Same here!

A nice quote I'd like to share from a Tumblr blog:

The only babies I had were baby pokemon!

Ditto! (Haha, pun) 

Anemia

There are a lot of things that make me happy to be childfree. There's one I experience everyday: anemia.

I have iron-deficiency anemia. Thankfully, it's not a serious condition for me, with the only effect being fatigue. No matter how much sleep I get the night before, I will undoubtedly feel very tired sometime during the day, usually in the late afternoon. Resisting the urge to fall asleep is not easy. Often, I've fallen asleep without noticing and slept for as long as two hours.

Waking me up from these naps is nearly impossible. Even if I am woken up, it's easy for me to fall right back asleep. I could literally fall asleep with the sound of a fire alarm blaring. That's how tired my anemia makes me.

I wouldn't want to imagine the trouble I'd be in with my anemia if I had a child. The kid could:

- walk right out of the house
- completely mess up the house
- hurt himself
- kill himself (ex: dresser falls down on him)
- break something
- get into some kind of trouble (ex: playing on the phone)
- be crying at the top of his lungs because he has some need untended to

There are countless stories of parents who "only looked away for a minute" and something happened to their child. The kid wandered off, injured himself, got hit by a car, was kidnapped, fell out a window, etc. Every single year, numerous articles of these incidents appear on news websites and blogs.

If one minute is all it takes, one hour is a death sentence.

Little CF Boxes

While browsing one of my favorite forums, I came across an interesting thread. The poster mentioned another forum, where a woman was asking it was unacceptable for her to be CF, but not a coworker of hers. The woman in question was someone who enjoyed being at home and had hobbies such as baking and art crafts. Her coworker was a traveler who often traveled with her husband. The woman's other coworkers were often pushing their babies on her, in hopes of her getting "baby rabies" and would say her lifestyle was why she should have kids.

The creator of the thread related, saying she has a similar life while a friend of hers is a spontaneous traveler. She and her married at the same time, but only she was questioned about being pregnant or planning to while her no one questioned her friend.

As some other users stated on the thread, the reason for this seems to be that when most people picture a childfree person, they think of someone reckless or hedonistic. While spontaneous traveling doesn't fall under either in my opinion, it is a lifestyle many would consider incompatible with children. On the other hand, someone who enjoys being at home and has hobbies that are related seems like the perfect person to have children to these people because children require so much attention (in other words: stay-at-home mom).

This is something I can relate to as well. While I haven't been bingoed about being childfree, I have been bingoed about an "abnormal" teenager. My family couldn't understand that I, unlike them, I don't need to constantly go out or socialize every hour. My peers often asked me why I never dated (lack of interest) or if I'd been to a club or smoked or drank (the answer to both is no). As someone between the ages of 13 and 17, I was expected to do some, if not all, of these things or want to. Instead, I preferred being at home, reading, surfing the internet, watching TV or playing games. Exciting? Not at all and I didn't want it to be.

Much like teenagers, I think many people put the childfree into this little box of a hedonistic and reckless lifestyle. They're glad these CF don't have children because they couldn't fit the responsibility into their lifestyle. So when a CF person comes along who does not fit into this little box, it makes them question their thinking. The idea of someone who enjoys being at home not wanting children is absurd because, in their minds, this person is already home much of the time anyway, so it won't be a big change (which is an utter lie).

The idea is basically you cannot have an on-the-go lifestyle without being childfree and that you cannot have a home-oriented lifestyle without children and neither is true (although the former is very expensive).

Too Much Noise

Yesterday, I visited a friend of mine for her birthday. Her birthday is actually tomorrow, but that's a school day and we attend different districts, so we wouldn't have been able to see each other that day.

I only stayed for two hours, but I had a good visit. However, I wasn't the only guest. Two of her small nieces and one of her nephews were also there, being babysat by her mother. The children were nice and, at one point, even watched some clips of Child's Play with us on her iPad.

While these kids were sweet and well-behaved, they were also loud. Very loud! They weren't screaming at the top of their lungs or such, but they were loudly squealing, laughing and playing together. It was cute to see and I'm glad the children were enjoying themselves and my presence didn't bother them. But despite this, there was only so much noise I could take. Eventually, their cute squeals became a nuisance, their play fighting began to sound like silly squabbling and their volume seemed to increase, despite that it actually hadn't.

Although I didn't plan to stay long to begin with, I knew that if I was getting aggravated, I'd best get ready to leave. So after we finished watching the movie clips, I hugged my friend and said goodbye to her family. I left feeling happy with my visit, but relieved to have gotten away. I have to admit I was also thankful my friend is a little oblivious and didn't notice my growing irritation with the noise, not that I wasn't trying to hide it anyway.

My opinion of the children hadn't changed. I still thought they were cute and was happy I was able to see them. The only thing that drove me away was the continuous noise, which I couldn't blame them for. They were kids and kids tend to be loud. I couldn't ask them to be quiet when they weren't acting up to begin with and weren't my family.

I relish the quiet I usually have in my own home. It's not always perfect, but it's where I have my own little sanctuary and can cut off most noise if I want or need to. Kids will be kids and that's fine for the most part, but to be able escape their noise when it is no longer cute feels essential to my sanity.

You Have No Way Of Knowing

Some childfree people say if they did want kids, they would be good parents while others say if they would make terrible parents and it's part of why they are childfree (not any explanation is really needed). Sometimes, they bring up examples of abusive parents. There is a bingo to this: "You wouldn't be that kind of parent."

My response to that: You do not know.

Nobody wants to imagine that they personally know someone who is an abuser of anything, let alone a child abuser. But the reality is there's no way to know. With the exception of the most extreme, abusive parents don't stick out like a sore thumb, especially not when the abuse is non-physical.

I have said before if, somehow, I had a child and did give it up for whatever reason, I would not be an abusive parent. But I don't know this. This would be my child, not someone else's child I can send home when they get irritating. I have to tend to this child's needs. I wrote a previous post about the toll the stress would take on me. What if the stress and exhaustion became so much, I abused my child? It's easy to say I won't, but I have never been under any severe stress I couldn't handle. In a situation, in circumstances I couldn't do much of anything about, what would I do?

Of course, this doesn't apply to all childfree people. Not by a long shot and I can safely say I would never abuse someone else's kids. But my own would be a different story. Nobody who knows me could guess I'd be capable of such a thing. There's only one way to find out if I am and I'm not doing it.

I agree, but sadly, drama is valued more than good influence.

My crazy friends...

Today, I had the chance to sit and talk with two good friends of mine, who I'll call Amu and Leah. While we tend to see each other on a regular basis for the most part, it's not often all three of us can sit down and just chat like friends. As usual, we talked about various, random things and Leah had Amu and I in stitches with her silliness.

One of the things we did get to talking about was future relationships. Amu already knows I don't want kids, although Leah didn't yet. Her reaction was identical to Amu's: no big deal. They think no less of me for it. Amu and Leah's plans are very different.

Leah wants to have six children while Amu wants to have four. Leah's older sister, who is a junior in college and majors in computer science, wants to have four, one biological and the other three adopted. Leah also wants to adopt some of her kids and I believe Amu may also want to.

However, Amu and Leah also have dreams of entering the medical field. Amu wants to be a nurse while Leah wants to be a veterinarian. Leah, in fact, joked about her husband having to be the one to stay at home with the children.

As they are my friends, I do support them and hope their dreams and desires come true. But at the same time, I don't think Amu and Leah understand exactly what that entails. No matter what you take in college, you'll have to work hard, but especially in a field that requires science. Not to mention that, if Leah is serious about wanting to be a vet, she will be in school for, at least, four years longer than Amu. Even with the help of a spouse, I couldn't imagine either Amu, Leah or Leah's sister would be looking to marry and have a child right out of school unless it was an unplanned pregnancy. In fact, I imagine Leah's sister would've been a little more realistic since she is already working as hard as she possibly can. Sure, she wants children in her future, but she probably would've told Leah and Amu that it's not that straightforward.

Also, understand that me calling my friends "crazy" does not mean I don't respect their wishes as they do mine. It's more their ideals that are crazy, not their desires. For example, Leah said that out of her potential children, she wants to adopt: a black child, a white child, an Asian child and an Indian child. While this may have been three good friends talking and having a good time together, she was clearly serious about that idea. So it seems they also do not know much about adoption.

Of course, people change and grow over time. My ideas and plans changed over time. However, they changed because I learned more, whereas I didn't know much when they first formed. That's part of how I became childfree. On the other hand, if their ideas don't change, I still support them. My friends' lives are theirs, not mine.