An Open Letter to DINKs Everywhere

Dear DINKs,

Thank you.

Thank you for uploading your gloriously childfree vacation pictures to Facebook. When you do this, I can "vacation" myself after my lovely little noisemakers have gone to bed. Fiji, Costa Rica, Miami, you go. You go to those places. You do it.

And the fact that it only cost you $800 and took only one day to plan? I love it. I do not hate. Because you deserve it. Everyone deserves it. Some of us cannot have it. As DadCamp writes in Babble, for the married-with-kids, a vacation like that would cost $1,500.

He complains about the necessary room sizes, and about the price of dinners. (This is a piece about why people without children suck, and, honestly, the man spends the whole time wishing he was without children. Maybe it's a satire?) But, yes, DadCamp. Dinner for five does cost more than dinner for two. Sorry, but I'm not sure how that is the fault of the childless.

The one thing he doesn't mention is that "a quick getaway" with kids sucks. It's all, "I miss my toys, she's on my side of the bed, I don't want dinner here, I want to stay at the beach, why do I ALWAYS have to take a bath." They're completely unreasonable on vacation, much as they are at all other times of their existence. They're kids. It's what they do.

So, I know that should I suddenly have triple the funds that you have and were able to go on such a trip, I wouldn't have the same kind of vacation that you would have anyway. I would still have a good vacation, but not the same kind. So, thank you. Thank you for having a sane, calming, relaxing vacation with no one whining about the size of the raisins in their toast. And thank you for posting the pictures for me.

DINKs, dear DINKs,

Thank you for living with me in the suburbs. I love to see you sitting on your patios, sipping your margaritas, laughing quietly like adults do, and never having to worry that a toddler is drowning in the pool or tangling himself up in the hammock (for the fifth time). It refreshes me. Just because I can't have something doesn't mean I don't want others to have it.

This, I believe, is how most childless-by-choice people feel about parents. Just because we don't have that, doesn't mean we hate that you have it (well, as long as we're not DadCamp). And I like to see it.

And double thank you to the DINKs who will sometimes invite my family over to partake in what would otherwise have been a childless soiree. If you think I don't understand the sacrifice you have made, I do. You've changed your whole scene, and I thank you.

Thank you also for living in the suburbs with me where you pay taxes for the school system even though you do not have kids going to school. This is a debt I can never repay. Well, I mean, I'm sure the parenting community must do something to improve your lives. I just can't think of anything right now...Bueller?

When DadCamp says "my best friend is married, no kids. He moved in to his childhood neighborhood, across from his old school which is now closed. It sits empty because too many empty nesters sucked the demand dry," I simply cannot fathom what he is talking about. In what childless mecca could he and his family actually live where there are so few children in the suburbs that a school sits empty due to the dry-sucking of DINKs?

Could the school be sitting empty, perhaps, because the taxes everyone (including DINKS) are paying made it possible for the district to build a new one? I may need to see some numbers here, DadCamp. (Also, I really like saying DadCamp.)

Thank you for being well-rounded human beings who may very well enjoy baking cookies on a Wednesday night as much if not more than a weekend getaway. That was an odd generalization for DadCamp to make.

Personally, I would rather have the weekend getaway. And I know a childless, married friend who would rather make the cookies. Because we're individuals. Children or no children does not account for personal taste and pleasure. Just saying.

Thank you for putting up with the drool of the parents who say things like "You have half the expenses and double the income!" out loud in a whiny, typed-out tone. Most of us only think it because, derp, these are choices that we have made. Choices. Like you made, too. They both have good points and bad points.

Of course, if one of the good points of being parents is supposed to be that we're "showered in family" with "children and grandchildren to keep us company" perhaps we'd better improve our attitude a bit (throat clear...DadCamp...cough). Just because these people are related to us doesn't mean they'll be around when we're old. We have to keep a good relationship with them in order for that to happen. And whining about how awesome DINKs have it on the internet probably isn't the best start. Also, what if one of those dozens of grandchildren we're all going to be showered with decides not to have children? Quite the conundrum we've now stumbled upon, eh?

In conclusion, DadCamp (God, I love saying DadCamp) "wonders how happy a childless couple will be when they’re at the end of the line?" And I answer, I have no idea, but I'm betting it depends on the couple and the two people within that couple. I'm betting it will have absolutely nothing to do with their lack of children by choice.

You can't just make up random pretend problems for people that they'll have in thirty years just to make yourself feel better now.

Instead, why not sit back, cut the gum out of your hair, steam clean a carpet, and put the lovely brood to bed--so you can log onto Facebook and take a mini-vacation, courtesy of the childless people on your friendslist.

Thank you, DINKs.

Oh, and PS - I actually love your sticker.

Courtesy original Babble article. Because the title of the article is too good.

 

Love is Delusion, Duh

My father has an old saying.  "Houses and spouses may come and go, but children will love you forever."  While this statement may be coming from a place of discreet cynicism on his part, its foundation - that the love between a parent and a child is limitless - attempts to explain the inexplicable. The bond between parent and child cannot be measured, scientifically or otherwise. There is no quantifiable value to love, so far as I know.

That foundation is something this article, purporting that having children is foolish and all parents are delusional, would do well to take into account.  I know it's edgy these days to look at only select pieces of an issue and dissect them one at a time, but it is misleading to then draw conclusions about the entire issue based on the selective research.

The author puts forward that parents overestimate the joys of parenthood to rationalize the waste of money children are.

First, children are only a waste of money on paper when you don't take into account their future as adults, but more importantly, since when can a stranger with charts and studies (a whopping 80-person study and 60-person study, I might add), assign value to someone else's treasure?  A supposedly worthless tin ring can can signify someone's entire life with another.  An old family heirloom could be worth pennies, but to the bequeathed? It's priceless.  It is not up to someone else to tell me how much my kids are worth to me.

John Cloud says, "researchers have known for some time that parents with minors who live at home report feeling calm significantly less often than than people who don't live with young children. Parents are also angrier and more depressed than nonparents — and each additional child makes them even angrier. Couples who choose not to have kids also have better, more satisfying marriages than couples who have kids.

None of this directly correlates to children as a monetary investment, the proponent on which his article is based, it is there to prove that parents are "are in the grip of a giant illusion," but it is incomplete and unconvincing.

It could be true that parents with minors at home often feel more stressed out than people without kids.  It could also be true (I'd have to see the research) that people are angrier and more depressed when they have kids.  Do couples without children have better marriages?  It's possible.  None of these things, however, prove that people should not have children or that they exagerrate the benefits of having them. Going through the supposed negatives does not disprove the positives.

Even if the arguments above are true, it is unfair to connect them to parenting in general, as if the child would be the only reason for them. The arguments simply fall short of proving that parents are clinging to an illusion.  No one can tell anyone else how much their possessions or creations mean to them personally.

Cloud goes onto to say, "Humans throw good money after bad all the time. When we have invested a lot in a choice that turns out to be bad, we're really inept at admitting that it didn't make rational sense."

That's an inflamatory statement if I've ever heard one.  It implies that children are not only worthless, but actually bad.  There is not much rational sense to having children, not because having children in the grand scheme of things doesn't make sense, but because the driving force behind birthing babies is above and beyond the human capacity to reason.  Just because you don't understand it doesn't make it worthless or bad.

"Does this mean you shouldn't have kids? Yes — but you won't," Cloud says. "Our national fantasy about the joys of parenting permeates the culture."

He then goes on to praise the economic value of a child back in the 18th and 19th centuries when they worked for their keep.  He referred to them as our staff.  Now, he says, they're our bosses.

We have a national fantasy about the joys of parenting because as a nation we've decided to cherish the future citizens we're bringing into the world?  No. Making a decision to protect any person, young or old, related or stranger, has nothing to do with the joys of parenting.  It has to do with caring for others and trying to make the world a better place.  I've yet to hear anyone say, "Oh, I need to become a parent right away. I hear it's a completely joyous activity that will better my life in all ways."

This is not to say that children don't better lives. My children are not my bosses, nor my employees, but they are my teachers, my muses and my life.  Try to put a monetary value to that. It's impossible.

The bottom line is, people don't have children to better their lives in a quantifiable way. If they did, then Cloud might have a point. No parent that I've seen is suggesting that their children have made their lives monetarily easier, or that they had kids to lessen the stress in their lives.

We're not heroes or suckers.  We're parents.  You cannot tell someone what their love is worth. It cannot be feasibly measured.

I will concede the author's main point though.  My kids can, indeed, drive me crazy.

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Childish

My house, one Thursday night, after putting the babies to sleep.  I'm sharing a bottle of wine with my husband when an internet article by a woman who does not know me assaults my way of life. 

Polly Vernon begins her article for Marie Claire by essentially complaining that she has more work to do because a fellow coworker is out on maternity leave.  I understand where she is coming from when she says she bristled and acted in defense when some man who doesn't really know her says, "That's okay. Women hold the fort for each other because you'll be hoping someone will do it for you."

Vernon says it's not okay because she's not going to have children, but she's wrong.  It's still okay.  She may someday need to go on disability.  She may someday have to quit with little or no notice.  She may experience a death in the family, or some emergency she must tend to, forcing her to leave the office for a bit, forcing another person to pick up her slack - male or female.  When someone is out, everybody left should work a bit harder to make up for them.

Still, in many ways, Vernon's article is right.  She should not have be on the defensive over her lifestyle choices.  Too often groups within a society belittle, mock, and make light of those who choose a different route.  But Vernon's bitterness does not give her a carte blanche to attack her fellow women, most of whom are not her enemy.

The brush she's using to paint every mother is an ominous shade.  Women who have children, she says, have "a sense of entitlement that can lead to some profoundly uncivilized behavior — as anyone who has ever been thrown off the pavement by a stampede of unapologetic Bugaboo-pushing mothers would agree."

That's an awfully small segment of society, I would say.  Having children doesn't automatically place me in a Bugaboo herd, just as not having children doesn't automatically make her unsatisfied with her life.

And to say that she accepts that most women don't feel the way she does is an ineffectual disclaimer when juxtaposed against the name calling in her next sentence.  "Still, I think as cultural movements go, this one has veered wildly out of control, consuming huge chunks of airtime, to the detriment of other concerns. Also — shhh — it's kind of boring."

Parenthood, like any lifestyle, has a following of readers and television watchers.  If you are bored by certain topics, it is well within your means to avoid them.  There are any multitude of channels you could surf, and millions of blogs and magazines that cater to world issues.

Also, parenthood is not a cultural movement.  Just because Vernon feels ostracized for her choice does not make parenting a "fad."  She cites celebrity births, lists a few movies in which bearing children is the plotline, and mistakenly involves women who are having trouble conceiving, in her quest to prove this is a "trend."

"Meanwhile," she says, "those trying, and failing, to have babies launch themselves into expensive rounds of fertility treatments, railing against being denied what they consider their absolute right, the one thing that the movies and TV shows and pop songs and celebrities are telling them is their defining opportunity for happiness."

Apparently, in Vernon's view, women who are trying to conceive are doing so because pop songs and celebrities are telling them to do so.  I, who never longed for children, find this one of the most tasteless and insulting paragraphs I have ever read on the internet.  Women who want children perhaps want children for reasons of their own, reasons which I will not attempt to prescribe for them, reasons that, I'm guessing, have nothing to do with pop culture.

Women have been having children since the dawn of human existence.  Looking back through history, one will find times where women, as a group, had upwards of 12 children, and times where women had none.  If she had looked just 50 years back, she would have seen the baby boom.  Simply put: having children is nothing new.

I have, of course, saved what was most personally insulting for last.  How can I not take offense when Vernon says "regular women have taken up the trend. Ubiquitous mommy blogs host heated debates on the relative merits of organic baby food, four-figure strollers, and the latest inventions of "momtrepreneurs.""

A parenting blog makes no claim on anyone's time.  A debate on organic food is heated because there are people out there who care about that sort of thing.  If Vernon is not one of them, might she just leave those women who are alone?  Must she poke at them and make them feel lesser as human beings because what they happen to find important, she finds laughable?  Isn't that exactly what she is fighting against in her own life?  And, who knows, perhaps one day an invention by one of these "momtrepreneurs" will save her life.  Why is a mother's invention any less valid because she is a mother?

Vernon had an opportunity here to meaningfully stand up for her way of life, to shut the doubting mouths of those who would brush her decision aside.  She chose, instead, to instigate a bitter attack against a group of people just trying to get by with one less food stain on their carpet.

Vernon may be childfree.  She may be childless.  She is certainly childish.

Marie Claire article linked at the top: http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/relationship-issues/articles/childless-by-choice?click=main_sr