Oh, how I wish we had one of these groups in our area! There’s one way up in northern WI, but too far away for us to reasonably join. I don’t know if I have the stones to start one, though, or how well attended it would be out here in the sticks. But I’m seriously thinking about sending for their start-up packet. (Weird thought for somebody who’s hardly a joiner, much less a starter-upper!)
Mind, I have no beef with our current friends, and when we do get together the conversation stays reasonably child-free (and they all have cool kids anyway). But it would be nice to have friends who didn’t have to work around their kids’ schedules, find sitters, worry about whether our choice of movie for dinner-and-a-movie night is kid-friendly, have a bit more discretionary income to do stuff, etc.
So I’d like to hear from Dopers who belong or have belonged to such groups. Did you find other things in common with members besides just not having kids? DO you still belong to the group? Do you get together with members outside of group functions? And do you live in a metro or more rural area?
It sounds like an excellent idea! It’s a bit too far in the small hours of the morning here for a longer answer, but I figured you might like an indication that your thread wasn’t invisible.
But of course, it wouldn’t have any *me * time, either.
I’ve never heard of such an organization, Scarlett67. Of course, at our age, it’s not difficult to find couples whose kids are old enough not to be much of a factor. The couple we hang out with most have a grown daughter and a son who’s old enough to be left home alone.
My wife and I have no children, but I know there’s a No Kidding (or similar) group here in Calgary. We’ve never made it out to any of their events, but that’s due more to our schedules than anything else. Still, some of the things they do sound interesting, and maybe we will check them out someday.
We have several sets of friends who’s children, like ours, are all grown up. There are no kids around when we travel, taste wines, party, etc. Oh, sure, we mention 'em … some of us are grandparents, and that HAS to be talked about for a few minutes, anyway!
My only other advice is, enjoy the munchkins while you have 'em. They’ll be gone soon enough, and then you’ll sit around all day wishing they’d just call. Just once a week. Is that too much to ask?
Just get yourself a group of gay friends. You’ll be fine.
(Yes, I’m well aware that there are a lot of gay parents. I know a number of them. It is still factual that the majority of gay people do not have children.)
I’ve thought about checking out the chapter here, but just haven’t done it yet. I’m guessing starting one would be slow at first - people tend to be lazy like me and think “hey, that’s a good idea” but just don’t get around to going right away. But there are probably people in your area that would be interested and would be glad that someone else takes on the responsibility to start a group.
We like it a lot - our group has a lot of very nice folks who are well-educated and fun to do things with. There’s also a reasonably wide range of interests, so you can usually find at least a few other people who want do the same things you do.
Our group happens to be mostly couples - sometimes there’s a movement among the singles to do things that would just be of interest to them, and that’s fine. It’s basically up to the members to decide how active the group is going to be and what they want to do socially.
You may start off slow, but if you persist you will find more like-minded people. One of the founding members of our group told me for the first year or two they ended up going to events with the same one or two couples all the time, but after that momentum started to pick up and we’ve got a pretty good-sized core group now. We used to have an informal rule in place that you couldn’t offer an activity to the group without first checking and making sure it didn’t conflict with another one that was already scheduled, but we have enough people now that it’s OK to schedule more than one thing for the same date and time.
I think the only thing I haven’t liked about it (and this has happened only very occasionally) is that I’ve met a few people over the years who really seem to detest children and are very vocal about it. I don’t care for that sort of attitude - we were all kids once, after all, and not one of us was a little angel all the time. I don’t want to think, talk or complain about kids or listen to anyone else do it - I should think that would be the point of being in a social group of childfree folks.
Since No Kidding is basically just a loosely-organized social group, and it relies on its members to make it work, as a founding member (should you choose to go ahead), you should have some pretty good say in what you want the general atmosphere and attitude of the group to be.
Jim and I are also members of our local No Kidding group (well, it used to be No Kidding, then the Canadian founder had a big money grab, and now we’re Childfree Friends). We have really enjoyed socializing with other childfree people. The benefits we’ve noticed the most:
People are almost universally extremely prompt.
No talk about children. You don’t realize how social talk is dominated by talk of children until you don’t have it anymore.
No risk of clueless parents bringing their children unexpectedly to child-inappropriate activities.
A certain amount of shared experience in dealing with other people’s inability to either understand why we don’t have kids or keep their mouths shut about it.
We found that we had a lot in common with most other childfree people - there seems to be a particular mindset of people who are childfree by choice, and we found that we fit in fairly well with them. I would advise most people who are childfree by choice to check it out.
I’ve thought about starting a local chapter of No Kidding here in Springfield. In fact, I probably will, someday.
The logistics scare me. Where to have the first meeting (my church sure as hell isn’t going to offer up one of their meeting rooms!)? How to advertise it?
What I like about No Kidding is that they’re not an advocacy group. They don’t promote a cause, or lobby political officials, or anything like that. They’re strictly social.
You could probably get a meeting room at your local library. I wasn’t here when our No Kidding chapter was started so I don’t know how many people were involved in the initial setup, but I know that there are no reasons for meetings now - once the groundwork is laid, there’s really no need for them unless your group wants to have them for some reason.
That’s a good idea! I hadn’t thought of that! Here I’ve been racking my brain thinking of places (the Unitarian Universalist Church? Don’t want to give the idea that it’s a religious thing. A meeting room at the Holiday Inn? Costs too much. Etc.).
