The official Childfree on MN bingo card

[ItsNotRocketSalad]

We have 24 squares to fill. What lines get trotted out on every thread that discusses the child free?

My suggestions:

1. You'll need my children to be your carers when you're old
2. Only parents understand real love
3. Childfree people shouldn't take annual leave in school holidays

The martyrdom of ‘who’ll be paying taxes / wiping your arse / carrying you out in a box’ makes me want to thank those posters (nobody has ever said this to me irl) profusely for giving over their lives to the noble cause of producing the little taxpayers and care workers of the future. What a sacrifice.

Or is it actually just like how I could claim to be saving the planet through not reproducing. I.e. a beneficial side effect that did not influence in any way a decision made for purely self-gratifying reasons.

"What's the point of you then'

Good Lord.

It's a bit of an existential question isn't it. Why do people have children?
Visceral need?
Because it's just what you do, innit?
Hope that your child will be the person who finds the cure for cancer?
Because you want to?
An experiment - see what they'll turn out like?
Vanity - creating a mini you?

The reason that they give your life meaning is odd - you are responsible for them for quite a short period of time. Does this mean once they hit 18 your life no longer has meaning? What happens if it's an unmitigated disaster - are you then a failure at life?

In the 21st century it would appear creating the next generation of consumers is important to capitalist cultures.

I would have thought at a population level women without children are bigger net contributors from a tax perspective than women with children anyway (appreciate individual experiences will vary).

I know I am.

So, if the children being born now stay healthy, are productive, and earn enough to pay tax - because not all of them will - I am paying for their health & education their parents' maternity/paternity eaves, and free hours of childcare etc etc etc etc.

Good that they'll pay me back by being the tax payers of the future.

No, it was Julian Vigo. She was at that time very unpleasant to women without kids.

Vanity - creating a mini you?

In the days when I read the Guardian it would very often have columns about childfree people and why they are CF, and the comments below would inevitably have something from parents about 'wanting to create a legacy and passing family genes on.' Some of us took a great deal of warped pleasure in pointing out that it only took one generation not reproducing to expose that for the fallacy it is.

I'll redeem the reputation of the childfree as horrible child and parent hating harpies and wish you the best of luck, @Straightsidedcircle and hope all goes well.

It's because it appeared in active that people are posting, I don't think anyone actively sought out this board to post on who isn't child free.

A lot of my friends definitely would not agree that their children have brought them joy.

So many have grown up children, even grand children and yet still get so much grief and stress. Most say if they could go back in time they would not have children

I think I've heard every one of these comments.

The most stupid ione I've been told is
" but your mum would love to be a grandmother"

I laughed when my Aunt said that to me. She was really upset I wasn't taking her seriously.

I hope everything goes well x

Waves back😁

My absolute favourite, not particularly here but in the wild, is "well it's a good job you're not having kids with an attitude like that!"

Like... yeah that's sort of the point? I'm not having kids because I don’t want them lol

Kinda defeats the purpose of the board if we're going to have proud parents coming in here telling us they don't understand not wanting the joy children bring 😡😡

Not a bingo square really as thankfully only seen this the once, but on a thread about a child abuse case someone said the reason things like that happened was because society doesn’t value children enough. Childfree women were given as a prime example of this societal rot and a cause of abuse.

Most of this nonsense I can shrug off, but that was revolting. To know that some idiots out there equate me choosing not to have kids with people who go out of their way to seriously harm children was very upsetting.

@Yuasa I think I remember that thread. There was one where posters were falling over themselves to argue that parents found child abuse more upsetting than any childless person ever could.

They continued to argue it even after I said that I found it upsetting because I’m the victim of it.

Some people on this site are genuinely really stupid, honestly.

Actually, I agree with most of this thread, but this one pisses me off. Posters deliberately misleading in the attempt to make a point when there isn't. I will explain.

Anyone, mother or not (unless fecking idiot) knows it's tiring to be nursing a dying parent. Similarly, anyone knows it's tiring to be sleep deprived through a chronic illness. Anyone. And very few would suggest caring for a baby was more so.

Yet you get the posters gleefully pearl clutching how Sharon in accounts thought she was more tired with her newborn twins, the ignorant fool. Except, critically, Sharon with her very off the cuff, casual remark doesn't know the poster is nursing a dying parent. It's not a normal thing to assume or take into account. So essentially, what they're saying is, whilst not alluding to the very obvious and unexpected reason they are exhausted, Sharon is a self absorbed dickhead for not knowing this information and making a comment on that basis. Sharon is not saying you can't be tired because you're caring for a dying relative. You're making out that's what she'd saying, when actually, she doesn't even know about the relative, so literally can't be saying it.

Along will come the "well I shouldn't have to share my private information" brigade. No, you shouldn't. But then, frankly, grow up and stop being obtuse. If the only basis of your gripe is due to the private circumstance, then don't gripe because someone else is unaware and acts on that basis. It's like bitching about someone bringing in a standard cake for everyone to share, but you can't eat it because it's not gluten free...but you haven't told anyone this, and then choose to be deliberately offended because people acted on their unaware stance...when you know full well if you'd said you were gluten free, they would have taken that into account

Re pet preferences: the equivalent of "dog-free" is the endless "cat people versus dog people" manufactured culture war that ignores people who like and dislike both.

Re sports: try having no interest at all in spectator sports and see what people make of you.

Re comparing wanting kids to disliking dogs or golf: people see kids as much more key to one's purpose in life than whether you have a dog or enjoy hitting a small hard ball with a funny-shaped stick.

But why is Sharon in accounts saying that? If Sharon asks a childfree/childless colleague how they are and they say oh really tired how are you? She doesn’t need to say you don’t know what tired is because you haven’t got children, she could say aw poor you, me too, the kids had me up all night, if you make me a coffee now while you’re up I’ll make you one next time, that’ll get us through.

Or a mother of two could tell a mother of one she doesn’t know what tiredness is. A mother of two with a sick parent can tell the mother of two she doesn’t know what tiredness is and on and on until we find the most tired woman on earth and only she is allowed to complain. Anyone can complain about anything and everyone can have empathy for their situation rather than trying to put them down and try and ‘win’ some kind of really shit competition about who has it worse.

Say what? BadNomad's post says nothing about the circumstances being private or otherwise.

'But then, frankly, grow up and stop being obtuse'..........
Bit rude.

You seem to be reading a hell of a lot into a post which doesn't appear to say what you're implying it does.

Who here is actively hating them? If they "bring such joy" universally, how is it they are so often abused, mistreated, ignored, abandoned, and murdered?

And who are the abusers, abandoners, and murderers? Not the childfree!

At work we have a Bicycle User Group and a Sustainable Commuting Forum, which are both basically "car-free forums".

You mean like the identity parents form around being parents?

Were interested in being child free and the associated lifestyle. What's so difficult to grasp here?

When you consider the medical impact on women that pregnancy and childbirth have, and how mothers always have parental responsibility by law, it becomes clear that it is unfeminist to ignore whether a woman is a mother. It affects the whole of her life!

Of the women I know through a hobby group, only the mothers have to choose between bringing the kids or missing the session if DH is on shift. Only the mothers-to-be have to dive out to throw up with morning sickness (at 8pm, it's somewhat misnamed.) That's just two examples of how our experiences differ. That these women remain in the hobby group is proof that women are more than mothers or not-mothers. But being more than mothers doesn't mean that they are not also mothers. And being more than a non-mother doesn't mean that I'm not also a non-mother.

When someone says they are tired, there is zero need to tell them they don't know what tiredness is.

There was a thread on here that I, and a number of other people here were on, where one mother still insisted that the tiredness of raising children was still worse than the tiredness of the poster who had shared about her exhaustion of caring for sick relatives. She also dismissed people with chronic illnesses. So, despite your rant, there actually are mothers who do genuinely believe that no personal circumstances trump parenthood in the competitive tiredness competition they take part in. Just like there are people who genuinely don't think women without children can experience love.