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And my point is, this is basically the case for everyone.
If somebody judges you for being child-free, so what? Anybody is free to make any judgments they want. You feel justified in your judgmentalism. So does anybody else who is making judgments on others. Doesn't mean it has to matter to anybody one way or another.
My overall attitude: "So you have an opinion. That's nice. Me, too, and I'm pretty solid on mine as it is." People can judge whatever they like, I make the decisions about what's best in my life independently of all that noise and am good with it.
Nowadays, with birth control, more work opportunities and more equality for women, etc, etc, there are more and more couples who decide to stay childless.
However, reading many testimonies online and taking in count how society reacts i wonder how difficult it really is for those couples to cope with the social pressure to have kids.
I know at least 4 couples (all in their early 40s) who decide to stay childless by choice,and i wonder how they cope. In this case, all this people are from literary circuits, are either writers or university proffesors involved with the art scene in where a lot of people are like this, so they definitely arent judged or pressured by their peers and friends. But im sure they are pressured by their parents (that grew up in a different time with different values) and by other people with not so progressive views. Others outside the intelectual/arty circuit have it much worse.
I think it might be very difficult to cope with this in a more conservative place like the US, in where tradition seems to be more prominent. And, outside of big cities, it must be really very hard to cope with the constant social pressure.
I would like to read opinions of couples or single people that are childfree by choice, and other people that know this couples and see how they are mistreated.
By "society" do you mean the uneducated, low-IQ majority of our "society", what a patrician Roman would refer to as the "Vulgarity"? That's how I view them. Anyone who inquired (I'm now old enough they have shut up, hopefully for good) was put back in place with a pithy retort.
"Frankly my dear I don't give a damn that you think we should have kids. Not happening."
So to answer your question more directly, I judge them much more harshly, and normally after one treatment they go away.
I think there is pressure from certain people, mostly family members, who want grandkids or nieces/nephews, etc. I know my mom would be quite sad if I didn't want kids because I am her only kid. But it's my choice and she would deal with it.
I always wanted kids and expect to have them someday but it is no walk in the park from what I see. In fact, I would rather that people who don't want kids not have them than having kids and not treating them well because they resent being a parent. There are way too many of those people around anyway.
From my observation, being child-free has become more socially "acceptable" as people have started to put more thought into the decision to have children, rather than it being the default. Personally, I'd rather hang out with people who are contentedly child-free than those who practically worship their children and can't talk about anything but Mason's or Ella's latest cutesy expression/superhuman talent/ unusual bowel movement.
I grew up in a Catholic community in New England back in the 1970's and 80's. Back then cultural Catholics were brow beaten and brainwashed into having large families. Understanding the social dynamics, someone could easily conclude when they wandered into an Irish-Catholic or Italian-Catholic neighborhood by the condition of the local real estate. Catholics had to spend more money supporting large families leaving less money for home upkeep and maintenance. The WASP-y neighborhoods were clean and pristine while the Catholic neighborhoods were rundown and ramshackle.
Back then I felt I had to rebel against marriage and children ( in the Catholic world, marriage without children was simply unheard of). Having drifted away from cultural Catholicism over the subsequent years I have concluded that the pressure to have children and associate judgment from others is highly localized in various subcultures of society.
I don't call myself "child-free" offline but I am open about my personal preference to avoid parenthood. For the most part the only judgment I receive is from a minority of 55+ Boston area baby-boomers (presumably Catholics).
The only pressure I got was from parents (especially mother) because of the desire for grandkids. Thankfully my youngest sister had two boys and any pressure there disappeared.
I never received any pressure from my parents. As I have mentioned in others posts on the subject, I strongly rebelled against my childhood religion and its obsession with procreation. I must have done or said something as a teenager to freak out my mother. She is very vocal about me staying child-free and is even more supportive of my child-freedom than I am. The parents never badgered my sister or I for grandchildren, although my sister has gotten married and had a daughter as she wanted. My parents are elated and I am happy for all of them, if there was any unspoken disappointment it is vanquished.
I never got any parental pressure, either, and I am the oldest of four. I was the last of the four to marry, and as of Sept., will most likely be the last of the four to become a parent (although my baby sister is only "beating" me by about two weeks, and if I have a preemie, won't "beat" me at all, necessarily).
My parents love being grandparents, but they never pressured any of us in any way to get married or have kids. We all just did what we wanted, on the timeline we wanted. My sister and I (youngest and oldest) both got married in our thirties, and my brothers (middle children) both got married in their upper twenties. We all waited until our thirties to become parents, except one of my brothers, who was 29 when his oldest was born. His wife was 31, though.
I think it might be very difficult to cope with this in a more conservative place like the US, in where tradition seems to be more prominent. And, outside of big cities, it must be really very hard to cope with the constant social pressure.
Let me the see bible belt and rural areas are not liberal friendly.
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