Please Stop Asking Me When I’m Getting Married and Having My Own Kids – by E. Barnes

Please Stop Asking Me When I’m Getting Married and Having My Own Kids – by E. Barnes

I believe I first saw this link on Melanie Notkin’s Twitter:

(Link):  Please Stop Asking Me When I’m Getting Married and Having My Own Kids – by E. Barnes

Excerpts:

I’m a PANK. Yeah, you’re reading that right. I’m a PANK, a Professional Aunt No Kids.

….I recently shared something on my personal Facebook page that reads, “I’m tired of hearing, ‘When are you going to get married and have kids?’ Let me tell you, I could have done that already and chose not to.

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

As this report notes (link is much farther down this blog page), more pressure is placed on WOMEN to marry and have children than is placed on MEN.

I know that culture and Christians can treat single / celibate / childless men like trash, but they are TEN TIMES worse on Christian WOMEN in these regards.

Women get far more pressured to marry and have kids than men do or ever will.

Women get more shamed and insulted by Christians (and at times, secular culture) for staying single, celibate, and childless than males ever are.

Just because most women are capable of carrying a baby inside them, society and churches think it’s their DUTY to have a baby (as though women serve no other purpose in life), and if they choose to opt out (or cannot have a kid), they are still marginalized or insulted for it.

Men don’t face nearly as much insult or pressure to have kids as women do.

I am right of center – but I agree with this left wing (liberal) guy that other right wingers such as Dobson’s real goal is to be against what he perceives as liberal threats to the church or culture. That is one very real motivator some right wingers have, in why they do things like harass women to have children.

I also want to say how utterly moronic I find this approach by Dobson.

A Woman’s Fertility is Her Own Business, not Everyone Else’s by L. Bates

A Woman’s Fertility is Her Own Business, not Everyone Else’s by L. Bates

I may have blogged on this before. I apologize if this is a repeat. I’m pretty sure I already read this, or something very similar to it, about a month ago, and I may have blogged on this before.

(Link): A Woman’s Fertility is Her Own Business, not Everyone Else’s by L. Bates

Excerpts (I have a few comments to make below this long series of excerpts):

We obsess over fertility as if women are slot machines who simply need to be primed and pumped at the optimal socially acceptable moment for a baby to shoot out like a prize

When Michigan-based writer Emily Bingham took to her Facebook page to vent her frustration at intrusive baby questions, she probably expected a few of her friends to share or “like” her post. Accompanied by an ultrasound photo she had found online, (Link): her post implored:

Before you ask the young married couple that has been together for seemingly forever when they are finally gonna start a family … before you ask the parents of an only-child toddler when a Little Brother or Little Sister will be in the works … before you ask a single thirtysomething if/when s/he plans on having children because, you know, clock’s ticking … just stop.

Please stop.

You don’t know who is struggling with infertility or grieving a miscarriage or dealing with health issues.

You don’t know who is having relationship problems or is under a lot of stress or the timing just isn’t right. You don’t know who is on the fence about having kids or having more kids.

You don’t know who has decided it’s not for them right now, or not for them ever. You don’t know how your seemingly innocent question might cause someone grief, pain, stress or frustration.

But instead of reaching a few dozen of her friends, Bingham’s post went viral, shared by more than 77,000 people and liked by more than 42,000. It’s not surprising that Bingham’s message struck such a chord.

My husband forgot Mother’s Day flowers, so I had sex with someone else – New York Post Says Number of Married Women Applying on Cheater Site Ashley Madison Increases After Mother’s Day

My husband forgot Mother’s Day flowers, so I had sex with someone else – New York Post Says Number of Married Women Applying on Cheater Site Ashley Madison Increases After Mother’s Day 

In light of stories like this one below, HOW can conservative Christians, Republicans, and my fellow social conservatives continue to insist that “the family” is the bedrock of society, that marriage is necessary for keeping social fiber intact, or that marriage instills qualities such as godliness and maturity in a person?

Notice also that the cheating woman in this story got married to her husband while she was in her mid-20s, which is the age at which conservatives and Christians (and including the ones who promote “early marriage”) say a man and woman should marry, but this very fact – her marrying in her 20s – is what contributed in part to this woman feeling bad about herself, about her marriage, and why she says she cheated on her husband.

(Link): My husband forgot Mother’s Day flowers, so I had sex with someone else

• by Jane Ridley
• May 2, 2015
• The adulterers website Ashley Madison is expecting a massive 500 percent spike in sign-ups from women on the day after Mother’s Day.
• According to its data, there was a 442 percent increase in sign-ups (compared to the daily norm) after last year’s holiday, following an upward trend since 2010.
• So what drives a woman to commit adultery after spending time with her family on Mother’s Day? Ann, a 42-year-old finance worker from Bergen County, NJ, who asked The Post not to use her last name, tells Jane Ridley her cheating story.
• Opening the Mother’s Day card last year from my husband, Derek*, my heart sank. We’d been married for more than 15 years, and I was the mom of his two young children — but he hadn’t even thought to buy me flowers, let alone jewelry.

• The whole run-up to Mother’s Day had been depressing. It made me feel old, like I was losing my sexiness. My marriage was stuck in a rut.

• We’d gotten hitched when I was in my mid-20s. Things were great at first, but they started to fall apart almost as soon as our kids arrived.

• Derek is only 48, but he might as well be in his 70s — he’s always tired and unmotivated. We have sex about once a week, though it’s hardly passionate. I never orgasm and just go through the motions.

• So, the day after Mother’s Day, I set up a profile on the cheaters’ website Ashley Madison.

  I’d had a bit to drink and was feeling flirtatious, so I wrote how I was a voluptuous brunette looking to have an affair.

• Within minutes, I had responses from several guys, including a man called Tom with three children. He was 42, worked in the medical field and his marriage was even more dysfunctional than mine. He wasn’t having sex with his wife at all.

Maryland: Woman Charged For Contaminating Her Family’s Milk With Dead Skin Shavings From Her Feet – Happy Mother’s Day 2015

Maryland: Woman Charged For Contaminating Her Family’s Milk With Dead Skin Shavings From Her Feet  – Happy Mother’s Day 2015

I can’t say as though I plan on making Mother’s Day related posts every year. I just saw this and it fit – and I believe Mother’s Day is tomorrow.

You can see my previous posts on how terrible Mother’s Day is for people who are infertile, for women who never married, etc., and how churches wrongly hype motherhood year round only to make it worse on Mother’s Day.

Evangelical Christians like to teach that becoming a parent automatically confers godliness and maturity on to a person, but it does not.

Evangelical Christians, in addition to other types of conservative Christians, like to point to getting married and/or having children as markers of maturity, when the Bible itself does no such thing.

Jesus never married, never had children, but I doubt many Christians would consider Jesus an irresponsible, selfish, backwards, dolt, yet they do this constantly with the followers of Jesus who never marry, or who are childless or childfree.

Here’s yet another example of how motherhood or marriage does not make a person more honest, godly, loving, or mature (the woman in this story is a mother, I think, and I believe married, too. I could be wrong, though, as the story does not explain who “family” is… these could be her aunts or nephews – most of the time, culture and reporters equate the word “family” to mean “married person who has kids”):

(Link):  Woman ‘put dead skin shavings from her feet in her family’s milk’

(Link): Maryland: Woman Charged For Contaminating Her Family’s Milk With Dead Skin Shavings From Her Feet 

• Sarah P. Schrock, 56 of Mechanicsville, Maryland, was arrested on Wednesday. The charges against her are connected to an incident where she served her family milk that she contaminated with dead skin shavings from her feet.
• The Mechanicsville woman was jailed in lieu of 10 percent of a $10,000 bond related to food contamination, as well as second-degree assault on Allison Depriest and Jessica Whitney Hurry during an incident at her home located off of Golden Beach Road.
• According to the Southern Maryland Newspaper Online, Schrock was home alone until around dinner time when Hurry and Depriest arrived. Schrock served milk with dinner. Depriest began to choke and coughed up what appeared to be human skin.
• Court papers state that Hurry also gagged while drinking the milk. An unnamed witness found dead skin in the milk after pouring it into a strainer.

The Childless Millennial

The Childless Millennial

I am normally loathe to publish anything on millennials, because the media never shuts up about them (and Baby Boomers). But, I see shades of this in older generations too.

(Link): The Childless Millennial

• A new report finds that today’s twentysomethings have a lower birthrate than any previous generation.
• ….It’s no wonder Millennial audiences relate to the show so well: Today’s twentysomething women have been slower to have children than any previous generation.
• ….In a new report, the Urban Institute think tank writes that in 2012, there were only 948 births per 1,000 women in their 20s, “by far the slowest pace of any generation of young women in U.S. history.” In 2007, the rate was 1,118 births per 1,000.
• The decline in births was largest among Hispanic women, at 26 percent, followed by black women, at 14 percent, and an 11 percent drop for white women.
• The researchers put forward a few theories for the decrease.
• One is the Great Recession, which might have hit pause on pregnancy plans because babies are, among other things, expensive. Past studies have estimated that the recession led to a 2.4 percent decrease in the fertility rate, or about 426,850 live births. The recession also slowed the trickle of immigrants to the U.S., and immigrants tend to have more children.
• … For white women, though, the story was very different: “81 percent of the decrease in fertility is attributable to declining marriage rates.” (Granted, white women were less likely to be single mothers to begin with.) All the single ladies of countless Internet essays are, indeed, staying unhitched—and they’re not having kids as a result.
• …The report authors say they don’t know whether Millennial women will eventually catch up in childbearing like women who lived through past recessions did.Overall, the report paints a positive picture for women of color and a neutral one for white women. On one hand, women might be enjoying living carefree and childless into their 30s.

Why Women Aren’t Having Children – from The Atlantic

Why Women Aren’t Having Children – from The Atlantic

(Link): Why Women Aren’t Having Children – from The Atlantic

Excerpts:

• As detailed in essays by 16 different writers, both male and female: because they don’t want to, and because not wanting to is perfectly reasonable
• by Sophie Gilbert
• Pope Francis is widely believed to be a cool Pope—a huggable, Upworthyish, meme-ready, self-deprecating leader for a new generation of worshippers. “He has described himself as a sinner,” writes Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Pope Francis’ entry on Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world,  “and his nonjudgmental views on … issues such as sexual orientation and divorce have brought hope to millions of Roman Catholics around the world.”
• But there’s one issue that can make even Cool Pope Francis himself sound a little, well, judgy. “A society with a greedy generation, that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society,” the pontiff told an audience in St. Peter’s Square earlier this year. “The choice not to have children is selfish. Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: It is enriched, not impoverished.”
• Ignore the irony of a man who’s celibate by choice delivering a lecture on the sacred duty of procreating, and focus instead on his use of the word “selfish.” This particular descriptor is both the word most commonly associated with people who decide not to have children, and part of the title of a new collection of essays, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed, by 16 different writers (both female and male) who fall into exactly that category.
• While the association appears to be so deeply embedded in the collective psyche that it’d take dynamite to shift it, if the book reveals anything, it’s that there’s an awful lot more to not wanting children than the impulse to put oneself first.

Some Atheists Are Just As Ignorant About Adult Singleness and Celibacy as Progressive Christians, Secular Feminists, and Protestant Evangelical or Conservative Christians

Some Atheists Are Just As Ignorant About Adult Singleness and Celibacy as Progressive Christians, Secular Feminists, and Protestant Evangelical or Conservative Christians

I don’t normally discuss atheism a lot on my blog, though I do sometimes write posts about my quasi-agnostic status, but I couldn’t help but notice this phenomenon.

My time on Twitter has taught me that some atheists – especially the ones with an irrational hatred of all things theist, especially Christianity – are just as stupid, prejudiced, or narrow-minded about adult singleness and celibacy and adult virginity, as are many Protestant Evangelical Christians, and other types of Christians.

Liberal, progressive, and feminist Christians are also biased against adult celibates and celibacy itself, as are secular, left wing feminists.

I normally don’t usually go looking for fights with total strangers on Twitter.

A few days ago, I was looking for Tweets with the hash tag “single” or “celibate.” You never know if you do what may turn up – you may come across some links to some good articles that way.

In the midst of skimming the tweets with the “celibate” hash tag, I saw two tweets that were very dismissive of celibacy, by two different people, one apparently an atheist, and I think the other guy was an atheist as well.

I was polite in my replies to their Tweets. I was not rude. I didn’t insult either one.

I heard back from both guys.

One guy was definitely an atheist, and I’m not sure about the second guy – though I think he was atheist too, or maybe agnostic.

The second guy wasn’t so bad. He was cordial, so there wasn’t much back and forth with him.

However, first atheist guy, with the handle @atheistic_1, either tagged his buddies in the exchange, or of their own volition, they started to chip in.

The other guys were @JeffMunroe51 and a @lobsterchin.

I don’t remember the JeffM guy being too obnoxious, and he tried to bow out of the discussion after awhile.

The lobsterchin guy began acting like a jackass, and I banned him after a few tweets.

First off, these jokers assumed I was a man. I had to correct them on that.

These atheists who were tweeting me, particularly the “atheistic_1” guy, do not understand biblical views on celibacy or singleness or natalism any more than most Christians do.

As a matter of fact, the atheist and his Twitter buddies sounded remarkably like the ignorant conservative, Reformed, Baptist, fundamentalist, and evangelical Christians whose writings about celibacy, virginity, and singleness I have been regularly criticizing and correcting on this blog the last few years.

Why Do We Still Have To Justify The Choice To Be Child-free? by H. Freeman

Why do we still have to justify the choice to be child-free? by H. Freeman

(Link): Why do we still have to justify the choice to be child-free? by H. Freeman

Excerpts.

April 8, 2015

The film While We’re Young is just the latest round in a culture war over parenting. And whatever your choice, it’s probably defined by fear of regret

They’re emotionally and physically exhausting, they’re hugely expensive and, after prison, they are the biggest curtailment of your personal freedom: objectively, it makes next to no sense to have children.

Sure, the instinctive drive to perpetuate the human species, blah-di-blah, but since it feels like the only conversation I’ve had with friends for the past three years has been how they can’t get their kids into any of the oversubscribed local primary schools, I think we’ve got that one covered.

None of it will come as news to the growing number of people in the developing world who, having decided that parenthood looks less like the triumphant arrival of the (Link): Simba cub and more like bored weekends at Legoland with a toddler having a tantrum, are opting out.

In the US  (Link): 18% of women now reach their mid-40s without having a child, an increase of 80% from four decades ago.

Last year the Office for National Statistics recorded the (Link): biggest drop in live births in 40 years.

A child-free life (a far preferable term than child-less), either by choice or circumstance, is increasingly, if not the norm, then not exactly the abnorm either.

Woman Left Quadriplegic Son in Woods in Philadelphia, Say Police

Woman Left Quadriplegic Son in Woods in Philadelphia, Say Police

And tell me again, evangelicals, Reformed, fundamentalists, and Baptists, considering news stories like the one linked to farther below, how parenthood automatically makes a person more godly, considerate, mature, and loving?

By the way, I would encourage you to visit my Twitter page (Link to my Twitter page) once in awhile, because I come across one or more stories like the one below at least weekly, but I don’t always have the time or interest to blog about each story here. (I find it easier to Tweet these types of stories on Twitter than make blog entries for each and every one.)

A lot of secular and Christian people assume that people who are childless or childfree are not fully mature, or are selfish. The woman below is a mother, but she dumped her 21 year old paralyzed son off in the woods for one or two weeks to go visit her boyfriend.

So excuse me, just because a woman never gives birth or never adopts does not mean she is a selfish, horrible person – I’ve never had a child, but I sure as hell would NOT dump a paralyzed or mentally impaired child off in the woods. Or hell, even if the child was NOT mentally impaired and had no health problems, I would STILL not do something this vile and selfish.

Being a parent does not confer certain positive qualifies on someone, such as being giving, loving, and godly.

(Link): Woman Left Quadriplegic Son in Woods in Philadelphia, Say Police

• April 12, 2015 08:23 IST
• PHILADELPHIA:  A mother abandoned her quadriplegic son in a wooded area of a Philadelphia park for nearly a week so she could visit her boyfriend in Maryland, police said.

  The 21-year-old disabled man was found by a passerby on Friday night lying on leaves and covered by blankets with his wheelchair and Bible nearby, said Philadelphia police Lieutenant John Walker.

  Police said the man who was abandoned in the woods is unable to talk and suffers from cerebral palsy.

• …The man was taken to a Philadelphia hospital to be treated for dehydration and malnutrition.

More U.S. Women Are Going Childless (2015 Report)

More U.S. Women Are Going Childless (2015 Report)

(Link): More U.S. Women Are Going Childless (2015 Report)

• The percentage of U.S. women in their 30s and 40s who are childless is rising, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau show.
• Some 15.3% of U.S. women aged 40 to 44 were childless in June 2014, up from 15.1% in 2012.
• (Link): Changes in Census’s data processing likely affected its estimates for 2010 to 2012. But even before that, the trend was up: 9.6% of women in this age group were childless in 2010, up from 9.2% in 2008.
• For women in their late 30s, the rise in childlessness is sharper. Around 18.5% of women 35 to 39 were childless last June, up from 17.2% in 2012.
• All told, 47.6% of U.S. women aged 15 to 44 were without children last year, up from 46.5% in 2012.

Talking to Meghan Daum About Selfishness, Being Childless by Choice – and how secular society idolizes parenthood and the nuclear family

Talking to Meghan Daum About Selfishness, Being Childless by Choice

It’s not just Southern Baptists and evangelical Christians who have turned the nuclear family into an idol – secular society does so as well. This interview discusses that topic, among others.

(Link): Talking to Meghan Daum About Selfishness, Being Childless by Choice

Excerpts

• … By email, Daum and I discussed everything from why childless-by-choice people are often forced to produce a “why?” for the (sometimes) well-intentioned crowd who demand an explanation for their decision to not procreate; the hubbub around egg freezing; what drives people to remain child-free; and why the phrase “child-free” itself needs to be retired.