Obligatory warning: This post mentions pregnancy but doesn't otherwise get deep into infant/preggo talk. Should be safe for most CF/CL readers, I think...
The tenor of conversation online about childless, childfree, and parental issues seemed shrill, unreasonable, and unlikely to solve any problems in the long run, when I started this blog a few years back. I was vocally childfree for many years, got interviewed about it, got published about it, etc., but hopefully not in any hateful way. Still, it was an important component of my identity.
Some 10-15 years ago I joined an online CF group, a small one populated by some folks I knew in real life and other people too. Some stuff I found humorous; I didn't mind the word "breeder" (which my "fruit" friends had long called us "hets"); it was nice to share experiences with like-minded people.
However, the viciousness and bitterness of other posts seemed way out of whack. Well-off white people with graduate-level educations and good futures in the tech industry snarling about how put-upon they were by those nasty, evil breeding types—it seemed bizarrely cruel, classist, elitist, and frankly sometimes sexist. The conversations tended to be about how fuckin' cool we were for not being like the pond-scum normals who procreate. Many of whom were not just unenlightened and prone to talk about dull subjects like children, but poor and uneducated. La ti tah.
When I wanted to rediscover resources for CF/CL folks online, years later, I found many a place that was even worse. Especially as I began, to my utter dismay, to experience the biological clock and question my previously rock-solid decision not to breed, I really sought good conversation about these things. From comments posted to newspaper sites when they ran articles about childfree living, infertility, any related issue... to blogs... to closed-loop discussion websites... I mostly found black-and-white thinking, bitterness, defensiveness, offensiveness, ad hominim attacks, and a lack of sympathy or interest in how other people lived. Everyone was a victim, it seemed—a whiny, angry one whipped to foaming peaks by the injustice of it all.
In other words, I found the Internet, in all its anonymous, cowardly glory.
This gave Nymphe an instant niche. I am still astounded by the feedback and support I've gotten for this one tiny, unpublicized blog. Just because I wrote about my experiences without assuming that parents are assholes and children are yucky. Just because I said, hey, there's a grey area of childless people, and we shouldn't have to fake that we're Totally! Happily! Childfree! all the time in order to fit the mold of the childfree cheerleaders. I still get the emails, some from people who've read current episodes of the blog and know I've crossed over... some from people who think I'm forever childfree.
I think the feedback has just been a sigh of relief from readers: thanks for writing this, because we're sick of the divisiveness. We're sick of the nastiness. Maybe we are victims in some ways, but we know things are more complex than many of the defensive CF groups want them to be, more complex than the defensive über-parents want to pretend.
Some people think it's weird or even unacceptable that a pregnant lady like me still reads and posts about childfree/childless/etc issues. But I do, because even if I were to squirt out two dozen screaming brats to drive all the other shoppers insane at the supermarket and overpopulate the planet and suck up all the tax money for schools, I would still care about inequality in our society. And the childless and childfree people in our society are treated unequally. That's just truth, supported by many facts. (See The Childess Revolution by Madelyn Cain for stats; it was written by a parent btw.)
In the last year I've noticed an uptick in reasonable, useful, interesting conversations about these issues online. Parenting blogs have them (see CafeMom post below). Childfree blogs have 'em too. (See this conversation at thebritgirl.com—the comments are probably more revealing than the initial post; you can see people mulling over each other's ideas.) Generalist newspaper articles tend to inspire pathetic posts lacking in thought, but strewn among them are really good discussions.
What I'd like to think is this: maybe we're actually listening to each other. Maybe we can guide the conversation to a point where it becomes useful. And then? There's hope for meaningful social change.
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