Archive for July 2009
No kids, no grief
Nobody’s Father (as well as its predecessor, Nobody’s Mother) gets a mention in Anne Kingston’s recent cover story for Maclean’sabout “a new manifesto [that] argues parenting is bad for your career, your bank book and your love life.” Said manifesto is, of course, French psychotherapist Corinne Maier’s No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not to Have Children, which has had all sorts of English press recently (on top of its French press last year) for its provocative argument.
Admittedly, I haven’t yet read Maier’s book, but Kingston’s article was interesting, especially these stats she found that illustrate society’s changing ideas about having kids:
“Are you planning to have children?” is a question Statistics Canada has asked since 1990. In 2006, 17.1 per cent of women aged 30 to 34 said “no,” as did 18.3 per cent of men in the same category. The U.S. National Center of Health Statistics reports that the number of American women of childbearing age who define themselves as “child-free” rose sharply in the past generation: 6.2 per cent of women in 2002 between the ages of 15 and 44 reported that they don’t expect to have children in their lifetime, up from 4.9 per cent in 1982.
