\npeople for her Childless by
\nChoice Project<\/a>. “I’m
\nkeenly interested in the process of decision-making,” she says. “How
\ndo we get from assuming parenthood for ourselves to the point where we’re
\nsaying, ‘No kids, thank you!’?”
\nShe shares what she’s learned in a new book, Two
\nIs Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice<\/a>, and in a forthcoming
\ndocumentary<\/a>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I called Scott to find out whether environmental concerns
\nwere a factor for many of the people she spoke with—and we also got to
\ntalking about whether the feminist movement is supportive of childfree women,
\nhow a nurturing instinct is different from a maternal instinct, and why we
\nshouldn’t try to save Social Security as we know it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
——-<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Q. How many of the people you talked to mentioned <\/p>\n A. I was trying to find the top six most compelling motives to <\/p>\n Even though [the environment] didn’t come out as the most <\/p>\n Q. When a person is thinking about whether or not to have a <\/p>\n A. There is that too. There was worry that we’ve messed up this <\/p>\n But it was more of the former that I heard about. There was <\/p>\n People who I interviewed thought long and hard about what <\/p>\n Q. Were people who cited the environment as a reason younger <\/p>\n <\/a>If you like this article, you’ll love my piece on being a GINK: green inclinations, no kids<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A. I got it across the board. I saw slightly more of the 20- to <\/p>\n I was influenced after the fact. I made the decision not to <\/p>\n Q. In your book, you mention meeting an older woman who asks <\/p>\n A. The choice to remain childless didn’t really exist even 50 <\/p>\n Q. Maybe the culture hasn’t caught up with this dramatic <\/p>\n A. That’s very true. The assumption that everyone will have a <\/p>\n It used to be <\/p>\n Q. Do you think there’s more pressure on women than on men <\/p>\n A. I think females do feel it more acutely, and the reason is <\/p>\n Studies have clearly shown that voluntarily childless women <\/p>\n Q. Do you feel like the feminist movement—not that <\/p>\n A. Women who choose to remain childless really haven’t been <\/p>\n Q. A number of the people you interviewed in your book work <\/p>\n A. Maybe, because we have time. Frankly, I don’t think I would <\/p>\n I was quite surprised when I was doing the research for the <\/p>\n I think there’s an understanding among the childfree that <\/p>\n Just because you’re childless by choice doesn’t mean you <\/p>\n Q. How do you respond when someone says it’s selfish not to <\/p>\n A. I question how they define selfishness, because to me, <\/p>\n I think people see a lifestyle that maybe involves travel or <\/p>\n But I don’t see selfishness played out in the sense of, “I’m <\/p>\n Q. There’s an argument that we need to have kids in order to <\/p>\n A. It’s like breeding workers. That kind of thing [is] a very <\/p>\n It’s ridiculous that we’ve been able to double the [world] Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n Birth-control opponents greenwash their message<\/a><\/p>\n Al Gore, Bill McKibben and the urgency of now<\/a><\/p>\n 50 years after the Pill and this is the best we can do?<\/a><\/p>\n
\nenvironmental issues as a reason not to have kids?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nremain childless. The environmental motive was not among that top six, but it
\nshowed up fairly regularly in the mix of motives. In a questionnaire, I asked people an open-ended question:
\n“I remained childless by choice because I believe ___.” The motive that was
\nmost frequent was, “I don’t feel the desire. I believe you shouldn’t have a
\nchild unless you feel a desire to have a child.” Then other frequently cited
\nbelief systems included, “The world is already overpopulated. I believe that
\nthe world does not need another child.”<\/p>\n
\ncompelling motive for the group, it was the most compelling motive for a number
\nof people. I interviewed people
\nwho felt very strongly that if they were going to be responsible global
\ncitizens, they needed not to have children. I talked to a couple in Canada and
\n[the woman] said to me, “As much as I love the potentiality of a newborn,
\nI don’t think the planet needs another garbage-producing human.” Her partner
\nactually wrote himself a letter the week he was going to get a vasectomy,
\nmaking a list of reasons why he got snipped. The No. 1 reason was that the
\nworld is overpopulated and Mother Earth’s problems are a result of too many
\nhumans.<\/p>\n
\nchild, environmental concerns might break down in two ways: There’s concern
\nabout overpopulation and that a child will cause environmental damage and use
\nresources and worsen climate change. And then you might be concerned about
\nbringing a child into a polluted and crowded world that’s going to be a less
\npleasant place to live. Did you hear from people on that latter point?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nplanet so badly, is it really fair to bring this little person into it? And I
\nthink “environmental,” more broadly, is not just a distressed planet, but also
\nthe social ills that might threaten the environment [in which you raise] a
\nchild, whether it be crime or drugs or sexual promiscuity.<\/p>\n
\na guilt aspect. Some people said, “You know, we really messed up this planet
\nand I feel guilty bringing a child into this place.”<\/p>\n
\nit would be like to be a parent in this day and age, and it didn’t look like a
\npretty picture to them. They didn’t have a lot of faith that they would be the
\nparent they really wanted to be based on the stressors that were out there for
\nparents.<\/p>\n
\nor older? <\/strong><\/p>\n
\n29-year-olds expressing concerns about the environment, but only slightly. I
\nanticipated that I would see more people concerned about the environment who
\nwere children of the ‘70s, when we had that zero-population-growth movement.
\nThere was a time, in the ‘70s and even in the early ‘80s, when it was totally
\ncool to be childfree, particularly if you were in environmental-activist
\ncircles. But I think this next generation, anyone born after 1980, is
\ngoing to be much more aware of environmental concerns because we’re doing a
\nbetter job of educating children about global sustainability.<\/p>\n
\nhave children in my late teens, early 20s, and environmental motives were not
\namong my primary motives. However, as I grew to be an adult, I became much more
\nconscious about environmental concerns. I read Bill McKibben’s book Maybe
\nOne<\/a> and was incredibly influenced by
\nit, to the point where I felt myself nodding on every page, saying, “This guy
\nis so right!” and thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if everyone had a chance to
\nread this book and really think long and hard about how many children they
\nbring into the world?”<\/p>\n
\nyou whether you have kids, and you tell her you’ve chosen not to, and she
\nresponds, “Back in my day we didn’t have a choice.”<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nor 60 years ago. Birth control methods were really dodgy and not particularly
\nsafe or accessible or widely available to most people. And there were laws on
\nthe books against using contraceptives if you were married, even until the
\n1960s in the United States and Canada. The fact that you can as a couple choose
\nto remain childless and you can take the steps to ensure that you do not have
\nchildren and you can do it safely and you can do it legally—this is new!<\/p>\n
\nshift?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nchild at some point in their life and it will all be good and happy—that still
\nhas a lot of power. People who make the alternate choice are really swimming
\nagainst the tide, and their decision-making is not endorsed or understood or
\naccepted in a lot of communities. <\/p>\n
\nthat you went from high school to marriage to children and the question was,
\n“How many children are we going to have?” And that question has
\nmorphed into, “Should we have children?” As you delay marriage and
\nchild-rearing into your 30s and perhaps even your 40s, you come to appreciate a
\nchildfree life. Then that fertility deadline hits, particularly for women, and
\nyou go, “OK, gosh, if I’m going to have kids, I really need to think about it.
\nDo I need to look at my partner as a possible father for my children? Am I going
\nto find a new house that I can raise a family in? Or am I going to refill that
\nbirth-control prescription?” And then you are a decision-maker—you’re no
\nlonger assuming kids for yourself.<\/p>\n
\nto become parents? Or do women feel it more acutely?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nthat having children, being a mother, is so tied to the female identity, more
\nso than to the male identity. People I interview will say, “People don’t think
\nyou’re a real woman unless you have a child.” There’s that sense that others
\nare thinking, “Well, she’s not really going to be fulfilled as a woman, or
\nempowered as a woman, or empathetic as a woman if she doesn’t experience
\nparenthood.”<\/p>\n
\ndo experience incredibly good well-being and do have a great quality of life
\nand are experiencing the full range of Maslow’s
\nhierarchy of needs<\/a>—that self-actualization that we all hope and pray for.
\nBut then there’s that niggling suspicion, especially from women who have
\nchildren, that this can’t be legit, that childfree women are in denial and are
\ngoing to regret it and are going to feel lonely and isolated and have a very
\npoor quality of life. I think there’s a sense that a man in the world will do
\nfine without children, but a woman in the world without children is going to
\nface some tragic end.<\/p>\n
\nthere’s some monolithic movement that you can pin down—but do you feel like
\nit’s supportive of the choice not to have children? Or is it really focused on
\nhelping women balance work and children?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nembraced in that umbrella of modern feminism. Maybe earlier, in the ‘70s, when
\nwe did have a very strong environmentalist movement, the childfree choice would
\nhave been embraced within the feminist movement. But I don’t see that in this
\nsort of neo-feminist movement that we have now. The focus really is on working
\nmoms. I think that will change as the numbers of women who remain childless
\nincrease. Now, in 2010, close to 20
\npercent of women don’t have children and will never have children.<\/p>\n
\nwith or volunteer with kids. Do you think it’s a disproportionately high number
\ncompared with the rest of the population?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nhave mentored had I been a parent—I just wouldn’t have had the time nor the
\ninterest. When you parent, your focus is justifiably on your own children;
\nthey tend to consume a large portion of your disposable income and
\ndiscretionary time. The reason why I think so many of the childfree are engaged
\nin volunteerism, and especially volunteering with youth, is because they can.
\nMany of the people I’ve interviewed emphasize that just because we’re childless
\nby choice doesn’t mean that we’re without children in our lives. Our choice is
\nto have nieces and nephews in our lives, to be able to mentor and to be able to
\nvolunteer in the community with children.<\/p>\n
\nbook how many people I came across who were teachers. These were people who had
\nchosen careers that would put them in daily contact with children, and they
\nloved their jobs. But on the other side, they’re saying, “I’m so glad I’m
\nchildless by choice, because I don’t know how, after spending eight hours with
\n30 kids, I could come home to a houseful of children. I would be overwhelmed.”<\/p>\n
\nif you choose, you can have children in your life, and if you don’t choose, you
\ndon’t have to. There’s that incredible freedom to create a family of affinity
\nversus a family of blood—what we call the tribe. The childfree are very adept
\nat creating tribes because they know that if they want to have a good quality
\nof life surrounded with people who love them and who they love, they need to
\nseek out people who can function as a de facto family, and some of those people
\nmight be little people.<\/p>\n
\ndon’t have a sense of nurturing. I’ve had a lot of people tell me, “I don’t think
\nI have a maternal instinct, but I have a nurturing instinct.” That nurturing
\ninstinct could be expressed by nurturing my community or nurturing my pets or
\nnurturing my spouse. I think
\nthere’s an assumption that if you don’t have children, you must be this
\ncold-hearted, isolated, curmudgeonly person. I don’t see evidence of that with
\nthe people that I’ve interviewed.<\/p>\n
\nhave kids?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nselfishness implies a victim. So who am I victimizing if I don’t have a child?
\nUnless my parents anticipated a grandchild and didn’t get one, I don’t see that
\nmy choice not to have a child negatively impacts anyone else.<\/p>\n
\ntime alone and hobbies, and parents might look upon that and go, “Well, you’re
\nself-indulgent or you’re selfish because your activities are more
\nself-oriented.” And that might be true. Some people think it’s a bad thing to
\ntake that time for yourself in isolation or go on a hike.<\/p>\n
\nchildless by choice because I want to go out to clubs until 3:00 in the
\nmorning,” or “I want to save every penny I make and not have to spend it on anyone
\nelse.” In fact, I see a lot of volunteerism, I see a lot of people donating
\ntime and money to charitable organizations, and I see a lot of people chipping
\nin to help their nephew go to college. That selfish label just really doesn’t
\nstick.<\/p>\n
\nkeep Social Security going, that we need more young people to support all the
\nolder people. There’s all this worry about demographic shifts in Europe, that
\nthey don’t have enough children being born. <\/strong><\/p>\n
\nscary assumption, that we can breed our way into well-being as a nation. I
\ndon’t think the evidence supports that. To save Social Security, we would have
\nto have, according
\nto Bill McKibben<\/a>, at least three kids on average, which would, in a few
\ngenerations, produce a population approaching China’s. From all I’ve read, it
\njust doesn’t make any sense.<\/p>\n
\npopulation in such a short span of time. But certainly we can’t afford to
\ndouble the population again. I don’t think the earth will support that. I think
\nit’s in everyone’s best interest if we find a way to plateau our population so
\nthat we do have a good quality of life. It may not include Social Security
\nbenefits. But it will be a world in which we might be able to feed ourselves
\nand might have enough fresh water on the planet for everyone. That would be a nice
\nworld to live in.<\/p>\n
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