April 4, 2007

Passing on parenthood

By Lisa Varano
lvarano@uwo.ca

Expectant mothers are welcomed to Toronto's Dominion grocery store on St. Clair Avenue West near Weston Road by parking spaces reserved for them.

Heather has parked there.

"Who's going to question me?" she says.

The 41-year-old, who works in Toronto's financial sector and didn't want her last name used to avoid offending clients, is not pregnant.

"Women have been having children for thousands of years. You're not any more special than the woman 200 years ago who was pregnant," she says.

Parking spaces for moms-to-be are just one example of how child-centric Canadian society is, says Heather.

"Really, does your child need a cashmere sweater? It's almost like trying to sell a baby as an accessory. I think that's very wrong because they're not accessories - they're lifetime commitments," she says at her office in Toronto. "If you want to have one, that's wonderful. They're your lifetime commitment, not mine."

A growing number of people are joining social clubs for the childless and now identify as "childfree," including Heather. They prefer the term to childless and hold a range of opinions, from liking children but not having them, to believing the planet is overpopulated and humans should voluntarily become extinct.

"There is generally a greater acceptance of all forms of family diversity," said University of Western Ontario sociologist Rod Beaujot, an expert in family change. "There was a division of roles, where women looked after mostly the family, and men looked after the providing and outside work roles. All that is changing in the direction of more individualism."

Still, people who choose not to have children feel pressure about their choice, he says.

"There's a natural tendency for families to want to perpetuate themselves," he says. "We need to support childbearing in Canada … but we shouldn't constrain people who don't want to have children."

Heather has always known she didn't want kids and doesn't feel any connection to children. When she was 15, she and a boyfriend broke up because he thought it was weird.

Today, Heather is the Toronto leader of No Kidding, a social club for childfree people. The Toronto chapter has about 40 active members. No Kidding, founded in Vancouver in 1984, now counts 79 chapters in six countries.

The newest chapter is in Huntsville, Ala., while closer to home in Ontario groups have formed in Kitchener-Waterloo, Burlington, Ottawa and Windsor.

Courtesy of No Kidding

Members of No Kidding gather in Toronto for childfree festival.

Heather recalls seeing the founding "non-father" of No Kidding, Jerry Steinberg, on a TV talk show in the late 1990s and realizing there were other people like her.

Steinberg, 62, says he founded the club because he was losing all his friends as they had children and became overwhelmed by parenthood.

"The moment they had kids, they disappeared off the face of the Earth. It was next to impossible to reach them on the phone, to get together with them in person, to do anything with them," he says. "They were so busy and so tired and so broke that they could not chat on the phone for 30 minutes without 30 interruptions when the kids were in the house."

Back in the mid-'80s when No Kidding was getting off the ground, Steinberg received a "shocking number" of messages from strangers who had heard about the club. Gradually, however, being childfree became more socially acceptable, says Steinberg.

Nowadays, the angry calls have dwindled. Most people who call talk shows to chat with Steinberg have children but agree with his message that people who don't want kids shouldn't have them, he says.

But childfree people are still accused of being selfish. Steinberg rejects that criticism.

"I would say, 'Excuse me - you're saying kids are a gift from God. I'm refusing the gift, and I'm selfish? And you're running to the door to get the gift and you're not selfish?' " he says. "It's the people who are clamouring for the gift who are selfish, not the people who are saying, 'No, thanks.' "

Several misconceptions dog the No Kidding group in Toronto, says Heather.

"We're not a bunch of child-haters," she says. The group isn't political - it takes no official positions - nor is it a singles club.

No Kidding sticks to socializing. Members meet over dinner to talk about politics and movies but rarely about children. For most parents, talking about children is like chatting about the weather. It's a conversation to fall back on, says Heather.

The Toronto chapter hosted No Kidding's annual international convention last summer, a childfree festival. Members didn't meet to child-bash; rather, they took in the city's tourist attractions. The next festival is slated for the fall in Las Vegas.

Some members are so certain they do not want children that they take steps to ensure they will never become parents. Heather decided she wanted to be sterilized at age 25 but doctors resisted.

She saw two male doctors who flat-out refused. So she requested a female doctor, who told her she was too young. But the same doctor agreed to the sterilization if Heather waited two years. And so she did, becoming sterilized at age 27.

"I was ecstatic. It was as if I was pregnant," she says.

Heather, who was an only child, has had little exposure to children because she has no desire to babysit or hold babies. She was handed her best friend's newborn once and quickly put the baby down - that was the only time she briefly held a child.

Being childfree has presented challenges for Heather's dating life. When she tested the waters by asking men if they wanted kids, they would often say yes, thinking that was the answer she wanted.

"I did date a man who had a child. That was one of our biggest problems," she says. "I thought I could make it work because he didn't have custody. It drove me crazy every weekend that kid was there."

Heather dates an older man who does not want kids.

Steinberg faced a similar situation when he dated a single mother.

"I found that even real intimacy, such as hugging and cuddling and kissing and lovemaking - especially the lovemaking part - had to wait until the kids were well asleep," he says. "It had to be muted. And once in a while it was interrupted by a child who wanted a drink of water."

When Steinberg's first wife decided she wanted children, they divorced. He is now married to a woman he met through friends in No Kidding. He had a vasectomy at age 34.

A disproportionate number of people in No Kidding work with children, says Steinberg, who is a teacher.

"I like kids," he says. "I just don't need them 24/7 to feel complete."

Courtesy of Jerry Steinberg

Jerry Steinberg is the founder of No Kidding, a social club for the childfree.

When friends tell Steinberg he would have made a good father, he asks them how they can be so sure. He did not want to risk being a bad parent, he says.

"For many people, parenthood is lovely and kids are wonderful. But for some, it's a nightmare," he says. "Saying that everybody has to have kids is like saying everybody has to be a music teacher. I, for one, would make the world's worst music teacher."

The decision not to have children is an intimate issue, says Lynne Van Luven, a writing professor at the University of Victoria who recently edited a collection of essays called Nobody's Mother: Childless Women Speak Out. The essays challenge the assumption that women must bear children.

Van Luven, 59, refers to herself as childless because she says it's more neutral than childfree. She oscillated between wanting kids and being comfortable without them.

People ask why she hasn't had children.

"I try not to be annoyed. I don't think it's anybody's business," she says. "It's sort of like asking someone about their sex life. You don't go up to someone in a supermarket and say, 'So, do you prefer the missionary position?' People seem to think that if you have a vagina and a uterus, you're somehow public property."

Heather scans an editorial that orders Canadians to "Start Making Babies," published the day after Canada's low birth rate of 1.5 children per woman was announced last month. She dismisses the order. Fifteen years after undergoing sterilization, she says she has no regrets.

"I think it's wonderful, in this day and age, women have the choice to control their own bodies and choose whether they want to have children or not. It's nice that slowly society, to a certain extent, is accepting of them."