Childfree and Loving It! by Nicki Defago

It’s definitely not helping the problem, but it’s a way of distracting people from having to think too much about it.” “It’s like they’re saying, ‘How bad can the world be when all these cute babies are being born?’ It’s like the orchestra playing on the sinking Titanic. “I wonder if people are trying to convince themselves that the situation isn’t all that dire,” says Misso, 33. While it’s only natural that baby backlash would occur, there’s much debate how the societal climate became such a perfect petri dish, a breeding ground, as it were, for it.īrian Misso, a copywriter who lives in San Francisco with his partner, thinks the current child-centeredness of our society stems from uncertain, volatile times, where people are worried not only about their own futures, but about the future of the country and the world. “It’s definitely not a support group, but there’s definitely moral support knowing there are other people who live like you do.” “We’ve started to find each other,” says Vincent Ciaccio, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., but is the spokesperson and director of strategic planning for No Kidding! in New York. Books like Jennifer Shawne’s “Baby Not on Board,” Nicki Defago’s “Childfree and Loving It!” and Frost’s “I Hate Other People’s Kids” all were published within the last year, and interestingly, when ordered on, can be added to a baby registry by the prompting of an ill-placed one-click button.Īlso gaining in popularity are childfree groups, like No Kidding!, founded in 1984, as well as and not limited to, the International Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, Kidding Aside and the World Childfree Organization. And they don’t care if they use the word hell in front of your kids, either.īaby backlash is everywhere. Because childfree adults are lashing back, refusing to drink the baby-making Kool-Aid and are aggressively asserting that they’re not abnormal for not wanting to procreate.įor lack of more erudite words, these people are mad as hell and they’re not taking it anymore. Blame the new generation of navel-gazing parents who act as if they’ve invented childbirth. And I don’t want to be labeled a freak because I don’t.”īlame the stalker-like media coverage of Angelina Jolie’s pregnancy.

“It’s people that don’t know me that say I’ll change, or that I have to have kids, that it’s my biological responsibility. “Those are people that don’t know me,” says Powell, who works at UC Berkeley and lives in Oakland. Preening pink princesses.īut as eyebrows raise when Powell, 34, makes a beeline for a particularly adorable little swaddled squawker in the corner, and the party guests start nudging Powell’s husband and saying, “Mmmmm hmmmmm, that’s you guys… any day now,” the record is swiftly set straight. And these kids, the spawn of her hyperfertile friends, come in every shape and size. LIKE A LOT of parties Bonnie Powell goes to these days, there are kids.

Childfree and Loving It! by Nicki Defago