Elaine Lui was 29 years old and had been married for a year when she and her husband, Jacek Szenowicz, decided that they didn’t want children. “Before that, we didn’t give it a lot of thought,” says the Vancouver-based eTalk reporter who writes the popular celebrity gossip blog LaineyGossip.com. “It was just an assumption, ‘You get married, you have kids.’ ” Front-line exposure to a close relative’s three young children and the work they required provided a wake-up call, Lui says. “That killed it for us. We just looked at each other and said, ‘We don’t want them.’ ”
In the ensuing six years, the couple has been barraged with reasons why they should change their minds, from “Your life will have no value if you don’t” to “You’ll be so lonely when you get old” to Lui’s favourite: “Don’t you want to know what your children would look like?” “Any baby we’d have would be of mixed race,” she says. “So everyone says, ‘Oh, it would be so gorgeous!’ ” She laughs. “And I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s really going to make me want to change my whole life.’ ” It’s a life the couple enjoys: they work together on her website (he handles the business side), golf together, engage in community volunteer work, and dote on their dog, Marcus.
As baby refuseniks, Lui and Szenowicz belong to a tiny but growing minority challenging the final frontier of reproductive freedom: the right to say no to children without being labelled social misfits or selfish for something they don’t want.
“Are you planning to have children?” is a question Statistics Canada has asked since 1990. In 2006, 17.1 per cent of women aged 30 to 34 said “no,” as did 18.3 per cent of men in the same category. The U.S. National Center of Health Statistics reports that the number of American women of childbearing age who define themselves as “child-free” rose sharply in the past generation: 6.2 per cent of women in 2002 between the ages of 15 and 44 reported that they don’t expect to have children in their lifetime, up from 4.9 per cent in 1982.
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I have my thoughts on this (I’ve raised five) but I’ll keep them private for now. I want to see what others have to say.
They shouldn’t have children. It would appear that they have reasoned and discussed this matter from all points of view. Children should be wanted and not treated as trophies on the mantle piece. My big query is who gets “fixed” him or her. Cheers.
Life is a gift. Pass it on.
I didn’t think I wanted kids until my wife got pregnant despite being on “the pill” but subsequently miscarried. That spark of life sparked a dialogue between my wife and I which resulted in two fabulous kids.
That being said, kids worked for us but there are plenty of folks who should never have children… but do…
I think some people who don’t want children, don’t want them for selfish reason, but then some who do want and have children may do so for selfish reasons as well. With the nanny state intrusion into every area of our lives, it has made it more difficult to raise children. Parents are having more areas of what used to be their authority taken away from them. Just as an example, the teaching of sexual information is completely out of the control of parents today. The whole taxation system is biased against single income two parent families as well. So it’s no surprise that family size has been diminishing and more are opting for no kids.
As an example my wife is one of 14 children. Those 14 children, all married, produced 60 grandchildren. The 60 grandchildren have so far produced 65 great-grandchildren. Quite a drop in birth rates over 3 generations. No wonder we need immigrants to support our society.
mid island mike
I normally would not comment twice on such a personal and private matter, however, I must add the following observations. So bear with me (no pun intended). These decisions to not have children didn`t just occur this decade. My cousin-in-law made this choice 30 years ago – my sister-in-law 25 years ago and my father`s first cousin 60 years ago. This is not a brand new, brave trend in reasoning, couples have been choosing to not have children for a very long time. Many people prefer life without children.
People make the decision not to have children for all kinds of reasons, selfish or not. So.. who defines what ‘selfish’ is, and why is it that ‘selfish’ is what those who make the choice not to have them get labeled. Even if ‘selfish’ is a reason, who is society to decide that’s a reason to dimiss the decision.
As one who chose 20 years ago not to have children, I have been labeled ‘selfish’ more times than I can count. Yet, no one (other than hubby) is privy to why we made the decision. As someone who was borne and reared by a woman who should have had the courage to choose not to have children and now carry the scars of it, I can testify that often this decison is deeply personal and for those who think they know better without all the mitigating facts, to label it is grossly judgemental.
And so what if it is for ‘selfish’ reasons – even though I can’t think of what those reasons might be that are ‘selfish’. Personal choice is just that. People make their choices and live with the consequences. Making personal judgements of them puts the ‘judger’ in a worse light than the ‘judged’.
I always thought that when I got it together I’d start a family. Well, when I kind of had it together, the woman I was with didn’t want more kids, time passed and now I’m in my early 60′s and not planning to start a family. Such is life.
It’s a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous cost but none can deny the that there are tremendous rewards as well.
either have them or don’t, like I said before it is that simple…. stop arguing over it.