Darren's Story

I grew up in a small town in southwestern Michigan that is primarily farmland. My mother was born in Yunnan, China, to missionary parents. My father was born in southern Indiana. My maternal grandfather died in China when my mother was 12, so I never knew him. My maternal grandmother was born and grew up in southwestern Michigan. My paternal grandparents were born in southern Indiana.

Both of my parents are deceased now. They divorced after 27 years of marriage, and both remarried.

My parents were both very damaged emotionally by their own parents. My mother's parents considered the Chinese to be more important than their own children, and didn't hesitate to tell my mother that. Also, missionary children were sent away thousands of miles to boarding school, with travel back to see their parents impossible for years and years at a time. It was not uncommon for children to go for five years or more without seeing their parents. My mother never saw her father again once she was sent to boarding school. The boarding school was run by British missionaries who were forced to be teachers when they would rather have been missionaries, and who frequently took their resentment out on the children in their care. This unnatural upbringing left my mother a woman who could not express emotion easily. Fortunately for her children, she was able to express her love for us, and I felt loved and cared for. Unfortunately, however, she could not help us learn to deal with the world of emotions in a healthy manner, and we all suffer from that lack.

My father's parents divorced when he was 12, in 1933. At that time, divorce was a horrible scandal, and women who were divorced were viewed as incapable of caring for their children. As a result, my father and his siblings were removed from their mother's care, and sent to live with relatives. My father and his brother were sent to his father's parents, and his two sisters were sent to live with an aunt. Like my mother, this early trauma was very harmful to his emotional growth, and he too found it difficult, if not impossible, to deal with emotions in a healthy manner.

In spite of my parents' emotional inadequacies, they were, for the most part, good parents. I didn't suffer abuse or neglect. What I did suffer was from watching my mother do two full-time jobs for her entire married life, as she had the full responsibility for we four children, the house, the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc., while working full-time outside the home. I saw that the division of labor in a household is never equal, and that men do not feel obligated to lift a finger around the house. Seeing my mother condemned to a life of household drudgery made me determined not to repeat that cycle. As I grew older, I came to realize that it was having children that forced a woman to put up with being a household servant. Having children makes a woman vulnerable to all kinds of abuses, because she must sacrifice her job to take care of them (or sacrifice upward mobility because she can't put in long hours at work) and must rely upon the husband's income to help support the children. If the husband doesn't want to help around the house, she can't force him, unless she is able to use the threat of walking out as leverage. And because she is bound to the children and needs his income to support them, she can't walk out. Thus I came to realize that having children was suicidal for a woman like me who did not want to be a household drudge.

I have four siblings, and am the youngest of the four. My oldest sister is also childfree. The second-oldest sister has two children, and my brother has five children. I am very close to both of my sisters. I am less close to my brother, because he does not have the time to keep in touch (he has three children under 1 year of age in his household).

Of the people I consider my closest friends, they are about equally divided between the childed and the childfree. Of the women I remain close to since our college days, only one has children. Two close friends I have made since college do have children, but they are grown.

I have had several jobs that involved children. I worked as a kindergarten teacher's aide in a summer migrant school program for two summers. I baby-sat my way through a master's and doctorate. I was a school librarian for grades 7-12. But all that that contact with children of varied ages did was to make me more convinced that I did not want any of my own.

I am a librarian at a university. I make good money, partly because I haven't had to devote my life to children, but have been able to work more than 40 hours a week at my job, thus earning top raises every year.

I have never wanted children. I didn't like to play with dolls, but preferred stuffed animals and reading. I have never experienced the desire for children, especially as I see them as making me give up the freedom that comes with being childfree. I was sure as early as high school that I didn't want any kids, but at that time, I honestly didn't know that one could not have children. I thought that it was inevitable. It wasn't that I didn't understand the reproductive process and pregnancy prevention, but that I didn't realize that it was possible to not meet societal norms and still be a valuable member of society. By the time I was in my early twenties, I had realized that having children was an option, and one that I did not choose to pursue.

I thank God every day for birth control!

The only pressure I ever got to have children was at work, when I worked for an idiot who would say things like, "Just wait until you have kids of your own, you'll change your mind" and, "It's different when it is your own child; have one and see." All of her drivel just made me more determined not to have children, because what if she was wrong? What would I do with a child that I turned out to not want after it was born? It sounded like a pretty big risk to take!

The only time I ever had doubts about my decision was during a period in my work life when work was awful and I was under way more stress than I could handle. I wanted to run away and not have to work any more, and the only acceptable way for that to happen is to have a baby. It is my belief that women choose this option when they realize that working isn't fun all the time, and that they will have to put up with a lot of hassles in the work world. What they don't realize is that they are trading the hassles of work, where they get paid to put up with the hassles, for the hassles of child care, where they not only don't get paid, but lose money hand over fist supporting the child. Not a good tradeoff, in my opinion.

I have never felt guilty about my decision.

I've remained pretty much constant over the years, excepting the one period in my life when I wanted to escape. And even then I realized that I was wanting to escape, not really wanting to have a baby.

My family is just fine with my decision. Even my parents were OK with it (probably because my oldest sister paved the way). My peers don't care.

To me, a family is a group of people who care about each other and support each other through thick and thin. They need not be related in any way. Gender and age don't matter. I have a family where I live that consists of 3 adult women friends. I can call them in the middle of the night in emergencies, we listen to each other's woes, we support each other. I also have siblings to whom I am close, but they live hundreds of miles away, and we can't maintain the daily contact that I do with my family here where I live. A family doesn't have to consist of parents and children to be a "real" family. A family is only as real as the love and support it provides.

I have no fears about growing older. I am 45 now, and do not see that having children or grandchildren would have enriched my life in any way. While my mother loved her grandchildren, the appeal was totally lost on me (their aunt).

I have 7 nieces and nephews and one great-nephew. I see my sister's kids every couple of months, and am fairly close to them. I rarely see my brother's children, as I rarely see my brother. I tutor two 3rd grade girls in reading once a week. I also serve as a mentor for an at-risk college freshman at my university.

When I am around infants and toddlers, I want to scream and run for my life. I can't tolerate the noise or the smells. School-aged children are a lot of fun, even teenagers, providing they are clean and well behaved.

I have seven cats. They are my immediate family, being the only ones to share my house. All seven are gray, to keep the cat hair the same color. I name them from my family tree, as I'm not going to be using any of those really neat names on my biological children.

I love to read, play with cats, garden, sing, play the piano, and watch TV. I am very active in my church as well. I can't conceive of being able to do ANY of the things that I enjoy if I had children. None of the parents I know have any lives of their own at all, because 100% of their time is consumed with childcare. I wouldn't be able to volunteer my time for my church, for non-profit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and the Arthritis Foundation, or for tutoring/mentoring if I had children. I wouldn't have a moment's peace for reading, and no time to play the piano or prepare my weekly vocal solos for church. TV enjoyment would be a thing of the past, as none of the shows I watch is suitable viewing for children!

Quite honestly, I'm glad that I didn't bring children into the world as it is today. While the threat of nuclear extinction may be lessened by the fall of the USSR, we face growing threats of ecological disaster from the ever-increasing pollution of our air and water. Having children only contributes to the pollution threatening our environment. No one who is truly concerned about the environment could rationally justify having children. Also, I am glad that I did not have children because I do not believe that the economy of the USA will be able to sustain them. A large portion of my salary goes to Social Security, which I will never see. A large portion of my salary goes to Medicare, which I will never see. These programs will not have to support me in my old age, because I am saving enough money NOW to be able to support myself after I retire. I am able to do this because I do not have children. If I had children, all of my disposable income would have to go to raising them, and there would be nothing left to save for my old age. I would then have to rely upon the government programs (which are going to go broke in the near future) or upon my children to support me in my old age, neither of which are acceptable alternatives for me.

I would describe my life without children as relaxed, calm, comfortable, peaceful, and restful. Having children eliminates those words from a parent's vocabulary for at least 20 years. I chose to keep those words as descriptors of my life.

I make $56,000 a year. I wouldn't make that much if I had had children, because I wouldn't have been able to earn top raises by working long hard hours. As it is, without children, this is a very comfortable salary. With children, I would be completely broke (as are my siblings). I am, and have ever been, single.

I see the lives of my friends who have children as a complete horror. My friends and family with children are subject to unending stress. First, they have NO money, so their lives are painfully circumscribed because they can't go anywhere, do anything, buy anything, or even pay a sitter just to get away. Second, once the children reach early adolescence, all semblance of control over the kid's wanes, and all hell breaks loose. Even with the strictest of upbringings, children do stupid things like shoplift, get pregnant, drop out of school, skip school, run way, etc. Parents are consumed with worry, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I choose not to burden myself with that kind of misery.

I will continue to work until I am 60, then I will retire (possibly earlier, but I am not sure at this point). I plan to spend my retirement playing, much as I do now on weekends. Reading, gardening, playing with cats, visiting with friends, reading e-mail and responding, home repair and upkeep, cooking, volunteering, church activities, and napping.

Having children would eliminate my future plans completely.

I don't feel that people who have chosen not to have children are selfish at all. The childfree people I have met are more thoughtfully introspective on the subject of children than any parent I've ever met. While I have yet to meet a parent who can answer the question "Why did you have children?" with anything other than a blank stare, I have met dozens of childfree people who have spent a lot of time reaching their decision to not reproduce. I have never met a childfree person who has reached that decision frivolously or lightly. All have been determined to examine the pros and cons of having children and reach a rational decision. Many have what anyone would think of as excellent decisions besides the obvious one: why should anyone who doesn't want a child have one? If one is at all concerned about children, one ought to believe that they deserve to be wanted. If a person does not want to have children, in spite of the blatant pro-natalism of our society, then they are being selfLESS, because they are in for a lot of hassles from family, friends, and colleagues for making that decision, yet they have made that decision in the best interests of a child.

To anyone who is considering whether or not to have children, I would say, "Do your homework. Find out how much it costs to have, feed, clothe, and raise a child and see if you can afford it. If you can't, don't have one. Find out if you are good at it. Borrow a friend or family member's child/children for 20 weekends or a week and see if you are happy all the time you have them. Are you nerves frazzled? Did you lose your temper? Think hard, because when you have your own children, you can't give them back. Take some parenting classes. Get some family counseling to figure out how you will deal with the changes in roles that will occur if you have a baby. Save your money NOW. Take the parenthood quiz."

I see parents unwilling to set limits on acceptable behavior for their children. Parents are afraid to discipline their children, even though countless studies have shown that children want such discipline, because they are afraid that their kids won't like them. Kids don't always like their parents, but it is the parent's job to live with that. Letting the child control the household is bad for the child. Not setting limits on how children act is cruel to the child, because s/he won't know why all the other kids don't like him/her.