{"id":3263,"date":"2017-04-20T08:01:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T12:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/?p=3263"},"modified":"2017-04-19T15:14:26","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T19:14:26","slug":"honoring-the-childfree-auntie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/2017\/04\/20\/honoring-the-childfree-auntie\/","title":{"rendered":"Honoring the Childfree Auntie"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece originally appeared on the Ms.\u00a0Magazine Blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Susan, a 53 year old camp director, babysat from the time she was 12 years old. She always assumed she\u2019d have kids one day\u2014but during college, she worked in a department store where watching impatient parents with their children inspired her to radically change the path she\u2019d planned for herself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Vladimir Pustovit<\/a> \/ Creative Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThey\u2019d yank them by the arm, pull them around, yell at them, and make them sit down. It just wasn\u2019t right.\u201d Susan took the experience to heart and began to think more deeply about how she could make a positive difference in children\u2019s lives. \u201cI had a lot of experience at being with children at various stages. And I enjoyed it, I loved it, but I said to myself, \u2018There are way too many kids out there that don\u2019t have someone to look after them and don\u2019t have someone to be an advocate for them.\u2019 I felt that I could be that person.\u201d She became a teacher and then a camp director and hasn\u2019t looked back since.<\/p>\n

Making a difference in children\u2019s lives is what Susan felt destined to do. In addition to working with children in her career, Susan says she\u2019s extremely close to her nieces and nephews. They enjoy weekend visits at her home and she has the financial security to help their parents with expenses. Susan loves giving to them. As she put it, \u201cWhen they visit me, I take excellent care of them, I lavish them, we have fun, and they have everything they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

We know from our interviews with hundreds of childfree women, some of whom appear in Maxine\u2019s forthcoming film, TO KID OR NOT TO KID<\/a><\/em>, that Susan isn\u2019t alone. For these women, being a parent isn\u2019t required for making a positive difference in a child\u2019s life. Non-mothers\u2019 roles as advocates, mentors, and friends to children are well documented. A survey of 1,000 non-mothers inspired by Savvy Auntie<\/a> Melanie Notkin found that children play an active role in the lives of 80 percent of women<\/a> who don\u2019t have children of their own. Another study<\/a> found that it\u2019s common for aunts to spend money on the children in their lives and assist kids\u2019 parents financially. In fact, in 2012 aunts spent an estimated $387 on each child in their lives. Three-quarters of them spent more than $500 per child. Despite aunties\u2019 significant investments in children, and the New York Times\u2019 feature<\/a> last year on this segment of the market, advertisers have been slow to catch on.<\/p>\n

Maxine is trying to rectify this. As a commercial director and filmmaker, she\u2019s made the first Aunty commercial, released on April 17. The advert features Aunties who serve as \u201cother mothers\u201d to their nieces and nephews and celebrates the role of aunts in our community.<\/p>\n

We hear proclamations all the time that it takes a village to raise a child and we know from childfree people\u2019s own accounts that they are an important part of that village. As feminist writer Jessica Valenti notes, \u201c\u00a0we need to start thinking about raising our children as a community exercise<\/a>.\u201d Non-parent figures are an essential part of that exercise. Research conducted for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America<\/a> shows that having caring adults who are not their parents involved in their lives improves kids\u2019 confidence, grades and social skills. Non-parents also provide needed support for parents.<\/p>\n

Today, 15 percent<\/a> of women in the U.S. will reach their 40th birthdays without ever having given birth. While these women may not have given birth, they have given to the children in their lives in significant ways, both emotionally and financially. Childfree Aunties\u2019 contributions should no longer go ignored.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Maxine Trump<\/i><\/b> has directed documentaries for TV networks from Discovery to Sundance and is author of the forthcoming book \u201cDiving Into Documentaries\u201d (Focal Press, 2018). Her previous feature film <\/i>Musicwood<\/i><\/a>\u00a0was a New York Times Critics\u2019 Pick. Maxine is in full production on <\/i>TO KID OR NOT TO KID<\/i><\/a> and is seeking a brand to sponsor her new Aunty commercial.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Amy Blackstone<\/i><\/b> is a co-founder and guest author at Feminist Reflections and a sociology professor at the University of Maine where she studies childlessness and the childfree choice. Her work can be found in academic outlets, in media such as Ms., Broadly, CNN and TIME, and on the<\/i>\u00a0blog she co-writes with her husband Lance, <\/i>we\u2019re {not} having a baby!<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This piece originally appeared on the Ms.\u00a0Magazine Blog. Susan, a 53 year old camp director, babysat from the time she was 12 years old. She always assumed she\u2019d have kids one day\u2014but during college, she worked in a department store where watching impatient parents with their children inspired her to radically change the path she\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1989,"featured_media":3264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30342],"tags":[38014,37899],"class_list":["post-3263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-childfree","tag-aunts","tag-childfree"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/files\/2017\/04\/aunts.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1989"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3263"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3274,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3263\/revisions\/3274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}