Forums: Childless

Nearly one in five American women in her early 40s is childless, according to a report that shows a striking increase in women who don't have biological children. The trend was much less common in the 1970s, when one in 10 women did not have children by 40 to 44, the age bracket researchers use to designate the end of childbearing years. The report, released Friday by the Pew Research Center, cites social and cultural shifts behind the change, including less pressure to have children, better contraceptive measures and expanded job opportunities for women. (snip) Overall, the report found that...

Laura S. Scott loves her husband. And that, she says, is enough to sustain a marriage. They don't need children. "Two Is Enough" is the name of her book explaining a couple's guide to living childless by choice. "I think I knew very early I didn't want to be a mom," Scott tells me. "I never imagined myself a mom, even as a small child. I never played with dolls. I was 15 when I told my mom, and she suggested things might change with my hormones. Nothing changed." Scott is 47. She's too young to conceive (excuse the pun)...

ANAND, India - Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15 pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape of soft hills. A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere else but are common here. The young mothers of Anand, a place famous for its milk, are pregnant with the children of infertile couples from around the world. The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile couples with local women, cares for...

Carolyn Moynihan | Wednesday, 5 September 2007 Dogs in prams Childless Japanese women push the country's culture of cute too far. It is not unknown for little girls to try and dress the family cat or puppy in baby clothes and wheel it about in a pram. Mostly they don't succeed but the instinct is understandable enough. A live pet is much more interesting than an inanimate doll, having the warmth, cuddliness and cuteness of a real baby, and it makes playing mothers so much more fun. It seems perfectly natural and predictable behaviour. An adult woman trying the...

Most little girls play with dolls when they're young, miming the age-old role for women: marrying and building a family. And, for some, there is a stigma around women who don't want to have children. Old stories and fairy tales paint single women without children poorly -- as spinsters or witches. It seems odd that these stereotypes would continue to live today, suggests Madelyn Cain, author of "The Childless Revolution: What It Means To Be Childless Today." Making The Decision Despite the potential negative reaction from friends and families, many women, such as teacher Samantha Henderson, make the decision to...

Send in the assmonkeys Behold the latest environmentalist fad: going childless Jonathan Kay, National Post Published: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 Last Tuesday, I wrote a column for this space entitled "At a restaurant near you, the war between Daters and Breeders." It was one of those airy, self-indulgent pieces of cultural commentary that otherwise self-important op-ed pundits publish every few months to "show their human side." (See: I eat in restaurants with my kids --just like you!) My basic point was that restaurant diners shouldn't go hard on parents whose kids emit the odd yelp at dinner time. I...

It was time for the "Childfree Landslide News." Christine Fisher leaned forward and announced this in a soft voice that would sound surprisingly strong when it aired as part of her weekly (at least on Mars, she says, where weeks are 13 days) online show, the "Adult Space Child Free Podcast." She had just put in a day at the pharmaceutical company where she works and was home in her Newark apartment, shoes off, with her husband flopped on a sofa reading in the next room and her two cats roaming underfoot. She started the podcast, a medley of commentary,...