Page 21 | Childfree Mumsnetters' Board?

musixa · 2023-05-24T19:10:40+00:00

There's been some discussion on this thread about the idea of a childfree/life without children board, so I thought I would raise the suggestion on Site Stuff [[https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4811166-to-ask-why-so-many-child-free-people-are-on-mumsnet?reply=126404125 [[https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4811166-to-ask-why-so-many-child-free-people-are-on-mumsnet?reply=126404125]] My thinking is that the board would be a safe space for Mumsnetters who, for whether by choice or making the best of the hand they've been dealt, are embracing the childfree life, to discuss the issues that uniquely affect us - some examples I can think of are discrimination when it comes to workplace holidays; planning for old age and inheritance issues, how to cope when your friendship group only want to meet in child-friendly venues; family pressure to have children. I would also hope it might stop so many threads like the linked one popping up, which often attract goady posters. I hope you don't feel this is a step too far as a board suggestion and will give it serious consideration.[smile]

off · 26/05/2023 04:44

because almost everyone does it, and it's expected

Sending your kids to school, that is. Not making analogies.

Sunshineboo · 26/05/2023 05:06

i joined here while ttc.

after 5 gruelling years i found out we could not have kids.

by this point mumsnet was such a part of my daily habits, i carried on coming here. I am now happily childfree (or maybe content is the right word) but I love this community.

I don't shy away from reading topics about parenthood but know i could hide them if i
wanted to. There is a rich tapestry of other threads to keep me interested!

1 in 5 women don't have kids by 44. our only representation on telly is people who are either driven mad by the experience or people who suffer then succeed. at times i feel invisible, but then i look round me and see so many strong women in the same boat.

it would be nice to have a space on here if it could be carved out to discuss things like media representation etc. it also gives people somewhere to go when ttc graduates to can't
conceive. I suspect there are a number of us here in the background, still contributing on the wider discussion we all have.

i am a member of childfree groups elsewhere but hate the parent bashing. i would hope that could be avoided here. but if mumsnet decide not to then so be it. i hope this does not mean i am not welcome here though as i love this community so much. is most think of it as mumsnet and friends
and i am most def a friend.

sammylady37 · 26/05/2023 06:15

lemonchiffonpie · 26/05/2023 01:10

Where have we "seen this kind of board in action"? If it were to be full of "rants and moans" - rather than sensible discussions for inheritance issues when there is no-one directly to inherit, for example - so what? AIBU is one big silly rant and moan and asking of questions solved by a single phonecall or a quick google. Should AIBU not exist?

By the ‘logic’ of the poster to whom you’re replying, any and all threads that are even vaguely critical of MILs should be heavily moderated and possibly even deleted. After all, MILs are MUMS, the very people this place is all about apparently, the people it is designed to support and help, yet daily in AIBU we have thread after thread with ranting and raving about MILs, utter vitriol about them, people encouraging NC/LC (isolating them from their family… is that not an abuse tactic? 🤔) and being utterly unpleasant and toxic about them. But apparently that’s ok cos the majority of posters posting such awful posts are themselves MUMS so it’s all good, they can castigate other MUMS as much as they want on a forum for MUMS. But should a childfree woman want to criticise the MUM who dismisses her opinions about non parenting-related topics, the world will tilt on its axis. Perfect sense.

sammylady37 · 26/05/2023 06:18

I have a will like everyone else, the process for doing it is the same whether or not you have children, google it

Yeah, cos it’s the process of making a will that childfree women may wish to discuss. The process. Not the content 🙄 More of your disingenuousness and unwillingness to hear what people are saying about perfectly valid topics of discussion.

sammylady37 · 26/05/2023 06:19

fitzwilliamdarcy · 26/05/2023 01:24

Ultimately what I love about MN is that childless/free people can simultaneously never understand what parents go through or experience proper true love like they do, but at the same time all of our experiences are identical to those of parents and nothing sets us apart whatsoever.

Almost like it changes depending on what’s being gatekept.

Aren’t the mental gymnastics actually quite impressive?

JorisBonson · 26/05/2023 06:20

This thread was missing some mansplaining about our choices and experiences. Good to see that's been rectified.

Busybutbored · 26/05/2023 06:38

sammylady37 · 26/05/2023 06:18

I have a will like everyone else, the process for doing it is the same whether or not you have children, google it

Yeah, cos it’s the process of making a will that childfree women may wish to discuss. The process. Not the content 🙄 More of your disingenuousness and unwillingness to hear what people are saying about perfectly valid topics of discussion.

This I totally understand. I didn't think I was going to have children (took 4+ years to conceive and do their was alot to think about), once I had one it was actually very easy. I agree totally disingenuous comments from some people, quite pathetic really.

MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 26/05/2023 06:58

off · 26/05/2023 04:07

To me, it makes perfect sense for a parenting forum to host a "Posters without children" board. More sense than boards about subjects unrelated to having children, like chicken-keeping, or the supernatural, or radio programmes.

When there's an overwhelmingly powerful cultural norm of any kind, one which many aspects of society are built around, and which pretty much everyone is presumed by default to participate in, then the existence of that norm has effects on your life, and being someone who doesn't, can't or won't participate can bring its own unique experiences that people want to talk about, often with others who may share similar experiences. (Like how, in countries which are overwhelmingly religious, atheists might get together to share experiences and info, and support each other.)

That's why analogies about car enthusiast forums, or book clubs, or cycling, or a lot of the other examples people have used, don't really work IMO. The state of not being a car enthusiast/book-lover/cyclist doesn't really have any impact on your life, because there's no real expectation that you will be, and because those things don't make nearly as much of a difference to the shape of your life as having children does.

It might not make sense to have a "Not bothered about cars" board on the car-enthusiasm forum, because someone who's not bothered about cars isn't being impacted by a powerful cultural norm of car-enthusiasm. But people who don't have children are sometimes impacted by the cultural norm of parenthood, specifically their non-parent status within that. Because non-parents have to exist in relation to the parenthood norm, aspects of people's lives are parenting-related, even if they have no children.

I started to write a post last night trying to articulate exactly this but I couldn't find the right words so I gave up. I agree with you... the experience of not having children is, in many ways, far more relevant to a parenting website than so many of the other topics that we see discussed here on MN.

Florissant · 26/05/2023 06:59

turnipthebeet · 26/05/2023 00:23

Oh dear so many words from Mr Mark. My little brain hurts.

Mark's posts are Shakespearean: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Jeezuswept · 26/05/2023 07:20

fitzwilliamdarcy · 26/05/2023 01:24

Ultimately what I love about MN is that childless/free people can simultaneously never understand what parents go through or experience proper true love like they do, but at the same time all of our experiences are identical to those of parents and nothing sets us apart whatsoever.

Almost like it changes depending on what’s being gatekept.

Absolutely.

KimberleyClark · 26/05/2023 07:31

off · 26/05/2023 04:07

To me, it makes perfect sense for a parenting forum to host a "Posters without children" board. More sense than boards about subjects unrelated to having children, like chicken-keeping, or the supernatural, or radio programmes.

When there's an overwhelmingly powerful cultural norm of any kind, one which many aspects of society are built around, and which pretty much everyone is presumed by default to participate in, then the existence of that norm has effects on your life, and being someone who doesn't, can't or won't participate can bring its own unique experiences that people want to talk about, often with others who may share similar experiences. (Like how, in countries which are overwhelmingly religious, atheists might get together to share experiences and info, and support each other.)

That's why analogies about car enthusiast forums, or book clubs, or cycling, or a lot of the other examples people have used, don't really work IMO. The state of not being a car enthusiast/book-lover/cyclist doesn't really have any impact on your life, because there's no real expectation that you will be, and because those things don't make nearly as much of a difference to the shape of your life as having children does.

It might not make sense to have a "Not bothered about cars" board on the car-enthusiasm forum, because someone who's not bothered about cars isn't being impacted by a powerful cultural norm of car-enthusiasm. But people who don't have children are sometimes impacted by the cultural norm of parenthood, specifically their non-parent status within that. Because non-parents have to exist in relation to the parenthood norm, aspects of people's lives are parenting-related, even if they have no children.

This is what I have been trying to marshal my thoughts to say but you’ve done it better than I could. Brilliant post.

Original poster

musixa · 26/05/2023 07:32

A point in LilyMumsnet's post from the thread linked in the OP, which JorisBonson kindly copied over, is very relevant:

"... we're the largest discussion forum in the UK"

At the moment, 20% of women end their childbearing years without having had children. It doesn't seem incongruous for 1/5 of the UK population to have a space on the UK's largest discussion forum - and it's the size and scope of Mumsnet that sets it apart from the more niche, specialist forums that some posters have tried to use as analogies.

Re. the point about 'childfree' being a divisive term - I think most posters supporting the board have already agreed that the more neutral 'without children' would be a better name for the suggested board.

OP posts:

Backstreets · 26/05/2023 07:35

Well I think it’s a nice idea. I come on here because if I’m going to discuss issues online, I want it to be with adult women, not men and children, who appear to dominate all other conversational spaces on the internet.

I never weigh in on baby name type threads unless someone wonders of Ledonkus is a good name for a boy.

FurAndFeathers · 26/05/2023 07:53

Mark19735 · 25/05/2023 23:54

Words are important, and the suffix "-free" is deeply problematic in regards to this debate. People without children are childless, not childfree. Using the term 'child-free' is goady, exclusionary, inflammatory and offensive.

Other uses of the suffix -free all refer to things that are unwanted, unwelcome or unpleasant. Cancer-free. Rent-free. Smoke-free. Gluten-free. Worry-free. The antonyms of -free include burdened, hindered, encumbered. It is objectionable for anyone to imply that parents' relations with their children should be described in those terms - even if it is couched in 'positive' language intended to make their life choices, or life outcomes, more validating. It's patently obvious that many (not all) of the most vociferous proponents of the right of a subset of Mumsnet posters to a forum where they can exclude the core constituency of the entire site have some major issues in respect of their childless status that they are still working though.

But a successful forum is about posters' behaviours, not their identities. Nobody knows, or need know, whether any individual poster on any given thread has zero, one, two or twenty children, unless they elect to share that information in the context of that thread. Same goes for whether a poster has zero, one, two or twenty dogs, or cars, or verrucae. I can understand why, if the demand is there, people might want to group threads together into a forum that caters for people who have an interest in dogs, or cars, or verrucae, but it would be extremely odd if people petitioned for a special forum to cater exclusively for posters who are dog-free, car-free, or verruca-free - even though there are probably a great many MNetters who are all of these things. It's the attempt to claim the position of being childless as an identity, branded as "free", and the demand that this needs a ringfenced space on a website for parents in which that identity is the dominant one, that is being objected to. Not the number of children someone does or doesn't have.

Nonsense.

do you find sellers who advertise clothes from a pet free home goady and offensive? I’m also gluten-free. Gluten is delicious. It’s not ‘unwanted, unwelcome or unpleasant’ in and of itself. It’s simply something that I am unable to consume. You’re trying to make bizarre and loaded analogies and it’s nonsensical.

if you’ve personally decided to take offence to the term child free that’s on you.

I’m child free because I don’t personally want children. That has zero bearing about how I’m able to respect other people who made a different choice because I’m a decent person.

you seem to be struggling with accepting that some other people make different choices to you for perfectly valid reasons, and have a strong desire to ‘other’ and exclude people based on your lack of tolerance.

these are all choices that you are making.

plus if you bother to read the thread you’ll see that several of us have posted to comment on the need for the board to be inclusive and welcoming as not all people without children are childfree (something you might struggle with!) and have suggested the title ‘Mumsnetters without children’

so your post is pretty moot

FurAndFeathers · 26/05/2023 08:00

Freeballing · 26/05/2023 01:00

No. I already said my children plan to live abroad so I don't factor them into care plans, they have big life goals why would i want to stunt that. I have a will like everyone else, the process for doing it is the same whether or not you have children, google it. I already said I am self employed and dh works every Christmas including Christmas day and has done for years and we don't mind.

Show quote history

Spectacularly and I suspect deliberately missing the point there.

Who are you leaving you inheritance to @Freeballing - I’m interested how you decided? What factors played in to it? Who will manage your assets if you need care?

Obviously your children won’t be will they?

Jeezuswept · 26/05/2023 08:03

Words are important, and the suffix "-free" is deeply problematic in regards to this debate. People without children are childless, not childfree. Using the term 'child-free' is goady, exclusionary, inflammatory and offensive.

@Mark19735.

I'm childfree. Of course it's not offensive, let alone goady or exclusionary to describe myself as childfree.

My friend describes herself as childless, after several miscarriages and a tragic stillbirth. There's a definite distinction.

Maybe you don't understand the real life connotations between the terms?

Jeezuswept · 26/05/2023 08:14

musixa · 26/05/2023 07:32

A point in LilyMumsnet's post from the thread linked in the OP, which JorisBonson kindly copied over, is very relevant:

"... we're the largest discussion forum in the UK"

At the moment, 20% of women end their childbearing years without having had children. It doesn't seem incongruous for 1/5 of the UK population to have a space on the UK's largest discussion forum - and it's the size and scope of Mumsnet that sets it apart from the more niche, specialist forums that some posters have tried to use as analogies.

Re. the point about 'childfree' being a divisive term - I think most posters supporting the board have already agreed that the more neutral 'without children' would be a better name for the suggested board.

"Mumsnetters Without Children"

@mnhq

It could happily sit in the "Other Stuff" section. I think this would be a great addition, would show how inclusive Mumsnet are, not bother any parents at all and be a great place for advice and support for both childfree and childless Mumsnetters.

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 26/05/2023 08:28

lemonchiffonpie · 26/05/2023 02:00

Or "We'll Never Know Real Love"... Or "Why Are We Even Here?"

'WomenWithMeaninglessEmptyLives' board (yes, have seen comments that childfree women have meaningless empty lives and what do they DO with themselves at weekends?0

GoodChat · 26/05/2023 08:45

Does empty nesters only apply to people who've had children who are now grown up, or could it be used in this context? If so, that could be a proposal.

JorisBonson · 26/05/2023 08:47

GoodChat · 26/05/2023 08:45

Does empty nesters only apply to people who've had children who are now grown up, or could it be used in this context? If so, that could be a proposal.

No, it isn't applicable. Nothing empty about my nest!

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 26/05/2023 08:49

Words are important, and the suffix "-free" is deeply problematic in regards to this debate

Only to you, Mark.

Jeezuswept · 26/05/2023 08:49

GoodChat · 26/05/2023 08:45

Does empty nesters only apply to people who've had children who are now grown up, or could it be used in this context? If so, that could be a proposal.

'Empty nester' would only apply to those who have adult children that have left home - so it's really a completely different situation to someone who has never had children.

KimberleyClark · 26/05/2023 08:51

Yes Empty Nesters would be completely inappropriate.

Original poster

musixa · 26/05/2023 09:00

Agree 'Empty Nesters' doesn't represent what was in mind for the board. If MNHQ are prepared to go with the very broad 'Mumsnetters Without Children' title, that wouldn't stop 'empty nesters' joining any threads which were relevant to their particular circumstances.

OP posts:

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 26/05/2023 09:01

KimberleyClark · 26/05/2023 08:51

Yes Empty Nesters would be completely inappropriate.

And like the suffix '-less', it suggests something is missing.