When childfree people are assholes
On tumblr, as a childfree person, someone asked me to speak on “the bad ones” aka the ones who are virulently hateful about/towards kids.
It’s definitely a form of bigotry, and one I’ve highlighted plenty of times, because it’s horrific. It’s certainly never been my intention to portray childfree people as inherently positive or healthy or good. I’m saying that MY choice to be childfree is positive and healthy and good for me. I’ve been speaking about my own childfree journey and platforming others who have insights to offer about there.
Unfortunately, there are bad apples in this “community” (if it can realistically be considered that) just like any other. The very loud and disgusting part of the childfree movement you mention was actually why it took me probably about 15 years from when I first heard about it to actually identify with it. I have NO SPACE in my brain for any anti children animus. I love kids and it truly disgusts me when other adults act like they are not full humans who deserve all the same dignity and kindness as adults. Kids are an especially vulnerable population and my abuse history makes me extremely apt to want to protect and speak up for them.
Fun fact, I’ve worked in nonprofit youth services and advocacy my whole 18 year professional career to this point. I write about this stuff a lot because being an advocate against child abuse and for kids is one of my most important personal values and activist energies. In fact, wanting to distance myself from anyone who sounds anti-mothering or anti-parenting was something I specifically spoke against in my original post on this topic.
I’ve come to understand that these jerks are to the childfree movement what TERFs are to feminism–they’re a warped and disgusting offshoot of an ideology that means I no longer have pretty much anything in common w/ them and I sure as fuck don’t want their voices to dominate or even represent the movement at all. They’re a rotting, toxic offshoot. But ultimately, they are not what being childfree really is and I’m not going to claim them, just as I don’t claim TERFs, who are “a part of the problem” that I’m trying to address in the first place, ya know?
I finally arrived at identifying as childfree (but pro-child) because in my IRL spaces and my closer online communities, this perspective is completely lacking, and it’s an important one. I’m much more likely to hear something like “not having kids is a selfish lifestyle choice” or “you can’t know real love until you have kids” in my offline world than I am to hear anyone say anti-child things (whereas I typically encounter those views only online.) So my goal in writing and sharing what I write and share is aimed at people who feel like me–that they don’t want kids but they’re being pressured and pushed to do it. I desperately hope that even just one person will feel supported by me, and that’s a huge win; a person who routinely gets shit for not wanting kids but who knows that’s right for them; a person who feels vulnerable about the fact that people around them are telling them their choice is bad and they are bad for wanting to make it; a person who feels like “everyone is doing it” but they can’t understand why and they don’t want to. I hope these people hear from me and each other and get the comfort of knowing they’re not alone and they are valid.
That means the vast, vast majority of my rhetoric on this topic is going to be aimed at them aka people like me. The same way that I can only spend so much time arguing TERF bullshit before I get back to writing about my own feminist views…I can’t spend more time entertaining gross anti-kid asshole adults and seeming like I’m giving them any legitimacy w/in the childfree movement.
So yeah, let me take this moment to once again denounce anything that is anti-kids, anti-families, anti-mothering, and anti-wanted-pregnancies. I am a part of many peoples’ “villages” for their kids and I’m proud to do that and I love those fucking kids endlessly, even if I won’t have my own. (Sidenote, it’s also possible to be childfree, supportive of kids/families by way of acting kind and supporting policies that help those who child-rear, but still personally dislike and avoid spending time w/ kids. That’s not my deal, but it’s a valid deal.)