Purple Men

First, an overdue apology. I’ve had an attack of blogger’s conscience. In creating this space, this opportunity to join in an online community of childfree women, I have intentionally excluded two groups: people with kids (yes, that includes step-parents with responsibility for step-kids), and more gender specifically, men. My apologies to the Purple Men™ out there. What pains me even more is that I may be inadvertently digging a deeper hold for childfree women in my need to give us a new label, when I am really trying to build a bridge between us and families that include parents (that’s everybody else folks). Why is adult childfree status so often colored as a women’s issue?

Perhaps it is because even in our modern day families, blended or not, men are technically childfree, given the amount of child-rearing duties that fall to the women in these scenarios. “He said he would help change the diapers”, but did it really work out that way? It goes the same for household chores, in most cases. Here I have to say I have had personal affiliation with an exception. My first husband was the best house-keeper a woman could every marry. (He used to call me “piglet” – and I am really not that bad.) I may have to read more Naomi Wolf to really understand this gender discrepancy issue. Can you say double-standard?

Or perhaps it’s because women bear the impending child for 9 months (I will side-step the issue of when it becomes a child – that’s another blog), and physically brings forth a new person into this world? I just love the commercial that is currently airing where a young, we assume married, couple are eating a “dreamy” ice cream bar together, she being obviously well into her (or should I say their) pregnancy. The scene cuts to him in a day dream about I-don’t-remember-what, then we view her day dream about him on a hospital bed surrounded by doctors and a nurse. His legs are spread wide apart and he is bearing down with tremendous effort and pain trying to give birth to their child as he turns to his wife and yells accusingly, “You did this to me!” Funny, ha, ha. I bet we’d have a lot more openly childfree men if the tables were turned for real.

The first category of visibly, out-in-the-open, childfree men that comes to mind are men of faith – er, the leadership class of them that is. Men of the cloth, until recently, have been held in high esteem for their sacrifice and devotions, as demonstrated in their supposed celibacy. I will go out on a limb here to say that I think suppressing a natural human urge has created some very unnatural and damaging consequences for the very people they are supposed to be nurturing. Wouldn’t it be a whole lot better if we approached the concept of sexuality and family in a more open and accepting manner? Why should one person’s definition of family be right for everyone? Why should celibacy be forced upon the leaders of the faithful? It seems to me they could counsel more wisely if they actually walked in the shoes of their followers. But who am I to say? I am merely an interested observer.

Another stereotype of a childfree man is the perpetual bachelor. Think of the playboys of the world, or of their Hollywood counterparts. Think of the character played by Pierce Brosnan in the 1999 remake of the 1968 classic The Thomas Crown Affair. (Can I just say here that I love this movie, and that both lead characters are Purple!) I was minding my own business in a brew pub after work one evening when I struck up a conversation with a man who introduced himself as “a player of sorts”. I gathered from our ensuing conversation that he had more than one woman on the side, who did not necessarily know about each other. He had worked hard and made his mark in high tech and now he was just coasting, working hard on his tennis game and courting interesting women. (No, I am not among them.) The burning question I was too polite to ask was whether or not he had first abandoned a family and children to pursue this bachelor lifestyle, or if he was wise enough to skip all that heartache to choose a childfree lifestyle in the first place? In my heart, I really want to believe the latter. Maybe my next survey will be for Purple Men™.

On that note, I must point out a small change to the Purple Women™ blog template that I made a few weeks ago. Did anybody notice? At the top, the blog description clearly defines a Purple Woman and now it invites “perfect strangers (of either gender and any persuation)” to blog about a childfree lifestyle. To be really proper, I should probably change the blog title to “Purple and Lovin’ It!” like the book title recently reviewed here. Nah.

P.S. Blogging from the road here. Visiting my Mum and step-Dad in Michigan for Easter weekend.