Laurie--you said this so well.  I loved when you wrote "I understand super hard."  And I especially liked this: "I think certain things are written with the fallout in mind, and those
are the ones I try to avoid. But something about the tone here, about
the baiting, about the divisiveness in an era where I hear a lot about
how there's room for everyone, how there is no reason we all can't get
along, really got to me."

There was a part of me that didn't want to write about it at all and another part of me that felt like the original post needed to be addressed because it felt in the same vein as Aliza Shvarts (remember her 15 minutes of fame?) from last year--shock value with no real message in a plea for attention (or, in this case, traffic).  I felt terrible giving either one of them attention.  At the same time, I think both can be a learning experience.

I can only go by what is written on the screen--not what the author thought in her head or what she meant to say--and what I saw was that someone who took the time to read her column apparently asked that she use the term "child-free" instead of "childless" in regards to them.  In other words, they stated a preference about how they would like to be addressed.  The author then took it upon herself to not only tell this person that she wouldn't use their term, but she thought their life was "less" because they were without children, because these were all the things they were missing out on.  Which, regardless of what sort of backpedaling she does, still applies to ALL PEOPLE WITHOUT CHILDREN  Anyone without children is missing out on her list.  So while she may have meant to direct it at people who give her a hard time about having children, nowhere in her post is that actually stated and in addition, by making it about people without children rather than people who hate children, she had hurt a wide group of people.  

Personally, instead of googling herself and adding comments everywhere, I would take the time--if I were her--to compose a thoughtful post about what she learned from the experience.  That would go a longer way in me believing that she never intended emotional harm.

Your post points out the myriad of reasons why a person would not have children and not all of them are shouting about how they hate kids.  On the contrary, a large portion are stating about how they would like or would have liked to have had children.

We all miss out on things in life.  If it's not children, it's something else.  What a sad way to view the world if you're viewing people outside your situation as having less.

Venting about infertility since 2006
www.stirrup-queens.blogspot.com
and we're not talkin' cowgirls...

This post has me choked up with anger and with sadness. I don't have kids and I don't want to. That does not make me a child myself. It certainly does not mean that I don't understand what it is like having kids. Au contraire! I don't have kids because I understand from my friends and family EXACTLY what it takes to be a good parent. I love being an aunt. It is the perfect role for me. And even more, I loved that I worked for many years in child and family policy. Because nothing is more important to me than the fact that all children deserve an equal chance at success in life.

Sometimes I think that the most aggressive voices on both sides of this ludicrous "debate" are so forceful bwecause they regret the decisions they made and therefore feel compelled to cover for it by yelling at people. Other times, I think it is just that people are so insecure with their choices that they can't feel good about themselves unless everyone validates their choice by opting for it, too. Or they are just such miserable people that they can only accept themselves by stepping on others. Otherwise, I can't imagine why someone would be unable to look beyond their own noses and see that life offers a variety of situations that people can find happiness in.

Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Oth

While you and I come at this subject from different perspectives (you would like to have a child; I'm happy with my childfree situation and undecided about whether I'd ever change that), our feelings are the same. What you and I (and also Sassymonkey, in her recent post) want is for every woman to be accepted for her choices, regardless of whether or not that includes bearing a child.

You said: "If [childfree women] don't like kids, how likely are they to find 'tiny kisses on your nose while you're napping' to be a draw? I know some parents who wouldn't be down with that, quite frankly."

That stood out to me because you're absolutely right. My eyes skimmed over Kim Hays' post because I was thinking to myself, "Um...no, thanks." Not that tiny kisses are bad. If some little kid did that to me, I'm sure I'd have a momentary thought of, "Awww, how sweet." But then I'd smile and go on about my happy, childfree day.

Personal blog: Zandria.us
BlogHer blog: Singles/Fitness

My husband and I don't have kids and we're old enough (52 and 42, respectively) that we've long since put that decision to rest. However, that doesn't mean we go around telling our parent friends that it's a shame they're tied down so they can't spend their evenings performing with rock bands and staying up all night the way we do.

I have a bad habit of saying, "No, we have cats" when someone asks if I have kids. I'm trying to break myself of it because it's kind of flip and might make me sound like a jerk, even though that's not my intention. I love my niece and nephew and I love my friends' kids, but I took a different path and I don't regret it in the least.

Having kids (or not) is either a personal choice or a fluke of
biology and circumstances - either way it's none of anyone's business.

Reading that post, and the comments (or at least enough of them till i felt a bit sick) made the following clear to me.

We all feel like victims sometimes. We are all defensive.  We think the world judges us, and find judgement even when it is not meant. 

And I dont mean you, Laurie, - I think that little post you refer to certainly is judgemental.

I mean - what is the point in arguing with your own perception of other people's opinion? In arguing with a person who possibly only exists in your imagination?  That smug "child-free" man or woman sneering at you over their keyboard?

Kim Hayes says "But I'm rubbed the wrong way by the so-called "child-free movement" that judges me without ever having walked in my shoes."

But she does not give any actual examples of where somebody did that.  That immediately makes me a lot less sympathetic. If she did refer to an actual example - she would be speaking about an actual persons real opinion, and I would know that she is not aiming at me, but at them. 

Oh. And somebody saying they prefer to be called "child-free" rather than "child-less" just does not seem to me to be judging her choice to have children.

What I don't get is why it has to be a competition on who has it better. We just have different life circumstances. There are wonderful things about being a parent and there are terribly annoying things about being a parent.

I have to say that I am generally a fan of the Moms at Work Sentinel column. Yes, I thought Kim's tone was harsh, but it sounded defensive. I think she had been attacked, and when someone attacks your children it is easy to react harshly.

But back to the point, I don't see why it is a "thing". People have children for about 1000 different reasons and people don't have children for 1000 different reasons. It isn't a contest. We don't have to one up each other.

And I don't care if you have children or not. I like people for who they are not what they have.

Or don't.

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Sports and Fitness
Sarah and the Goon Squad
Draft Day Suit

Like Melissa, I loved when you wrote "I understand super hard."

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Sports and Fitness
Sarah and the Goon Squad
Draft Day Suit

I'm childfree, by choice. I don't consider myself childless, because there's something about the word that makes it seem (to me) like I should have children and well, I just don't want children at this point and I don't know that I ever will.

The vast majority of the time a post decrying the child-free doesn't bother me. Different strokes for different folks. There was just something about the post that didn't sit well with me. It seemed mean-spirited towards those of us who don't or can't have children. The decision to have children is so important, so huge. You are saying that you want to bring life into the world, or that you want to take responsiblity for a life that is in the world. It's a huge responsibility, and not a choice that I think someone should do just because "that's what comes next" or "that's what grown-ups do."

Unfortunately it's not something that everyone who wants can have. Not everyone who wants to have a baby is physically able to. Not everyone who wants to adopt gets approved or can financially afford it. Not everyone who wants to mother can be a mother. I know people who really do want children, they don't know if they can. Some of my friends haven't been able to, for a wide variety of reasons. And when I saw that post, which just throws everyone who doesn't have children, who identifies themselves as child-free or childless, under a truck I got angry.

I got angry because yes, there are people who think that all children are brats and that people who have them are selfish and the people who have them are "breeders." And yes, they call themselves child-free. But they don't speak for me. They don't speak for a friend of mine who is trying to conceive but is at the moment child-free or childless (I don't know which she'd prefer). They don't speak for the friend of mine who tried for years and underwent multiple fertility treatments and was never able to have a baby.

But we were all judged to be the same.

Not all mother's are the same either. As my years of working with at-risk teens proved to me, sadly not all mothers love their children. Not all mothers wanted their children. Thank goodness so many of them and that so many moms blog about there fanastic lives with their children but it's not universal. The ones that don't love their children certainly don't speak for those that do.

So why would anyone assume that me and my friends and the many women I don't know but are like us think exactly like child- and mom-hating child-free?

And for goodness's sake, can we please stop using reproduction and children against each other. I don't care if you are child-free, childless, have one child, ten children, work at home, stay at home, whatever. You made the choice that was right for your family. Let me make mine.

Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.

I read the post and personally wasn't impressed. I agree with Sarah, that it sounded defensive. And offensive as well.

We can and should be able to identify ourselves in whichever way applies to us as individuals. I respect childfree and childless and any other term people choose to identify themselves. That's what it boils down to for me. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. (thank you, aretha)

http://raisedqueer.squarespace.com

As writers we have an obligation to do our best to say what we mean. And if say it wrong, we have an obligation to apologize or to fix it. I'm seeing neither which I guess is what bothers me the most.

The post just starts out on the wrong foot to begin with. The headline: "You say childfree, I say
child-less nya nya " (okay, I added the nya nyas)  is simply antagonistic and unfair, so really, it can't go anywhere but downhill from there. But I have to believe the writer, in crafting her bullet points, started
confusing the things that non-moms are missing with some of the things
she's personally gained from parenting. Because the implication that if you don't have children, you are "missing" traits like empathy (ironically) or patience is just so offensive it's almost unbelievable.

I just keep thinking how I'd feel if evangelical Christians told me I
was missing out on morals and integrity and a life of happiness
because I'm Christ-less.

(Oh wait, they do.)

No one wins in a situation like this. The author feels more beat up which gives her justification for writing her post in the first place; people like you feel attacked and defensive and hurt and sad; and moms like me and Sweet Salty Kate feel like we have to jump in and say um, not all moms think this way you know...

Words have power. Especially in a public forum like the blog of a major newspaper. And so I hope the author will write a second post to apologize or clarify her position. Hopefully a little of both.

Mom-101

Cool Mom Picks.com

Blog With Integrity

Thank you for addressing this issue and for being so honest about it.  It's easy to say "let's treat each other nicely" but not so easy to go into details about ourselves sometimes, and to get to the root of the reason why people react so strongly.

I've held off on commenting about this when I saw it on Twitter because I thought Hays was so defensive at that point that she'd dig in harder when pressed just because she'd already gone so far with it she couldn't back off now.

I comment because it hurts to think how much her post dug into you, Laurie, and Sassymonkey and Average Jane and all of my other childfree bloggy friends. (I use "childfree" and "childful," myself.) The words we are arguing over are semantics, but that doesn't mean they don't have the ability to hurt.

The worst part of all of this is that the hurt comes from generalizations. I know I don't represent all mothers at all just because I procreated -- my parenting style is way different than many, and I've written extensively about the heat I take for having an only child by choice. Maybe that's my "ouch" point, whereas yours is kids in general. It's an ouch for me because despite my belief my husband and I made the best decisions we could based on our lives and personalities and life circumstances, you can't know if you made the "right" choice. There is no tidy grid we can put our choices into. There's no Cosmo quiz where the answers are obvious and you find out fifty pages later that you're "right" or "wrong" in your decisions. You can't step in the same river twice, you can't live two lives or two decisions simultaneously. None of us will ever know what would've happened if we'd done things differently.

And in that, we are all the same. We all doubt ourselves. I hear a lot of people tell me I should do this or that and even as I'm thinking, "she/he is saying that because he/she feels insecure about his/her decisions and wants to convince me I'm wrong," I'm also thinking, "BUT WHAT IF I'M WRONG???"

As I'm learning more and more from my writing and friendships from the Internets, word choice can be dangerous. If you feel secure in a position and you want to take it, great, but you have to understand that as you said, you'll not only offend those you were sort of trying to offend (for whatever reason), but you're also going to offend or hurt a huge audience of people who bear you no ill will. We have to think more carefully when we publish to the audience of THE WHOLE INTERNET. It's not a newsletter to like-minded people. It's not an e-mail to your best friend. It's going out to the world, and the world can read it. You could make or ruin someone's day. It's powerful, it's beautiful, and it's a tremendous responsibility.

If we want to leave this world better than we entered it, we have to stop generalizing. We have to greet each human being one at a time, without regard for any physical characteristic, any family situation. It's incredibly difficult -- our brains want to apply past learnings immediately, to categorize, to move on. But we have to give each and every person that comes across our path the benefit of the doubt -- let her prove herself worthy of friendship or scorn based on her behavior.

It's fine to have an opinion. But your right to swing your hand stops when it hits someone else in the face.

Rita Arens writes at Surrender Dorothy and BlogHer and is the editor of Sleep is for the Weak.

Laurie, I agree about dividing people into camps, in this case based on parenting status. There must be something tribal, deep in the unevolved parts of our brains, that causes us to label others as Like Us or Unlike Us.

And Melissa, I like that this phrase is something that unites us: "We all miss out on things in life.  If it's not children, it's
something else.  What a sad way to view the world if you're viewing
people outside your situation as having less."  Life is full of trade-offs and opportunity costs, of paths taken and not taken.

And Sarah, I liked this: "And I don't care if you have children or not. I like people for who they are not what they have. Or don't."

So while I am able to synthesize, I apparently have no original thoughts on this CF/CL uproar.

Weebles Wobblog ... mindful living amid chaos.

All Thumbs Reviews ... get your sass on.

@BestLight on

I am getting ready to go out of town and I'm scrambling (plus there is work to consider. :)) and I want to respond to you in more depth, but for now I just want to say thanks for responding so thoughtfully from your own experiences and belief systems. 

This, to me, as Rita alluded to, is the best kind of discussion that the Internet in all of its weird glory can foster, and so has BlogHer on a smaller community scale. It keeps me coming back. 

Laurie 

LaurieWrites

Laurie, this post is incredible. You write this is such a lovely, unjudgemental way and are so clear with your point. It is so frustrating that writers continue to focus on things that can drive us apart. Not that the subject matter inherently drives us apart, but the way so many people write about it, it becomes so divisive. You're right on here. I'm so glad you wrote this response.

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