To think the term 'childfree' is as bad as 'childless'

”Have you considered adopting?”

Several people have said that, if you read back a few posts.

I always say my house is a man-free zone. Awaiting being told I’m a raging misandrist in 3, 2, 1…

"oh why not? Have you tried IVF?"

Childfree describes me perfectly. I don’t have children because I never wanted them. My situation is very different from someone who desperately wants children but cannot have them.

Framing that as „hateful“ is frankly ridiculous and goady.

I am absolutely childfree. It is - for me - liberating to know I don’t have to conform to the societal norm.

And I don’t want to as I DO view children as a burden and not something I would ever want in my life.

I use this phrase specifically because I don’t want people to think I want children but am unable to have them.

You don't have to use any of these terms, though. You can just say "I don't have children"

This is so key.

Everyone is different, and that's ok

It's when the parents start pushing how life isn't complete without a child nonsense, which is then met with, children are awful you couldn't pay me to have one

Then everyone gets offended. Because some people (in both camps) just can't accept that their life choice isn't superior and have to ram it down anyone's throat who doesn't agree, to self validate.

If only more people could just realise that most of us don't give a shit whether you've got ten kids or none, we're all too busy worrying about our lives, families, jobs, friends, marriage, health, our mortgage, cost of living, a partridge in a pear tree...

You would if default was to have a dog and not having dog would be met with questions...

There is a board on Mumsnet called Mners without children. The whole childless or childfree conversation has been thoroughly talked through over there!

The general consensus being, childfree is people who made a choice not to have children, childless is people who wanted children but have had fertility issues or circumstances that have resulted in no children.

I'm childless.

Why not simply, "I don't have children?"

I talked about that upthread, @LePetitMaman. IRL I would use ‘I don’t have children’ because I can say it with a big smile that makes it clear it’s a good thing.

Online, it would be much harder to tell whether I didn’t have them through choice or because I couldn’t. So childfree & childless are easy shorthands.

If you say I don’t have children then people start telling you to just adopt or giving you ‘advice’ on conceiving so you have to then explain you don’t want children and they start questioning why. If you say childfree it’s just easier and skips over the unnecessary bits of the conversation which is why a lot of people use it.

So which other category of human would YOU be apply it? I wouldn't even apply it to an animal personally - for example I think dogs seem like an awful lot of hard work, but I'd never described myself as 'dog free'.

I think childless sounds a bit crap. Like something is missing. Fingerless gloves, are gloves missing their fingers. You have to point out that the gloves default from the "norm" of just gloves.

I think childfree is fine, until you get the small minority who want to make such a point about how awful the idea of having children is. Like standing in front of ten dog owners, announcing how dogs are foul, and portraying superiority at being "dogfree.". It naturally gets people's backs up. It's sneering at their life, in a "ewwww who would ever want that thing that you have" way, then doing this faux naive "I have no idea why that would offend anyone.". Granted that's only a few people that behave like that... But alas, they tend to be the constant loud voices on the subject, and they unfortunately do the majority a disservice.

Non parent, again, no. That's like the gloves thing, having to define yourself as being different to the default.

Thinking on it.... Generally the default in life is you acknowledge something that applies to you, but you don't list all the things that don't, because that list would run in to the thousands. If I asked Polly to tell me about herself, she might say "I'm a swimmer, I have a cat, I have a degree in Spanish.". But not "I don't play bowls, I don't have a budgie and I don't have a maths degree."

Why not simply, "I don't have children?"

I’ve not read the full thread but i don’t mind it. Tbh having children and being a parent is probably more the norm. Child free is what it is.

People don’t ask if you are childfree tho they tend to ask do you have children? i reply no we’ve chosen not to have them. End of convo….

Whichever of the two people choose, it's certainly better than barren and fruitful - and if they've speaking about themselves, they're perfectly entitled to use the one that expresses their position on the matter and relates solely to them. But when you're talking about somebody else, just saying they do not have children suffices.

Childfree women clearly live rent free in your head, I can almost feel the frothing rage emanating from this post. Your reasoning here is frankly deranged, you could zipline right over the Atlantic with the size of that reach. Yes, many childfree women feel children would be a negative addition to their life. You’d probably save your blood pressure by just…accepting that.

Not a short easy one that differentiates between people who wanted kids & people who didn’t!

Well, banning term "childfree" will be actually probably bigger hit on parents' vocabulary than the small nimber of actual childfree people.
Good luck!

To me they ARE to be escaped at all costs! 🤣

Sorry, jokes aside, I get what you mean but there isn't really another phrase that I can think of.

Of course it's not hateful to not want to have children, but it is hateful to use a term that describes children in a fundamentally negative way. The value of a certain demographic should never be based on whether or not they are wanted. Children are intrinsically valuable, because they are humans, whether or not someone wants them.

But to some people it would be something negative to have children. Why do some of you still think people shouldn't be permitted to say that?

10000% this. You wouldn't use "free" as a suffix to any other demographic. Children are the one group it's still acceptable to describe in generally negative terms.

It's not hateful if you don't want children. Nobody should have children if they don't want them. That's not conducive to a good childhood for a child. There's all sorts of reasons why people might not want children (or can't have them) and there's nothing wrong with that.

I didn't have kids and prefer that someone says I don't rather than childless or child free. I would have liked to have had kids. Childless isn't a nice term.

Either way you get assumptions made about you regardless of the terms used and whether you don't have kids or you do.