Childfree for Dummies: Part II

Think about pets. There are some pets you're really into. (Doggies? Kitties? Bunnies?) You think they're adorable and have or want one yourself and are interested in all your friends' stories about their pets of that species.

Then there are other pets you're not that into. (Budgies? Goldfish?) Logically you can appreciate them and give them basic pet respect, and one in a while they can be cute, but you skip right over them when you go to the pet store to objectify puppies and scroll right past them on Cute Overload.

Think about the pets you're not that into. Think about how you'd feel about owning one. Now think about how you'd feel about owning one that you have to keep for the rest of your life and it would have full human rights.

That's how I feel about having kids.

Childfree for Dummies

Suppose I was standing before you with a pregnant belly, or with three preschoolers like my grandmother had at my age, or with my 10-year-old daughter like someone I went to high school with has right now. Wielding my sprog, I announce "I know what's best for my children!" A critical mass of humanity immediately rallies behind me, don't they?

That's exactly what I'm doing now. I do know what's best for my children, and that's that I don't have any children.

Suppose I have a child, and I put arbitrary limitations on this child in order to protect them. They have to be in bed by 8:00. They can only go trickertreating on these two streets and they have to be back by 7. They can't go to a friend's house unless I've met that friend's parents. Even if these limitations might seem overprotective or potentially hinder their fun, it's still being a good parent, isn't it? After all, I'm the grownup, I know more about what the world is like than they do, and it's my job to calculate the risk. I only want what's best.

That's exactly what I'm doing now. Knowing what the world is like, I've made the decision to keep my ova inside my ovaries. It is true that there is more potential for fun outside the ovaries, but I'm the grownup, I've calculated the risk, and they're staying inside my ovaries. I only want what's best.

Of all the people in the world, I'm the one who knows the most about my genetics, my personality, my strengths and weaknesses, and everything else about my reality. After all, I live inside it every day, while everyone else is just looking in from the outside. I am the most qualified person to decide whether this is a situation worth subjecting an innocent child to.

And if for whatever reason you think my judgement is so bad that I can't evaluate my reality nearly as well as you can, why on earth would you want an innocent child completely at the mercy of my judgement for at least nine months, with repercussions that would last their entire lifetime?

Sophisticated voter targeting?

Mentioned in passing in an only tangentally-related article:

Both are evidence of what Canada's political parties and for-hire election campaign tacticians have known for some time: that the Conservatives are doing the most sophisticated, intense and widespread voter-targeting in the country.

I wasn't going to mention it this early on, but I've gotten two pieces of literature from the Conservative campaign so far, and they were both addressing me very specifically in my capacity as a parent.

Thing is, I'm not a parent. Not only that, but very few people in my postal code are. If they had done any demographic targeting at all, they wouldn't be sending me this stuff.

Originally I was going to comment on how I've never before gotten political propganda targeting me as something I'm not. I've gotten material targeting me as having an opinion I don't have, but always in my capacity of something that I am. I've gotten both "As a tenant, here's why you should support rent control" and "As a tenant, here's why you should oppose rent control." I've gotten "As a hard-working citizen" as a premise for nearly every political platform I've ever heard of. But I've never been targeted as something I'm not. And they consider this sophisticated voter targeting? All I can assume is that means they don't give a flying fuck about me.

Things They Should Invent: quick and easy general fertility test

There are all kinds of ways to test if you're fertile (i.e. ovulating) today, and there's a lot of medical science that diagnoses specific problems that may cause infertility. But we could also use a quick and easy pee-on-a-stick type of test to give you a rough idea of how fertile you are in general compared with the average woman. It doesn't have to diagnose the reason behind any reduced fertility it finds, just the presence or absence (or, ideally, the degree) of fertility.

For example, I put a lot of time and energy and resources into not becoming pregnant. But I don't actually know if I'm fertile. I've never been pregnant, so there is room for the possibility that I cannot become pregnant. I'd really like if there was an easy way to confirm that I am in fact fertile before I go through any invasive and time-consuming sterilization procedures.

This isn't just applicable to the childfree. People who want children could do a quick general test for the presence of fertility to decide how much time they want to spend on "trying" or whether to go with adoption or artificial conception. People could take the test every year to see if (or how much) their fertility is declining as they age, and plan their lives accordingly. If you want to impress upon teens the importance of responsible sexual behaviour, you could have them take the test and see just how must of a risk they'd be taking. People who have recently had babies could see when their fertility returns and make their family planning decisions accordingly.

And once again, children provide perspective

So I finally got off my ass and did my errands. Behind me in line at the grocery store was a lady with two small children - I'd estimate their ages at 2 and 4* - who clearly needed some food and a nap. Mein Gott what I have to do is easy in comparison - in comparison to both the mother and the children!

I can go about life without ever having to worry about someone else's Dora the Explorer doll, and if all I want to do is go home and curl up with my favourite stuffed animal I can just go and do that. I can buy what I need at the grocery store without someone wheedling for some junk food every two seconds, and if I want some junk food I can just throw it in the cart without asking anyone's permission. I don't have to organize my life around someone else's bladder needs, and if I have to go to the bathroom I can just go without someone telling me to hold it or scolding me for not going earlier.

All I have to do is put on some music, pour a glass of wine, and tear through 3,000 words of translation. (Don't worry, it gets carefully revised tomorrow without the influence of music or wine, it's just most efficient to do the first draft by brute force and the distractions make that go easier.) Compared with grocery shopping with a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, dead easy!

*Most people I know who are in a two-child family spaced two or three years apart think this is a bad spacing. The eldest is old enough to get used to being an only child, but too young to really appreciate (both in the sense of "think is little and cute" and "empathize with the greater needs of") a baby, and still needs a lot of parental attention that might take away from the baby's needs. With a wider spacing, like five years, the older sibling is more independent and more able to appreciate a baby. And apparently (or so I've heard) with really close spacing the older sibling doesn't become accustomed to or remember being an only so they don't resent the lack of full parental attention or the need to compromise to accomodate the younger sibling. And yet so many people continue to space their children at two to three years. I wonder why? Perhaps no one tells them. (I certainly couldn't think of a tactful way to tell someone to space their children differently.) Perhaps they grew up in different family configurations themselves. Someone should do a study on how the configuration of the family in which people grew up affects their later family planning as an adult.

Would abortion patients actually care if abortion had a negative impact on their health?

Salon debunks the idea that having an abortion has a negative impact on women's health.

Which got me thinking: even if it did, who cares?

You get an abortion, you go insane. You get an abortion, you get breast cancer. You get an abortion, you become infertile. Even you get an abortion, you go to jail.

All of those are so incredibly negligible compared with the alternative of going through an unwanted pregnancy and bringing an unwanted child into the world!

If someone actually thought "Well, I've thought it through thoroughly and determined that it's best for this child to be spared the misery of existence. Oh, but wait, if I did that then I'd have to take Paxil for a little while! We can't have that!" then they'd be entirely too selfish to have a child anyway.

Added Aug. 15 11:30 pm: Some people aren't going to like or grok or agree with this post because it's about abortion. But I just realized it isn't really about abortion at all. I wrote about abortion because the article that triggered these thoughts was about abortion, but it's bigger than that.

So reread the post, but cross out the word abortion and replace it with whatever your personal family planning goal is right this minute. For me, that's never becoming pregnant. For other people, it is becoming pregnant. Or perhaps having four kids. Or perhaps getting a vasectomy. Or perhaps adopting kids. Whatever your goal is, replace the word abortion with your goal and reread the post.

See how all those potential health effects are so completely negligible?

That old cliche where a small child provides perspective

Today is one of those days where I'm afflicted by a thousand small miseries. My immune system's been too busy battling my cold/cough/sore throat thing so zits and muscle aches and contact dermatitis have been running rampant. My work is boring, my headphones are dying, my hair isn't nearly as gorgeous as I want it to be, and it's that time of year where the apples I like are out of season but the peaches haven't started yet. I'm grumpy.

Then, on the subway, I see a woman with two small children, aged maybe 2 and 3. Whenever the slightest thing is wrong with one of these children, the mother has to take care of it the kids can't do it themselves. A shoe is uncomfortable, a sweater is getting too warm, a drink of water is needed, the teddy bear would be happier sitting on the other side of the stroller - every time the mother has to handle it.

I got off the subway thinking warm happy thoughts about my quiet apartment and perfectly-administered Ortho Tri-Cyclen.

When everyone has kids at once

I was poking around on Facebook, and saw that a bunch of people I went to high school with have had babies (or at least they were holding babies in their pictures).

I understand intellectually that a lot of people have children, but because I can't identify with the need to have children it's very strange to me to see such a huge number of people have all made that decision. I think I'm subconsciously processing it as an obscure, expensive and time-consuming hobby that some people have, and it's strange to see a bunch of people all suddenly doing the same obscure, expensive and time-consuming hobby. It would be like if you poked around on Facebook and found that half a dozen people you went to high school with all quit their jobs and bought land way out in the wilderness and are now planning to live off the grid and support themselves through organic farming. If one person did that, you'd say "Hey, cool!" But if half a dozen people, all from your high school, all did that your first thought would be "What kind of weird trend is this? Do they know what they're getting into?"

Open Letter to women who are wondering if their boyfriends will ever change their mind and want to have children

Dear R who wrote in to Cary Tennis and lady who wrote into Claudia Dey:

My first thought was to implore you, speaking as a childfree 27-year-old (who was recently a childfree 26-year-old), to take your boyfriends at their word.

However, I quickly realized that if you aren't going to listen to a 27-year-old whom you like well enough to date, you clearly aren't going to listen to a 27-year-old stranger.

So instead, I'll give you a little piste de réflexion. Just think about this, quietly and to yourself, at your leisure, and see what you come up with:

If you were dating a 27/26-year-old man who said he does want children eventually, would you assume that in his youthful folly he doesn't know what he's talking about and may yet change his mind?

Essure leads to surreality

I just found out about Essure (obviously I need to spend more time in CF communities since this was the first I'd heard of it) so I was doing some googling about it. In my travels, I came upon a blog where someone had seen a TV commercial for Essure and was outraged that it was portraying a family with something like children. "Wow," I thought, "This is one of the most militant radical childfree people I've ever seen! OK, so you don't like children, but why get so upset about having to see them in an Essure ad? If you're that upset about children, you should be glad they're promoting Essure to people who have children, so they won't have more." Then I read on in their comments, and realized they aren't militant radical childfree, they're militant radical breeders who were upset that OMG poor innocent children are being used in an ad for a big evil sterilization procedure! Just goes to prove Eddie's circle theory. (And kind of makes me want to invent a sterilization procedure that involves sacrificing your existing children into a volcano, just so something will exist that's worthy of this dude's outrage.)

Then later on I was talking to my friend about how I was very excited to have learned about a new sterilization option. "Oh, it's so cool!" I was saying, "they stick something up your vagina and through your cervix into your uterus. Then they put these little bits of metal in your fallopian tubes, and they somehow irritate your fallopian tubes and cause permanent scarring! Isn't that great?" If you take that out of context, it might possibly be the weirdest thing I've ever said in my life.

Half-formed idea: sterilization on demand to ease the burden on the health care system

The vast majority of the times I've gone to the doctor in my adult life have been to keep up my birth control pills. The vast majority of the prescriptions I've had filled in my adult life have been for birth control pills. The vast majority of claims I've submitted to my insurance have been for birth control pills. If I could have gotten sterilized on demand when I first became sexually active, my entire burden on the health care system in my adult life would probably be about 25% of what it has been so far. (More like 10% if it weren't for Gardasil, which is pricy and required four appointments).

We know that 10 million Canadians use prescription contraception. What would the burden on the health care system be like if all those who never wanted to have children (ever or again) got sterilized?

The first page of Google results rather vaguely suggests that just under 20% of the population is childfree. Given that some childfree people are already sterilized, and given that some childed people might want to be sterilized but not be able to (perhaps because they're young, perhaps because they only have one child, etc.) let's work with the assumption that 10% of the people using birth control would like to be sterilized. So that's 1 million people who would like to be sterilized. So let's sterilize them. Snip, snip. Now what happens to the health care system?

I use up one standard annual appointment slot a year for my birth control needs. If we assume that everyone has simple birth control needs and only needs one appointment a year (a very low estimate, since some methods require 4 appointments a year and some people have to try a number of different methods before they find the right one) that would open up one million appointments across the country. The first page of google results gives numbers between 2.4 million and 5 million for Canadians that don't have a family doctor. But in any case, one million free appointment slots would make a significant dent!

Other factors that I have been unable to quantify:

- How many free doctor appointment slots = room in the doctor's practice for a new patient?

- Sometimes unwanted pregnancy occurs, even with birth control. Getting an abortion surely takes up more medical resources than simply maintaining contraception, and carrying the baby to term anyway would take up even more, plus produce a whole nother human being who is also going to need medical resources.

- A lot of people, if they don't need to go to the doctor for their birth control every year, aren't going to get a pap smear every year. Come on, we all know it's true. How would this affect overall public health? And how would it be affected by the introduction of Gardasil, once enough of the population has been innoculated to wipe out the major strains of HPV?

- Would the reduction in the number of people taking hormonal contraception (which can increase blood pressure) have any appreciable impact on the instances of heart disease in the general population?

- With the baby boomers, the issue of contraception has recently become/is about to become moot for a huge chunk of the population. Would that make the impact of sterilization on demand negilgible? What would the impact have been if it were available as the baby boomers were starting to become sexually active? (And as an aside, is the fact that this huge chunk of the population no longer requires contraception going to have an impact on the sexual health of the overall population? I once heard the boomers described as the generation that had the drinking age (in the US) lowered to 18 so they could drink when they were in college, then had it raised to 21 so their kids couldn't. Are they going to do the same thing with birth control now that they no longer need it? Although it might be too late for that now anyway - I'm the child of boomers who started their family relatively late, and I'm far too old for my parents to be interfering in my contraception.)

Things They Should Study: how do childless elders feel about their social lives or lack thereof?

You often hear or hear of elders complaining of social isolation because they don't get enough attention from their descendents. And people with children do tend to assume that their children will take care of them in old age.

But what about childless elders? On one hand, if you're childless, you don't have any younger people who have some sense of duty to take care of you. But on the other hand, you can see it coming. You know you don't have any children, so you aren't going to be surprised when you get old and you don't have any children or grandchildren around you.

I did a quick google and the research I could find suggested that childless elders are more socially isolated, although marital status is also a factor. However, none of the abstracts (I can't access academic databases from home so I couldn't see the whole articles) said anything about whether this bothers them.

What's interesting is this is all going to be moot anyway within the next generation. With the internet, even if you're confined to your home and your children never visit you, you can still blog about whatever you want or find an online community about whatever interests you (or whatever it is people will do on the internet a generation from now).

Pssst...you missed a key point...

This article has been making the rounds of CF communities: Why Do Doctors Get to Decide When a Woman Is Old Enough to Have Her 'Tubes Tied'?

Unfortunately, they forgot to address a key point: the general consensus of the medical community is that 25-year-old women are too young to decide to get their tubes tied because it's a permanent decision and they may regret it later.

So why do they have no problem with 25-year-old women having babies? That is also a permanent, life-altering choice, but if you end up regretting it the consequences are much more dire.

If I walked into my doctor's office and told her I want to get my tubes tied, she'd say "Come back when you're 30." But if I walked in and told her I wanted to have a baby, she'd say "Great! Let's get you off those birth control pills and onto some folate supplements! You'd better hurry - a woman's fertility drops after the age of 26."

No one would dare suggest that I'm too young or immature to have a baby now at 26, even if I am. In fact, there are a lot of very noisy people who would consider it my right to have a baby, even if it means ruining the kid's life. But, apparently, I don't have the right to make sure I don't ruin the kid's life.

Parenting advice from the childfree

Inspired by a train of thought arising from the first letter in Friday's Vine (i.e. Friday March 9, it hasn't been archived yet):

Think about the sexual values you want your kid(s) to have. Yes, I know, squicky. You don't want them having sex at all ever. But work past that mentally and think into the distant future, when your kid is a full-fledged adult and in whatever kind of situation you think it's appropriate for people to be in before they have sex. What do you want their sexual values to be? Do you want their sex to be loving? Kind? Gentle? Respectful? Fair and equal? Fun? Romantic? Not taken too seriously? Taken very seriously? Heterosexual? Homosexual? Married? Unmarried? For procreation purposes only? Heavy protected by contraception? Just decide, quietly and to yourself, what these values are.

Then, whenever a book you're reading contains sex scenes that reflect these values, buy the book and keep it on a bookshelf in your home. The books don't have to be about sex, they just have to contain one or more sex scene of whatever level of graphicness they happen to be. You can read them or not as your preferences dictate to you, just keep them on a bookshelf in your livingroom or some other public area of your home. Don't point this out to your kid or anything, just keep it there in your home.

Why? Because at some point in early adolescence, your kid is going to learn that some books have sex in them. And they're going to look for the sexy parts of books so they can learn more about sex. While they might prefer a more visual medium, books have the advantage of being innocent- and respectable-looking, silent, and easily portable. Once your kid discovers that there's sex in them thar books, they will read the books, especially the sex scenes, and most likely surreptitiously. But because you have chosen books whose sex scenes reflect what you consider to be positive sexual values, your kid's earliest exposures to sex portrayed in media will reflect the values you want to instill.

"You will someday"

Most childfree people have, at one time or another, had the following exchange:

Childfree: "No, I'm not having children, I'm childfree"
Interlocutor: "You will someday."

An idea just to make the whole situation more entertaining: if your interlocutor is of the opposite sex, take it as a threat. Recoil, hide, refuse to be alone with them, etc.

Boring grownup stuff

The problem with arranging a move is that there's so much boring grownup stuff involved. I have to call people and get estimates for stuff and write cheques and watch my bank account balance and sign things. I've used the word "insurance" more in the past week than in the rest of my life combined! Don't get me wrong, I'd still rather be an adult than a child (I watched whatever I wanted on TV today! And now I'm playing computer games while drinking wine!) but this high density of boring grownup stuff is kind of getting me down.

This makes me glad I'm childfree and carfree. People with children and cars have to worry about stuff like this ALL THE TIME! Cars are giant resourcesucks, and with children you have to be doubley extra super-duper careful about EVERYTHING!

Maybe that's why those Kids Today people take childlessness as one of the signs of not being a grownup - because it affords you time to think about stuff other than boring grownup stuff.

Analogy for natalist culture

Suppose you're in decent, functional, serviceable physical condition. You have full use of both your arms and both your legs, and your body does what you need it to do in everyday life. However, you don't particularly enjoy pushing yourself physically. Sure, you don't mind the occasional casual swim or bike ride, but you have no interest in working out every day - you'd much rather be at home with a good book or enjoying the bounties of the internet.

But everyone in the world assumes that you're going to do a triathlon one day.

Sure, you think triathlon is a decent sporting event. You'll watch it when the Olympics are on TV and you appreciate the athleticism involved, but you have no interest in doing it yourself.

However, elderly relatives and nosey acquaintances keep asking you when you're going to do a triathlon, and when you say you're not, they smile smugly and mutter knowingly among themselves that it's just a phase - soon you'll grow up and start doing a triathlon every couple of years.

Random people that who run into, who know nothing about your physical condition - even people you've met in passing on the internet who have know way of knowing if you even have legs - tell you that you should totally do a triathlon because you would make SUCH a good triathlete!

Even though you have mentioned at work that you have no interest in doing a triathlon, your boss's long term HR planning takes into account that you'll need some time off to train for a triathlon or two within the next five or ten years.

While your doctor is quite willing to treat you in a way that allows you to sit at home with a good book or spend time on the computer right now, she insists upon a long-term treatment plan that will ensure that you are in prime condition to do a triathlon any time you want to. When you undergo a minor medical procedures that requires that you don't exert yourself, she keeps emphasizing to you that it's VERY VERY IMPORTANT that you don't do any triathlons within the next month, completely disregarding the fact that you have told her you don't want to do any at all ever, and the fact that you've already decided that if you ever happen to wander into a triathlon course, you would just leave the area rather than completing the race.

Wouldn't that get annoying after a while? Well, that's how I feel when people assume that I'm going to be a mother some day.