A Paternal Instinct?

During my research for the Childless by Choice Project, I interviewed partnered and married childless and childfree men and I asked them, "Do you think there is such a thing as a paternal instinct?"

The responses were varied, but to paraphrase the majority of the men I interviewed, the response was: "If there is, I haven’t got it."

Beyond the anecdotel comes evidence from a major study conducted in the U.K. reported by The Daily Telegraph in Australia this past December, in an article titled For Dads, Happiness is No Kids.

Following is the full article:

The patter of tiny feet has long been thought of as the key to happiness. But according to a study, having children makes men less satisfied with their life, while women only enjoy motherhood once their offspring are packed off to school.

Between the ages of three and five, children made mothers less satisfied with life, while being the father of a child under five "significantly reduces"' life satisfaction.

Women with children aged five to 15 were happier than those who did not have children. Even children of school age brought no increase or decrease in happiness for men.

The study, carried out by the Institute for Social & Economic Research in Colchester, England, surveyed nearly 4000 couples between 1996 and 2003.

A caveat: I have not seen the original study. However, this rings true to me, based on my interviews.

What do you think?

Flickr photo by fusionstream (cc) /Technorati Tag: Childfree

Purple Man at Lunch

I grossed myself out this week and opted for a "quick" hot dog at Costco for lunch. I only had a half hour allotted and it was the closest solution. It didn't end up being quick at all as this lunch venue is so popular, I spent almost 10 minutes just standing in line to spend $1.50 on the dog.

What took even longer was the interesting man, let's call him Steve, that sat down next to me. He just didn't belong. I thought he looked a little bookish and out of place, bespectacled and all. Trim physique. Plus, he had come prepared with a hard cover book and a New Yorker. As it turns out he was a Purple Man.

After clearing him for landing in the bench zone next to me, my first question to him was, "Are you a writer and are you from New York?" In my experience those from the East really give it up to the Big Apple and consider it the center of culture in the U.S. I think they should all be required to visit Venice Beach, California in order to reconsider their position.

He was a scientist and from the East Coast indeed. He was there getting a flat tire fixed. It was a jaunty conversation, well worth the trip to Costco, and not at all what I was expecting. I wanted to know his whole story, but men don't need or want to articulate about being childfree like we women-folk do. He readily agreed we get all the pressure and men simply fly below the radar. I gave him my Purple Women^TM business card and sincerely hope that he writes us a Guest Post sometime -- or at least leaves us a comment!

Purple Men are out there. Sometimes I wish they would speak out more and help alleviate the double-standard that seems to exist. Their silence is not supportive of the women they love.

Photo by roboppy (cc)

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Purple Blessings

Guest Post by D²
Career Woman & Mother of two girls
Contributor at Diary of a Decision Blog
San Francisco Bay Area
I am not a Purple Woman by any stretch — I am full-time working mother of two girls 6 and 10 and recently separated having been married for the past 18 years.

My life, along with everyone else’s, is complicated, now just in a new way. My sanity and spirits remain positive because of the love and support of my family and a wide circle of friends—many of them Purple Women^TM and Men. Working full-time and participating in different activities puts me in contact with lots of interesting people, many of whom by circumstance or design are child-free. I don’t know what I would do without the affection and companionship of the Purple folk in my life.

For the first time in 40 years I didn’t have a family to spend Easter Sunday with, but my Purple peeps made sure I was with them. When I needed someone to mind my girls on Tuesday nights for ice skating show rehearsals, all three Purple Women^TM I emailed were able to cover all the dates with back ups, just in case someone had to travel (in fact, they enjoyed coming over so much that they want to continue Tuesday girl’s night through the summer). One calls from Minneapolis every day just to check in. Another one asked me to help her do a head to toe makeover. And still another is going to take me ballroom dancing with her husband. And these offers are not just limited to the Purple Women^TM — there are even Purple Men in the mix offering to take me out for drinks, dinner, movies and providing dog sitting.

So here’s to all to the Purple People in my life—you know just the right things to say and do to keep me moving forward. Blessings to all of you: my gang at CPTS, LAG, LB, MA, CVM, AF, SK, AG, EW, KG and the others that the Universe provides every step of the way. Ever grateful AWE (a.k.a. D2)


Technorati Tag: Childfree

A Tribute to the Men Who Love Purple Women

Before the Valentine flowers wilt, the chocolates are devoured, and the cards are recycled, I would like to pay tribute to the Men Who Love Purple Women™.

Why? Because they love us for who we are. Now.

If you love a Purple Woman, there is...

...No promise of future children,

No guarantees that we’ll endure your bad habits because we have to, because the kids need a father,

No biological or instinctual compulsion to cleave to you,

No need to stick around.

But we do, and you do, because it works for us. Because there is the promise of love and companionship, someone who will love you even though you’re unconventional, and you don’t care what people think. Someone who has your back when you’re challenged. Someone who said "I do" or took a chance even if he had been told he’d regret it, or that he had committed himself to someone who was "selfish".

At the risk of making generalizations I may later regret, I will admit that Purple Women™ can sometimes be prickly, strong-willed, or aloof . We don’t generally adhere to the established gender roles. We may not know how to use an iron or bake cakes. We like our freedom. Some of us like our solitude. We don’t always appear to need you.

But we do. And, more importantly, we want and love you. For you.

[Photo: Originally uploaded to Flickr on February 3, 2007 by shirley77]

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Childfree Men

Book Review by Guest Contributor, David Graham
Aspiring Author & Childfree Man

The Chosen Lives of Childfree Men
1999
by Patricia Lunneborg
$69.95

A key aim of any competent book review is to give the reader some idea of how the book stacks up against its competition. In the case of my subject, The Chosen Lives of Childfree Men by Patricia Lunneborg, my task is finished before it starts because, quite simply, this book has no competition. It is, as the jacket flap says, “the first book to explore the motives and consequences of voluntary childlessness from a man’s perspective.” I hope to change this state of affairs by writing my own book to help men decide whether to have children, but that is another subject, and here ends my gratuitous self-plug.

Before I get to the content of the book, a word about Lunneborg’s method is in order. Although she does not say so outright, her study relies on what sociologists call a “qualitative,” as opposed to “quantitative,” method. The exact ten-dollar term is “the phenomenological method,” which may help explain why she elected not to burden her readers with it.

Or, translated from academic jargon into plain English: “

"We sat a bunch of people down, asked them questions about an experience they had, and wrote down everything they said."

Lunneborg admits that this approach makes her study more “exploratory” than “scientific.” It is true that, without sampling thousands of men, we can’t know what percentage of the general population made this or that decision, for this or that reason, within x % margin of error. Nevertheless, in some ways her choice of method was better than a statistical survey. This is because human nature is to a large extent universal; we all have, at bottom, very similar needs and motives; and in the end there are only so many reasons that any reasonably intelligent person can give for not having children. Given these facts, exact percentages and pluralities seem ho-hum compared with a close examination of every reason from every possible angle. This method achieves depth where the statistical method achieves breadth.

Another good thing about qualitative methods is that you enjoy a certain amount of wiggle room in choosing your sample. Lunneborg used a “sample of convenience” consisting of thirty childfree men from the United States and the United Kingdom. Some were “recommended by friends of friends,” while most replied to ads placed through three childfree organizations. Some readers might wonder why the men were overwhelmingly well-educated and from the professions, and indeed it would have been refreshing to hear from more blue-collar men. But this is not surprising because, statistically, the voluntarily childfree tend to be more highly educated than average.

For what it’s worth, the sample does include a retired mechanic and an airplane painter. And while most of the other men have jobs requiring at least a college education, a few of those jobs probably have blue-collar paychecks attached—for example, a high school geology teacher, mainframe computer operator, elementary school librarian, rural library clerk, and “dulcimer player” (although, who knows, maybe dulcimer playing is more lucrative than I’m assuming).

Before meeting the men, Lunneborg mailed them a “Reasons Exercise” to fill out and return. It listed several reasons men might give for not having children. The men were asked to check each reason that applied to them. Later on, the Exercise allowed Lunneborg to follow up on the men’s specific concerns when she met each one for a taped, one-hour, anonymous interview. The interviews also gave each man a chance to bring up any motives or concerns not covered in the Reasons Exercise.

These interviews make up the bulk of the book, in the form of lengthy excerpts sandwiched between Lunneborg’s summaries and commentary. Some common themes emerged from the interviews, enabling her to divide the book into chapters based on the most common reasons and concerns that came up. Chapter titles include:

1. Personal Development
2. Relationships
3. Not Liking Kids
4. Early Retirement
5. Avoiding Stress
6. Staying the Way We Are (fear that a child might wreck an already perfect relationship)
7. Men and Overpopulation
8. Work and Money
9. Mixed Feelings (daydreams about progeny that might have been)
10. The Fatherhood Connection (relationships with their own fathers)

The very richness of these categories is enough to crack the childfree-male stereotype found in TV, movies, and popular literature. To the extent that the media bother to portray a childfree man at all—not counting the token “gay pal” in chick flicks—he is usually well-meaning, but emotionally clueless. Often the leading man’s lonely friend or brother, he somehow managed to hit the age of fifty without finding The Right Woman to have his child. And so at night while his friends read bedtime stories to dozing toddlers, he carries on a beery debate in some sports bar. At the other extreme, exemplified by Hugh Grant’s character in the film About a Boy, he is a shallow womanizer whose rejection of fatherhood is deliberate and part of an overall refusal to “grow up”.

In contrast to these stereotypes, Lunneborg’s profiles reveal men who are thoughtful and complex: They have taken great pains to question “family values” that most people take for granted, and they have taken even greater pains to know themselves. Many have rejected fatherhood not to safeguard a life of hedonism, but in deference to a hard-headed, at times exaggerated, notion of what it takes to raise a child. Some had cats or dogs on whom they spent a great deal of time and worry and love; this experience convinced them that caring for a child would be even more onerous. As a childfree man who is very attached to his three cats (one of whom very nearly runs the household), I took a special interest in the remarks of Roger, a 55-year-old Sales Manager living in Washington state:

"My view of being a father is having the responsibility of providing home, hearth, encouragement, love, support, teaching, training, etc., from the moment of birth until the moment the child leaves on his own. It’s an overwhelming task…. Three years ago we rescued a cat that was run over by a car.

I don’t know how people who have really sick or injured children manage it. But I know how I felt about this stupid cat. His jaw was broken, and I remember worrying, “Has the cat suffered? How’s he gonna eat?”…I assume you have deeper feelings of affection for a child than for a cat.

I’ve always figured children would complicate your life terribly. That cat has complicated our life. We rescued him and now it’s our responsibility to take care of him."

Lunneborg, incidentally, brings a much-needed dose of horse sense (no pun intended) to the whole issue of whether animals serve as surrogate children for childfree people:

It’s hard not to notice the role that pets play in maintaining a warm, comfortable home and how many of the dogs and cats in this book were rescued. Jean Veevers (1980) claims it is a myth that childless people’s pets serve as surrogate children. I think that in some cases here, they were surrogate children, but isn’t it the same in the homes of parents who have pets? Don’t some of them treat their pets as if they were children, and some of them not?

There is no question, then, that these men took to heart the full weight of childrearing in deciding to stay childfree. But if you think this means they had any doubts about their parenting skills or the way their child would have turned out if they had chosen to take a crack at parenting, think again.

To Lunneborg’s (and my) surprise, only one of the 30 men listed “possible disappointment” as his chief reason for not having children. (Lunneborg initially had called this reason “failure” but wisely replaced that loaded term with the euphemism “disappointment.”) And 11 men, over one third, said that not only did possible disappointment have nothing to do with their decision, but the very thought of a procreative blunder never crossed their minds. To them, raising a child was just another project whose success depends on hard work and know-how, like getting a promotion or building a deck in your backyard. A good example is Gordon, a 32-year-old programmer for Microsoft:

"I have no doubts about how good a father I’d be. I’d be successful…I would have paid as much attention to childrearing as I could have and done the best I could. For example, all children go through a rebellious phase where they want to be separated from their family. That’s going to happen, and if I had a child and got to that point, I would love that time. Because I would talk with the child and give my perspective on rebellion and help the child rebel in a productive way. I would never, never live my life through my child."

Such comments are jarring. After all, it is the male who has the reputation for bringing cold realism to the childrearing discussion. Yet here are eleven smart and successful men who, in a show of almost Quixotic confidence, refuse to entertain the possibility that, despite their best efforts, they might have produced a neurotic, a dropout, a thief, a Jeffrey Dahmer. Do these guys honestly believe that no one was ever raised by loving and capable parents and still grew up to be a loser or a whacko? Lunneborg, to her credit, was not afraid to push the issue:

Sometimes I challenged the men. Why are you denying for yourself the disappointment you see around you all the time, every day, in your own family, in the families of your workmates, in your next door neighbors, in society as a whole? Most could not begin to contemplate such a possibility.

In addition to categorizing the types of reasons they gave, Lunneborg found that the men themselves fell into three types of decision maker. Two of these types will be familiar to anyone who has read the existing childfree literature dealing mostly with women: Postponers and Early Articulators. But the third category is almost unheard of among women:

Acquiescers - a class of men that has sparked irritation and puzzlement on childfree blogs and messageboards, Acquiescers are married men who decline to voice their own opinion for or against having children.

Instead, they go along with whatever their wife wants to do. (Here again a harsher term, such as “Wishy-Washy” or “Henpecked,” yields to a euphemism, “Acquiescer.”) As 49-year-old Sven puts it, “[My wife] had a lot of doubts about kids and I am neutral. If I had married someone who really wanted kids, we would have had kids. I like children, although the older I get the less tolerant I am.”

What bugs childfree people about Sven’s attitude is this: We know damned well that he would never dream of letting his wife single-handedly decide whether to buy a Ford SUV or a Toyota Corolla, whether to rent or buy their house, or any of the other monumental decisions that come up in a marriage. Knowing this makes it hard to swallow his claim of neutrality on the question of whether to create a human being who will live with them for at least 18 years at a cost of well over $200,000. Could he be passing the buck out of his own queasy uncertainty? Is he afraid to challenge his wife on a matter that she really cares about?

As much as I hate to leave those questions hanging in the air, I will have to stop. Although I could go on citing these provocative excerpts all day — for the book is full of them — this review is already too long and Teri is probably ready to flog me as it is. So I’ll hurry up and get to the requisite discussion of the book’s flaws. There aren’t many.

The index could be more comprehensive. I found myself wishing that Lunneborg had offered some theories to explain why the Acquiescers acquiesced, or at least had asked them tougher questions. And for a 143-page non-textbook, the $69.95 price is outrageous. But if you have anything more than a passing interest in the study of childfree men, or you are a man struggling to decide whether to have children, and you can’t find a copy at your library, it’s worth biting the bullet for this book. And anyway, it’s the only book we guys have at the moment.

[Blog Administrator's note: Did you make it to the end? Bravo, you deserve something special! Send me an email with your mailing address (I will not share it with anyone) and I will mail you a Purple Woman! button - Happy Valentine's Day!]


Technorati Tag: Childfree

Finding Your Voice

Thought for the day:

“It’s okay to stand out in your field; but God forbid you stand out in the crowd.”

A lot of childfree people I’ve met act this way, myself included. Men certainly don’t want to talk about it. It’s a guy thing mostly. Women just go more naturally to an intimate subject. Blame Oprah, everybody else is. Thank goodness we are not really Purple. If we simply keep our mouths shut, no one will know we are different.

Hmmmmm. Our more vocal of purple contingent wants to know, “Why all the anonymity?” Have we committed a crime? Why are we so apologetic for not being parents?

You may know someone like this. They’ve been on the front lines longer. They are the pioneers of our movement, the ones who found their anger and who faced the music before us. Their anger is their strength. They’ve been online in chat rooms and forums a lot longer than Purple Women™ and they made it easier for us to follow in their childfree footsteps.

Okay, I may be stretching it to call childfree people a “movement”. That truly implies agreement on something, a united front. We are far from that. But we are getting harder to ignore, as the trend to remain childfree is up globally, as evidenced by this week's Newsweek feature story, despite America's burgeoning birth rate. We are not alone and the Internet is here to connect us.

My gosh, people are blogging about it. They are writing books; we’ve reviewed some of them here. Popular media and news outlets are getting curious about what it is to be childfree. They often get it wrong or show only one extreme. There’s only so much you can do within the constraints of a sound bite. We’re controversial, on a personal, social and political level – whether we like it or not.

Might as well learn to talk the talk. How well prepared are you to handle “The Question”? How comfortable would you be if a news person wanted to interview you? I’ve been asking myself the same questions as I write my book.

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Purple Minds Think Alike

by Guest Contributor
CarpeWritem (a.k.a. Man in Black)

As most of us know, choosing to go through life without raising children is not what most people expect or even want to learn about their friends, family or neighbors. Although the concept is becoming more popular, those of us who've made that decision are still well inside the minority circle. We're aware of that.

Women obviously make up a vast majority of those who are preyed upon because of their decision. They hear it from family and friends usually, but sometimes even total strangers get in a dig. It's frustrating (especially to those unattached singles who have no one to fall back on and commiserate with – trust me, I know), but...

to those ladies who stand behind their decision with a tactful, non-threatening reply and a winning smile: you go, girl!

That's exactly the right thing to do, in my humble opinion. And if they've caught you on one of those "get me out of here before I beat the crap out of this idiot" days, well, a good zinger sometimes does the trick.

The feedback from my first blog post is starting to tell me something. The comments from those who answered (I love the entire Cooper-load of 'em) makes me wonder why men are almost never challenged on the childfree idea. I stress the word "almost", here - it does happen, just not as often as you would think.

Naturally, we don't have to deal with pregnancy, childbirth and the associated events (and I'm not even going to attempt to go down that road), but aside from that, aren't all the other reasons for choosing "childfreedom" the same? Members of both sexes do not want kids because they: enjoy sleep, would rather spend their money elsewhere, have other ways of bettering society, don't like messes...pick a reason.

Now, I'm not saying that all articles written on being childfree focus solely on women. I've seen plenty of men interviewed. And the last thing I want is to drive a wedge between the sexes – there's enough of that already. I'm merely wondering why more childfree men don't speak up about their decision.

Are we inherently lazier than women? Do we not like the limelight and stay in the shadows to avoid ruining "a good thing"? Do the single guys simply want more chances to get laid? Does the press not care as much because we're men? The list goes on...I'll leave you with this:

Kudos to the men and women who stick up for their decision to be childfree. Not everyone does, and not everyone has to. It's okay if you don't, but my guess is that there are probably just as many Purple Men as there are Purple Women^TM out there. (Actually, if "Men are from Mars" as the famous book states, wouldn't that make us green?)

Until Next Time...

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Purple Men Do Exist

Purple men do exist. I am married to one, but I don't think I'll trademark the term Purple Men^TM anytime soon.

Somehow it just doesn't have the same appeal for menfolk. That doesn't mean that their thoughts and opinions are not welcome here. Parents (we all know one or two) and those on the fence about kids are also welcome.

I found this gem of a post on a new blog and I think we should all encourage him to write more on the subject and visit us often. (I can't help but say I know a few single childfree women who would just love to meet him!)

As of today, we have had exactly two brave men leave a comment here.

Technorati Tag: Childfree

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.