Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Whiny Wednesday

Last week a Tennessee woman pinned a note to her 7-year old adopted son and put him alone on a plane back to Russia.

People, a child is not a purchase. You cannot get a refund on your child, biological or adopted, just because he didn’t turn out quite as you’d hoped. I understand how the desire for motherhood can taint a person’s view until she can see only what she wants to see when the chance of having a child is presented to her. But this is a human life we’re talking about here. If you choose to be a mother, you choose to be a mother FOR LIFE, not just until it gets too hard.

That’s my gripe. What’s yours?

The Myth of the Crazy Cat Lady

I like to tease my nieces and nephews by telling them that if they’re not nice to me, I’m going to leave my (u-hum) millions to a home for cats. But how far from reality is the stereotype of the childless woman filling her home with feline companions? Do we women really need some small helpless creature to nurture in order to satisfy our natural instincts? I’ve been told by more than one person that instead of having children I should just get a dog instead, and during my time cruising the infertility websites, I came across countless references to fur-babies, the pets we childless women supposedly use to substitute for our offspring.

I have a cat. There, I admit it, but I have a cat because I love cats and I never had a cat growing up, so as soon I had a stable place of my own, I adopted a kitten and I’ve always had one since. Do I treat my cat as a substitute for a child? Of course not; I would never let a child get away with the things my cat does. Carve up my new couch? Climb up on the table during dinner? Throw up on the carpet without making some effort to get to the bathroom? All these actions from a child would deserve some kind of response, ranging from a stiff talking to, to being grounded for a week. But punishing a cat is cruel and pointless. She’s a cat; she’d put back her ears, give me a dirty look, then just go and do it again. But do I talk to her? Do I hold her like a baby? Do I blow raspberries on her stomach? Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean she’s a substitute for a child.

So, do we need to fulfill some in-built need to nurture? Can the need be satisfied with a relationship with an animal? Does nurturing a career or our creativity or a dream suffice? What do you think? Let us know.

Top 10 Best Things About Child-free Holidays

10. Making up fun new traditions all of your own

9. Enjoying uninterrupted adult conversation over dinner

8. Being able to wriggle out of family obligations without Grandma pouring on the guilt about never seeing her grandkids

7. Being able to serve sugary foods without risk of your guests having sugar-induced tantrums

6. Not having to battle your conscience about loving versus spoiling when shopping for gifts

5. Not feeling obligated to call every toy store within a 50 mile radius to find the last available hot item du jour

4. Not having to wipe a layer of dust off said item du jour two weeks after the event

3. Not having your favorite holidays become all about the kids

2. Choosing not to celebrate at all

1. Having the option of spending the holidays with someone else’s kids, feeding them sugar, spoiling them rotten, riling them into Tasmanian Devils, and then going home to your nice peaceful house.

Life With a Book

Laura S. Scott is the founder of the Childless by Choice Project and wrote this book based on her findings.

Two Is Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice is the narrative of one woman’s quest to explore the motives and decision-making processes of the childless by choice in North America. Facing the end of her childbearing years in a childless by choice marriage, author Laura S. Scott surveyed 171 voluntarily childless individuals in United States and Canada to determine why and how they came to the decision to remain childfree.

It makes for interesting reading. She says:

I think we need to acknowledge that in a pronatalist society, child-free can sometimes be a loaded term. It can imply more than we intend, inviting people to assume motives—like dislike of children—which may not apply to some who are using the term as a way to communicate their well-being. Child-free also implies a type of lifestyle that may not be an accurate description of the lives of some of the childless by choice persons I have interviewed: teachers, childcare workers, and those who choose to welcome other people’s kids into their lives.

Have you read this book? Can you recommend other books for childless or child-free readers? Let us know.

From Easter Eggs to Donor Eggs: The Ethics Debate Rages On

The debate rages on about the ethics of buying and selling donor eggs for in-vitro fertilization. A recent study suggested that guidelines set by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine regarding appropriate compensation for donors is largely ignored, and that ads appearing in student publications of more prestigious universities offered way in excess of the $10,000 recommended cap.

A Los Angeles Times article makes the case that with the soaring cost of higher education:

College women comprise the largest market for donor eggs, and students struggling to pay college bills may be more tempted than ever to part with their genetic material. I can imagine some women, down the road, may regret that exchange.

Slate argues that this is just a step away from designer babies, suggesting that:

The egg market shows us what lies ahead. Once it’s possible to upgrade your seed, people will do it. And that will shake the foundations of equality. Rich folks won’t just have the best health care, education, technology, and social networks. They’ll have the most talent, too. Meritocracy will become aristocracy. What then?

A Christian Science Monitor blogger suggests that capping the price of donor eggs will just push open the black market:

Price controls cause shortages, and force people to contract elsewhere, outside the regulators’ jurisdiction.

While majority of people would consider buying better babies unethical, the fact remains that Assisted Reproductive Technology is already an option only for the wealthy. With $10,000 for donor eggs, $10-15,000 per IVF cycle, plus the cost of medical and agency fees, most people just don’t have this as an option.

What do you think? Tell us how you feel about egg donation and designer babies.

You Tell Us

You’re living Life Without Baby now, but maybe you still want children. If so, what’s stopping you right now? Please tell us; we’d love to hear.

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Holiday Traditions

With Easter and Passover upon us, it’s a time of year for gathering with family and keeping up traditions. Maybe your traditions include a huge family dinner, a sunrise service, or a mad hunt for chocolate-filled plastic eggs. But when you don’t have children, many traditions are either impossible to maintain, or simply aren’t the same. Not that there’s anything wrong with decorating eggs for your own pleasure, or mounting a one-person egg hunt, but having your photo taken on the Easter bunny’s lap could present all manner of problems.

My family didn’t attend church and so our Easter day was almost always spent hiking in the nearby countryside. That’s a tradition I’m more than happy to keep up. If I had children, I would decorate hard-boiled eggs and make bunnies out of pom-poms. An Easter egg hunt would be a tradition I’d adopt for my children, too. But I don’t have children and so I won’t be doing those things.

Many holiday traditions revolve around activities for children, so those of us without children have to start our own traditions. Today I’ll cook lamb with fresh spring vegetables, such as fava beans, English peas, and baby potatoes. I’ll uphold my family tradition of getting outdoors by taking a walk or a bike ride with my husband. I might even go to the sunrise service at the beach.

Which child-oriented holiday traditions have you abandoned and which new traditions have you created in their place?

Top Ten kid-friendly activities to do even if you don’t have kids

Here’s my Top 10 list of kid-friendly activities I still love to do even though I don’t have kids. What’s yours?

10. Play miniature golf and insist on playing by the rules

9. Go out for ice cream

8. Ride the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland

7. Play whack-a-mole

6. Build a sand castle and defend it against the sea

5. Watch Bugs Bunny cartoons

4. Do spins on a swing

3. Draw on the paper tablecloths in restaurants

2. Celebrate my birthday with cake and presents

1. Go to the midnight showing of a Harry Potter movie