Please read "The Childfree Life." please craft a one page reflection essay about the articles.

Excerpt from

The Childfree Life

Lauren Sandler

t t-- AMERICAN

WOMEN EXPECTING TO REMAIN CRILDLESS

WITH HIGH INCOME

li, t4 WITH

MIDDLE INCOME

'he decision to have a child or not is a private one, but it takes place, in America at least, in a culture that often equates womanhood with motherhood. The birthrate may have fallen, but the baby-product in- dustry is at a record high, an estimated $49 billion for 2oi3. Any national discussion about the struggle to reconcile womanhood with modernity tends to begin1 and end with one subject: parenting. Even Sheryl Sand- berg's LeanIn, abookfocused on encouragingwomen's professional development, devotes a large chtmk of its talÿe-home advice to balancing work and family, pre- suming that, like its author, ambitious women will have both. It's great that we're in the midst of a cultural conversation about the _individual choices and struc- tufa!barriers that shape our lives. But ffyou're a wom- an who's not in the mommy trenches, more often than not you're excluded from the discussion.

Being sidelined doesn't exempt childless women from being scolded. In a December column in the New York Times headlined MOÿ. BABIES, PÿEASE, Ross Douthat argued that the "retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion"--an indicator of "decadence," revealing "a spirit that privileges the present over the future:' The Weekly Standard's lonathan V. Last has made the case in his controversial book What to Expect When No One's Expecting that the selfishness of the childless American is responsible for no less than the possible destruction of our economic futttre by reducing the number of consumers and taxpayers.

just smarter./ÿt the London School of Economics, Sa- toshi Kanazawa has begun to present scholarship as- serting that the more intelligent women are, ÿhe iess likely they are to become mothers. Many peers in ÿhe field have not embraced his findings: Kanazawa ana- Iyzed the U.K.'s Natior, aI Child Development Study, which followed a set ofpeoNe for 50 years, and found that high intelligence correiared wkh early--and Iifeiong--adopdon of childlessness. He found that among girls in the study, an increase of z5 IQ points decreased the odds of their becoming a mother by 25%. W-hen he added controls foreconomics and edu- cation, the results were the same: chiidhood inceI- iigcnce predicted chiidiessness.

Of course, higher IO often leads to higher education and higher opportunity costs. Its women flu ÿhat subset who are most often chc ones who opt out ofpaÿcntlÿood

' and who prefer to caii &emsetves child free, "Child- iessness is for someone who wants a child but docsn't have one. h"s a lack. i'm not iacldng an?-LhingY says Laura Carroll, author of The BalJÿ fvfaÿ4;ÿ !laura Kipnis, a cuh-aral critic at Northwes tern b-nivcrsir-y, like-wise rejects defining women withouÿ kids as "-Iess"---as if, she says, 'your life isn't going to be fulfiiied without it, like there's a natural absence ÿhat once you fiilit with a child, the world makes sense7

I

J l

WITH LOW INCOME

[ 1

Why Don't Yeu Have Kids? Tÿ BURÿ.N OF IUSTZÿICArIOÿ rÿNDS ro ÿsÿ oÿ.

childless women. We rarely ask, "Why do you have kids-?" Instead it's "-Why don't you?" One response I've heard repeated in dozens of interviews is "I keep waking for the biologicai clociÿ to tick," Another trait childiess women articulate in common is a girlhood lack of imerest in dolls or playing famiiy pretend games with friends. Some cafft stand the noise of kids. But many of these women have chosen to worlc -with kids as teachers or counselors--mothering the world, so to speak--or have close relationships with friends' and sibiings' children, sometimes housing them for vacations or starting up &eir college funds. "I love chil- dren. i just don't need to own one"is a common refrain.

l-ÿac designation for -women who feei at a young age ÿhat they arefft mother material and then abide by ÿhaÿ seifqcnowledge is eaÿq.v adopi-eÿ5, if there is a biological explanation for this impulse, or iack of one, it has yet to be discovered, Some studies of maternal instinct have shown ÿhat it chcks in once a woman gives birth, but whether our nature leads us to con- ceive is another matter entirely, One researcher has controversially suggested that childless women are

A frustrated single life is how the 30% increase in childless black women from z994 to 2008 is ex- plained by some academics. "One potential theory is that they're refusing to fall into a stereotype" of the unmarried black mother, says lennifer Hickes Lun- dquist, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who studies race and gender, adding that in her extensive studies on fertility and family for- mation, it's a common refrain to hear high-achieving black women mourn what they say is a dearth of simi- larly educated black men.

But Jena Starkes, a Web designer, says, "This doesn't have a damn thing to do with me lo oking for a 'good Nack man.'" Starkes, who shares a Manhattan apartment with her mother and a few eats, says she couldn't get through the eHarmony dating filter tmtfl she lled on her questionnaire about desiring kids. She says these days she can't really talk to her old friends, whose priorities have all shifted to the "glamorous martyrdom" of child rearing, as she calls it. Ironically, Starkes develops mommy e-commerce for a living. Motherhood, she says, is now a massive consumer base: from organic onesies and Veggie Booty to ad- heavy blogs on every aspect of maternal striving. "Before there was a mommy industry, before there was product to move, you'd never hear how it was the .Nardest job in the world," she says. "If it's the hardest'job in the world, I'm damn happy I don't have to do it.

You're not supposedto saythat, but it's true."

For those who don't hold the job, there are aavaÿ- tages. "I get to do all sorts of things: buy an unneees- saryb eautiful object, plantrips with. our aging parents, sleep in, spend a day without speaking to a single per- son, send care packages to nieces and nephews, enroll in language classes, go out for drinks with a friend ori the spur of the moment," says a happily partnered woman named ÿenna lohnson, a Virginian who lives in New York. "I know all ofthis would be possible with kids, but it would certainly be more complicated. My plans--professionally, daily, long-term, even just for vacation--are free from all the contingencies that come with children:'

gist ÿulia McQuillen sees a clear relationship between the messages we hear about motherhood and an in- creasing desire to opt out of it. 'At a culturallevel there's the constant advice given to women that you need to invest more in yourkids," she says. "If we make mother- ha o d unrealistic, why would we want to do that j oh?"

I c"ÿ I

o THE

MARKET MOMS

REPRF.,SENT IN THE U.S.ÿ

MORE THAN TWICE THE

ANNUAL DEFENSE BUDGET

$62°3 BILLION

EXPECTED SIZE OF GLOBAL

BABY-CARE MARKET

FOR COSMETICS

AND TOILETRIES IN 2017-- UP FROM

$4ÿ,3 BILLION IN 201!

I

Great Expectations FEW WOMEN SPEND THEIR GIRLHOODS ASPIRING TO AN unencumbered life. Daydreams often take the form of permanent attachments: monogamous passion yielding beatific motherhood. Yet as we get older, we change along with our economic, professional, social and romantic realities. 1Philip Morgan, director of the

I Carolina Population Center, has said in numerous interviews over the years that no one wants fewer than two children. He's referring to a raft of surveys that measure women's fertility intentions, in which young women are asked simply how many children they'd like to have. (It's not a question typically asked of young men.) Of course, they're not asked about pro- fessional opportunity costs or lasting romantic love.

But those factors contribute to postponed childbearing, which Morgan says is "the real story of fertility in the past 2o years. Women'put off mother- hood because of work, education or the lack of a de- sired partner, he says, and meanwhile "they develop lifestyles they enjoy:' As loyce Abma, a social scientist at the National Center for Health Statistics, says, "The decision to haQre children is not an on-off switch but more lflCe a continuum." One woman told me about reading a magazine article when she was 40 on "the four stages of adulthood": college, career, house, kids. "I thought, My God, I'm stuck forever at No. 3," she said. She waited for panic to set in, but it never did.

The opportunity costs for an American woman who gets off the career track could average as high as 81 miI- lion in lost salary, lost promotions and so on, ecoaoruist Bryan Caplan says, (Caplan, the author of the book Self- ish Reasons to Have Mare Children, argues that she should

I go for it anyway.) Such concerns are nothing to dis- miss, especially in a down economy, whether women articulate that sacrifice or not. But Kathleen Gerson, a professor of sociology at New York University whose research focuses on work, gender and family life, says postponement is far more complex than a r4sum4 fac- ing off against abiological clock: "It's what gives women time to build up their lives and think about how they want to live. Other commitments take the place of what motherhood might have meant:' Gerson says women are living in a"damned if you do, damned if you don't" social context in a countrythat she believes emphasizes self-sufficiencyequallyalongside a deep commitment to motherho o d. The mix breeds imp as sible conflict. With- out independence, we're failures. With it, we're selfish.

The rise of attachment parenting, with its immer- sive demands, and the sheer economic cost ofralsing a childÿfor a ehildbom in 2oiz, an average of 8234,900 until age i8, according to the USDA, and 8390,000 if your household earns over $zoo,ooo--has made moth- ethood a formidable prospect for some women. Sociolo-

Motherhood"s Ambient Roar FOR 15 YEARS AT FOUR DIFFERENT UNIVERSITIES, DE- mographer Stephanie Bohon has asked students if they intend to have children. "They all raise their hands," she says, "and then I ask why--and no one has an answer for me. That's what a social impera- tive does." The cultural noise about motherhood has become such a constant din that many of us don't even notice it. But ask any woman in her 3as or 4as who hasn't given birth and she'll likely tell you the ambient roar is oppressive. Products from cleaning solutions to cars are targeted at mothers. Magazines regularly offer features on the trials of parenting-- TIME'S own ARE YOU MOM ENOUGH? cover contributed to the vira! tide--and genuflect at gilded icons of ce- lebrity motherhood, a sorority of which the Duchess of Cambridge is just the latest member. (I counted 36 images of Hollywood mothers and babies in a recent issue of Life ÿ Style; tabloids have made a staple out of baby-bump watches.)

Patricia O'Laughlin, a therapist in Los Angeles who specializes in counseling women who are ambivalent about their Uhÿiÿe, says the identity that-childless women developed as little girls around the expectation of motherhood is the most painful stumbling block.

Even the decisive ones aren't immune: Leah and Paul Clause keep a baby box in the closet with a pink tutu she once bought for an imaginary infant girl and an article on raising nerdy children that he says spoke to him. "It's indulgent of alife I have to grieve," Leah says. "If we decided to have children, we'd have to grieve the life we currently have."

Even if you are in the minority of women who don't grow up internalizing the idea that you are pre- destined for parenthood, the mommy drone doesn't quiet. "I resent that the entire culture of this country is obsessed with kids," RachelAgee told me the day af- ter her 4 oth birthday. 'ÿnd so cial media is only an out- let to post pictures of your children. I've got nothing to put on Facebook. At 40, that's hard." (She has not yet bought the buzzed-about Faeebook baby-blocker app to censor progeny pies, but she says she's tempted.) Agee graduated from a Southern Bible college where she was taught that to be a godly woman, one must pro create for the kingdom. "I just knew I couldn't trade my freedom for it," she says. She moved to Nashville as a hopeful performer and stopped going to church because it was so "oppressively family-centrie." Near- ly 3o% of married households in the Nashville met: ropolitan area are childless, but even in the secBlar, artier corners of Music City; Agee wasn't greeted by culture that supported a life without dependents. It used to be that one's urban starter kit wou.ld include a leather jacket, a guitar and a pack of cigarettes. Today that's been traded out for Lululemon maternity pants, a stroller and a pack of diapers.

Eleanore Wells, a market researcher in New York City, says that even in her mid-sos, she finds judgment at everytum. "So manywomentake my choice person- ally;' she says. Recently, she told me, a woman on the subway inquired if she had children and then asked, aghast, "Who is going to take care of you when you're old?" Wells wanted to reply that nursing homes are filIed with parents, but she says she just smiled, went home and packed her bags for an annuaI trip to Mar- tha's Vineyard with friends. "When I was younger I fomÿ_dit more exhausting," she says. "Now I don't give a s--- what anyone thinks. It gets easier."

Navigating the Choice LAURA SCOTT RUNS THE CHILDLESS By CHOICE DOCU- mentary project, which gathers stories of people who opt out of parenthood. "To make this choice, you really have to b e able to manage and navigate all assumptions that are going to be made about you," she says. "You have to be able to challenge the status quo."

"It's toughest in your late 3os and early 4os," Going Solo author Eric Klinenberg says. That's when social isolation tends to peak among people without kids. "What people report everywhereis this experience of watching friends just peel offinto their small domes- tic worlds. That's the rea! stress point," he says, not aging and dying alone, as people fear--and strangers and family members alike tend to admonish--but the loneliness between when friends have babies and when theybecome empty nesters. It has hit the Clouses earlier than Klinenberg suggests, since their Southern Christian circle seems to have already disappeared into parenthood. They say their lives have become lonelier and narrower over the past few years. "You build strong relationships, and then they change. It's great for them, but it sucks for you," Clouse says. But they recently had their first "date"--- roller derby--ÿvith a childless couple at their church. They say it felt like a massive relief.

As the childless numbers creep up, so do opportu- nities to make a full, connected life with other non- parents. The community networldng site Meetup.com alone has about 2o, ooo members of child-free groups in about 90 metropolitan areas--one for women in subur- ban New Jersey, one for singles and couples in Chicago and so on. In a suburban Nashville mall one Friday eve- ning, a child-free group gathers around a long table at Buffalo Wild Wings. Most of the 24 people here live in developments nearby, and none of them have kids. Recent acfivitleshave included zip-lining, canoeing and the monthly dinner the foodie couple in the group orga- nizes. %Ve can do anything we want, so why wouldn't we?" Andrea Reynolds says, cueing a round of clinking beer glasses. The one thing they don't do much of, her husband says, is talk about "th4 no-kids thing" when they're together. "It's kind of the only place where we don't have to answer those questions;' he says.

Deeper into the city the next night, at her 4oth- birthday celebration, Rachel Agee announced, "My wish for myself at 40 is to be who I've chosen to be and not to fe ellike I have to defend it." Her friends, nearly all childless, applauded, m

OF AMERICANS

BELIEVE HAVING

CHILDREN INOR.F.ASES

SOCIAL STANDING

/,'9%

OF CHILDLESS

WOMEN AGES 40-44

ARE "VOLUNTARILY

CHILDLESS

CHILDLESS WOMEN

AGES 40-44

Sandler, Lauren. "The Childfree Life." Time 12 Aug. 2013: 40-45. Print.

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AVERAGE NUMBER OF CHILDREN BORN PER

WOMAN

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7,0 NIGER

5.5 AFGHANISTAN

2.6 INDIA

23 MEXICO

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U.S.

1.9 U K.

1.8 NORWAY

1.6 CHINA

1.4 GERMANY

ITALY JAPAN