Actually, no, parents and extended family raised me not Breeders, so I was not the screaming brat at least in situations where people other than immediate family were around me. What infuriates many of the childfree is the derliction of duty we observe in many parents who insist it “takes a village” when it come to paying for their children’s expenses, but otherwise insist the village has to right to undermine their reproductive freedom and lifestyle choices. Also, based on my own childhood experience (and that of my siblings and other relatives) of multiple caregivers among a large extended family, I am far from convinced that parents are necesary to raise sane, productive citizens of society. If anything, I wonder if the small family isn’t the breeding ground of most mental illness.
I see no implied ‘should’. -less is a suffix used in the English language to denote the absence of something. The language itself uses a negative tense. That’s all it is. To read some sort of deeper meaning into, is to project IMO. I am carless for instance. I do not own a car. It does not imply that I SHOULD own a car, simply that I do not. The English language does not need to be reconstructed to suit every single possible idea that people cling to as part of their personality. It would be an impossibly complex language if we were forced to reconstruct the language every time it didn’t validate someone.
Yes of course, there are assholes everywhere. But the childfree pretty much as a whole seem to have a chip on their shoulder. People who merely do not have children do not seem to have any trouble self-referring as ‘childless’.
You raise some interesting points, but I think this touches on the inherent problem. You are expecting the entire group ‘parents’ be responsible for a subset. You also seem to be projecting that because your parents were not there to raise you that your situation was optimal because the family that did raise you did a better job then your parents for whatever reason.
Sorry if this is too personal, but it seems to me that you are suggesting your parents didn’t raise you even though they could have. Am I right? Or did your parents die when you were young?
I grew up with a general fear of parents because my parents were not very good parents. But as I grew up I realized that there were plenty of good parents out there. They had their foibles and flaws, but some parents are better than others.
And as for breeding grounds of mental illness. No one escapes childhood without scars.
That’s not what he said. It’s the person who calls people by disparaging names such as “breeder”, or “crotch turd” (common terms on the childfree blogs) who have some sort of personality fault – could be bigotry. I prefer to think of it as an overpowering misanthropy.
My mother does, and she’s not the only one I know. I know many parents who have told their children “it is your duty to take care of me!” meaning “to let me run your life, even though you’re a grown up.” I know many parents, specially mothers, who are unable to respect their children’s territories. I know many who do not accept “talk back” even when it’s to point out that they’ve got the result of one of yesterday’s football matches wrong. I also know some who expect the rest of the world to accomodate them constantly; who do things like go on a camping trip and complain that the camping area doesn’t have a baby changer, a playroom smelling of Febreeze and a separate kitchen for baby food. And of course there’s the ones who think that giving birth makes you a parent (no, it’s the raising that does).
Congratulations on not having had parents like those. But yes, there are parents who request and require unquestioning worship and submission.
We really needed a thread that’s a virtual duplicate of the other one currently running, with the exception that mswas wants to invent a new type of “bigotry”?
What nonsense. Like when you were claiming that the only reason people have kids is because they recognize it’s their duty to Society.:rolleyes: It is also idiotic to pretend that “childless” does not have a pejorative implication in a culture where relatives and themes in advertising and the media place inordinate pressure on couples to have children, while glorifying single parenthood no matter how incapable the parent is of raising the kid(s) properly.
As I said in the other thread, the decision to have children should in general be regarded as ethically neutral, just like the decision not to have children. As comments in that thread showed, while giving lip service to that view there are some posters that just can’t help throwing out snide allusions to how non-childbearers are “free riders” benefiting from others’ fecundity. Should we stamp our feet and call those people “bigots”?
On the contrary, I think it’s enough to point out the hypocrisy and silliness of such views.
Incidentally, I saw in today’s paper a summary of a Nature article on how overpopulation may have already pushed some indicators of environmental degradation past the point of no return. Hey, let’s all yell “Bigotry!”
Or maybe we should stop and listen.
I sense a new Bill O’Reilly talking points memo coming out of all of this.
Personally, I am child free by choice however I do not see why/where I would force it on others or deride them for having a different decision.
The reality is there are people who have children who are very derogatory and condescending to the childless, and in my experience they greatly outnumber the derogatory childfree activists. Neither kinds of derogatory behavior is acceptable.
As someone who has straddled many possible childbearing scenarios (did not want children until I turned thirty, had a child at 32 then found out it is impossible for me to have the second child I desperately want despite not being a moron, drug addict or welfare cheat) I have found the child free or those without children a thousand times less smug, bigoted and judgemental than those who have all the children they want both before and after forty.
I also quite frankly find the childfree more interesting. They tend to think about other things than the latest score junior got on his math test or how Karliee and Caisonne can’t possibly learn to play soccer without mommy hovering over them every single second.
Nothing is more boring to me personally than the latest whine by my local suburban smug mommy gathering every single day at the bus stop each morning.
That’s what everyone says.
Forgive me for not reading the entirety of the much longer thread linked in the OP, but I was wondering what the appropriate term for a couple who choose not have children is? Some posts in this thread have said “childless by choice” or CBC, but that’s rather unwieldy, I think. The term “barren” or “infertile” is appropriate for couples unable to have children, but not for couples deliberately taking steps not to reproduce. “Barren” and “infertile” also imply that the couple want to have children.
I also disagree with the OP that “childless” is a suitable term, because it carries an implication that the circumstances can change. In one example given,mswas describes herself as carless. Presumably therefore, she could and would acquire a car if she needed to. So the term “childless” (or jobless, homeless) carries with the implication that the state is temporary, transient and changeable, which I don’t think is appropriate to someone who has chosen not to reproduce. Example: someone who has shaved their head is hairless. Someone who has had their hair fall out is bald. The first is temporary, the second permanent.
The other option “child-free” is, according to the OP, an ideological stance implying dislike and intolerance of all children, and that certainly doesn’t suit, well, me, for example.
I’m also fascinated that the term “breeder” is considered pejorative. Is that purely from context? I don’t perceive any negative connotations of the word itself. Some people breed. Some people do not. If “breeder” was acceptable, then we could also use "non-breeder"to describe CBC people/couples.
Straw man. Never said that. yawn Already addressed this directly. So I don’t know why you are continuing to say I said something I didn’t say when you already KNOW FOR A FACT I didn’t.
I’m sorry that you feel oppressed by English Grammar. ‘In a culture’. It’s called the human race. There is significantly less pressure to breed in American society than there is in more traditional cultures. That the childish bleating of ‘childfree’ whiney blogs is taken remotely seriously at all is a testament to how much accomodation this nonsensical ideology is given in our culture. The entire biosphere puts an emphasis on breeding, not just American culture.
Childfree is whiney nonsense. ‘Oh no, someone failed to validate my choices! I’m being oppressed! The Dictionary has me in shackles!’
The decision to have children IS regarded as ethically neutral.
Your inability to grasp what Malthus meant about freeriders doesn’t mean you were being insulted. It just means that this topic gets you all weepy and emotional. Aren’t you a Doctor? You should have plenty of money to enjoy a Margarita in Cozumel, enjoying the freedom that comes with not being burdened by children. It’s a position I envy certainly. But I don’t envy it so much that I begrudge you such freedom. Go enjoy, find yourself a nice Mexican lass/lad whatever you prefer to spend the week with. Buy her/him a Margarita or two! All I ask is while you are there, recognize that no one along the way at TSA, customs or anything stopped you from taking this trip due to the fact that you have children.
Yes, people LOVE to point out the hypocrisy of straw men they just made up. It’s a favorite pasttime on the SDMB for sure. 
Yes, there are lots of articles about that. But you’re pointing your vitriole in the wrong direction. In the west, we don’t overpopulate, we overconsume.
The only people listening to you are the people who are educated enough to engage in actual family planning. The people who are breeding like rabbits on ecstacy, they don’t have a subscription to Nature.
:rolleyes: I expect better from you. You should know that proportion of the population matters not the sheer number. There are more parents who are derogatory because there are more parents. But the fact of the matter is most parents don’t give a shit. They are indifferent.
And people who are childless by choice. They don’t give a shit either.
But the majority of “childfree people”, give a huge shit. They are angry and want to spew their vitriole at all parents.
So you know perfectly well that it’s not meaningful to compare a population size that is the vast majority of the population to a tiny subset of the population. I shouldn’t have to point this out to you.
Childfree would be one thing but the term connotes all sorts of nasty baggage, as people like jackmanii have made it into a politically charged hateful term. It would be one thing if people just wanted to use the term. But they don’t, they make blogs denigrating parents. And most of the discussions on childfree blogs are about how much they hate parents and children. Breeder is considered perjorative because that’s how it is used.
People who have kids and people who don’t can largely do the same stuff. They can ski on the same ski slopes, go to the same movie theaters. They can live in the same apartment complexes. The idea that there is ANY oppression whatsoever of so-called ‘childfree’ people is laughably absurd.
Look at this: We have a forum call Brat Free.
This is a lovely thread where they talk about how a disabled girl should have been allowed to die rather than receive medical care that prolongued her life until she was 10 years old.
My Mother was told that by a Christian Scientist when my sister who was born 8 weeks premature was saved by medical science and has lived to be 24 years old. So the childfree folks over at ‘bratfree’ share a commonality with hateful Christian Fundamentalists. Huzzah!
Pretty much the entire thread is about how much these people hate her parents for keeping her alive. To be fair, I can understand some of the posters who are relieved that this girl was put out of her misery. That’s sympathetic. I understand. But some of the posts are just sheer and total hate.
Seriously, this is the same kind of shit as Stormfront. Childfree should not be accepted to be taken seriously, because it’s a hateful ideology. It hates life itself.
The ‘Moo’ of my daughter is sleeping in the other room.
This shit isn’t simply a choice not to have children. No, it’s the active hatred of the act of procreation and anyone who engages in it. If you are childless by choice, I suggest you reconsider your choice to use the term childfree, because you are associating yourself with some very, very, very hateful people.
Once again, I request that you respect people’s choices on the labels they choose for themselves. I am childfree, not childless. Your continued wilful ignorance about what words mean to the people they apply to is getting kind of strange.
Ok, let’s not go overboard here on celebrating the “miracle of birth” or the “fabulous rewards” of raising kids. Billions of jackasses have managed to accomplish this difficult task for thousands of years.
You are free to chose to have kids or not have kids. Other people are free to not give a shit or even disagree with your choice.
What ignorance? I’m perfectly aware of the word you choose to use.
I am free to use the proper English word in the way it was intended. This whole bullshit nonsense about being some kind of oppressed group is crap. Childless isn’t an epithet. If you choose to be insulted by it, it has nothing to do with me.
I am speaking English correctly, and I am making a point about the difference between the two words.
msmith537 All beside the point. Yes, people are free to be assholes and there are assholes everywhere. But, we should not allow ‘childfree’ hateful nonsense to degrade decency in our society. People are free to be bigots if they want to be, certainly. But bigotry needs to be pointed out and recognized, and not merely accepted as an alternative lifestyle.
I’ll reiterate, choosing not to have kids is a perfectly acceptable choice. In the other thread pretty much everyone agreed that it’s ethically neutral to choose to have kids or not to have kids.
But Childfree is a hateful ideology that is spreading and gaining ground and they play this nonsense victim card in order to get people to accept it and condone it.
Childfree is the same kind of bigotry as Stormfront. Just got to the bratfree site and read some of the articles.
Here is a thread about how angry they are that news sources report on the first baby born in 2010.
Look she’s angry that someone’s baby was saved by medical science, because she didn’t get a raise and her business spent money on ‘mooooternity’ expenses.
She could you know, be ranting about how health insurance shouldn’t be coupled with employment, but no, she’s pissed off that newborn babies receive medical care.
To say a couple who do not want children are bigoted, or selfish, in my opinion is very wrong. Some people who are responsible, love children and do not have them themselves are not selfish but would not have a child because they feel they would not be a good parent and a child deserves more.
People who have children,neglect them.mistreat them, and cannot afford to care for them physically, emotionally,financially are more selfish than ones who choose the opposite.
Responsible parenthood should in my opinion be the norm. You want a child to be able to give them love and support and not for the purpose to have them love you.
It’s really simple. If you call all of any group bad, you are practicing bigotry.
And no getting around it by using the No True Scotsman fallacy. “My parents aren’t breeders because they actually raised me right. But all them other parents…” “Those childfree people who don’t disparage parents and kids, well, they’re really childless-by-choice, not child-free.” Sound remarkably similar to “Yeah, my black friends are nice people. But them others are n—” (Having grown up near the KKK capital, you hear that excuse a bit too much.)
My guess: the reason why all the people that mswas knows that are childfree are bigots is because they’re more likely to be the ones that will make a big deal about it. It’s like my observation that most of the gay people I know are absolutely flaming. It’s selection-bias, that’s all.