The love of my life and I have chosen not to have children (caveat, required by science -- thus far. Someday we may be able to clone ourselves and take an army to another planet in which case, I'm pretty certain E will overrule me and we'll have *TONS* of kids. But today, we've decided it's not in our plans).
We are odd. It is clear. Our fridge is covered with the family holiday photos and birth announcements of all of our friends and family in our general age cohort who've all chosen to have children. We're married. We're happy. We're more or less financially stable. And, typically, people like us have kids. Yet, we've opted out. So, we are weird. (To those who know either of us well, this is not remotely surprising.)
We also maintain close friendships with people who don't have the option of having children, other couples like us, single folks, etc, and the variety of our relationships with these folks is defintely rewarding.
In the last couple of weeks, the US media has taken this (the "non-reproducing, otherwise relatively normal couple") up as a cause of some sort. So we've got our most recent Time magazine as shown at the top, and this article.
And all I can think is, why the fuck is it us versus them?
I have many children in my life -- nieces, a nephew, and all of my friends' kids. I am grateful for all of them making my life richer. I don't feel that my close friends and family feel that our choice somehow hurts them. I am lucky. So maybe we can all get to a place someday where it's okay to choose whatever you choose with respect to reproduction (preferably when you can provide for your offspring...), but we all agree that, no matter what, all kids need support, and we should all support them.
In the meantime, headsup -- If you are youthful and fit enough that you can pose in a bathing suit on the cover of a magazine, then you are too young to have actually made any final decisions about anything. Just saying.
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