Missing Out?

by Shelley
Regular Contributor
Purple Women & Friends

Tell a parent that you’re childfree, and chances are you’ll hear the timeless retort,

“You don’t know what you’re missing.” This comment exasperates me to no end, usually because I take it for what it is: a thinly veiled, critical judgment of my choices.

But as much as I dislike this loaded statement, I have to admit, there is a good chance I really might be missing out on something.

Sometimes I wonder how it would feel to love my own child. I love my husband more than anyone else in the world, so I try to relate how I’d feel about a child to how I feel about him. Our connection is so intense that sometimes it overwhelms me, and I think that losing him would be like losing myself.

Would my love for a child be similar? Or would it be even stronger, since the connection would be both physical and emotional?

I tend to think I couldn’t love my husband as fervently if I had to share my devotion with a child, but what if it doesn’t work that way? What if I was able to have two great loves in my life, and could have twice as much joy? Unfortunately there’s only one way to find out, and that’s quite a risk to take.

As much as I dislike society’s mystification of the bond between parent and child, I can’t deny that there must be something uniquely special about that connection. After all, even God used the father-son relationship to explain His love to the world. There’s something powerful there that I’ll never be able to experience.

Yes, I know that part of what I am “missing” involves loud unpleasant noises, in-depth contact with various bodily fluids, and a terrible restriction of personal freedom. No big loss there, that’s for sure. And for me, I don’t think there’s any other loss either.

I know that God doesn’t want me to have children, so that must mean He’s got something better in store for me. There must be something pretty special that parents are missing out on too.

Flickr photo by Mr.mt (cc)

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Welcome Shelley

Please help me welcome Shelley to the Purple Women^TM site as our newest Regular Contributor. Shelley is new to blogging, but seems to be a natural, and we can all be jealous that she is still 20-something!

She is employed as a Human Resources Manager and describes herself as a Southern girl trying to “embrace her Faith without shutting off her brain.” She says she tries to lead a practical Christian life in the Bible Belt with her husband of 7 years. They have recently decided that the only “children” she will ever have will be the furry four-legged variety. Her current fur-kids include a kitty named Tillman and a retired racing Greyhound, Bowman. The 1st person who can figure out why these pet names are significant and leave a comment gets a "Purple Woman!" button. Post your guesses here.

Shelley and her husband lead a home group, their church’s version of Sunday School for other young couples without children, and they provided the encouragement she needed to start the blogging journey with End of the Tunnel. Please welcome Shelley to our Purple space in the blogosphere!


Technorati Tag: Childfree

Contributor Guidelines

Purple Women™ Team Blog
Contributor Guidelines

Mission Statement
The purpose of the Purple Women™ team blog is to…
• Create a community of online friends
• Manifest a socially significant dialogue about being childfree, and…
• Unite Purple Women™
• Dispell myths about who and what we are in society, our institutions and families.

The Team
Purple Women™ blog team members, Regular Contributors, are childfree women -- all! Our ideal team is diverse in opinion, age and background, and fluent in English. Team members have responsibility for introducing topics by publishing original blog posts, and participating in discussions (commenting on other’s posts).

Some turn-over is expected. Blogging is not for everyone, and sometimes you don’t have as much time as you think, but hopefully being a contributor will become a habit and a hobby you enjoy. Becoming a Guest Contributor is also an option.

How Often? Posts vs. Comments
Regular Contributors are encouraged to post – on a weekly basis, once or twice a month at a minimum. At the very least, please keep up by reading and commenting on other’s posts. The goal of this blog is to have fresh content on a weekly basis, a minimum of 2-3 posts per week. More is okay too. Fresh content keeps our reader’s attention.

You may want to subscribe to the blog using the Feedblitz form in the sidebar. That way you will be notified of new posts by email when they appear on the site. Only the first paragraph will appear in the email, and only once a week on Fridays.

Dialogue is the goal, and comments brings value to readers and enlighten us all to different perspectives. Participating in the online discussions via commenting is just as important as original posts (and they take less time to create!).

Content
Before you put up your first post, make sure you know where we’ve been, from an editorial standpoint. You can view the previous posts by searching by Topics, found in the sidebar. If you want to do a “Book Review,” just make sure it hasn’t already been covered by another contributor!

Here are some ideas for posts:

• Famous PW
• PW in the news
• Answer to: “Do you have kids?”
• Role Models
• Choice vs. Circumstance regarding childfree status
• Childfree stereotypes in the media
• Book Reviews
• Telling your parents/friends/co-workers you are childfree
• How you came to be childfree
• Why you are childfree
• What your unique childfree holiday traditions are…
• Religion and the childfree
• Culture and being childfree

The above topics may have been covered, but not from your unique perspective!

Administration
Teri Tith is the creator and founder of Purple Women™ and serves as its administrator. Only the administrator can change the settings on the site, i.e.: determine who can post, what kind of comments are allowed (anonymously or not), and how the page looks, etc. Teri manages the tags and the sidebar items, but feel free to make suggestions at any time.

The administrator has access to all blog posts, so if there are typos…they will magically disappear. The administrator will not change your words or your content without discussing it with you first. The administrator cannot alter comments, but can delete them entirely if they are off-color or offensive.

Next Step:
Send Teri an email if you are interested in becoming a contributor to the Purple Women™ team blog, and send her your topic idea.


Technorati Tag: Childfree

Big News & Help Wanted

I have decided not to write the book, Purple Women^TM. After investigating the costs and the prospects, I have determined that publishing a book is not a luxury I can afford. Online publishing is more cost-effective, and if done correctly, has the potential to reach a larger audience. I am satisfied with this blog as my contribution to the childfree realm and I will endeavor to keep it going and make it the best I can. Toward that end, I ask for your help on...

How to improve this blog?

What topics most appeal to you? What new topics would you like to see? How did you discover us? How can we reach out to help more childfree women discover us? What do you like most about this blog? The least? Feedback on any or all of these questions would be most appreciated.

I am still rebuilding our already, crowded sidebar after making the cross over to Blogger's new version. I stare at this blog so much, sometimes I cannot see what's obviously missing. Today, I added back the GeoVisitors link that allows you to click through and see what part of the world our readers are checking in from. I like to try and guess who I know in that country. I don't know many people in Iran, but my Uncle does live in Tahiti. If you like this tool, just click on the link I've provided and put it on your site.

I’d like to see our Contributor ranks fill-out again. In particular, we have not heard from the 50+ group of women who have traveled the childfree path. Their voices have been missing. It would also be great to have a Canadian, a Brit, an Auzzie, moreover, English-speaking Purple Women^TM regardless of ethnicity or nationality represented here. Your perspectives and experiences would be most welcome. We have had one parent, and a couple of men write for us in the past. Thanks again to all our contributors. You know who you are!

A good way to test the waters is to become a Guest Contributor. Guests Posts should be 500-words or less. It can be one-time only or more than once. Regular Contributors commit to being a regular voice in this space, and actively participate in the leading the dialogue by making comments, regardless of who is posting. I'll post the Contributor Guidelines later this week. No. It doesn't pay, but then, this blog is not monetized.

Lisa, one of the founders at BlogHer, has assured me they now have a program for non-mom ads that are simply geared towards women. Planning to give it a try. We may not all be moms, but we are still shoppers. I have been wary of placing any robot-generated ads in the sidebar, like Google AdSense, as I fear they will pick up on the word "child" and we'd get diaper ads -- ahhhhrrrrrg!

Stay tuned for these changes and more improvements to come. If you have an idea, please post a comment here or send me an email. My thanks in advance, and I hope to hear from you.

Cheers,
Teri Tith
Blog Owner/Author
Purple Women & Friends

Flickr photo by Ian Broyles (cc)

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Fare Thee Well

The voices of 16 Purple Women^TM and a few Purple Men have been featured on this blog since it's inception on September 2, 2005, including eight regular contributors and dozen or so Guest Contributors.

This blog has connected you to two very unique Purple Women^TM, Debi Martin, who blogs as Twiga92, and Robin. They have taken their leave from us as Regular Contributors, but you can keep in touch with them on their personal blogs (invitation only in the case of Ms. Robin) and dialogue with them here as I am sure they will be keeping in touch, possibly sending in a burning Guest Post from the front lines from time to time.

Three cheers for Twiga (means: giraffe in Swahili) who joined us in March 2006. She has been a contributor with us for an entire year, publishing 23 posts from a childfree Christian perspective. Debi grew up overseas as a missionary kid, born in Asia and graduating from high school in Kenya. She is married, has two cats, and loves books, scrapbooking and the occasional geo-cache adventure, all of which she continues to blog about prolifically on her four other blogs. One of her best posts for Purple Women & Friends, if best can be measured by the number of heart-felt comments, was her post titled: Being Christian and Childfree on May 25, 2006. Thank you Miss Twiga for the contributions you made this past year in our childfree space.

Also, thanks and best wishes to Robin (a.k.a. hismuse on MyBlogLog), our youngest contributor and a blushing bride about to become a Purple step-parent. Robin made a big impact in just six months with our team, contributing fourteen posts and generating quite a few comments in that short period. She truly came with her own blog posse as she was already an avid blogger contributing on more than one team blog when she joined us. Her post with the most comments was Fence Sitting published on August 25, 2006. A mother of two furkids, and a non-practicing Jew, you can keep up with Robin on her personal blog: The Road Less Unraveled, powered by WordPress. Thank you Robin, and congratulations on your engagement!

You can find the volume of posts contributed by these two ladies by clicking on their name under the Label section in the sidebar. If you're new to this blog, they'll still be fresh as a daisy.

Well done ladies! Keep on blogging!

On that note, if you are interested in contributing a Guest Post, or considering a longer term assignment with us, please send Teri an email. We have a few openings.


Technorati Tag: Childfree

PW Top 10 Posts

Here are the posts with the most number of comments thus far:

# Author, Post Title (Date of post)

20 Robin, Fence Sitting (8/25/2006)
16 Robin, Childfree with Child Support (11/9/2006)
16 Twiga92, Career or Child? (10/16/2006)
14 Teri, Respect and Little Dose of Humor, (8/1/2006)
14 Teri, Purple Men (4/15/2006)
13 Robin, A Childfree Life (7/7/2006)
12 Teri, Pets As Kids? (10/28/2006)
12 Twiga92, Married and Childfree (10/18/2006)
11 Twiga92, Being Christian and Childfree (5/25/2006)
11 Robin, Furmommy (11/3/2006)
11 Robin, Why I Will Never Be 100% Childfree (7/17/2006)
11 LauraS, Something for the Gratitude Journal (10/6/2006)
11 Twiga92, Friendships (11/18/2006)
11 LauraS, But Can She Walk in Those Jimmy Choos? (4/30/2006)
11 Robin, Peace and Quiet (6/29/2006)

Okay, okay, so there are 14 posts on the list. What was I supposed to do with a seven-way tie for 11 comments?

I am so proud of these posts, they really represent our best. Kudos to the team!

Enjoy visiting them again (or for the first time). None of these conversations are closed, so feel free to weigh in.

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Purple Women Contributors

To all our Contributors, Readers, and Commenters, a great big...

Ten regular contributors have shared this space since this blog was founded. Here they are in order of appearance with # posts contributed to date:

Teri (Sept 05 - ), 124 posts

Dr. Wendy, 1 post

AthenaMarina, 4 posts

Boxing Tomboy, 29 posts

NikkiJ, 15 posts

Twiga92 (March 06- ), 10 posts

LauraS (March 06 - ), 16 posts

AlphaGirl, 5 posts (including one as a guest contributor)

NomadShan, 3 posts (plus some great commenting action!)

Chase, 3 posts (ditto)

Robin (Sept 06 - ), 5 posts

Isabel, 2 posts

Four guest contributors to date: VictoriaM, Gloria MacDonald, ManinBlack, Tanja, and AlphaGirl.

A total of 197 posts (including 15 book reviews) on the site to date. That’s a lot of topical content!

Technorati Tag: Childfree

Diversity & New Contributor

One of our contributors is an expert in diversity. She gets paid for her counsel to bring it about in a corporate setting. Two of our contributors are professional writers and I suspect all of us could be. One is a banker, and more than one of us has worked in the nonprofit sector. We also have an entrepreneur.

Our contributors are a most diverse and interesting group in terms of age range, current location, places we've lived, profession, married vs. single, ethnicity, and religious practice. We are all either Canadian or American, and two of us are dual-citizens, British and Columbian. (Don't worry there won't be a quiz later!)

I suspect that if we were all in the same room together we would never run out of things to talk about!

Now, Robin joins the mix. She is 20-something, a non-practicing Jew, dating a man who may make her a step-parent and admits she is on the fence about children. She lives in Massachusetts and is already an avid blogger.

Welcome Robin. Purple Women^TM readers look forward to your first post!

There are a lot of negative spaces out there where the childfree gather online and use derogatory terms for parents. It was my intention to create something different, something more respectful and deserving of respect and consideration by a broader audience. Social change is a lofty goal and it takes time. Contributors and commenters here are part of that change. (Chase totally gets it.)

Putting something in writing makes it more powerful. If someone reads it -- even better. If they tell their friends about it, the concept can improve, evolve…influence others.

Ideas are the commerce of progress and change.

Technorati Tag: Childfree