A dislike of children?
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Why is having children seen with such contempt these days?
The Sunday Times - Britain
March 07, 2004
Focus Welcome to the new divide
Senay Boztas
Is a baby
a) A cute, cuddly asset to society, or
b) An irritating excuse for its parents to grab the best employment perks, holidays and tax breaks?Sarah Morgan was angry. It was not her hectic job at a health club chain that was making her blood boil, but a ?breeder? ? a colleague with children ? delayed on the school run for the umpteenth time. This left Morgan dashing about to cover for her colleague, feeling fed up and exhausted.
?All of the benefits were for people with children,? recalled Morgan. ?Most of the staff had families and were well catered for with a cr?che, discounts for childcare and a lot of flexibility about the time they came in to work.?I was simply told what shifts I would do, couldn?t get the holiday I wanted and was then expected to put in extra hours whenever someone?s kid caught a cold. I saw paternity leave coming and decided I had had enough.?
Morgan is not alone. She is one of a growing number of people who have decided not to have children. Describing themselves as ?child-free? rather than ?childless?, they see no reason why a brood should attract any extra benefits, at work or in society.
Across America and now Britain, these babyless boomers are becoming increasingly frustrated with what they say is family-friendly discrimination at the office and beyond.
It is not just irritation with the obligatory screaming baby on a long-haul flight, or the blockade of mothers congesting the roads on their way to and from school that is causing the boomers to organise, but what they see as ?institutional discrimination?.
Last year in Britain new legislation gave parents with young families the right to ask their employers for flexible working patterns ? while the childless received no such benefit. It is another example, say the child-free, of how they are increasingly being treated as second-class citizens.
Some say we may be witnessing the start of a new schism in society. ?There are many who, in a previous era, would have had children but now put them off until their forties, or do not have them,? said Peter York, the social commentator.
?It?s a group that is growing ever more rich and selfish and will increasingly object to public policies that they believe discriminate against them.?
Among the most extreme of the new crusaders is Julie Bindel, the feminist writer and campaigner who believes the social emphasis on families is simply unjust.
?You are massively rewarded for having children, financially and socially. Parents might pretend they are performing a social function by producing children to support me in my old age, but their smugness and self-indulgence are unbearable,? she said.
?You only have children for selfish reasons and it is a hole you choose to dig; as a result, my flights cost a fortune in August, I share the burden of filling in (at work) when you are off, and then I?m told it?s only fair that I cover in the office over Christmas.?
SOCIOLOGISTS point to growing prosperity, the emancipation of women and the cult of the individual to explain the trend.
Certainly fewer people are deciding to have children. According to the Office for National Statistics, British women on average have 1.7 children, compared with 2.4 three decades ago. In the 1940s, one in 10 women did not have a child; now the figure is about one in four.
Overall the birthrate has declined from 13.8 live births per 1,000 people in 1991 to about 11.3 today. Although this trend is most marked in Scotland, two-thirds of households in England and Wales now have no dependent children. Indeed, 30% are occupied by singles.
Professor David Coleman, a demographer at Oxford University, points out that women also tend to have children much later. ?The average age of first births is getting later, and the more births are postponed the more likely they are to be cancelled,? he said.
?Women are less economically dependent on men and more likely to delay marriage, cohabitation and giving birth in order to start a career. It is remarkable that given the attractions of this young, independent adult life, they still want children, with their ?250,000 price tag and 20 years of partial house arrest.?
Elinor Burkett, a campaigning American author, has written a book arguing that a new civil war is brewing. The Baby Boon How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless describes the ?new-found fury? of the child-free.
?There is a pro-family revolution among governments,? she said. ?Employees with children get thousands of pounds a year in benefits ? extra insurance and unpaid leave, scholarship aid and tax credits ? denied to non-parents. Those who remain childless save untold sums for our employers, yet these sums are not repaid in other benefits, such as extra holiday time or greater pension contributions.
?People are being punished for their lifestyle choice while others are given every break going for theirs. That?s a simple reality which creates, perforce, polarisation.?
If you think that?s radical, try logging on to the internet. Here dozens of sites have been set up by the ?child-free? to allow supporters to moan about ?breeders?.
One such site, childfree.net, lays out its philosophy ?Benefits of the child-free lifestyle are numerous. You have a greater degree of freedom and outlet for spontaneity in your daily life, not having to consider the logistics of taking children and their accessories everywhere you go.
?You generally have more money. You often will have more energy and better opportunities for calm and quiet in your home. Child-free couples may even have better, happier, more stable relationships.?
Other groups such as No Rugrats! and Zero Population Growth boast articles with headings such as ?the case against babies?. One recommends the Onion, the spoof news website, which dedicated a recent article to the ?stupidity? of children. ?Despite their relatively large cranial capacities, babies are so unintelligent that they are unable to distinguish colourful plastic toys from food sources,? it noted.
The embryonic child-free movement in Britain appears to have been sparked by Labour?s decision last April to introduce legislation giving fathers the right to two weeks? paternity leave and giving all those with children under six the right to ask for flexible working hours.
This was welcomed by family campaigners but the largest survey of 58,000 workers across Britain ? published in The 100 Best Companies To Work For, a supplement in today?s Sunday Times ? shows that people without children are significantly less happy with their employers than childbearing colleagues.
Least happy of all were childless employees with adult dependants. It is into this category that Bindel falls. ?I care for an adult with a serious mental illness and get no state support,? she said.
?While I pick up the slack from colleagues? children, I have to take annual leave to get time off for this care ? and I see no reason to think that people who have children are doing more for society than I am. You can climb that mountain of having children but why should I pay for the walking boots??
In America a barrage of criticism from the child-free has lead to demands for new laws banning discrimination and the setting up of support groups with names such as No Kidding.
Pete Bradon, a research psychologist at the University of Plymouth and research manager for the Best Companies study, says that many firms are being forced to change the way in which they treat child-free people.
?Year on year, these childless workers are getting more dissatisfied and more vocal,? he said. ?They are significantly more likely to think they are not getting a fair deal at work ? hardly surprising when they can?t take maternity leave or use cr?che facilities ? and are less engaged with their firms as a whole.
?I would not be surprised if there was not a legal challenge to issues such as the right for the childless to ask for flexible working.?
However, others say that legislators have only just caught up with the needs of families ? and are unlikely to promote childless living. ?If anything, governments are more likely to address the problems of declining populations in western Europe by actively encouraging people to have children, however much this new childless group votes with their cash and at the ballot box,? said York.
Recent research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that the government is spending more than ever on parents. The study by Mike Brewer, at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, shows that between 10% and 25% of parents receive more support than the cost of their children, with tax and benefit breaks having doubled in the past 30 years.
?The government does now spend ?22 billion a year on families with children, compared with ?10 billion a year in the 1970s. We are paying parents directly more money than in the past for having children,? he said.
?The majority of people do still have children, so you could see this as distributing the cost through lifelong taxes ? and as a group, those without children are richer. But there is a social agenda to raise law-abiding, socially included people and return from the child poverty of the 1980s and 1990s.?
Morgan, in the end, decided that she could not stand working 10-day shifts while her colleagues with children had the flexibility that they wanted.
Two years ago she left the health club to become a customer service adviser at First Direct in Leeds ? a firm that offers a flexible benefits package for everyone.
?Here it is 5050 for us all,? she said. ?You can spend your benefits points on childcare at the on-site creche, or choose vouchers I spend my ?80 of Boots vouchers not on nappies but on treats like perfume.?
THE DINKIES' MANIFESTO
Do you have sticky finger marks on your sofa? No!
Do you trip over toys at the top of your stairs? No! Do you ever worry about how difficult it is to get a decent nanny? Absolutely not! And if that?s the way you want to keep it, join our crusade for the child-free.
We hold the following truths to be self-evident
That we have for too long struggled under the yoke of the child cult.
That we are fed up with holding dinner parties at which all our old friends leave early to get home for the babysitter.
That these same friends ? who once talked of nothing but sex, alcohol and Big Brother ? now know the name of every character in Bob the Builder and worry about school league tables.
Through our own choice we have taken great pains to remain child-free. We are martyrs to the contraceptive sheath, the coil, the pill, the snip and the headache.Of course, we did wonder about children early on but we didn?t seem to have the time. And what with the cats to look after, the BMW to keep clean, the trips abroad . . . well, pregnancy-wise we just couldn?t find a window.
So if we?re not prepared to put up with children of our own, we?re certainly not going to be inconvenienced by anybody else?s.
These are our demands
AT THE OFFICE
1 That the breeders do their fair share of work at Easter and Christmas, and don?t hog all the bank holidays.
2 That they don?t bring their whining toddlers into work.
3 That they don?t phone their children from the office to ask, in a silly voice, whether the little darlings have eaten up all their Alphabetti Spaghetti like a good little boy/girl.
AT HOME
1 We demand the absolute right to have white covers on our sofas without some toddler coming along and smearing it with chocolate.
2 We further demand the absolute right to put our hands underneath those sofas without finding a load of old Smarties.
3 We demand the right to lay down fashionable wooden flooring without
our pregnant sisters saying in loud voices that our home isn?t very child-friendly.
OUR MONEY
1 It is unacceptable for the taxes of the child-free to be squandered on nursery places, where children do nothing but cut up bits of coloured paper and drop glitter paint on the floor.
2 It is also unfair to expect us to pay for schools, youth clubs, Gordon Brown?s trust fund for babies, and the cost of burying disposable nappies in landfill sites.
3 Maternity units. We?re not paying for them either.
Comfy child-free couples of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your bank holidays (and perhaps care in old age).
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I wuv babies!!! yay
http//i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa210/jaythikay99/em_muslim_beard.jpg
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What is that??
a smile, can't you see?
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I don't have a husband confused
(Potential inshallah)
Anyway, I believe the key word to anti-childrenism is the concept of depopulation.
Compare the population reduction page
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_reduction
With the overpopulation page
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
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People who are anti-children have been brainwashed by materialism. They prefer the company of cats and inanimate objects which can only lead to them growing old miserable, lonely and bitter. Children remind us of the important things in life - that happiness comes from helping other people, not accumulating money, cars, holidays. The cycle of life rejuvenates our souls and brings us closer to God and happiness.
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Please! Some people simply prefer not to have children
yea, i've seen many couples (unmarried) who simply don't want to have children.
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Please! Some people simply prefer not to have children ... nothing to do with being brainwashed, hating kids, or preferring to accumulate money. We're all different, there's no need to bash people who chose a lifestyle different from our own.
nopeChildren are human beings though, and the kind of hostility to them as shown in the article really isn't acceptable. Would you be okay with it if they displayed that hatred towards a different race? Demanding an end to their tax money being spent on black people, or complaining about having to hear foreign accents at work?
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Please! Some people simply prefer not to have children ... nothing to do with being brainwashed, hating kids, or preferring to accumulate money. We're all different, there's no need to bash people who chose a lifestyle different from our own.
nopeNo one doesn't prefer not having children. It's not human to not desire children.
Then again it's probably a mentality thing. Only children don't desire sexual relationships and children. Quran 46... many who would not desire children, would be tried as not marriageable.
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Please! Some people simply prefer not to have children ... nothing to do with being brainwashed, hating kids, or preferring to accumulate money. We're all different, there's no need to bash people who chose a lifestyle different from our own.
nopeWell Said. Also consider
828, 764, 3437 5720, 639
639 O you who believe, do not be distracted by your money and your
children from the remembrance of God. And those who do this,
then they are the losers.3437 And it is not your money or your children that will bring you
closer to Us, but only those who believe and do good work, they
will receive double the reward for their works, and they will
reside in the high dwellings in peace -
Well Said. Also consider
828, 764, 3437 5720, 639
639 O you who believe, do not be distracted by your money and your
children from the remembrance of God. And those who do this,
then they are the losers.3437 And it is not your money or your children that will bring you
closer to Us, but only those who believe and do good work, they
will receive double the reward for their works, and they will
reside in the high dwellings in peace1672 And the god has given you mates of your own kinds and has given you, through your mates, children and children's children, and has provided for you sustenance out of the good things of life. Will men, then, believe in things false and vain, and thus blaspheme against the god's blessings?
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_sRMZ4fpco
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1W4wv4K8rM
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I did not say that what is being described in the article is in any way acceptable. My post was referring to some of the comments on here.
How can people not prefer to have children if they aren't brainwashed or pre-occupied with running after money, or willfully preventing the birth of a child?