Source: snugabell.com via Kathleen on Pinterest

Comedian Rita Rudner once said, “My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We just can’t decide whether to ruin the carpet or ruin our lives.”

Ruining one’s life and a child’s life can both easily be said and done, given the fact that many people put more thought into deciding what car or home to purchase, as well as what carpet to buy, than whether or not they should bring a child into the world.

I have brought children into this world, with the first unplanned in the fleeting days of young adulthood when my life’s plans included everything but having a baby.

The important philosophically hard fact is that it was my choice to both keep her and love her, as I continue to do today.

But what if I did not? What if I had decided instead to adventure through college undeterred as planned; live in a dark writer’s flat in England and then travel the world as a fearless female war correspondent?

These are questions I will never be able to answer as my life undoubtedly took a drastically different turn, but that was my choice as a woman, as a human being and as a resident of this crowded and ever-shrinking planet.

As a mother, I can honestly say that I cannot imagine my life as meaningful or fulfilling had I decided “not to have children.” However, I can also honestly say that my life might be “less stressful” and perhaps just as interesting on an equally, albeit different level.

However, the “choice debate” and the issue of politicized parental propaganda is not only limited to the lives and dramas of women.

Men also suffer the rigors of societal pressure, continually facing the dilemma of whether or not to have children and raise them, and they face unrelenting rants upon them just as women do, even though the format may be slightly different.

The biological and social pressure for men to propagate is huge, not that size matters, as males are accused of being less than masculine should they chose not to sow their wild oats and then spread them feverishly. Just ask any man over 30 without kids.

And conversely, notice the praises of ultimate manhood for males who even father children out of wedlock and across ports and distant shores. Although men may be scorned if they are merely “baby daddies” and leave children without physical or financial support, a man’s proven virility goes a long way, baby.

As a parent, you might wonder why I may be so concerned with this subject at all. The most important concern is obviously that I believe that many men and women, are harassed into becoming parents when they should not be, for their own sake and for the child’s.

Secondly, I have both friends and family members, male and female, who are consistently called names and given guilted lifetime trips about their childless status, and as grown adults, they suffer emotional and mental anguish.

To both men and women of a certain age, I have heard the following comments and questions posed:

“He or she must be gay.”

“You must have had a really bad relationship with your father or mother.”

“Have you tried therapy?”

“Are you afraid of commitment?”

“You must be sterile.”

“You are going to really regret this when you are old and all alone.”

And the always classically and affectionately put . . .

“What is wrong with you?”

In Western society and largely throughout the world, one is presumed to be cold, selfish, physically or mentally challenged, immoral and even mentally and spiritually lacking in one way or another if they decide not to have any children at all . . . .  ever.

And if the “said” childless has pets instead of children . . . let the wars and scathing commentary and glances begin ever the more ugly.

We wonder what could possibly be wrong as we imagine a multitude of strange skeletons hiding in their closets—perhaps even scathingly theorizing if they too have yet to come out of one. Whispers, rumors and opinions are formed as to why this friend, sister, brother, cousin, uncle, aunt or childless couple continues in their unwavering stance of simply not wanting kids. We torture them with endless pictures of our own babies, tell them over and over again that “it’s never too late,” and warn that they will regret their decision “not to go forth and multiply” for the rest of their lives.

According to a 2010 Study by Pew Research, nearly one in five American women now ends her childbearing years without having a child, compared to only one in 10 during the 1970s.

“Among all women ages 40-44, the proportion that has never given birth, 18% in 2008 since 1976, when it was 10%. And there were 1.9 million childless women ages 40-44 in 2008, compared with nearly 580,000 in 1976.”

Perhaps Betty Freidan’s revolutionary book The Feminine Mystique was even more apocalyptic than once realized, especially and inherently when she wrote:

“Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is being made by many women now, without guilt.”

While it is understood that both men and women have an evolutionary biological need and feel the pressure to plant and nurture their genus before leaving the planet, modern medicine and revolutionary changes in politics and societal culture has drastically changed people’s ability to choose paths they now deem as more important or advantageous than child-rearing.

Go figure.

But we don’t believe people when they tell us their reasoning for a childless life. We think they are lying, have suffered some horrendous abuse and ultimately, some of us even make it our life’s mission to save others from what we are convinced must be an empty, pathetic life.