{"id":1358,"date":"2014-08-11T12:20:13","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T12:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/families\/?p=132"},"modified":"2014-08-11T12:20:13","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T12:20:13","slug":"childfree-is-family-friendly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2014\/08\/11\/childfree-is-family-friendly\/","title":{"rendered":"Childfree is Family Friendly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amy Blackstone<\/a> is a sociology professor at the University of Maine.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a puppy, and that\u2019s my idea of starting a family. People say, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s practice for parenting,\u2019 but if it\u2019s practice for anything it\u2019s to be a mom to another puppy.\u201d \u2013Christina Hendricks<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>
Image via Flickr Creative Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mad Men\u2019s Christina Hendricks is the most recent<\/a> among a host of celebrities to be asked about when she\u2019ll be adding kids to her family. Though the media has only recently taken notice of the childfree, the fact is that rates of childbearing in the U.S. have been on the decline for the past 40 years. It seems celebrities aren\u2019t the only ones choosing to create families that don\u2019t include kids.<\/p>\n

The notion that family is something we choose rather than something based solely on ties of \u201cblood or marriage\u201d isn\u2019t new. Kath Weston explored this idea over two decades ago in her 1991 book on gay and lesbian kinship, Families We Choose<\/a>. Yet Google \u201cstart a family\u201d and you\u2019ll quickly discover that for many people, even today, families don\u2019t begin until children enter the picture.<\/p>\n

In 1976, just 10 percent of women had not given birth<\/a> by the time they reached their forties. Today, that number has nearly doubled<\/a>, reaching 19 percent in 2012. While a fifth of women may be without children, they are not without families. Research shows<\/a> that people without children form bonds, create households, and help rear the next generation in many of the same ways that those with kids do.<\/p>\n

For the 45 childfree women and men I have interviewed in the course of my research on the choice not to parent, family is about belonging, social support, responsibility, and love. For my interview participants, family can and does include blood relations such as siblings and parents and it also includes partners with whom they may have legal ties. But, on the whole, their definitions of family emphasize the needs that families meet and the functions they fulfill rather than who their families do or do not include. As Sara, a partnered childfree woman in her mid 30\u2019s put it, family is those who are \u201cunited despite any kind of differences; it\u2019s a togetherness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>
Image courtesy we\u2019re {not} having a baby!,<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Perhaps many of the definitions of family my research participants shared emphasize meanings<\/em> rather than members<\/em> because of childfree people\u2019s own experiences of exclusion. A number of my interview participants shared stories about not being invited to events at friends\u2019 and relatives\u2019 houses because it was assumed, without asking, that they wouldn\u2019t want to participate if kids were present. Others described how \u201cfamily friendly\u201d events in the community exclude their adults-only families.<\/p>\n

Annette, a 40-year-old childfree woman who defines family as \u201canyone who cares for and loves each other\u201d shared her frustration: \u201cOur town has lots of great activities and most of them are called some variation of, \u2018Family Fun Day.\u2019 So does that exclude me? It usually does because it\u2019s geared for children, not for my<\/em> family.\u201d It seems that family fun days and family friendly environments really mean fun and friendly for just one kind of family: those that include children.<\/p>\n

Americans of course aren\u2019t the only ones whose perceptions of family seem to be limited to household units that include children. In Ireland, couples without children are defined by the census as \u201cpre-family<\/a>.\u201d In some ways, this makes sense; having children is an important milestone and children are an essential part of family for many. But when one fifth of women end their childbearing years without having had children, perhaps it is time to consider that not all families do, nor must they, include children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amy Blackstone is a sociology professor at the University of Maine. \u201cWe got a puppy, and that\u2019s my idea of starting a family. People say, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s practice for parenting,\u2019 but if it\u2019s practice for anything it\u2019s to be a mom to another puppy.\u201d \u2013Christina Hendricks Mad Men\u2019s Christina Hendricks is the most recent among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30342,8959],"class_list":["post-1358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childfree","tag-families"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}