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

[JemimaWithTheStripeyTights]

I totally understand why somebody would prefer not to describe themselves as 'childless'. The -less has connotations of something missing, of being somehow inferior or lacking when compared with people with children. It makes 'having children' the default, and 'not having children' abnormal. I get it.

But something about 'childfree' really grates with me. The -free seems to imply liberation from the idea of children, as if that's some obligation or burden, or as if they're something to be escaped from at all costs. Basically, I think it sounds as much like a smug value judgement as 'childless' is a thoughtless one.

Not sure what the alternative would be, but how about 'nonparent'? It needs to be a word that's totally neutral about whether having kids is a good or bad thing.

Have we always fussed and nitpicked over language to the degree we do today?

It's so bloody tedious – and seems to go hand in hand with people with being completely insecure and neurotic over the very thing they claim to be so confident about.

I am childfree/childless/sprog-nonencumbered/a person living with lie-ins and I am absolutely fine about it. I don't mind how you identify and am not really interested in the ins and outs of your navel-gazing.

I am saying the opposite. People who call themselves “child free”, if they don’t have children, are making themselves sound flawed, selfish and like they are not pulling their weight. If they called themselves something else, it wouldn’t have those connotations.

Why, does this poke a sore spot in you? Other people exposing their own flawed selfish intent? Do you truly believe that people that do not choose to have children and excercise their free will and access to modern wonder of contraception are "not pulling their weight"? What should we do with these selfish women eh?

Should we round them up? Send them to a penal colony to think about their selfishness until they're ready to rejoin society and fulfill their innate and fundamental use, by reproducing?

This is BONKERS.

How is it offensive though?
Someone childfree is choosing to live a life “free” from having their own children.
That makes absolutely no statement on you and your kids or your view of your children and how much of an obligation they are or aren’t.
It’s completely insane to say it’s offensive imo and I say that as someone who has chosen to have children.

Should we round them up? Send them to a penal colony to think about their selfishness until they're ready to rejoin society and fulfill their innate and fundamental use, by reproducing?

At least there'd be no kids there.😀

I didn’t put this on my earlier post about a friend who is childless but says she’s childfree to avoid ‘advice’ because I don’t want to upset anyone who is childless or adopted (or anyone) but as some people seem to not be understanding what some childless women are trying to avoid by saying they’re childfree I will put it here. Please don’t read on if you don’t want to read something horribly offensive.

My childless friend always said she was childless/didn’t have children because of infertility until she was asked by someone ‘why don’t you try getting a government baby?’. After crying her heart out in the middle of the main road and never wanting to repeat that experience she started saying she’s childfree. So judging women who use the language they feel comfortable with around, having, not having, struggling to have or losing a baby is just awful to me.

I always use the term childfree because I feel like it's offensive to say childless.

How I view it is childfree is a positive happy choice and childless is when something unfortunate has happened to someone who wanted children.

Your logic is completely flawed. People who you decided are “selfish” probably shouldn’t be responsible for raising human beings who form part of society. That’s the last thing we need - emotionally neglected, emotionally incontinent selfish arseholes who won’t “pull their weight” and will not contribute to society. 🤣🤣

'Come on Clover, everyone knows you can't get pregnant the first time...'

Everyone has been a child and this language doesn't affect or discriminate against children so I don't believe the offence is to do with children being a vulnerable group.

The ridiculous attempt at drawing an equivalence with Jamaicans and disabled people is simply fatuous.

What's this really about? Why are some parents feeling offended by there being a neutral to positive phrase for those who don't have children?

Remember it's not always a binary of simple free choice or a sad loss. It can be making the best of a hand you hadn't foreseen but don't want to get into it with everyone.

If it is to do with feeling judged for choosing to do the hard work of raising the next generation with the personal sacrifices that may come with that (career, pay, health) then this isn't really the battle to fight.

'Come on Clover, everyone knows you can't get pregnant the first time...'

Or if you do it standing up.**

I admit I may be biased, I see a lot of child abuse in my line of work. While those parents undoubtedly should not have had children, or not gotten together with partners other than their kids dad (perps are often step parents or boyfriends), by and large the idea of children as a nuisance and a burden just hits different when you see some of the results of attitudes like that. Including torture, non-accidental deaths and homicides of children.

Yeah, I was abused as a child by my parents, and now I'm childfree. Oddly, that experience has given me a strong sense of perspective. It is absolutely bananas offensive to suggest that using the word "childfree" in any way results in, or contributes to, people committing child abuse. I find it astonishing that you work in this field and yet genuinely believe that people expressing happiness in a life without their hypothetical children is an attitude which leads to parents abusing real, existing children.

Shame on you. Seriously. From a victim of child abuse - shame on you.

I’m really sorry you were a victim of child abuse. I know it won’t make anything better for you but it makes me feel sick that any child can be treated badly and I honestly do feel for you having gone through that 💐

Thank you. That's really kind of you.

I'm going to leave this thread now, as frankly it's made me feel sick to my stomach that there are people in the world who have thoughts like this in their head and yet still consider themselves morally superior to people whose cardinal sin is using a fucking word.

Sadly, nobody on this thread who is being, frankly, an arse about this term, has responded at all to anybody who has made this very valid point.

What people aren't getting is that this isn't about them or their children or children in general.

I love children. I work with them. I am genuinely hurt by the idea that I can't even choose how I refer to my own lack of children, because I am not of enough value in society to even make that decision for myself.

I am sorry I haven't managed to reproduce. I am sorry that for this crime I am to be judged and belittled, told what I think, told what I mean, by people who are smug about their reproductive function and think my lack of it is their business.

So many people have explained on this thread why, 'I don't have children' doesn't stop the painful conversation I just don't want to have.
If people weren't such nosey parkers, there would never have been this problem. If those who have chosen not to have kids hadn't constantly had their choices questioned, analysed and been treated like some child-hating, selfish prick who will never know love, maybe nobody would have become militant about it.

Who gives a fuck if a cat has no choice but to get pregnant?

Those of us who see the results. Like kittens trying to suckle from their dead mother, or a cat & newborn abandoned in a locked carrier & found covered in their own piss & shit. That’s who gives a fuck. And I’ll quite happily go on pouring whatever maternal instincts I might or might not have into cats.

@ObelixtheGaul

I don't have kids, I never wanted to have some. Yet, I also never had to say "I'm childfree" or "I'm childless" or "I'm a non-parent".
Some people have asked me whether I had kids, and I think my face spoke for itself (maybe it's also the fact that I replied "gosh no!!!") so my intentions regarding having children have always been quite clear.

Also, I've noticed something crazy: People don't care. I'm not saying it in a bad way at all. People just don't care. No one has even been awake in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling, thinking "I can't believe Bridget from Marketing doesn't want / have kids"

The -free seems to imply liberation from the idea of children, as if that's some obligation or burden, or as if they're something to be escaped from at all costs.

Well, some of us do feel like that. So it’s an accurate implication.

If people weren't such nosey parkers, there would never have been this problem. If those who have chosen not to have kids hadn't constantly had their choices questioned, analysed and been treated like some child-hating, selfish prick who will never know love, maybe nobody would have become militant about it.

@ObelixtheGaul has absolutely nailed it. No one is asked “So, you’ve got two kids. Why is that?” and yet saying you don’t have children is so often the cue for all manner of prying, intrusive and extremely personal questions or “helpful” comments.

If someone says they don’t want children, do NOT, for the love of all things sacred:

• ask why;
• suggest IVF or adoption;
• tell them about your friend who tried acupuncture/relaxing/hugging crystals and now has nine kids;
• ask them who will look after them when they’re old;
• extol the joys of kids they either don’t want or can’t have;
• tell them they don’t know true love or the real meaning of life.

Just keep it fucking zipped.

Also, I've noticed something crazy: People don't care. I'm not saying it in a bad way at all. People just don't care. No one has even been awake in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling, thinking "I can't believe Bridget from Marketing doesn't want / have kids"

And yet some REALLY do. I had a friend who was absolutely obsessed with me settling down and having children, it was all she would ever ask me about. She would even try to get her kids to behave “Stop that otherwise Granny will never changer her mind about having children!”

I can’t fathom why she was so upset by my opting not to have kids, but she’s far from the only one who behaves like that. IME is usually because they take it as a judgment on their life choices, feel that you’re not pulling your weight or genuinely feel that you’re missing out on something they found wonderful.

Other things not to say

• My friend was like you, they just gave up and accepted it and now she’s expecting her second

• oh I wish I had that problem, I only have to look at my Nigel and I’m pregnant.

• don’t give up, my auntie Mary had a baby at 49!

Why can’t you just say “doesn’t have children”? I can’t imagine what situation you are using childless/childfree in.

I have lots of children but it’s hardly something that I need a word to describe.

Lots of people have answered this throughout the thread.

As per the twenty bajillion previous answers - because when women without kids say we don't have kids, the follow up is almost always along the lines of have you thought about adoption, IVF, fostering, relaxing and seeing if it happens for you - highly intrusive questioning.

And that changes because you use childless/childfree?

Do you find it objectionable if people say they didn’t want children, as opposed to saying they don’t have them?