Mostly my feelings have surfaced in response to this article
in The Observer and the responses of support it provoked the following week. (Can't find them online but they are the usual)
I?m pretty sick of smug journalists writing articles about being child-free and how they feel so hard done by because the rest of society is having children. I?m as sick of their articles vilifying parents as I am sick of reading articles about parenting.
Must there be such a polarisation of child-free Vs parents within society? Can the two camps not co-exist and appreciate what all have to offer society?
And what about some of the terminology that is used by the Child-free, by men and women?. Some of it smacks of misogyny. Child-rearers? Breeders? What vile phrases for women to use against their fellow womankind.
I don?t give two hoots if women make a choice not to have children but I mind very much that they have a problem with those who do. Whilst their act of not having children is no more selfish than my desire to have children, they do show themselves up to being selfish people when they start complaining about their taxes being spent on things which benefit children - like education, nursery places maternity benefits etc? Are they that small-minded not to realise that we ALL pay taxes into a pot from which we do not take out an even amount? I don?t begrudge paying for day centres for the mentally ill, drug rehabilitation units, incapacity benefit, unemployment benefits, new roads, regeneration projects (the list could go on) or many things which I rarely use or hope never to use. Why are parents being singled out?
Have they forgotten that sometime in the past, someone?s taxes paid for their maternity ward, their children?s library, their education?
One the one hand they complain that they come last in the queue to be allowed to take holidays during school holiday time whilst on the other hand gloat that they can take several long-haul (term-time) holidays per year (in fact cite this as a huge plus reason not to have children)
I wholeheartedly agree that ALL employees (not just parents) should be entitled to flexible working and should be able to establish a good work/life balance but often it is non-parents who set the precedence for working excessive hours over and above what is contracted. Also, why moan to us? Parents and parenting groups have spent decades fighting for flexible working rights (it?s not like we even really have it - only the right to request it). If other groups want it, then they can fight for it too.
Pre-children I worked in two different places of work which offered flexi-time to all. My BIL has no children and is allowed to take a 3 month sabbatical every two years (he uses it to travel). Another friend of mine is child-free and she has been allowed to compact her hours into 4 days. Such flexible jobs do exist for non-parents. And there are plenty of part-time jobs out there? many, many part time jobs. They are typically low paid and lowly rewarded but nothing is stopping non-parents from applying for these jobs.
Do child-free women really want a return to the 1960s attitude towards women of childbearing age? How would it benefit them if ALL women had to leave their careers and work-places as soon as they have a baby? It would most probably send the feminism backwards, leaving these child-free women working in an even more male-dominated workplace, perhaps having to put up with sexist comments from the men wondering when the said child-free woman was going to leave and have babies.
Grrrr - can you tell I get a bit hot under the collar about this?!