We knew “The Case Against Having Kids,” the August 3 cover story, would elicit response and debate. But we weren’t prepared for the deluge—well over a hundred letters and more than 1,000 comments on Macleans.ca (at last count). Clearly, the subject struck a nerve—and as one email indicates, even a gastrointestinal tract or two: “Disgusted,” was its subject line. “It made me nauseous to read the article…in fact, I’m not even sure what was the point of the article aside from promoting yet another fad and the ultimate age of selfishness.”
So to recap the point of the article: to examine the small but growing strata of people who are choosing not to have children. The moment was ripe: Corinne Maier’s manifesto No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not to Have Children, which sparked furor in France last year, was about to land in North America. Increasingly those who are voluntarily childless are taken seriously as a statistical cohort and as the subject of research. Additionally, a number of high-profile women, such Cameron Diaz, have recently said they have no plans to have children.
The topic is so new in mainstream discussion that many readers assumed it has to be anti-child—reading “The Case Against Kids,” rather than “The Case Against Having Kids.” One inflamed letter writer even suggested it’s not safe to send trick-or-treating children to my house on Halloween (It is! Honest!). A pregnant woman expressed her displeasure, concerned the article could affect her domestic harmony: “But I have got to say that I, being a mom-to-be for the first time, due in 5 weeks did NOT appreciate my husband being welcomed home after a hard day at work to this headline.” Some readers complained the story was one-sided: “I presume you’re going to give equal space to “The Case For Having Kids,” a reader fumed, as if civilization itself didn’t provide that.
Most of the mail came from parents, which isn’t surprising: despite declining fertility rates in Western society most people do have and continue to have children. Many wrote to testify that being a parent is the most wonderful and gratifying experience life has to offer—the corollary being that those who opt out are deficient somehow. Chris Boyd, who writes that he has one young child after years of thinking children weren’t for him, summed up the sentiment: “I now feel genuinely sorry for those who focus on their selfish existence too long and end up lonely and bored and childless,” he wrote, adding: “Oh, and number two is due in December, I guess our lives are over based on 40 Good Reasons to Not Have Children. Really, I could give you 100 reasons you should.”
Ironically, such judgment is at the very core of the stigma felt by those who are childless by choice: The fact they don’t want what so many people desperately want, that they’re opting out of an experience frequently described as life’s most profound, makes them suspect; they’re viewed as social outliers or “selfish.”
One email referred to people without kids as “living a ‘lifestyle’ of barren self-gratification.” Yet that wasn’t my observation researching the story. Many people who choose not to have children had given thoughtful, careful (sometimes anguished) consideration to the decision. They were acutely aware that parenting is an experiment, one they cannot control, and they weren’t willing to take the risk for varied reasons. Others just knew intuitively from a young age that they weren’t cut out for parenting. As one woman told me: “I don’t think I could be the kind of mother my children would deserve.”
There’s a reflexive assumption, it seems, that people don’t have kids because they want more stuff—bigger plasma TVs, holidays, a SubZero fridge. Reader Melanie Wallace echoed another viewpoint, one voiced by childless people I spoke with: that she believes she can make a greater social contribution if she didn’t have children. “I, too, do not feel the ‘calling’ to parenthood, and very much appreciated your efforts to help your readers understand that those of us who choose to remain child-free are not narcissistic ego-maniacs,” she wrote. “On the contrary, we are often giving back to the world as much as any traditional parent. Through choosing not to parent biological children, I have found that I have the time, energy and resources to “nurture” the world and the people already in it in new and creative ways.”
Some expressed gratitude that Maclean’s was addressing the topic and hoped that it would foster greater understanding—and result in less pressure being placed on those who don’t want children to have them. One woman wrote: “Many people seem to think that they are entitled to give me their two-cents worth on my decision not to bear children. I hope this article enlightens the public as to how rude, inconsiderate and ignorant their comments are.”
(The tone of some of the mail suggested they weren’t imagining the censure: “Bravo to those brave—k child-free couples,” one reader wrote. “If they fail to see how their genetic seed could possibly enrich this world, I for one, do not want their progeny either. Perhaps they should go one step further and voluntarily sterilize themselves, lest they change their minds once that biological clock starts ticking.”)
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