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Since Sassymonkey sent a link yesterday morning to a post called "Child-free movement: You say 'childfree,' I say 'childless'" by Kim Hays of the Orlando Sentinel Moms at Work blog, I've been trying to figure out why it bothered me to the point that I felt the need to call the author out on Twitter. (I am allergic to conflict and am therefore so not a Twitter caller-outer. I'm a Twitter converser, no rage included on a regular basis.)
First, of Hays's point, a recap:
She has unnamed, unspecified commenters on her blog who prefer to be called "childfree" and not "childless" who "corrected" her (quotes not mine) related to the use of these terms. And maybe, I don't know, she woke up thinking about that the other day (which must have been a slow parenting news day, I'm just saying) and also thought, wow, I'll throw a little bit of contextless background in here about people who are nasty in their childfreeness and make a list of the things they're missing out on that I - as a mother - am not. And then she wrote a mostly warm and fuzzy list with a side dish of excessive quotations, bold font, and snide asides.
Just so I know, when I have nieces and nephews, that is not the same as having my own children, she'd have me know, which totally ruins my plan to pass those kids off as my own. And also there goes their inheritance.
I am sounding nasty to my own ears and I don't like it, but I am so tired of this discussion that I know I can't abandon. And let me state for the record that I usually would not take the time to dicker around with a premise as unclear as I find Hays's to be in this piece. 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.
I am tired of people being drawn into strange camps based on parenting status. Parenting choices and circumstances are among the most personal in our lives, at the same time the most obvious and the most difficult to explain. They're inextricable from our biology and our chemistry and our cultural identity, a point I'll argue all day long, because as a single, childless woman in this country I know things. Scary things. Upsetting things.
Walk with me to my office a few years ago, when the married with children colleague who knew my stance full well on all of this leaned in my doorway next to a pile of work she'd dumped on me and said, "Oh, I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have people to go home to who gave my life meaning." True story. Continue on to Austin this March where a dad blogger told me in a terribly mean way that my opinion didn't count, that I would always be a child until I'd had children, a conclusion I'm guessing he was basing on his cohort that includes, exaggeratedly both real and fictional, John Edwards, the late Michael Jackson, Homer Simpson AND Peter Griffin, Tommy Lee (who I hesitate to call out because, well, we have a history, but still) and that guy I knew in grad school whose child never had decent shoes but he always had a dime bag.
And talk about evenings for which the old "bottle of red in a brown paper bag" image was invented. I mean, seriously. People say some really effective things when they're screwing with you sometimes.
So, whereas I am tired of having to state the following, I'm afraid people who can relate don't feel able to often enough because it's not fun to admit:
I will be 40 years old in a little more than a year. The only thing left that I haven't done that I wish to do in my life - the only huge thing, because I have a jillion other things on my to-do list, some of which even give me the will to get out of bed in the morning - is to be a parent. Sometimes this makes me sad. The end.
