Child “less”
And loving every minute of it
On any given weekday morning in millions of households across the country, parents yell down hallways and up the stairs for children to come to breakfast.
Cereal falls into bowls, spilled milk pools around the salt and pepper shakers on the counter, backpacks zzzzip, and shoelaces get double-knotted for safety.
Kids are shuffled out the door and onto the school bus.
In significantly fewer households, the scene is less chaotic. An alarm goes off and a shower runs. Somewhere, a toaster pops an English muffin, the sound interrupting the subdued drone of an early morning political commentator on TV. A woman slips on her shoes, turns off the TV, and grabs her travel mug filled with hot coffee, leaving for the day.
She doesn’t carry a diaper bag, has no idea what a “binky” is, and hasn’t tripped over a toy since she was a child and the toy was her own.
She is considered by some a curious anomaly, the evidence of which can be found in book titles such as, Unwomanly Conduct: The Challenges of Intentional Childlessness, by Carolyn M. Morell; Voluntary Childlessness: The Emergence of a Variant Lifestyle, by Ellen Mara Nason; and Without Child: Challenging the Stigma of Childlessness, by Laurie Lisle.
