Well, I disagree. I wish for lots of things, does that make me 100% on that side? I have never voted on that basis, or given money to anyone on that basis, or protested on that basis. I voted for Clinton even so. I never made any decisions on that basis.
So I totally disagree. I may think firmly to one side, but my actions are definitely in the middle.
Thanks for this. I always thought of the term “childfree” as passive agressive. “Sugarless” gum doesn’t have sugar in it, but “sugarfree” gum is describing the sugar as something bad. “Childfree” always seems like a term used to lord some sort of superiority.
But, this differentiation you make here makes sense, though I’m not sure that everyone is using it the same way as you!
It’s an odd sort of wish. Replace “children” with, well, almost any other category of inoffensive human in that wish, and you would see that.
I am not, of course, questioning your actions.
Ah, ok. You were told that by a total nutbar, not a sane person. Your point still stands, of course, but I don’t think that’s the majority view here. I also can’t help but idly wonder what life is like for susanann’s kids. No one should have to feel that they’re the only thing giving meaning to someone else’s life.
I don’t mean it to be passive aggressive at all, I swear. it’s just that when I said “childless” people would get sad for me and assume I was heartbroken about it. There are lots of people who can’t have children, and it’s a heartbreaking thing when they want them! So I felt bad appropriating the term when I was happily childless. SO then I started using childfree…but then I found out about the batshit insane culture I have mentioned.
So now I say “I don’t have children.” Wait until that starts to mean something dramatic! 
And this is where people are just different. That comment wouldn’t even register with me. I wouldn’t make it, because I don’t phrase things like that, but I wouldn’t interpret it as advice, or telling me what to do. I would interpret it as someone talking about their own experience. Like “That pie looks delicious!” “Thanks! Have you ever had it?” “No” “You should try it. It’s hard to describe”.
I know I feel a strong obligation to move conversation away from myself towards the other person: if they comment on my kid, I have to ask if they have any, because it’s good manners to give them a chance to share. If they don’t, it’s a bit of a dilemma: if I take the conversation back to my own, it’s like I am being selfish, interested only in my own things, but if I pursue the topic otherwise I am being judgey. Even something like “Well, then, what are you interested in?” sounds like I think whatever the followup is their weak substitute for having kids. I’ve found that an awkward moment before.
I think this and related incidents are part of why people are reporting such different experiences with being child-free. For most of my 20s and early 30s, I had no plans to have kids, and I never felt judged. I am not trying to dismiss anyone’s experiences as the result of being oversensitive, but I do think it’s possible that different people are differently sensitive. People commenting on my choices just doesn’t register as criticism to me. I suspect that there were some criticisms I missed, because I didn’t care, but also that others sometimes perceive criticisms that
So are we talking about childLESS, or childFREE (as in the “proud to not be a parent and possibly advocating same”)?
As a recent member of the Breedfolk, I have to say we aren’t disturbed by the Childbare. But the reality is that raising a child takes a priority that makes pretty much all of the activities of childless people seem less consequential by comparison.
It’s a child. It doesn’t know any better.
The assholes raising the child, however, are fair game for criticism.
On the flip side, it’s like people who complain about a screaming child. “Oh sorry. I forgot I have absolute control over when my baby screams and didn’t realize that not everyone wants to experience his miracle.” If you want to live in a world with no children, go move to a fucking Club Med.
I think it’s pretty weird to be proud of NOT doing something that actually takes effort and commitment. Joe’s not unemployed. He’s employFREE! Mary isn’t uneducated. She’s schoolFREE!
I just tell people if they want me to have kids, I’ll raise them to be little Hitlers. That usually shuts them up
Mmm, again I disagree, and let me be clear, that was totally one of the mild ones, and I wasn’t offended by her, just surprised. I mean, she clearly said, “You should have some”…like I could just change my mind at that moment.
When you tell someone, in whatever manner, that they should have kids, you really have no idea of their situation. You don’t know if they
It just seems unusually intimate. It’s “small talk” that isn’t, really. It’s a pretty major decision, or should be anyway! It’s not like I can just give the kid back if I decide it’s not for me.
I’m not “proud” of not having children or anything. But I am happy that I realized this about myself very early, before I had one, and regretted it. Isn’t that a good thing? People who don’t want kids…quite frankly, shouldn’t have kids! It’s not a good fit.
I understand what you are saying, and I wouldn’t have said what she said because I know how people are about kids, but I am questioning whether she really perceived herself as “telling you to have kids” any more than a store clerk is telling you to have a good day. It can also be read as a really passive aggressive girl way of saying “I am sure glad I had kids”, because you aren’t allowed to say that: saying you are happy about your own choices is Pushy and Stuck Up in a lot of women’s rulebooks.
I am not saying it wasn’t tone deaf. It was. I am saying she quite possibly did not literally mean what you thought she literally meant.
For some people, such talk about families is small change. The woman in your example probably wanted to do no more than communicate ‘I am happy in my state’. She probably had no notion she was digging too deep for her audience, or that her comments might be a potential ‘trigger’.
I’m childfree as in I have never wanted to have children and have made the decision (with my husbands whole-hearted agreement) to not have any.
I like the concept that I read here on the boards a while back that I’m not childless because that term indicates to me that I’m lacking something that I would otherwise desire. (compare it to jobless, homeless, etc).
Compare it to “fatfree” and “hasslefree” and see how it sounds. The word before the “free” suffix is seen as something undesireable.
“Less” does not necessarily have that judgement involved. It does in your two examples. “Cordless” and “Boneless” make no judgement about the relative importance of cords and bones the way “cordfree” and “bonefree” would. People talking on a cordless phone aren’t pining for a cord, and people eating boneless chicken aren’t digging around hoping to find a bone in there somewhere.
In my case, your comparisons work great. Because having a child is something undesirable to me. It’s not making a general judgement because lots of people want kids and there are people who are childless in the sense that they don’t have them, but do want them.
If you have a better set of words to describe the distinction between the two, I’m more than open to hear them.
It seems the two positions are:
(1) “childfree” is the neutral term and “childless” indicates people who specifically want children (but are either prevented from having them for some reason, or simply do not have them yet); versus
(2) “childless” is the neutral term and “childfree” indicates people who do not have children because they have made a deliberate choice not to have them.
In short, one term is neutral and one contains a value judgment - but people disagree on which is which! 
[For the record, it looks to me like #2 makes more sense, juding by other examples - as noted above, “boneless” versus “bonefree” chicken]
I think the general problem is that people think of it as a universal value judgement. I look at it as a personal value judgement. Having a child would add be of no added value for me personally so yes it is a value judgement. I don’t think of either as a neutral term because they describe different desires, not that either says that one is better than the other.
But the “free” suffix implies something that is universally unwanted, while the “less” suffix implies something that is absent. I can’t think of any word with a “free” suffix where the antecedent is not unwanted by all. Carefree, crimefree, germfree, stressfree.
I mean “carefree” is a good example. If one is “carefree” it is because “care” is taking a bad meaning as something stressful and universally understood to be unwanted. But if one is “careless” it is because “care” is taking a neutral meaning where it can either be absent “careless” or present “careful”. The “care” itself is neutral and the suffix denotes whether it is present or absent; the suffix makes no judgement on the root word which can either be good or bad.
The “less” suffix can make something desireable depending on the antecedent in a way that the “free” suffix can’t. Brushless carwashes are a positive sales tactic. Eggless recipes can be either good or bad depending on what you’re looking for. Fearlessness is a positive trait, generally. Odorless, selfless, and on and on.
In other words the “less” suffix can allow for the root word to go either way, while the “free” suffix" is a judgement on the root word being something universally unwanted.
Are there examples of a “free” word where the person using it wouldn’t be saying that no one should want the thing that precedes it?
I had never considered Anaamikas point before though, and there is something there as differentiating between not wanting children vs. not currently having children. I guess it depends on the intent of the speaker. I’m guessing the intent is often, but as Anaamika points out not always, a passive aggressive judgement. Maybe there needs to be a separate word for people who don’t want kids, but aren’t being dicks about it!
That’s the way I’ve always heard it / experienced it- it’s a deliberately chosen term to point out that they’re ‘free’ of children, while the rest of us are apparently shackled. And generally speaking, the people who deliberately use the term “childfree” in conversation are in my experience, assholes who have something against kids and parents, and seem to want to rub all the advantages of not having children in my face. You find someone bitching about children just doing child stuff, and in my experience, you’ve found someone who’d self-label as “childfree”.
Note- I’m not saying all, or even most non-parents use the term “childfree”, or act like that, just that there seems to be a pretty serious overlap in my experience. The vast majority of non-parents I know just don’t want kids for one reason or another. One couple is worried about genetic issues, another guy I know just doesn’t think he’d make a good father, another woman I know is too career-focused to be a good mom, and she knows it. None of them bear children any ill-will however.
I’d propose the term “non-parent/non-parents” as used above, because “childfree” has a connotation of children being something we should be ‘free’ of, and “childless” sounds like something someone is deprived of, neither of which is anywhere neutral at all. Saying someone is “childfree” implies he’s free of those pesky children, and the term “childless couple” implies something sad and wrong, at least in common American usage.