Sunday, July 18, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

LIFESTYLE CHOICE: Childfree Zone

Members of No Kidding gather for fun with those who share their desire not to have kids

Laura and Dan Birlew coordinate the local chapter of No Kidding, a social group of people who have no plans to have children. "Every day, we're so grateful about how compatible we are," Laura says. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

Dan Birlew plays video games day and night, and he writes strategy guides on how to beat them. He is a smashing success in his field. His wife, Laura, is a freelance photographer. They got together at age 19. And even then, these two self-described "recovering Catholics" knew they would never want kids.

Dan, 33, and Laura, 32, tell these things about themselves during a Wednesday dinner in a back room at Big Dog's, a restaurant where the group the Birlews coordinate, No Kidding, happens to be hanging out for the night. No Kidding is open to people who don't want kids. It's free to attend. And at the moment, burgers and beers are being served.

"Every day, we're so grateful about how compatible we are," Laura says. She looks up, lovingly, at her much taller mate. "You know what Dan tells people? He doesn't want to share his video games."

Laura laughs. Dan, square-haired, looks with care back at her: "That's a joke I tell people. I try to add levity to it."

"I think I was born this way," Laura says.

"I think I became this way after seeing my parents interact," Dan says.

Laura tsk-tsks that thought and says Dan is a golden child in his family.

"His mother adored him, and now I adore him," she says.

Laura describes herself. In her family, she was called upon to be mature and responsible at an early age, she says, and "I'm totally enjoying my childhood now. All I want to do is have fun. ... If you have kids, when do you have any time for yourself?"

Ask other members of No Kidding why they don't want kids, and they seem to have one short answer at the ready, such as "I'm a good aunt," or "I don't like the job description" or "It's too hard." They have longer answers. They might sort into the following categories:

I don't want my lifestyle to change. The world has become too hard for kids and parenting. I don't want to worry about a child of mine getting ill, injured or killed. I don't want to possibly end up as a bad parent. I want to focus on making a good life for me and my mate. I want to travel. I want to sleep in. Babies cry. Life is hard enough as it is.

To many people in the rest of the world, it is incomprehensible why anyone would not want a child. That's exactly why No Kidding is a refuge. It's a social group, not a political organization or 12-step program. The next outing is Friday, to see the '80s tribute band Love Shack at Texas Station.

"A lot of parents don't want to be understanding about how we don't want children, but we're very understanding of why they want children," Laura says.

In fact, because of potential consequences from kid-lovers, most of the 10 people who have shown up for this particular Wednesday gathering insist they don't want their real names to appear on this page. One woman picks out her own fake name for this story, "Gigi," and says her clients might assume wrongly that she hates children, and then won't hire her as a real estate agent.

"I don't need that headache," Gigi says.

A guy in his late 20s who is planning to have a vasectomy by 30 wants to be called only Mark here, because he would rather inform future first dates on a one-on-one basis.

"You can be having great times on a date -- and then the kids thing. The conversation goes downhill from there. I say, `There's more to me,' " Mark says, " `than the ability to have kids.' But she's not going to change my mind, and I'm not going to change her mind."

One of Mark's short answers: "It's all about being an individual. And when you have a kid, that individual goes bye-bye."

There also is a woman here whose retired husband doesn't want their names used. ("People can't understand our lifestyle.") So she is referred to thus as Red and he as Red's Dude.

Red and Laura talk about the stigma of being purposefully childfree, and dealing with other women who shove pictures of their kids in their faces in attempts to convert them.

Red: "My parents complain that they want grandkids, but they have grandkids. Women are really persistent about it. I think maybe they want to share that (bond). But it's, like, `OK just stop.' "

Laura: "Don't you hate that look you get, like they feel sorry for you? Like, `You poor thing, you don't have children?' Like they pity you? Like you're not a success in life?"

They shrug.

Red's Dude is a war veteran and a former martial-arts instructor who actually has grown kids from a previous life. He doesn't see them much. He hears Red and Laura talking about how women reproach childfree women, and he says women talk even harsher to men who don't want kids.

"When you're single, everybody's always setting you up. They're always setting you up with women with kids. And they would get really offended" at his honesty about kids, Red's Dude says.

This branch of No Kidding is just one of 97 chapters that have been started in six countries. The group was fathered by Canadian Jerry Steinberg in 1984, when he was in his 30s. At the time, Steinberg had to go to four doctors before he could convince one to give him -- a childfree 34-year-old linguist -- a vasectomy.

Steinberg's NoKidding.net Web site has a section on it where people can write about being childfree. One woman, a teacher, writes that she remembers at age 8 looking out of a window and seeing her mother struggling with a chore, and she thought, "Why does Mom work hard all the time?"

It can seem to childfree people that they are serious minorities. Of American women, just 6.6 percent are voluntarily childfree, according to a 1998 Census report. (The term is, indeed, "childfree"; people who want kids but don't get them are the ones who are "childless.")

Then again, childfree people's genes die out in society. It's a Catch-22. People who are opposed to reproducing do not reproduce, so their DNA evaporates, just like the DNA did of 19th century religious sects that advocated sexual abstinence.

Academic studies of childfree people are rare, but a recent thesis by Vincent Ciaccio, titled "The Childfree: Motivations for Childfreedom and Social/Political Views," came out of Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y. Ciaccio cited previous studies showing "nine major categories" behind the reasoning of childfree people:

"Personal development, betterment of relationships, jobs and career motivations, less stress at home, fear of failure as a father, not liking kids, desire for early retirement, avoiding stress and role strain, and the desire to remain in their current lifestyle."

Ciaccio cited another major study that showed childfree couples experience more satisfaction than do couples with kids, plus a "greater dyadic cohesion," meaning more bonded relationships. Ciaccio's study found that childfree people generally: oppose being viewed as selfish; support government-funded birth control and abortion; "believe that not everyone should make efforts to have children"; and "do not respond favorably to commercials and advertisements that feature babies or children."

Ciaccio also observed: "The highest-ranking motivators show that the childfree do not want children for personal lifestyle reasons. They understand that having children will affect their privacy, reallocate their time, affect their career ambitions, their finances, and their social activities, and they do not want these changes taking place. They also do not want children to negatively affect their relationship with their partner, including the period of childbirth. Moreover, the childfree have seen the ways in which children have affected their family and friends. These reasons show a solid understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood, which the childfree do not desire to take upon themselves."

There is, it should be noted during the No Kidding collective, some judging of bad parents and kids.

The future-vasectomy "Mark" says parents learn the hard way: "They say, `Oh my God, it's not a toy, it's a responsibility.' ... Then they think they can still be single, but they can't."

Dan says he goes to parties, and a friend will try to talk to him about video games or something, but then the other guy's child will start to call out for attention.

"They try to have a three-sentence conversation, and they can't have it. You can't reason with a crying kid," Dan says.

Red's Dude says when he did date moms, their kids seemed like ingrates. And when he taught martial arts, he had to convince kids to break themselves of their unruly, ungrateful behavior.

And then there is Delia White. That's her real name. She's 47. She looks 31. She works at a hospital. Among other duties, she gives MRI tests to children. She appears to be the happiest person in this group. She says people often ask her why she is so happy. It's her natural demeanor, she answers.

"I got my tubes tied when I was 31," she says. "I had to get letters from two doctors before they would tie my tubes."

You should see the childlike smile on her face, except when Delia talks about the one period of her life, from age 25 to 30, when she was in a relationship with a man who was a father.

"It's (very) hard," she says. "I baby-sat when I was growing up, but they were always asleep. You just watch TV and go home. But when I had to bathe this child and have birthday parties for their friends, and they're running, screaming through the house, I was just like, `Aaaaah!' ... And it's your whole life. And it changes your life. And it never ends."

"Gigi," the real estate agent, says in a mocking tone: "Well, you know, it's different when they're your own."

Delia: "It would have to be different when it's your own. People always say that. But it would have to be."

Delia acknowledges that, yes, there is her own old age to deal with someday, by herself possibly, but it's worth it.

"Sometimes, I think I'm alone. I don't have family who's gonna take care of me when I'm old. But then, I come across this bratty kid who's screaming, or I'll see a mom with a 22-year-old kid living at home," she says.

There is a guy sitting next to her. He's a writer, he says. He doesn't want his name used, or his age. He picks a fake name, "Jason." He says it is not great imagining a retired life without a family to fall back on. But that thought is made only worse by people who remind him that being childfree will lead to that.

By the way, he says in response to another question, he and the other members of No Kidding are talking about this kid stuff now because a newspaper reporter is asking them about it. Usually, members talk about what's going on in their lives and have fun. They don't normally discuss with each other why they don't want kids, because they get enough of that from everyone else.

"Of all the times I've come to these" get-togethers, he says in an adult manner, "this is the only time we've talked about it."