Specifically, why are some people so disturbed by another's childfree status?

I know that this general topic might be an overworked subject on boards like this, which is why I would like to keep things specific.

So, specifically, one of the major reasons that the childfree label emerged as an identity and a movement of sorts (while avoiding domesticity has always existed) is due to the incomprehension and rudeness with which this stance is met by so many people. This negative reaction has a variety of consequences, some of which are pretty serious: ostracism and alienation from family and friends, unwanted pregnancy and all that that entails, intimate relationship problems, and a variety of other things that damage one’s life.

Why does this happen? Usually, whenever the perennial topic of childree-ness (childfreedom?) comes up online, almost nobody ever admits to being one of “those” people who make things so frustrating. Yet, in meatspace, it happens all the time, hence my last paragraph.

The childfree sometimes chalk it up to envy, and while that’s surely true sometimes, it can’t account for the negative reactions from those who don’t yet have children. So, what’s the story? Why the bingoes?

You said specific, but I still don’t feel this is specific. I’ve got kids; I guarantee I’ve never done any of this stuff. (The closest I’ve come is once–once–asking my brother, after his divorce, if he still didn’t want to have kids. He said no, and that was that). When I didn’t have kids, the worst that happened was the VERY occasional comment from parents saying that they’d like grandkids at some point. When I had one kid, I had a rude lady tell me I needed to have another, and not to worry about finances, I’d make it work (ha ha, rich lady, thanks for your totally clueless advice!)

But ostracism? alienation? unwanted pregnancy? Really?

As for intimate relationship problems, that one is pretty straightforward. Whether to have kids is a major life decision. If you don’t want kids, and your partner does, it’s probably a good idea to break it off before someone gets upset. And vice versa.

Have you encountered these problems? Would you be willing to share?

As for the bingo, it’s a lazy cliched joke at this point, made by all kinds of activists as a way of shutting down the other side. If you can predict the arguments they’ll make, you can make a bingo card, reducing anything they say to a joke, so you can ignore it.

Don’t people normally get upset when people around them do things detrimental to survival? If you saw someone cutting themselves with a razor you’d probably react badly. Plus because we are social creatures, if one of us makes it acceptable it makes it easier for others to take up that behavior. That is why we have things like shame and shunning, to sequester those with attitudes and behaviors are detrimental to society lest they start a fad.

The whole system of evolution depends on having another generation of meatbags walking around suffering and being confused. Rejecting that spells the end of the last 3.8 billion years of mutation and survival.

Point being, maybe on some level it is just a response to the idea of rejecting behaviors necessary for survival. Same as people reacting badly to people who self harm.

Thats all just theorizing though. I have run into this myself. I tell people I don’t want kids and instead of listening they say ‘yes you do’ in one of those condescending manners of people who just assume you haven’t felt the love of Christ yet and that is why you aren’t part of their religion. No I don’t want kids. In between the financial obligations, my health problems making it hard to support a child, the inescapable responsibility and fears of passing on certain genetic traits I have no desire.

If you go into a fandom and tell them the thing they like sucks and is overrated and you refuse to watch/read/listen to it anymore and you’re better off for it you’ll also get a hostile reaction. Especially if the fanbase perceives there to be serious flaws in the product and they’re already on the defensive.

More seriously, children are perceived as a shared sacrifice to better society as a whole, like taxes. This is where the resentment comes in when some people refuse to share in the burden. Maybe it’s a hold over from the ancient past, when tribes were in fierce competition. You’re threatening to upend the system, if there were like 200 of us.

From what I recall of my anti-natalist debates here even this supposedly godless lib board a lot of people really believe the unborn spirits are sitting out there in some cosmic jail waiting to be released. Your refusal to uphold your end of the bargain is giving them sad frowny faces. It’s even better to live a woeful life than not exist at all, because it makes sense to ascribe feelings and motives to things that don’t exist.

It’s interesting because human beings can theoretically untangle themselves from the biological imperative. There’s a sense that we are part and yet separate from nature. But we can’t. Imagine the first group of human beings to realize sex = babies. That must’ve been depressing. Maybe that’s when our forebears invented beer.

I’ve been told it is because I am “selfish”. Damn straight. No way do I want the responsibility for a bunch of children. That is why on every Father’s Day I hide from all process servers.

The selfish label is interesting. Rejecting innate biological desires out of concern for the well being of others should be called altruism. Seems to me the selfish label is more appropriately to those parents who want to bring little versions of themselves into the world so they can love them and nurture them like pets. Or use them as surrogates to live out their own life goals. Or save the marriage. Or let the parents be satisfied over some egotistical, scientifically dubious sense of familial immortality.

I’ve been told on this very board that my not wanting kids automatically made my life worthless and meaningless. So there’s that too.

What the fuck?

Some people want kids, and some don’t. It has nothing to do with wanting to clone yourself or raise kids like pets. For Christ’s sake, having children is the default normal, and not having kids is the default abnormal. And I define normal in the statistical sense.

Sure, I think it’s somewhat selfish to not have kids, but it’s none of my business and I realized that only a few years ago. Personally, I have always known that I wanted to have kids. I’m hard-wired that way I guess. And some people are hard-wired the other way.

Might it be because life is cosmically unfair, and therefore there are many, many people in the world who either cannot have children but want them badly, or who have had children when they didn’t really want them but decided to go through with it anyway? While it isn’t at all rational, the existence of people-who-don’t-want-children-and-don’t-have-them can feel, on some gut level, like an affront to someone in either of the above situations.

I see this as a good discussion, but I have not yet seen a debate break out. I’m sending this over to IMHO. If a genuine debate breaks out, the Mods, there, can send it back.

[ /Moderating ]

You know, I had a kid slightly on the late side, and I’ve never experienced this. At most I got some mild inquiries from my mother (who understandably would like grandkids) and normal polite conversation (“Do you have kids?” “No” “Oh, I have two daughters. Are you a football fan…”)

I have, however, experienced a particularly vocal subset of “childfree” folks who think children should not be allowed in public or mentioned in polite company, lest they be exposed to the dread terrors of “hearing kids play in the park”, “seeing a child in a restaurant”,or God forbid “small talk about kids at the office.”

Not having children is “different”. Most people want children or at least are open to having them. Someone who chooses not to have them = weird. Weirdness has always carried a stigma.

I also think some people have conflicted feelings about their own parenthood. They love it, but they also hate it. Maybe they feel compelled to put down the childless person’s lifestyle because it makes them better about theirs.

I think some of the negative reactions come from the bucking of gender expectations. A woman who isn’t maternal, who doesn’t like kids, or who’d rather focus on herself than on a family, is often seen as a freak.

Finally, some people view having children as one’s civic duty. It’s your way of giving back to society and showing faith in the future. For people like this, it doesn’t matter how many old ladies you help to cross the street. Your life only has meaning when you are able to produce respectable, law-abiding citizens. Children are the most universal status symbol there is.

All that said, as a person who doesn’t have children, I have only gotten a few negative reactions about my status. All of them were just mildly sanctimonious. I suspect quite a few people are glad I’m not trying to be anyone’s mother.

A lot of people like to take common preferences, and turn them into absolutes, then into moral imperatives. “Most people want children” becomes “All people must have children.”

Rather like how “most people are sexually attracted to the opposite gender” becomes “all people must be sexually attracted to the opposite gender.”

Ummm, you missed the kids on airlines too.

I’m completely mystified by the “child free” movement. It’s a WTF? I didn’t have a child until I was 40, so I think I’ve got a bit of perspective.

You don’t want kids? Ain’t my bidness and I truly don’t care. You want to get in my face about it (and I feel the same about bible thumpers and rabid atheists), then you’ll get a ration of shite back. I’ve got some close friends past child bearing age sans children and it’s not a topic that comes up. They come over to my house forewarned my kids are in the mix but we’ve never sat around trying to get them to breed or adopt. :wink:

Yep. As a person with no kids, I have to say that most of the time, a small group of . . . hardcore childless people, I guess? seem to be the the loudest in debates. Sure, there’s also the “but you’re just not living yet” crowd, but they seem minor in comparison, especially online. Multiple times on this board, I’ve read rants about the fingers-on-blackboard painfulness of a toddler’s laughter. I mean, it doesn’t offend me or anything, but . . . :confused:

This. But the snark comes from both sides though.
I myself will have to admit to a little bit of bias. While I have never said anything rude about people who wish to remain childless, I do admit that I prefer to date women who are already mothers.

Mainly because, if we hit it off, I want there to be a better chance of her bonding with my kid. And I don’t want her doing it for my sake, but rather she do it because she naturally loves children.

This is less of an issue now that my youngest is almost an adult.

I didn’t have a kid till I was 37, and I don’t ever remember anyone putting pressure on me or making judgmental comments or even vague suggestions that I should get with the breeding program. I wonder if it has to do with specific community values and levels of religiosity and family dynamics more than society overall. I’ve lived most of my life on the secular west coast.

From an evolutionary point of view, encouraging your relatives, or at least people you perceive as being similar to you, to reproduce, will help spread your own genes.

Good luck fighting it.

Envy. There’s a reason it’s No. 6 on the Cardinal Sin Hit Parade.

Note: Not Cardinal Sin’s Hit Parade, though he’d’ve got the joke. Called his residence the “House of Sin,” he did.

I’m in my 40s, unmarried (probably forever) and childfree (almost certainly forever.) I’ve never been on the receiving end of half an ounce of grief over either. When I was younger, maybe there were people who thought I was too stupid to know myself. Now, when I meet new people, they may assume that I’m gay until they know me. This kind of hubris or ignorance is only mildly annoying to me.

My grandparents are all gone by now. My siblings have given my parents grandchildren. Nobody I’ve met in my entire life has ever been even slightly disturbed by my single or childfree status.

In my opinion, this thread is a textbook example of begging the question.