Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Whiny Wednesday: Worst Celebrity Parents

We all have our own personal lists of most despised celebrity parents and our own reasons for that scorn. As it is Whiny Wednesday, it seems like the perfect time to have a rant about the celebrity parents we love to hate.

I’ll get you started with my top three:

Kate Gosselin

Kate Gosselin

Kate Gosselin

Oh, sorry, I have others:

Nadya Suleman (Octo Mom)

The assorted Kardashians (remind me, why are they famous?)

Levi Johnson (somebody stop this man!)

and if she doesn’t get a grip, Angelina Jolie is going to make it on there before long, too.

Your turn….

Celebrity Babies

I don’t make a point of following celebrity news, but it somehow manages to find me anyway. I must say that I’m pleased with the recent slew of celebrity sex tapes because they’re trumping the usual news about celebrity baby. Even so, you can’t make it through the grocery store line without somebody’s pregnant belly poking at you from the cover of a magazine.

Ever since Demi Moore posed naked and pregnant for Vanity Fair, celebrity pregnancy and motherhood have gone from taboo to acceptable, to the mess we have today, where pregnancy bumps and new babies are the latest celebrity accessories. Everybody’s doing it and there’s no escaping the news. The magazine racks at the grocery stores are covered with a who’s who of maternity. One magazine has a regular Bump Watch feature, and People magazine’s online version has an entire page dedicated to celebrity baby news. As if the gossip mags aren’t already doing their best to make us feel inadequate because our hair isn’t smooth, our waists aren’t tiny, and our clothes aren’t chic, now apparently we’re not perfect if we don’t have the most adorable baby in tow.

Well, I’m not buying it. Not until one of these celebrities comes clean about the difficulty she had conceiving with her size 0 body, or that motherhood isn’t just some pretty thing that comes with a designer nursery and a new set of cute clothes.

Pamela Tsigdinos’ Great Interview About Moving Beyond Infertilty

Life Without Baby member, Pamela Tsigdinos talks about overcoming infertility and making the decision to remain childless. It’s so great to hear her talking about the emotions, the stigma, and about “coming out of the closet” as an infertile woman. Wonderful. Also interesting to hear a discussion about choosing to get off the baby crazy train on a site dedicated to “IVF and third party family building.”

You can hear the podcast of her interview on the link below:

The Impact of RESOLVE with Executive Director, Barbara Collura, and Pamela Tsigdinos, Author of Silent Sorority, a Winner of Resolve’s Hope Award.

You can also check out Pamela’s website: Silent Sorority

Teen Retailer Launches Maternity Line

Even though I don’t have children of my own, I still find I have protective maternal instincts for children in general, and this article fired all those instincts into action.

Forever 21, that hip teen store, has launched a line of maternity wear for pregnant teens.

On the one hand, I think that if ever a group of women needed help to feel good about themselves, pregnant teens are it. But the maternal side of me thinks that making pregnancy attractive to teens by offering cool outfits is completely insane.

If you read the comments under the article you’ll see a number of people who think that this move won’t encourage teen pregnancy. I say baloney. I can clearly remember back in the days before hormones started my actual baby madness that, whenever I walked past a maternity store with stylish outfits draped over neat bumps, I’d daydream about the day I’d get to be pregnant. Those clothes made motherhood look beautiful and fun and desirable. Is this the message we want to send to our teens, that you too can be hip and trendy; all you need to do is get knocked up?

Yikes.

Maybe I’m being cynical, but we’ve all experienced the alluring commercialism of the motherhood industry, all those conferences and stores selling their glorious image of motherhood. And we’re (allegedly) sensible adults. Is this what we want to sell to impressionable teens?

Magazine for Non-Moms II

Last week a great discussion ensued about the lack of magazines for women who don’t have children. A number of people bemoaned the fact that women’s magazines are either focused on fashion and dating or kids, and that many of us have stopped reading them because we can’t relate to the stories.

So, let’s play make-believe. Let’s pretend we have unlimited resources to start a magazine aimed at women who don’t have (or don’t want to talk solely about) children. What would it contain? What kinds of stories would interest you? What issues do you want to read about? What are subjects would you like to see covered?

And finally, what would you call the magazine?

Have fun with this. You never know, Oprah could be watching.

Cameron Diaz: Happily Not Having It All

Here’s a refreshing celebrity point-of view–the idea that “having it all” just isn’t practical and that “giving life is easier than giving love.” Granted, for some of us, the latter isn’t exactly true, but if only everyone gave this much thought to the parenthood decision.

Cameron Diaz: Happily Not Having It All – Expertise – SavvyAuntie.com.

Are Women With More Education Less Likely to Have Children?

The Pew Research Center recently put out an interesting report on women without children. According to their findings:

Nearly one-in-five American women ends her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-ten in the 1970s. While childlessness has risen for all racial and ethnic groups, and most education levels, it has fallen over the past decade for women with advanced degrees.

One-in-five women? I have to say that those figures surprised me. The report goes on to say:

Childlessness is most common among highly educated women. In 2008, 24% of women ages 40-44 with a bachelor’s degree had not had a child. Rates were similar for women with a master’s degree (25%) and those with a doctorate or a professional degree, such as a medical or legal degree (23%).

The report doesn’t give any indication as to why the rates dropped in women with advanced degrees when they were increasing overall. Any thoughts on this?

I thought it would be interesting to conduct our own poll and test our figures against the report’s. What is the highest level of education you have attained?

[polldaddy poll=3463887]

The Unreasonable Uproar About Elena Kagan’s Childlessness

On her blog The Road Less Travelled, loribeth posted a great piece about Elena Kagan and the uproar about her childlessness. It’s a very insightful post with some great comments.

She says:

I’m somewhat sympathetic to the argument that American women desperately need role models who have managed to rise to the top while also having a family. At the same time, reading stuff like:

“To me, if a woman doesn’t have a child, she has only an abstract ability to pass judgment on issues where motherhood is concerned.”

sets my teeth on edge. I would submit that parents pass many, many judgments on behalf of people without children that don’t necessarily serve our needs very well — and yet nobody seems to question their ability to speak for us.

In an NPR article about women in the Supreme Court, Nina Totenberg made a great point:

Before Sotomayor’s appointment to the court, there were six justices in the court’s history who were unmarried and had no children — all of whom were men.

I’d be willing to bet that during their nomination proceedings the topic of their childlessness never came up.

Number of women without children soars, study finds

Number of women without children soars, study finds.

I found this article very interesting, especially as a great discussion on this exact topic ensued here a couple of days ago.

While I’m not exactly happy to hear that our numbers are swelling (because I’m concerned that at least some of this is due to rising infertility rates) I’m always glad to see the discussion being had “out there” in the public eye. The more we talk about this, the sooner being a woman (or a man) without children will become less of a taboo subject.