Motherhood Manifesto Not Just for Moms

I recently spent part of my weekend free time reading and watching The Motherhood Manifesto, a book and DVD encouraging moms to fight for new laws and workplace policies that would benefit the lives of mothers and their kids.

Yeah, I know, I’m childree, but I have great respect for the author’s of this work: Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, an award-winning author and consultant on environment policy. Also, I was curious;

I wondered, is their initiative likely to further the divide between mothers and non-mothers in the workplace?

In my humble opinion, the answer is yes, and no.

Most of what is advocated in The Motherhood Manifesto are changes that would benefit all: Flex-time, benefits for part-time workers, more paid vacation or sick time, minimum "living" wage, and equal pay for equal work.

Where it gets prickly is the instances where the push for maternal/paternal leave, after school programs, affordable childcare, and universal healthcare for kids (just for kids??) may leave childless workers with valueless benefits; benefits which, essentially, they pay for in sweat and are an important part of their compensation package.

The book exposes some very frightening facts, including the fact that families with kids are three times more likely to be forced into medical bankruptcy. But when you think about it, of course, it makes sense; the more people you have in your household the greater chance one of them will have a illness leading to catastrophic, impossible, medical bills. Parents by virtue of their choice to raise a family expose themselves to any number of risks, including sleep deprivation, severe stress, and—in the case of mothers who take time off to raise a family—loss of seniority and promotion opportunities, resulting in serious long-term loss of income.

I sympathize. The current U.S. work culture is not friendly to working moms, Americans pay far too much for health care and insurance, and I believe employers can do more to help the next generation and those who care for them. However, I think in the spirit of fairness and sound economics, benefits should be doled out in value units and the worker should have a menu of benefits and be invited to choose those which would benefit them the most. The parent might choose subsidized day care or flex time, the childfree and empty-nesters might choose affordable long-term health insurance, or paid time off to volunteer or tend to elder-care duties.

I once took a job which required me to travel state-wide. Some days it would take me two to three hours to get home. This situation forced me to drop my volunteer work as a tutor at an after school program. I would have loved paid time off for my volunteer work, but no dice. I was a part-time consultant. No benefits.

Clearly, there are shared objectives if these types of advocacy efforts can be more inclusive. So I was happy to see that on page 72 of the Motherhood Manifesto, in a sidebar titled It’s Not Just Mothers, John de Graff (who directed the Motherhood Manifesto film and is the National Coordinator of Take Back Your Time) acknowledge that moms, dads, singles, and couples are all suffering from "time poverty," pointing out:

"The average American works nine weeks—350 hours—more each year than the average Western European."

Time…aaah; time for leisure, time for family, time for sanity and health.

Now that’s something we can all get behind.

Flickr photo by edtwilight77 (cc)
Technorati Tag: Childfree

Consider "Child Free Living"

Consider "Child free Living."

This from two of the top infertilty doctors in Mombai, (formerly, Bombay) India.

Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, MD and Dr. Anjali Malpani, MD have an infertility clinic in India. They wrote a book titled How to Have a Baby: Overcoming Infertility.

How do you overcome infertility? According to the Malpanis:

Choosing not to have children at all is an option which you can select - to live childfree. Remember, childfree living is a choice you can make - choosing not to have children isn't the same as having childlessness thrust upon you.

This is a quote from chapter 31 of a their book, which can be read (free) in its entirety on the Malpani Infertility Clinic website.

Here’s what they have to say about how infertile couples can "adapt to the decision to live childfree":

Remember, there can be real advantages to life without children: more personal freedom, more time to spend on your own interests, and more emotional energy to invest in your emotional relationships. Start enjoying your time with your spouse more - remember the early heady days of your marriage before you were striving for a child? Try to recapture those magic moments again.

Kudos to these two compassionate people who dedicate their work to helping infertile couples but recognize that childfree living can be a viable and sustainable option for couples who are ready to get off the fertility treatment treadmill.

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Do Your Breast

A certain body part has come under particular scrutiny Purple Women^TM. You know the ones, they come in pairs are considered by many to be "weapons of mass destruction," they are associated with erotica, and most recently deemed objectionable by Facebook when a mother posted a photo of this body part exposed while nursing her baby. Frankly, I am more offended by swearing in public.

Women are so villified, and not just by Islam. I blog about this today because there is a Purple Woman out there doing something about it. Her name is Sue Richards. She is the Breast Health Empress -- breast health, not breast cancer. Breast health includes having healthy attitudes towards our breasts and our bodies, and how to care for them -- before a diagnosis. Let's call it preventative.

Denise, over at BlogHer is an official Breast Ambassador (you can become one too) and she posted about this topic recently. I also met Sue at BlogHer. In fact, she was the first person I met. We were sitting out by the pool because we both had registered so late we could not get in to the first day. Each of us had flown all the way from Ontario, Canada to be at BlogHer '06. We marveled at how far we had to come to meet each other when we lived, at the time, in the same province.

I later went to interview her at her home in Guelph, right before we moved back to California. I will feature her in a new series of posts called Profiles of Purple Women. With her permission, I will publish her story on this blog. Stay tuned for the upcoming story. She is a self-described Social Entrepreneur and a heroine of mine.


Technorati Tag: Childfree

Childfree Advocate

Guest Contributor, M, has given me permission to share a recent comment she made in response to an archived post by LauraS titled Am I A Childfree Advocate?:

"I think advocacy is absolutely needed, however none of us are obligated to be advocates simply by virtue of choosing to be childfree. We do not have to speak for or defend the group just because we are a(n unofficial) member.

And I agree that many or most of us are not pushing for a childfree society; only speaking up for the legitimacy of our personal choice to not have children and defending that choice as one that is equally valid as the choice to be a parent.

Some think childfree means wanting no one to have kids, or hating kids, or hating parents, etc. etc. etc. when all it really means is voluntarily choosing to not have children of our own.

I think most of us just want our choice to be respected and not routinely criticized, questioned, or judged (of course, we can't control others' thoughts or speech, about any matter, nor expect others to think as we'd like them to). And, we want to be treated fairly in society (this I think we can and should expect to change or better control), which is partly where the advocacy part comes in.

I, for one, think it's really important to speak up and work toward employee-friendly policies at work and elsewhere, or family-friendly policies that are truly friendly toward all families, including those without children."

Her thoughts ring clear as a bell with me, though I do not know a lot about the specific issue of workplace "policy" equality. Please let us know if you'd like to hear more from her on this topic!

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Write a Letter

Today's Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle featured this story on the front page of the Style section: Group Weighs in on Advertising Impact.

"You don't have to be a radically minded person to change the way that women and girls feel about themselves. You don't even have to consider yourself a feminist. You just have to know what bothers you and what doesn't and do something about it."

-- Jennifer Berger, Executive Director, About Face

Purple Women^TM and their non-purple friends who are raising daughters will appreciate what this organization is trying to do. Have you ever been standing in line at the grocery store and tried not to look at all the demeaning women's magazines that are offered there? They focus on an ideal image of beauty that we cannot all possibly meet. Well, this organization aims to do something about it. We are consumers all, and we make choices every day that support the hidden messages that are embedded in these headlines, articles, and ads. We decide to shop at that store, to buy that magazine, etc.

Puleeeeeease, don't buy these magazines! Make a donation to About Face (www.about-face.org) instead, and write a letter to the publisher, or better yet to the manager of the store. About Face is going into schools to educate future consumers, all in the name of building self-esteem for young women. Bravo!

Ladies, it's time we re-write that nursery rhyme,

First comes love, then come marriage...

...and then comes whatever the hell you want. (Pardon my French.) And, if you don't believe that, then somewhere along the way, the system has failed you -- your family unit, your schools, your community, publishers of women's magazines, and TV magnates -- society at large perhaps.

The official website associated with this blog (www.PurpleWomen.org) will evolve in this advocacy direction, and we can take a lesson or two from the advocacy pages on the About Face website. There are lots of examples of letters that have been sent and a few responses from the producers of the offensive advertisments. I have always believed in the power of a well-directed letter. As we continue to examine how childfree women are portrayed in the media, we can blog about it here, and we can also write letters.

They say one well-written letter is worth 100 people behind it who feel the same way. Every politician knows this. So, where do we begin? In the U.S. we are coming up on an election year. Let's keep an eye out for our first collaborative effort. Purple Women^TM, let's weigh in -- remember, you don't have to be a radical feminist to do it!

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Please Read This

The Purple Woman known as BritGirl really nails it with this quote on her blog this week:

Childfree people do not have to justify their choice not to reproduce, so please don’t ask us “why we don’t have kids.”

Read the entire post here.


Technorati Tag: Childfree

Childfree in the Military

Nothing more pleasing to me than to hear from new Purple Women^TM on front page posts. If you like what you see here, tell a childfree girlfriend!

My duties as blog owner/author have always include monitoring and responding to comments. That used to be exclusively on the main page, but now that our site is more searchable, I am finding that new visitors are exploring more, and a comment can appear anywhere in our voluminous postings. This is kinda fun for me. Occasionally, I will elevate a comment, or a portion of one, to the front page.

This week, I fielded a new comment on The Question. It represents the first time we have heard from a childfree, married member of a military family, specifically the Royal Air Force.

I am 31 years old, married for 9 years in August this year. You wouldn't believe the number of people that have asked me WHY we got married if we weren't planning to have any kids, much less straight away after the wedding.

I always say that we got married because it meant the RAF would have to provide us with a house (which is true) as my husband is a technician, and has been since 1994. The reaction to that sort of materialistic response is just outstanding, as people think that I really mean it!

She has probably not heard of the ridiculous Initiative 957 in Washington State, which would force couples who want to marry to prove that they are able to have kids together before they can get a marriage certificate. Really just a knee-jerk reaction to deny gays the right to marry, the intentionally childfree heteros are just lumped in I guess. Not stellar legislation.

Did they ever get enough signatures to bring it to the ballot? I will report back later this week.

Flickr photo by MatthewBradley (cc) FYI, the copyright holder insists these are all women in the photo.

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Mea Culpa

Mistakes are learning opportunities. My last article on the subject of birth control pills for Unscripted (the childfree ezine) had a flaw in it, more an error of omission. This was a first issue that they immplented a new reader comment feature and was a good move on their part. A reader called it to our attention.

Purple Women^TM and Men are natural proponents of birth control. If there is one unifying issue to define our movement, that would be it. Many will not share my opinion that we should protect a woman's right to an abortion; however, we can have a civil dialogue about it.

Since I had my permanent solution, a partial hysterectomy (ovaries in tact and hopefully still functioning) in 1992, my personal knowledge of the birth control offerings was vague due to lack of necessity. Lucky me, because it's a quagmire of choices. My first story for Unscripted was on the new device and procedure for sterilization available to women: Essure. No two women are the same and there is an option for every body type and life situation. In my research, I marveled at the usefulness and the controversies surrounding EC, the Emergency Contraception that was developed as a last resort pill to be taken the morning after unprotected intercourse.

My mistake was in not understanding how EC works. EC prevents fertilization. This is of monument significance as pro-lifers must be satisfied that no life is lost. EC works before life begins. Now if we could just eliminate the barriers to it, such as cost and access. Every sexually active female should have one in her medicine cabinet.

[Flickr photo by missjasmine.]

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Public Health

Reproductive Rights are a matter of public health. To reproduce or not, affects entire families and communities -- not women alone. Policy in this area is set at the highest level and monitored closely by our highest court's decisions. Are you tracking them?

Purple Women^TM and Men will be pleased to know that last month, Eric Keroack resigned as head of Family Planning, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services here in the U.S. He was a presidential appointee, and simply the wrong man for the job. Public pressure, much of it right here in the blogosphere, contributed to this turn of events. I first posted about this back in February: Reproduction Choice and How to Defend It. Read Gloria Feldt, a fellow at the International Leadership Forum Post, to keep up with the latest on these issues and rights, which need vigilant defending and vocal advocates.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is cause to break out the champagne. As we get older, it is no less important to celebrate our advances -- in our causes, not our age!

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Ouch! That Hurts

No big surprise. There has been some negative feedback to the article that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle last Sunday. Last night, I met Valerie Francescato, our new Purple poster girl, who was featured in the story. She coordinates a childfree social group using the MeetUp software (at her own expense, it's not free to use the software). My husband and I wanted to meet her and she was hosting an outing in the City last night, so we went. Lots of topics came up, and there was a lot of buzz about the recent article.

Almost everybody liked it; however, a conservative Republican blog has taken exception to the lifestyle we represent. Apparently, the photo of Valerie holding her cat in the her kitchen was lifted, (not sure that doesn't infringe on the publisher's copyright), re-posted on this site and a string of mean-spirited comments ensued.

What alerted Valerie was that fellow MeetUp organizer said he had to de-list from her MeetUp group because it was doing weird things to his own site's stats. Well, this peaked her curiosity, so she had to investigate. She Googled her name.

We know that like the man from Texas, who was quoted by Laura L. Shawne (author of Baby Not on Board) in the article,...

"I did a lot of radio call-in shows where I was called a lot of names," she said. "One man in Beaumont, Texas said my husband and I deserved to die alone."

...not everyone approves of our choice to remain childfree, regardless of our reason for being so. I feel sorry for the infertile couples who come up against this attitude in real life. I guess after they tell their story and clarify that they are really "child-less" they get sympathy, or pity, not anger.

Not sure which is better. See for yourself at FreeRepublic.com: mean comments that won't be repeated here. We've got rules in the side bar!

The photojournalist came to my home too, took similar pictures of me holding my cat. Now I am glad they weren't published. (Probably because I don't live in the city proper.)

Purple Women^TM what say you?

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Theoretically Speaking

by Guest Contributor Laura Thérèse
Harvard Law Student & Spokesperson for No Kidding! International
Blogs: Childfree Issues, Childfree News

History is full of theories that have not been fully thought through. Let's add to that list the idea that intelligent people have a responsibility to procreate.

I have heard many times that those with low intelligence are out-breeding us. There is some substance to this: the more education a woman has, the fewer children she has, and the more likely she is to have none at all. Now I am not contending that education is synonymous with intelligence, (I know some brilliant people who founded successful companies with a high school diploma) but there is at least some correlation there.

From this problem, people immediately jump to the conclusion that intelligent people should go out and have more kids to compensate. Side-stepping for a moment the disputed idea that intelligence can be so readily passed on genetically, and ignoring the offensive eugenics overtones, this conclusion has other serious flaws.

What is the point of having smarter kids? Theoretically, it is so that society as a whole will improve. We hope future generations will break cold fusion, cure cancer, debunk string theory, and craft a better government. The supporters of this idea think their next generation will move us forward, or at least keep us on track better than a less-intelligent populace can.

This theory needs debunking if it is to ever go away. If we are not encouraging young women to get joint MD-PhDs and devote their lives to medical research, they will face the same cultural pressure to have children and raise them for the same flawed reasons. Where does it end? It is like arguing that a branch should create more branches, instead of leaves, so that there will be more branches to make leaves. Somewhere along the line, there has to be a leaf-maker. Why not Purple Women^TM?

Now this first theory relies upon a related theory that one cannot 'have it all', (I do hate that phrase) that women cannot crack cold fusion while nursing two infants. I would say that while working mothers can indeed make contributions to society, some of the really big advances will need to be made by someone who is married to their work. Perhaps it can be done by someone whose spouse watches the children, but unless our culture changes dramatically, this will be the women. Flash forward to a future depicted by Canadian author Margaret Atwood in her novel, The Handmaid's Tale, where intelligent women exist as incubators for their own superior DNA while brilliant hubby saves the world. A disturbing prospect.

An even larger flaw of this 'solution' is that it rests on a conclusion regarding nature v. nurture that is far from settled science. Is passing on superior genes enough? Do people really think that a brilliant couple who has no interest in having children, but do so out of a sense of obligation, will make good parents?

The “therapy culture” we live in is not going to fade anytime soon. I have serious doubts that my own theoretical offspring will make any great contributions when they're appearing live on Dr. Phil working through the psychological scars of being unwanted. Children know when they are unwanted. A child will notice the fact that she was raised by a nanny, or a mother constantly grumbling under her breath about all she had to sacrifice. I reject the assumption that her child is any more prepared to change the world than one who was raised by parents who really loved and wanted their child, regardless of I.Q.

The next time someone espouses this theory of passing on your superior genes, ask them if they have thought it through to its logical conclusion.

In the meantime, I will firmly reject the notion that I am duty bound to pass along my biological material, rather than making my own contribution to society.

After all, my own parents sacrificed what might have been far-reaching careers to educate the young minds of America, including mine. I am not making the best of their contributions by being just another branch on an endless family tree.

[Photo originally uploaded on February 27, 2007 to Flickr by Photos of Nature's Calm.]

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Reproduction Choice and How to Defend It

Do we, the childfree, represent a movement or do we merely exist in growing numbers that are getting harder to ignore?

Thus far, I would say we fall short on both descriptions, but that may be about to change. The proof will be in our collective actions and the issues we rally around. The launch of the ezine Unscripted: A Childfree Life and childfree blogs such as the Childfree Issues are recent developments that may bring us together.

Reproductive rights are core issues for people who are childfree by choice. Men and women are affected equally. It is not a women’s health issue, it is a public health issue and it affects us all, your daughter, your niece, your aunt, your sister, your girlfriend, and your wife – and yes, you.

What’s at stake?

• Access to birth control for all who want it

• Right to abort an unwanted pregnancy

These are important topics to discuss in the childfree realm because, let’s face it, there would not be so many of us if not for the miracles of birth control and yes, control over our pregnancies. To learn more about these issues you can visit the website of The Center for Reproductive Rights, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization defending these rights on all fronts at home and abroad.

Title X was created by Congress in 1970 to provided safe, confidential access to contraception, non-biased reproductive education and care. It provides this care to 4.5 millions low-income individuals annually. The Bush Administration has not ensured enough funding for Title X to maintain current levels of reproductive care for millions who are below the poverty level.

A roll back on reproductive choice is happening in the United States. Evidence is the recent presidential appointment of Eric Keroack, a known proponent of natural contraception, now in charge of the Family Planning Division of the Dept. of Health and Human Services. We see further evidence of in measures being placed on state ballots.

What Can You Do?

Exercise your power as a member of the childfree community and vote when given the opportunity. In California, Proposition 85, which would have amended the state constitution to require women under 18 to notify their parents before they could access abortion services appeared on the November 2006 ballot and was narrowly defeated. This was the second time Californians have protected the privacy of minor women, but no doubt a similar proposal will appear again in the future.

Childfree men and women should identify themselves as a member of the childfree community when writing letters to their leaders. In the New Year, let’s stand up and be counted. We need to protect the right to have control over our reproduction and the right to safe, healthy contraception options and not least importantly, safe, legal abortions. The latter two go hand in hand. Access to proper contraceptive methods reduces unwanted pregnancies and abortions.

The access to contraception and reproductive choice is being challenged at all levels of government and in many arenas, including high schools and college campuses. In the U.S. it varies from state to state as we follow the tenet of self-determination. It should also be applied to individuals, regardless of their age.

What messages are your leaders sending you? Could the message be:

All women should be pregnant, and all women and their partners should be happy about it.

This is just not reality folks. I hope they don’t expect us to be barefoot, too.

[Blog Administrator's Note: This opinion piece was first published in the ezine Unscripted: A Childfree Life, January 2007 issue under a different title: Reproductive Choice or No Choice.]

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Give Us Your First Born

CNN reported this morning that signatures are being sought for a Washington State defense of marriage initiative that would force couples who want to marry to prove that they are able to have kids together before they can get a marriage certificate. If you marry and you don’t have a child within three years, your marriage would be annulled.

At first listen it sounds like something social conservatives have dreamed up to thwart same sex marriages. WRONG.

Initiative 957 was concieved by a group calling themselves the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance which...

..."seeks to defend equal marriage in this state by challenging the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on Andersen v. King County. This decision, given in July 2006, declared that a 'legitimate state interest' allows the Legislature to limit marriage to those couples able to have and raise children together. Because of this 'legitimate state interest,' it is permissible to bar same-sex couples from legal marriage."

And the childfree, too.

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance is a group of concerned citizens that became alarmed when the Supreme Court ruled that the state had a "legitimate" interest in establishing that the purpose of marriage is for procreation and child-rearing.

The Alliance spokesperson and the initiative sponsor, Gregory Gadow is hoping that the initiative will pass and the Supreme Court is forced to rule that the assumption that procreation is a required element for legal marriage is unconstitutional.

They need 224,880 signatures by July 5 to get Initiave 957 on the ballot in November. As of this morning, they had 200. I envision the petition sheet.

Where else will you see social conservatives, same-sex marriage advocates and the childfree signing in support the same initiative?

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Childfree News

Three items of note this week:

Purple Thins?
Interesting Forbes article about how parents eat more fats and tend to be heavier than those who are not parents. Well, if you consider what most kids eat, that's a no brainer. Aieeeee! They refer to us as childless instead of childfree. How tacky.

New CF Project
Childfree Issues is a new website underway by No Kidding! spokeswoman LT. I have joined its corresponding blog as a contributor. The focus is childfree advocacy. No - that does not mean "recruiting others to be childfree" as the pro-natal mindset might assume. Currently, the dialogue is about workplace compensation, specifically employee benefits packages.

Bylines
Unscripted: The Childfree Life, the new ezine for people of the purple persuasion needs writers. I met the editor, Martha Kneib, at the childfree festival in Toronto last year. She is a professional and she will edit your story. She improved my editorial in this month's issue quite a bit: "Reproductive Choice or No Choice?"


Technorati Tag: Childfree

We All Have Mothers

One of my Purple Women^TM informants was kind enough to send me an article from San Francisco Weekly called New Mother's Work by Eliza Strickland (12/6/2006).

The post title above is a quote by Joan Blades, co-founder of a new political action group called Moms Rising. Her co-founder is author Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner who recently debuted some new data in her first book, The F-Word: Feminism in Jeapoardy:

"For every dollar that a man earns today, a childless woman earns 90 cents — not perfect equality, but close — while mothers earn 73 cents, on average, and single moms earn 60 cents. These numbers represent disparities in hourly wages, so part-time work schedules and unpaid leaves don't skew the statistics."

We childfree have a true workplace advantage. We still don't have pay equity with the men, but I will say her numbers make it look like we've progressed. How we will fare with the pull of this newly realized political organizing is yet to be seen.

When Blades says "we all have mothers," I am reminded of how hard it must have been for my mother, a single mother in the beginning. I need to read more about their agenda, but initially I am captured by their cause - even though I have no intention of raising kids.

Moms Rising could be good for all women. Backers like Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy would be wise to recognize families of two as they push for new family-friendly legislation and workplace policies. The two should go hand-in-hand.

As Purple Women^TM we are unwitting feminists, whether we like it or not. My question is, are we going to have a voice in the changes that inevitably take place, or will we simply take a backseat to mothers?


Technorati Tag: Childfree

Café or the Cafeteria?

Should employers continue to grant extended benefits coverage to parents and decline to transition to “cafeteria” plans that set a single dollar amount for each employee?

This question was recently posed by Ms. Laura Ciaccio, Spokesperson for No Kidding! International, author of the Childfree News blog and Child-free.com, and also a Harvard Law student working on the above question for a course project. Here is the argument I sent her for her site.

We have to appreciate what we have in this country, the good ol’ U.S. of A., and one of those things is a free marketplace. Burgeoning entrepreneurship is a sign of a healthy economy. This well spring is the direct result of a healthy middle class, the size of which is also an indicator of a strong economy and a happy populace. Macroeconomists would agree but it’s hard for most of us to get the bigger picture. We all prosper when our economy prospers, and prosperity is not tied to what hand-outs our employers give us.

I am a Democrat, trying to develop Republican sensibilities. Now that liberals have won back both House and Senate, majority leaders and their followers have a responsibility to listen to the other side. Republicans have morphed into religious fanatics lately but they remain true to their true pro-economy, capitalist core. It is even more important to develop the ability to dialogue and come into the conversation open-minded. If we really feel like socialists at heart, we should move further north.

When I first heard about Ms. Ciaccio’s project and her stance, I cringed because telling a corporation how to take care of its employees feels a bit heavy handed. I look forward to the dialogue she stirs up and applaude her for doing so. Here’s my take and you are free to disagree with it:

I think we, the childfree, need to take responsibility for our own choices. We decided (or accepted) our status, and regardless the reason, we should not expect compensation for phantom children. The Achilles Heel of the argument that Ms. Ciaccio puts forward is that in fact we should have extra disposable income since we don’t have extra mouths to feed. As an employer, it is proper to take care of your employee and his or her family. This argument will not find a sympathetic ear with the great masses of parents (who outnumber us, by the way). The U.S. tax code already allows employers to offer pre-tax spending options for unreimbursed medical and caregiving expenses, be they child or elder. That is available to us all equally.

If we advocate that a company provide equal value in benefits to each employee, where would that money come from? Profits would be the first thing a board or business owner would move to protect. Head count and salary would be the likely target, so would the company picnic and ironically, the company-sponsored cafeteria. The proposal is called a “cafeteria plan” of packaging benefits, in which each employee gets one a voucher for the same amount with which they can pick and choose from a benefits plan.

Put on your business-owner hat for a moment. Look at your total cost per employee. Parents cost more for businesses so heavily weighting their bennies to families with kids, yet, which employee gets promoted? Unfortunately, the odds are that the guy telling jokes at the water cooler, the married man, yes, one who has the right number of kids does. Oh, and the tall people. So many subjective factors come into play, rather than job performance, but I would bet that all business owners look at employee cost when making staffing decisions. They have to or they wouldn’t be in business.

So, why would childfree want to advocate to make themselves more expensive and less attractive in the workplace? Instead we should shed some light on what a bargain we are, always filling in for the ones who have to dash home for a child’s activity. Use it to our advantage. The cafeteria plan would impact women in the workplace most directly. Many talented working women are also mothers and if employers were forced to offer equal benefits for all employees chances are some of theirs will go away. The economic impact to the business would be too great for it to turn out otherwise in reality.

Ms. Ciaccio, if you want to eat at the cafeteria, go ahead. Our co-workers who have kids are probably eating lunch a sack lunch at their desk. I’ll take my compensation in dollars and cents, and eat across the street at the café with my extra disposable income, and only sign up for as much health coverage as I need.

For more on this topic and others visit Childfree Issues.


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

What is Our Role?

We the proud, the purple, the childfree......What is our role?

Do Purple Women^TM have all the perks and none of the responsibility? Well, maybe on the surface. Shoule we be leaders? Artists? Perhaps the childfree should be the ones to charge into battle, or the first responders in a crisis.

Elinor Burkett wrote a book about the burdens that the childfree adults shoulder in the workplace (The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless, 2000). They don't have to pattern their lives around soccer season or the school year. Perhaps that is as it should be, just as teens and grandparents help parents in childcare and rearing.

We should all invest in the future, right? Whether it be by paying taxes into our institutitions and systems or influencing young minds.