Downside to the CF lifestyle...

Are there any you can think of?

Without children I have no access to the unpaid, forced labor my parents had.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

No, I really can’t think of any. And I try hard, I really can’t think of any.

I can't think of any either. Honestly. I have never felt like I was missing out or the clock was ticking. It is SUCH a nice feeling too!

I know, we get all the perks and no downside! At least none that I can think of. It's really a wonderful feeling! One more reason to celebrate with a glass of wine tonight!

The downside is having to listen to all the breeder-brains out there bitch, whine and moan about how our lives are so empty and that we, as childfree women, are useless without having a child. That's about it. LOL

I can't think of anything either! I can't wait until I'm 40 so people can stop commenting that I'm still young and that I'll change my mind bull shit! I have another 7 years to go!

As with anything there are the positives and negatives and I guess for me there are a couple of downsides to not having a child. I have always wondered what a child of ours would look like

I guess another downside is not having their company when I am elderley but I have worked in a nursing home and know fully well that having kids is no guarantee of company and besides that it is very selfish to have a child for that reason.

Giving birth to a tiny perfect human being is an amazing experience to wittness and I guess I have always wondered what it would feel like knowing my husband and I created another life. A womans body can do some pretty amazing things....

After saying all this though I must say that there are to many negatives to being a parent for me and I know we have made the right decision deciding not to have children.

I only see the upsides of being childfree. DW and I aren't rich, and we certainly don't go on season-long vacations on a private yacht, but we would be in hock up to our asses if we had a brat to support.

Doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, not having brats gives you a freedom that you can't put a price on.

Blossom is the happy, sunny CF person on this board. ( Waves at Blossom. Haven't seen you in a while. Glad to see you back here! )

Okay, back to being my old cranky self.

The thought of being pregnant horrifies me. I'm on track to get a hysterectomy + ovary removal soon and I can't wait.

Thank doG I never got pregnant...I think I would be saying GetItOutGetItOut.

The only downside of being CF to me is in the workplace. My current boss is great, but she's a rarity. I had a very ill cat a couple of weeks ago, in fact, she was a young cat and I had to put her to sleep. I took a day off to do this. My boss was very understanding. She believes we all need personal time and she's fair with it.

Unfortunately, my experience with her isn't the norm. An ex-boss told me once that I took too much vacation time. He said I didn't need it because I didn't have keedz. Excuse the fuck out of me, but my employer gives me vacation time and I'm going to use it. This dude was a childLESS Uncle Tom, breeder-pleaser type. He told me he wouldn't take vacation during the Summer because families with keedz needed it. Gee, Fuckface, if you want to be a Breeder panderer and donate your vacation or not take it, go right ahead, but I'm not doing the same just because you don't think I deserve a life.

I work in a very "family friendly" place and to many of these assholes, these benefits only go to people with KEEDZ. For example, when I took FMLA because my mom was critically ill and her mother was dying, my ex-boss hassled me over every little detail. He made my mother's doctor fill out all this paperwork. We are talking about LEAVE WITHOUT PAY, FOLKS. He got the number where I was and called me and asked me about work stuff. (It was stuff he could have done; I'd left meticulous notes...he just didn't want to bother reading it...he wanted to call me so he didn't have to think.) My mom had almost died the night before...I told him that and he still wanted to talk about work. I told him I wasn't being paid to talk to him and I hung up.

I normally wouldn't be such a hardass, but you treat me like shit during my time of need, and I'm not giving an inch. Might I add, during this time, a co-worker's wife miscarried a six week old fetus. Ex asshole boss let this guy work at home for TWO WEEKS, WITH PAY.

And I was no slacker in this job. I got exceptional performance reviews.

I'm not saying that this guy wasn't grieving, but I was furious that my family concerns were not seen as valid as his. That shouldn't even come into question, benefits should be available to all, regardless of whether you are meeting someone else's definition of "family."

So, it's taken a a major thread drift to explain, but I hate it when Breeders get more slack at work. Some bosses see their concerns as "more worthy" of accommodation and that's not right.

It still wouldn't be worth it to have a kid I don't want, but it is a major annoyance.

Technically, it's not a downside of being childfree; it's more a downside of other people's stupid attitudes.

I've found it's a little harder to make friends. I've had a hard time finding CF friends offline. I've found though my experience that there's a really good window for making lots of good friends (late teens through twenties), and then after that it's just harder. Part of it is because people are more settled in their ways, more likely to have more committments. But also a lot of it is because they're more likely to have kids, and just have completely different priorities and schedules. And that's if they don't just vanish into parenthood (which a lot of my friends did).

Downsides:
no tax breaks or medicaid breaks
feeling like you don't fit in to the mainstream

OK; that's about it

Bell_Flower, I have had to become a hard-@ss, too, when it comes to the work & vacation issue with breeders on the job. Holidays, vacation time, and days off are not any less important to me -- the childfree-by-choice employee -- than those with children. I have become very firm about not being bothered on my days off and to be able to have one of the Winter holidays off. I have worked too d@mned many jobs where the moo guards got ALL of the holidays off -- even the evenings before -- while I was stuck working 80+ hours in a week...yes, that happened with the very first security firm I worked for in 1998! The money was good but I was very burned up how one moo got all of the X-mas and New Year's days off while *I* felt forced to accept such a horrible schedule where I got no rest that week.

To me the downside to be childfree is living in a society that is centered around children and the idea that "family" means that a child is in the picture. I wish that marketing/advertising executives would realize that not all families include a child. There is another market out there (the childfree community) and we have more money to spend than those with children on things such as entertainment, travel, pets, investing and fancy cars. They don't market to us. No....they market to the moos. Just once I would like to see some advertising designed for the childfree. I think it is time that we are seen as a true FAMILY. That is what I see as the downside.

Hermione Wrote:
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> To me the downside to be childfree is living in a
> society that is centered around children and the
> idea that "family" means that a child is in the
> picture. I wish that marketing/advertising
> executives would realize that not all families
> include a child. There is another market out
> there (the childfree community) and we have more
> money to spend than those with children on things
> such as entertainment, travel, pets, investing and
> fancy cars. They don't market to us. No....they
> market to the moos. Just once I would like to see
> some advertising designed for the childfree. I
> think it is time that we are seen as a true
> FAMILY. That is what I see as the downside.

AMEN! That bothers me too. I hate when ads or magazine articles refer to the reader/viewer as "You and your kids". What kids? Does that mean they're not talking to me? Do I not exist? Does my opinion not matter?

Not being advertised to is an UP side in my book, but I think advertising is a particularly evil form of social control. It's bad enough to see that many of my favorite musical artists, who I never thought would do this and aren't "popular" in any sort of a broad sense (El-Vez? Bellrays? Dirtbombs? Ween? The Fall?! screw you mitsubishi!), have songs in car commercials. It's not like I don't know about what products are out there, and I'd just as soon not have my lifestyle pandered to and controlled (Hey, YOU gotta keep up with the joneses too!) in such a way.

At the same time, I do understand it would be helpful if there were more varieties of "family" out there in the popular culture. At the very least it would open the eyes of some folks to know that yes indeed, you do not have to be married to, or birth, someone to care deeply for them enough to call them "family". Plus, I do think that "alternative" families, are too smart for advertising, and that may indeed be the real reason why we haven't been assumed into the mass culture. From what I've read on here, CF really aren't into keeping up with the latest trends, fads or "The Joneses" down the street. We don't need the newest, fanciest cell phone, music device or auto, to make us feel good about ourselves or make us feel included.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

Thankyou bellflower - I remember you

Thank doG I never got pregnant...I think I would be saying GetItOutGetItOut.


LMAO!!!!

I can understand where you are comming form in the work front. People without children deffinatley get screwed big time. Thats is why I guess some Cfs get resentful and I cant blame them for that. I have always said having a kid is a lifestyle choice and when it comes to work everyone should be equal childed or not but its never going to be the case at these so called family friendly companies.

Cheers!
Blossom

The only downside is:

-- putting up with the bingos,
--the having to explain yourself(not that you "have to" but you know what I mean),

--seen as an instant childhater,
-- I "don't understand how it is" when breeders have their kyd bull shit problems,
--losing more and more friends so darn easily to the alter of the baybee

--not having the same circle of friends that still call each other b/c they are all moomies and only can relate to that, so I'm totally off their radar(this is a mixed blessing tho);

--having totally different opinions than most people and getting the evil eye for it, b/c all their stupid opinions are only related to their damn kids and not the rest of the world.

--not gettng speyshul treatment at work b/c my kid(s) have the sniffles and other made up bullshit.

and the like, but when it comes to the end of the day, it is definately allll worth it. I rather have no friends and work 23/6 than to have brats to slave over and turn into a breeder brain.

CFScorpio Wrote:
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> Downsides:
> no tax breaks or medicaid breaks
> feeling like you don't fit in to the mainstream
>
> OK; that's about it

That and the advertisement. I do, however, see more upsides to be childfree than downsides. I also see more downsides to having children, then not.

---

lab mom

I guess I only started worrying after my grandfather died; my mom and her brothers and sisters took care of him, and I thought "what happens when I'm old and dying of cancer, who's going to be shoveling morphine into my mouth when I can't move anymore? Or what happens if i inherit my mom's health problems and have no one to help me out with stuff I can't do?" I still don't know. But it's certainly not worth having kids (plus who knows, the stress of being a parent might throw my health to hell).

As far as friends, I found out, quite by accident, that most of my friends were either CF or on the fence. I've found that certain sorts of people tend to be CF, and that's in keeping with the types I choose for friends, so there you go. My bf is CF as well (though that's in part because he wants to be a workaholic and knows that'll take up all his time; it's a far bigger priority in his life than kids would be).

My mom had almost died the night before...I told him that and he still wanted to talk about work.

I hate selfish wankers like that. I remember when my former boss's girlfriend died...on the day he and my other boss were at the funeral and my coworker and I were running the business for the day, one of the customers called. We'd sold a truck for him (we sold stuff on consignment on ebay for people) and he was bitching that he wanted a certified check for it, apparently he didn't trust us to actually pay him or some shit like that. He asked for the one boss, G, and I said he wasn't in. So he asked for the other boss, T. I told him T wasn't there either, because G's girlfriend had just died and they were both at the funeral.

The guy was like "that's too bad for him, but you have to understand how *I* feel." Oh, man. If I could've reached through the phone and throttled him, I would've. I mean, what the fucking fuck. HIS FUCKING 22-YEAR-OLD SERIOUS GIRLFRIEND IS DEAD, it breaks my heart into pieces just THINKING about what he's going through never mind him having to LIVE it, and you want me to understand how YOU feel about something you should've understood long before you did business with us? Oh, FUCK no. I was SO pissed. I left a note for T about it, and he said "I could tell you were really mad because every other word in the note was 'fuck'." I was walking around bitching about it for the rest of the day; my coworker said "if he calls back, let ME talk to him." I'm not sure if it was to keep me from bitching the dude out, or because HE wanted to do it.

Being judged by society as a freak. Or a monster. And never fitting in.

Having no one to leave your stuff to when you die.

Feeling like you're left out, missing out - whatever.

And that's about it.

Very interesting you all...thanks!
I had thought of a couple other downsides, I'd be curious to know what the spawn of me and my partner would look like, but of course, we know what curiousity did to the cat. I know my partner, who is adopted, would like to know a family member he's linked to genetically and looks like. He's always amazed at the similarities between genetic relations, even distant ones.

However, here's some ideas I'd come up with in regards to some concerns I'd read...
Who gets your stuff? Friends, other family members, non-profit orgs. I've got a huge music collection that will probably end up at the community radio station I've volunteered at for a long time, I know certian friends would definetly take my cat and fish if need be. There's a tiny library my grandfather started in his tiny town that would probably love my book collection. Trust me, you will be just as missed by your friends and extended family as you would be by any children. Alot of times these folks lose out on the rememberance momentos that might be distributed upon one's death because the kids get it all, and it seems kind of wrong to ask them for an item to remember a lost friend by.

Who takes care of you when you get old? Again, friends, extended family. There are lots of "intentional" communities of people of various ages who do take care of each other. I have a few friends who are 10+ years older than me, and I wouldn't hesitate to provide care to them (or even my younger friends if need be), and assume they'd do the same for me.

Damn friends giving birth and dissappearing? I've found that there are certian groups of people to tend to not breed, or if they do, still remain involved with their non-breeding friends as well. In my experience, these folks tend towards volunteering in the community for "liberal" and especially non-religious entities. Socialists, community radio/free speech advocates or volunteers for social service orginisations that provide services for adults or animals. Or they tend towards roller derby, rock shows and/or hanging out in bars.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

I got a downside to Childfree Lifestye:

1. Our taxes wasted of Breeders scum

2. Easily get Bingoed by Childed people - left, right and centre. But we resist them more.

3. Govenment and religious people hate CF people's guts because we become smart by deciding not to go thorugh their sad soddy paths of having kids with their kiddy sarifice stupid burdens also we to good and smart to dodge "wallet", "oops", and so on.