourself for supposedly missing the boat, not having the family people are telling you you ought to have, or that you think everyone else has? Why waste time comparing your life to the fantasy filled life filled with perfect children? Never mind that the fantasy is continually shouted at us from every societal corner.

Often, childfree adults and childfree women in particular, are either told by parents and other “well-meaning” people that if they don’t have children “they’ll regret it and find out too late what they’ve missed out on…” or, Read the rest of this entry »

Christmas is just around the corner, and it’s no secret that I just love it. The sounds, the smells, the decorations, the Christmas tree, the fun of buying presents, sending greetings and curbing my curiosity as I eye the deliciously wrapped presents under my tree – which I’m under strict orders not to investigate until Christmas Day. People rushing home doing last minute Christmas shopping, and yes, even the Christmas music (although have to admit that does get boring pretty quickly). Read the rest of this entry »

Here are a couple of interesting links that tie in very nicely with my article on the Fertility Industry. By Nina Paley they were passed on to me by Carisa, with whom I have to agree that Nina’s work is real genius. I have never seen movies quite as good as these before.

Of the two, this one is my favourite – brilliant and so very on target:

http://www.vhemt.org/fertco.mov

And here is another great one, called The Stork (which was actually shown at the Museum of Modern Art according to Nina’s blog):
http://clusterfunction.com/video/ninapaleydotcom/Stork/StorkFinalSorensen.mov
Quoting Carisa “They make you want to laugh, but cry at the same time due to being so spot on.” Having seen them, I could not agree more!

See them for yourself. Enjoy. And thanks Carisa for passing on these great childfree links! I’m bookmarking this one.

Don’t want a baby? No matter. You may soon be hearing the pitter-patter of little feet anyway. By that time you’ll know – too late – you’ve been duped into fatherhood.

I had heard of incidences of women trapping men into having a baby, but somehow I thought it was the exception rather than the rule. I need to revisit my thinking. Judging by this article entitled “That was no “Accident” and brought to my attention by Kath not only is it not uncommon, it isn’t even particularly condemned. Why not? Well, because the woman wants a baby. And it appears not only does the end justify the means, but it doesn’t seem to matter that their partner doesn’t want or is not prepared for fatherhood.

As I read the article I had several thoughts. Each one worthy of an article itself. I found the hairs on my neck standing on end. I felt disgusted at the depths that some women would sink to have a baby.

From the article, which I hope you will read, here’s a real life scenario:

“… Jody (not her real name), a 32-year-old account manager for a major New York ad firm, decided to speed things along with her boyfriend two years ago by getting pregnant without telling him. “It’s not about trapping the guy,” Jody says. “That’s kind of old-fashioned. Yeah, you want him to be into it, but there are other ways to get a guy to commit. If you’re smart and in a good relationship, it’s just about the fact that you want a kid.”

Really? How fuckwitted is that? Read the rest of this entry »