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"In 2002, the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- which conducts annual Consumer Expenditure Surveys on the cost of raising children -- estimated that families making $65,800 a year or more will spend a whopping $249,180 to raise a child from birth through age 17."

--MSNBC Money/ Raising Your Quarter-Million Dollar Baby

Childfree Magazines & Newspaper Articles: 2002-2003


[1979-2001 articles] / [2002-2003 articles]

Please See Our List of Childfree Friendly Books


2003

  1. Florida Today: Want to be a Mom? (10/13/2003)
    "A slew of books has been written on the joys of motherhood and in support of the child-free choice for those women asking themselves if they want kids. But in the past decade there have been very few that take no stand on the subject, that simply want to help women think about the question. At the same time, the reasons to have children -- or not -- have gotten more complicated."


  2. News 8 Austin, TX: New Male Contraception (10/12/2003)
    ""We think that males really should take part in the family planning responsibility, so having children is a couple's responsibility. Therefore, if you don't want to have children, it should be a joint decision," she said."


  3. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: What’s In A Dame : We’re Not All Born To Be Parents (10/7/2003)
    "Interestingly enough, the book is not written by "traditional" mothers — one of the authors is a childless obstetrician who has been content to bring other people’s children into the world, and the other is a woman who has a young daughter, but doesn’t live with her. So the result is not a blanket endorsement of motherhood, but rather a nonjudgmental journey through the responsibilities and what-ifs that mothers and nonmothers face."


  4. Macleans: You Assumed Wrong (10/6/2003)
    "When I answer that my husband, Darrin, and I have decided not to have children, the statement is usually met with bewilderment, silence, even disapproval. I can almost hear their thoughts. Why did we get married if we're not going to procreate? And it still seems far more acceptable for a man to declare he doesn't want children. How can I, as a woman, not want children? It is my duty. I have been equipped with the power to give life, and I choose not to use it. There must be something wrong with me. I have been called everything from selfish to child-hater. I actually had someone say to me, "Well, you probably abuse kids too, don't you?" I've been told that I'm "copping out on the future" by not replenishing the earth with new human beings. I used to feel embarrassed and uncomfortable, so I would lie and say that I couldn't have children. I don't lie any more. I was tired of people's misplaced pity. "


  5. Sunspot.net: A Baby, Maybe (10/5/2003)
    "A slew of books has been written both on the joys of motherhood and in support of the child-free choice for those women asking themselves if they want kids. But in the last decade there have been very few that take no stand on the subject, that simply want to help women think about the question. At the same time, the reasons to have children - or not - have gotten more complicated."


  6. New York Times: Out of Step and Having a Baby (10/5/2003)
    "My parents were gleeful at the promise of a grandchild, but the reaction of my other 30-something friends was the same as Jane's: shock, shame and pity that I was having a baby in my 20's. When I broke what I thought was the joyous news, Kim, a high-profile ad executive, childless and recently divorced, neatly explained her philosophy about children. 'They ruin your life," she said. "It's never going to be about you again. Your relationship will change, everything will change.'"


  7. New York Times: Journeys; When 'Welcome' Doesn't Mean Junior (10/3/2003)
    "No one tracks just how many hotels have added ''no children'' policies in recent years. But the practice has become so common that the latest edition of the Zagat Survey of hotels, spas and resorts in the United States has a new category, ''Children Not Recommended,'' with more than a dozen listings, from the Kenwood Inn near Sonoma, Calif., to the tiny Point resort on Upper Saranac Lake in New York. ''If parents brought children, they'd be tiptoeing around ordering the kids not to touch this or that,'' said Tim Zagat, the co-publisher of the guides. ''These probably aren't places where kids would feel comfortable.'' The hotels say the adults-only policy is a way of maintaining their sophisticated atmosphere, with three-hour dinners and well-stocked wine cellars, and of cutting down on upkeep (no sticky handprints to clean up). Safety may also be an issue when there are swimming pools without fences and balconies with widely spaced balusters. "


  8. Expatica: Choosing a Life Without Kinder (10/2/2003)
    "Around half of all childless couples in Germany make a conscious decision against raising a family, says sociologist Harald Rost at the State Institute for Family Research at the University of Bamberg."


  9. Boston Globe: Unexpectedly Expecting: Pregnant After 40 (9/30/2003)
    "Overall, the rate of pregnancy, both accidental and intended, among older women is quite low: In 2000, there were only 11 pregnancies among every 1,000 women in their early 40s, compared to 159 for women in their early 20s. But for women over 40, just over half of pregnancies are unintended -- a rate second only to teenagers, according to 1994 data, the most recent available from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that tracks abortion, among other reproductive trends. And, in 2000, 31 percent of pregnancies to women over 40 ended in abortion -- again, second only to teenagers, also according to Guttmacher surveys."


  10. NPR: Dog is My Co-Pilot (9/30/2003)
    "Being a childless woman of child bearing age, I am a walking target for people's concerned analysis. No one looks at a single man with a Labrador Retriever and says, "Will you look at the way he throws the tennis ball to that dog. Now, there's a guy who wants to have a son." A dog, after all, is man's best friend, a comrade, a buddy. But give a dog to a woman without children and people will say she is sublimating. If she says that she, in fact, doesn't want children, they will nod understandingly and say, "You just wait." For the record, I do not speak to my dog in baby talk, nor do I, when calling her, say, "Come to Mama"


  11. <Reuters: Police Hunt Child Swapped For TV (9/29/2003)
    "The childless couple paid an Albanian man 10 million lire (5,164 euros) to provide them with a baby complete with false documents, the investigation found. The baby's natural father swapped the child for a TV, unknown to the natural mother."


  12. The Guardian: You Might Be Richer Than You Think (9/29/2003)
    "A household's position in the income distribution depends not only on the cash coming in but also on how many people share it. To achieve the same standard of living as a childless couple, government statisticians typically assume that a single person requires only 61% as much income while a couple with two children (aged four and 13) needs 145%."


  13. JoongAng Daily: Millions Of Koreans Have Decided That Raising Children Is Too Tough (9/29/2003)
    "Korea’s birthrate, measured as the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime ? has dropped to 1.17 today ? the lowest in the world. According to the Korea National Statistics Office, the country’s population rose by 495,000 last year, the first time it had grown by less than 500,000 since the agency began keeping track."


  14. NZ Sunday Star and Times: Boag: Lack of Kids Makes Clark A Success (9/28/2003)
    "I've always felt one of Helen Clark's greatest assets in terms of how she spends her time is having no children. There is no one with whom she has to spend Sunday. Helen Clark doesn't have any of those personal conflicts. She's always everywhere," Boag said."


  15. The Guardian: Fanfare for Furry Babies (9/27/2003)
    "Pets are not substitutes for human friends and family, they're a complement, as any cat-owning, childless working woman or batty spinster will tell you."


  16. The Salt Lake Tribune/ Dear Carolyn: In Search Of A Monogamous Man Who Doesn't Want Children (9/26/2003)
    "It seems like the men I know (mainly my friends) don't think about "settling down" until they feel it's time to start a family and until then they are just going to sleep with as many women as they can. Age and career and how many of their friends are married factor into this decision. Is this the general way of the world or have I gradually descended into a life surrounded by bottom dwellers? "


  17. Financial Times: The Feminist Business Agenda (9/26/2003)
    "As early as 1993, the non-profit Russell Sage Foundation found that childless women aged 30 were earning 95 per cent of similarly situated men. With that word "childless", we get to the rub. Women fault the modern workplace primarily for its failure to accommodate mothers. Those who have risen to high levels in business or the professions have often had to choose between motherhood and a career. A survey last year for the National Parenting Association, a US lobby group, found that 42 per cent of female corporate executives aged 41-55 were childless, as were 49 per cent of those earning more than $100,000 a year."


  18. Free Republic: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (9/20/2003)
    "In the weeks since then, I have metamorphosed into a truly monstrous person - a sort of rabid Humpty Dumpty who bellows at people to vacate their seats for me in the subway and commands men to help me carry my packages. If anyone ever shows the least sign of unwillingness to comply with these demands, I shriek, "but I AM PREGNANT". It was in this uncompromising frame of mind that I stood on a street corner two nights ago, trying to hail a cab. When a woman came and stood 20 yards in front of me, to hail a cab for herself, I had no hesitation in freaking out..."


  19. The Guardian: The Generation That Took A Gamble (9/17/2003)
    ""I went to a party the other day," says Rowena Lamm, a 39-year-old health writer who is actively trying to find a man to father her child. "And it was full of 40-year-old women who were either pregnant, had very young children or were sitting in corners weeping. Every conversation you joined was about that one subject." The cartoon of a crying woman saying, "Oh my God, I forgot to have children", is more applicable than ever."


  20. Fox News: Breaking the Bank for Junior (9/16/2003)
    "PoshTots.com, the Mecca for luxury children's items, has created a booming business helping parents give their rug rats the royal treatment. The Web site sells everything from a $47,000 playhouse called "Fort Bethesda" with a fireman's pole, turbo tube slide and a climbing wall to a $49 bunny "poof" skirt made of tulle for dress-up."


  21. Ohio State Research: Anthropologist Pleads For Fewer Humans, More Saved Species (9/15/2003)
    " He believes that anthropologists have a slight edge over ecologists in seeing the extent of the threat on biodiversity. “Ecology is largely a science that deals with the present,” compared to anthropology, he says, and the study of millions of years of evolution gives perspective to the current urgency over endangered species and our relationships to them."


  22. The Scotsman: Happy And Child-Free (9/13/2003)
    "Picture this: little girls, dollies, prams and dressing-up clothes. It’s a cosy nursery scene, the playing out of a biological destiny. But what would be the reaction if, when asked by a doting mummy what she wants to be when she grows up, one independently minded little miss answered, "Happy and childless."


  23. The Salt Lake Tribune: U.S. Jews: Fewer, Older And Intermarriage Rate Stable (9/13/2003)
    "Demographic studies generally consider 2.1 children per woman as the necessary number to sustain the population; Jewish women average less than 1.9 children. Also, in every age category, the percentage of Jewish women who are childless is higher than the percentage of U.S. women who do not have children. The gap narrows, but does not close, for women ages 40-44. Twenty-six percent of Jewish women from this group are childless, compared with 19 percent of U.S. women. "


  24. Sydney Morning Herald: Tryranny of the Childfree (9/11/2003)
    "All this also means we now face at work the tyranny of the young and the childless. So much for "smug marrieds". The singletons' career prospects blossom as they are able to meet the unending demands of an ageing, and empty-nested, management while the rest of us are squeezed relentlessly - not least the children, who after 10 hours of being looked after by strangers, struggle to recall your vaguely familiar face."


  25. WOIA Radio: No Kidding/ Child-Free Couples & Singles (9/11/2003)
    " The growing organization follows a similar demographic trend in which the percentage of women of childbearing age who define themselves as voluntarily child free is on the rise. "


  26. Christianity Today: Is It All Right for a Married Couple to Choose to Remain Childless? (9-10/2003)
    "What's unusual is the choice never to have children. Couples contemplating this decision need to ask themselves what their motives are. Are they being self-indulgent or making an idol of career or money? Or are they choosing this path prayerfully because they feel called to love God and serve him and others in a different way? Childless-by-choice couples always should ask whether they have a special responsibility to serve God's people in ways couples with kids can't. The key to all this is that Christ asks us all to take up our cross, sacrifice ourselves, and follow him out of love in some capacity."


  27. The Guardian: In the Family's Way (9/9/2003
    "The young mother may be advised to give up work till her children are older or she may be urged to fight for government policies and workplace changes that would enable her more easily to combine both roles. But basically the books all give the same depressing advice: compromise, settle, tone yourself down, and do it sooner rather than later."


  28. Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke (9/9/2003)
    "One evening Ruth Ann walked into the living room to hear Dexter, now seven, on the phone, talking to a bill collector. “My mom doesn’t do that, and you shouldn’t call here any more. Leave us alone."


  29. Boston Globe: A Room of One's Own (9/7/2003)
    "One of the caveats of motherhood is that you forfeit your right to private space. Once the kids come, you leave the bathroom door open. You leave the bedroom door open. For that matter, your whole life turns into an open book, subjected to scrutiny from the offspring, accusatory chants of "Why do you do it this way?" or "You're always telling me one thing but doing something else." Mothers may not have private lives, at least not without effort, guilt, and secrecy, and the idea of having private space is orders of magnitude more weird. Imagine "a mother shutting her door, and the children knowing she is behind it; why, the very thought of it is outrageous to them," writes Munro, who was known to have composed her fiction in her bedroom, snatching moments between children and chores. "A woman who sits staring into space, into a country that is not her husband's or her children's, is likewise known to be an offense against nature.""


  30. Atlanta Journal Constitution: Married Without Children (8/24/2003)
    "They see marriage as a union to fulfill emotional and material needs, said Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. They delight in a world without soccer practice, PTA meetings or Elmo songs. They travel on a whim and enjoy nights out without finding a baby sitter. "


  31. Sydney Morning Herald: The Church Puts The Sin Into Single (8/20/2003)
    "They related Bible stories about Jesus's love for single women - how cutting through the gender mores of his culture he turned away those wanting to stone an "adulterous" woman; how he was a close friend of Lazarus's single sisters Mary and Martha; how he chose a single woman and ex-prostitute to be the first witness to his resurrection."


  32. Pittsburgh Tribune: Effort Toward Building Community Blows Up In Parent's Face (8/19/2003)
    "Over the past 22 years, I have watched a disturbing (and somewhat uniquely American) parenting trend," she wrote. "Today's parents are no more repulsed by the gum wads than parents of yesteryear were. Today's parents, though, want someone else to protect their children from them." Parents bring their children to restaurants and expect the wait staff and other patrons to watch the kids, she wrote, and the same is true for library story hour, where "day care" kids overwhelm the librarian while "accompanying caregivers chat amongst themselves."


  33. MyInky: Living Alone Leads To Lonely Death, Empty Funeral Parlor (8/19/2003)
    " As he slowly weakens, he mentally flogs himself for not leaving progeny to carry on his good name. But it could be that the opposite is true. Perhaps he's dying the same way he lived. Alone."


  34. The New Yorker: Leave No Parent Behind (8/18/2003)
    "Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi demonstrate, in their forthcoming book “The Two-Income Trap,” that having a child is now the best indicator of whether someone will end up in “financial collapse.” Married couples with children are twice as likely as childless couples to file for bankruptcy. They’re seventy-five per cent more likely to be late paying their bills. And they’re also far more likely to face foreclosure on their homes. Most of these people are not, by the usual standards, poor. They’re middle-class couples who are in deep financial trouble in large part because they have kids."


  35. Madison.Com: Kid Costs Can Overwhelm Parents (8/18/2003)
    "From 1983 to 1998, the price of housing for married couples with children rose 79 percent in real terms, roughly three times as much as it did for childless people. One reason, of course, is that couples with children live in bigger houses these days, but the real reason is that parents get into bidding wars for homes in safe neighborhoods with good public schools."


  36. Independent Online: Motherhood is Boring, Say Young Women (8/14/2003)
    "Annily Campbell, author of Sterilised Women, a book based on interviews with women who choose to be sterilised to prevent pregnancy, said: "People always ask women without children why they did not have any, but no one ever asks women with children if they regret having them."


  37. The Guardian: Will I Regret Not Having A Baby? (8/11/2003)
    "Other women say they feel a yearning for motherhood like a physical ache. I don't know what they're talking about. The daily depredations of child rearing, though, seem viscerally real. A child, after all, can't be treated as a fantasy projection of my imagined self. He or she would be another person with needs and desires who I would be tethered to for decades."


  38. Pittsburgh Tribune: New Parents Discover How Child-Unfriendly Our World Really Is (8/10/2003)
    "Either some restaurants do a better job of cleaning beneath tables, or they do not attract as many gum blobs. I'm not sure which. But it got me wondering, wouldn't it be nice if restaurants were actually aware of the blobs and removed them before we arrived? In what other ways is our society family-blind? Such blind spots pull back the curtain, I think, on a society that does not place a high priority on children's well-being, nor does it protect our children. "


  39. Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Northwest Birth Rate Hits A Record Low (7/31/2003)
    "The group says the population of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia grew to 15.1 million people last year -- an increase of 144,000, or 16 people per hour. That puts the Northwest's population growth rate at its slowest pace since 1986."


  40. The Globe and Mail: Motherhood's Last Taboo (7/5/2003)
    "There's a new novel out called We Need to Talk About Kevin, by a woman named Lionel Shriver. What happens when a woman, Eva, does everything "right," quits work, marries, has a baby and then discovers that she doesn't like her kid? It's not a question of female empowerment, believe me. It's about women saying the truth out loud: "I don't like my child." Perhaps it will be nicknamed Sick Lit. Fine, I'm glad it is being said."


  41. New Zealand Herald: Childless Couples Set To Become Most Common Family Type (6/30/2003)
    "One-person households will increase by 149,000 -- 45 per cent -- from 333,000 to 482,000, largely due to the ageing of the population."


  42. Western Catholic Reporter: Religious Canadians Usually Want Children, Says Survey (6/23/2003)
    "The article, entitled Childfree by Choice, reported that Canadians with no religious affiliation are more likely not to plan a family than their religious counterparts. Among those in the age group 20-34, 12 per cent of those with no religious affiliation expected to stay childfree, compared to six per cent of religious Canadians."


  43. Times Herald-Record: Child-Free - And Lovin' It (6/22/2003)
    "Many of those who are child-free wonder why they always have to justify their lives, personalities and beliefs. Lassen acknowledges that she loves children and describes herself as nurturing but, "I just didn't want to wait until the children were out of the house and in college to have fun," she said. "It takes a strong person to make that decision."


  44. Rutgers University: Report Highlights Trends Showing A Decline In Child-Centeredness In American Society (6/13/2003)
    "The Census Bureau projects that by 2010 families with children will make up only 28 percent of all U.S. households, the lowest number in at least a century. Also, a majority of Americans disagree that the main purpose of marriage is rearing children, the report finds."


  45. The Globe and the Mail: Traditional Family Still The Norm (6/10/2003)
    "In 2001 married or common-law couples with children aged 24 and under living at home represented 44 per cent of Canadian families, down from 55 per cent in 1981. At the same time couples with no children at home accounted for 41 per cent of families, up from 34 per cent two decades earlier."


  46. Seattle Gay News: Choosing Not to Have Children (6/6/2003)
    "Given the current surge in Lesbian parenting, the moms among us could one day be the majority in our community - maybe even in my lifetime, when I'm a childless crone. If that happens, I hope our institutions and businesses remember and respect that the fight for Lesbian parenting rights was all about choice - including the choice to pursue paths other than motherhood."


  47. Salon: We All Die Alone (5/9/2003: Subscription Required)
    "The alternative to stocking our lives with individuals duty-bound to care about us is just too scary. It requires facing, in a forthright and unflinching way, what it will mean for us -- that's me and you, pal -- to get old."


  48. Salon: To Breed Or Not To Breed (5/6/2003: Subscription Required)
    "A child, after all, can't be treated as a fantasy projection of my imagined self. He or she would be another person with needs and desires that I would be tethered to for decades. And everything about meeting those needs fills me with horror. Not just the diapers and the shrieking, the penury and career stagnation, but the parts that maternally minded friends of mine actually look forward to: the wearying grammar school theatrical performances. Hours spent on the playground when I'd rather be reading novels. Parent-teacher conferences. Birthday parties. Ugly primary-colored plastic toys littering my home." (Subscription Required)


  49. The Cincinnati Enquirer: Childless By Choice (4/25/2003)
    " Jerry Steinberg prefers documentaries to cartoons. He likes spontaneous walks at midnight, sleeping in late and relaxing to classical music when he comes home from work.'The last thing I want is to get pounced on when I walk in the door,' said the 57-year-old Vancouver, B.C., man, who, for many reasons, decided nearly 30 years ago that he never wanted children."


  50. Slate: What Spilled Out When I Cracked My Head Open (4/3/2003)
    "...to compensate for the loss of my manuscript I needed to abandon most of my responsibilities as a father. How I had spent several months redefining what is meant by "the bare minimum"—how little a husband and father can do and still not trigger screams of terror when he walks in the front door. How I had a genius for it—and an excuse. A deadline....It's even more astonishing how, even when we might think we have earned a right to forget about our children for a moment, we haven't."


  51. ABC News: Few Worries About Vasectomy (3/12/2003)
    "The new research, published in the March issue of the journal Fertility and Sterility, actually found vasectomy patients scored higher on self-esteem measures and problem-solving tests than the general population."


  52. Free-Lance Star" Growth OK When It's Family (3/1/2003)
    "The problem is that every parent and grandparent wants the same thing for his children and grandchildren and all that growth adds up. Suddenly, we are back to the basics of human nature--we want our family members to have every advantage but we don't care about anyone else...Maybe herein lies the problem. Maybe it is not the developers who are at fault but the people who have children. After all, if there were no children or grandchildren there would be no need to build more houses and all this growth we complain about would evaporate.


  53. The Guardian: Well, It Sounded Like A Good Idea In The Pub (2/16/2003)
    "This is a short book adapted from a short essay by father (Laurie Taylor) and son (Matthew Taylor) in Prospect magazine. The original piece was sparked by a conversation in a pub, a difference of opinion about fatherhood, which led them to pose their strange question. They characterised voluntary childlessness as a 'disease' and attracted outraged comment from readers."


  54. Essence: To Me With Love: Single And Childless, One Woman Embraces The Joys Of Partnership And Motherhood By Opening Her Heart To The People Life Sends Her Way (2/2003)
    "In my composite life there is no son or daughter either, but for the last six years there has been Rhonda, almost 17 now, the young woman I mentor. Her own mother died almost a decade ago, and I have grown to love her as if she were my own. Unlike many women my age, I have never longed for an infant, never seriously considered having a baby solo."


  55. Albuquerque Tribune: Should Being A Parent Make A Difference? (1/24/2003)
    " The fact is that for strategic reasons, companies offer assorted benefits to different classes of workers. Not everyone benefits from, or deserves, advanced educational opportunities, support for conferences, travel, executive perks, stock options, coverage for mental illness, sabbaticals or family-oriented coverages. These are afforded because companies see their value in terms of employee attraction and retention, motivation, work climate and cultural values."


  56. Eastday: Chinese Single Women Enjoy Colorful Lives (1/24/2003)
    "In modern Chinese cities, the number of single women like Wei is increasing and the single life is being accepted by more women. An investigation by the Zero Investigation Company in six big cities showed that 82.79 percent of urban women accept the idea of the single life, and the percentage is as high as 89.94 among women with a higher educational background."


  57. Sydney Morning Herald: Making a Man Go Father (1/12/2003)
    "The study, released last week with much media fanfare, concluded men were delaying having children more than ever and almost a quarter would never become fathers."


  58. The Sun Link: Childless By Choice, But Whose Choice Is It? (1/5/2003)
    "Men more commonly talk about enjoying the freer lifestyle; women often see this as a choice between motherhood and a career."


  59. Alternet: Techsploitation: Baby Makers (1/2/2003)
    "I'm happy," I said. "I like kids, but I don't want any of my own. I've been fixed." "No," the person asserted. "You're broken."


  60. Aging Social Policy (US Department of Health and Human Services): Effect Of Childlessness On Nursing Home And Home Health Care Use (2003)
    "This study examines the likelihood of nursing home and home health care use for childless older Americans."


    2002

  61. The Guardian: Time to Ban Takeaways - And Babies (12/30/2002)
    "[Babies] They are just one big walking (or sleeping or crawling) eco-disaster. They encourage a huge spike in our conspicuous consumption and all those disposable nappies are our landfill sites' worst enemy, alone accounting for up to 4% of all household waste in the UK."


  62. Science News: Male Pill On The Horizon (12/14/2002)
    "A practical birth control pill for men has long been on medicine's wish list. Now, researchers have discovered that a new oral drug created to ease a genetic disorder could have contraceptive benefits."


  63. Shape: No Plans For Children (Mind Body Q & A) (12/2002)
    "The dismissive or belittling comments you're encountering from others reflect our culture's assumption that being a "real woman" necessarily means bearing children. You might respond to such remarks by saying that you are trying to be thoughtful about the responsibilities of motherhood, and you're simply not sure if motherhood fits into your plans for your life."


  64. The Age, Australia: Don't Call Me Daddy (11/9/2002)
    "A preliminary study based on the federally funded Household, Income and Labour Dynamics (HILDA) survey, released late last month, found that men aged 18-24 and 25-39 expected to have fewer children than women of the same age group; 27 per cent of 18-24-year-old men said they expected never to have children (compared with 21 per cent of women). The survey, which is tracking 14,000 Australians over three years, found lower-income men wanted fewer babies, and wanted them later. On the issue of which gender holds sway over family planning, the survey proclaimed: "The role of men is of equal importance in determining fertility outcomes over time."


  65. Sydney Morning Herald: No Baby, No Cry - That's Bliss (11/7/2002)
    "The coo-instinct seems to have been left out of me, and I have no internal timeclock ticking down any biological imperative. Given this, it always seemed stupid to me to have children just because generations of men (and a few women) promised me it would make me feel fulfilled."


  66. Star Tribune: Why Some Men Are 'Childless By Choice' (10/28/2002)
    "Like many guys, Petersen said, he didn't give children much thought until the woman in his life raised the issue -- in his case, his wife, a year into their marriage. She didn't want children, and he had no strong feelings one way or the other -- having never really considered the question. So they agreed to remain a twosome.

    The three years since have only persuaded Petersen that they made the right decision. But he still chides himself for the passive way -- and he swears he's not alone -- he approached such an important decision."


  67. The Mercury News: Feeling Ostracized, Childless Workers Join Forces (10/14/2002)
    "Being childless in the workplace is not always easy. Some say they often are tapped to fill in for a co-worker who needs to leave early to rush a child to a soccer game or doctor's appointment. They also feel pressured to work nights and weekends and travel more often because they don't have 'families.'"


  68. The Telegraph: So Tired - And I Haven't Had The Baby Yet (10/4/2002)
    "Surviving on an average of just three hours, 40 minutes' sleep for the first four months, 70 per cent of women in their mid-thirties and older admitted to feeling irritated rather than concerned when their child cried. For these women, the decision to return to their careers full-time exacerbated their exhaustion. An overwhelming 92 per cent admitted to feeling "wrecked" at work. Ninety per cent also claimed their relationship had been badly affected and 70 per cent reported going off sex."


  69. American Family Physician: Women's Regret After Sterilization Procedures (10/1/2002)
    " Approximately 4 million men and 10 million women in the United States have been sterilized. Worldwide, this is the most popular form of contraception... The authors conclude that most women do not regret surgical sterilization, and that only a very small percentage of patients take action to obtain reversal of surgical sterilization procedures. Nevertheless, about 6 percent of those choosing vasectomy and 7 percent of those choosing tubal ligation are likely to regret the decision. "


  70. The Scotsman: Outrage over Tokyo Governor's Tirade On Women (9/30/2002)
    "On 12 December last year, Mr Ishihara fanned the fire by declaring in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly that he totally agreed with other comments by Prof Matsui, comparing women with animals, and said that elderly women were nothing but an oppressive burden."


  71. The Guardian: The Joys of Childlessness (8/22/2002)
    "I know poorly paid factory workers who have been sterilised because they didn't want kids. It doesn't follow that the childless among us are forging ahead in our careers, earning buckets of money and dressing head-to-toe in designer gear. And nor does it follow that the childless are necessarily single. I've been in a relationship for more than a decade and not having kids has, if anything, strengthened our love."


  72. Slate: I Am New Father, Hear Me Wimp Out (8/13/2002)
    "The other night Tabitha and I went to see Minority Report. It's the sort of movie that just a few years ago I would have cheered and Tabitha would have at least tolerated. But in the middle of the film a small child is abducted from a public swimming pool. That was enough to ruin it for Tabitha and to make me feel we ought to just skip dinner afterward and go home and make sure nothing terrible had happened to our children. This is obviously neurotic."


  73. New Statesman: Who Wants To Be A Mother? (8/12/2002)
    "Some work is not family-friendly by its nature, and there is little any employer can do about it. I am fortunate to have a job I like and one that challenges me. But it would be difficult to combine it with having children. I travel frequently, often to dangerous places and at a few hours' notice. I rarely know when I'll be back. Female foreign correspondents with children seem to feel constantly torn."


  74. Slate: Why Is Everyone Laughing At Me? (7/15/2002)
    "The second rule of fatherhood is that if everyone in the room is laughing, and you don't know what they're laughing about, they are laughing about you."


  75. The Guardian: Resistance Is Useless (7/3/2002)
    "Before becoming parents, I think we assumed that life would go on much as normal, with the added bonus of another curious pair of eyes. Our daughter demurred. Abroad was hot and far away and so foreign. She was happier sitting on Camber Sands in the rain with a plastic bucket and half a dead crab. We liked adventure. She liked routine. (In fact, if you deviated from her routine, all hell would break loose.) We ate on the run. Like an old person, she liked regular hot meals, preferably eaten with her own Teletubbies spoon laid out on her Pooh Bear placemat and drinking from her Piglet beaker."


  76. The Guardian: The Truth About Babies (6/27/2002)
    "Whoever observed that the price of democracy is eternal vigilance must have been a marriage counsellor. Maintaining a genuinely mutual relationship is a lot like pole vaulting, or brain surgery. When other people do it, it looks so easy. But try doing the same trick at home - especially after you have had a baby. Just when you thought the dangers of gender-typing were dead and buried, they rise up like unquiet spirits from the postpartum wreckage. Suddenly, she is "Mum" and he is "Dad", and - struggle and resist though they might - there isn't a hell of a lot they will be able to do about it."


  77. U.S. Newswire: Sterilization World's Number One Contraceptive Method, According to New Report (6/19/2002)
    "Worldwide, approximately one out of four couples use sterilization (21 percent female, 4 percent male) as their family planning method...Sterilization has the advantage of being a one-time procedure and relatively cheap. Roughly one-third of all married women in India and China, the world's two population billionaires, have been sterilized."


  78. Tarrant County College/ The Collegian: Women Deserve Choice Not To Be Mothers (6/19/2002)
    "Women are not baby-making machines. Reproduction isn’t our sole purpose on earth."


  79. New Statesman: Fertility Fears (Book Review/ Baby Hunger by Sylvia Ann Hewlett) (5/27/2002)
    " Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of the new manual of the moment, knows all about baby hunger. Her own appetite for nappies, disturbed nights and yucky splodges on her clothes was so hearty that in her mid-forties, having already given birth to three healthy children, she decided to try to have one final baby. At first, her husband Richard was - unsurprisingly, perhaps - not very keen but, after much soul-searching, she "persuaded him to come on board for this project". Together, they embarked on an expensive race against time. In 1997, after yet another round of IVF treatment, Hewlett delivered a healthy daughter, Emma. At the time, she was 51 years old."


  80. New York Times: The Talk of the Book World Still Won't Sell (5/20/2002)
    "Sylvia Ann Hewlett's book, Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children, has failed to make best-seller lists despite presence on market for two months with kind of publicity authors and publishers usually only dream of on major television talk shows and news programs and in leading newspapers and news magazines; its peculiar fate has become publishing world's mystery of year; publishers say fault may lie with book's generic title, ambiguous cover and failure of news media to appreciate nuance of Hewlett's research..."


  81. Slate: Driving Miss Tallulah (5/7/2002)
    "In the past three years I have tried on occasion to imagine what effects I am having on my child. I do this dutifully rather than naturally because it seems like the sort of thing a father should do. But I never get anywhere with it. The fact, as opposed to the theory, of life with a small child is an amoral system of bribes and blackmails. You do this for me, you get that. You don't do this for me, you don't get that."


  82. Washington Monthly: The Rise of the Creative Class (5/2002)
    "Young workers have typically been thought of as transients who contribute little to a city's bottom line. But in the creative age, they matter for two reasons. First, they are workhorses. They are able to work longer and harder, and are more prone to take risks, precisely because they are young and childless. In rapidly changing industries, it's often the most recent graduates who have the most up-to-date skills."


  83. Nine MSN 60 Minutes: Transcript: Childfree Zone Interview (4/14/2002)
    "My argument is it can be incredibly liberating for a couple to say no, you know. We just want to spend time with one another. We don't want to bring another person into this dynamic. We can do what we want, when we want to, and it's just two … and a dog."


  84. Salon: The Baby Panic (4/23/2002)
    "So far, however, nobody has pointed out that Hewlett herself is downright eccentric on the topic of children -- she has five with the same husband (including one from his previous marriage), the last one conceived through nightmarish infertility treatments when she was 51. It seems clear that her own obsession with mothering has distorted the social science she's trying to explain, and exaggerated the problem she proposes to solve."


  85. Salon: A Woman's Place (4/23/2002)
    "As history shows, childless women in America eventually provoke hysteria. Gail Collins recently pointed out in the New York Times that at the turn of the century, when women's education mushroomed, their professional options expanded and some of them declined to reproduce, the country panicked about "race suicide." In the '80s, there was fear about what one writer called "the Birth Dearth," and single females were either pitied, mocked or demonized. The unencumbered woman quickly wears out her welcome in popular culture."


  86. Christian Science Monitor: In Japan, Life Without Children Is Savored With Guilt (3/27/2002)
    "'In Japan, there's a strong feeling that you don't have children for yourself but you have them for your parents,' says Akira Takemoto, assistant professor of Japanese language and literature at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. 'That's why it's difficult for young adults to make that choice...'"


  87. Sydney Morning Herald: This Pitch Doesn't Ring True (3/26/2002)
    "Women are more educated than ever, yet we are still treated by marketers and advertisers as though we are no more than the sum of our kilos, cut of our dress, length of our hair. Forget menstrual calendars on candy-red phones designed to remind you that another egg has been wasted and you are another month closer to menopause and lifelong childlessness."


  88. The New York Times: For Women, The Price Of Success (3/17/2002)


  89. UCSD Guardian: Challenging Notions Of Normalcy (1/7/2002)
    "People are generally less worried about financial stability before they have or adopt children. During the childless period of their lives, people are more likely to allow their conceptions of society and the world to be free-floating and capable of change. They are likely to accept diversity in all shapes and forms -- sexual orientation, sexual identity, religion, race, ethnicity, disability -- more willingly."

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