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Childfree Men: Do They Feel the Guilt?
By Sylvia D. Lucas (or, *former-me)
Childfree men, whether they’re Dual-Income-No-Kids “lifers” or just waiting until later to have kids, haven’t shared the focus of the barrage of attacks their female counterparts have endured since the advent of birth control. How do men without children get off so much easier … or do they?
Whether in magazine articles, blogs, online publications, or in person, women without children are “bingoed” (chastised for not having kids/told why we should have kids — “Oh my god, you’d love it!”) pretty regularly. We’re told — usually indirectly and/or from a safe distance — that we’re cold, we’re freaks, we’re selfish, we’re child-haters, we’re non-nurturers (so what?), we’re unnatural…
And that’s just for starters.
Most of the insults are too absurd to be offensive, so I’ll call them “pesky.”
“Offensive” would be something like the oft-repeated study findings that show women are apparently at higher risk of developing breast cancer if we don’t produce offspring.
How’s that for pressure?
Are men without children made to feel guilty, too?
A survey conducted by author Laura S. Scott, author of Two is Enough: A Couple’s…
