Child-free with an attitude: some childless adults are tired of supporting other people's kids, and they are organizing

American Demographics, April, 1996

Some childless adults are tired of supporting other people's kids, and they are organizing.

To those who love the squeal of a child laughing, who sigh at the sight of a pregnant woman, and who prod their friends to join them in the joys of parenthood, a California high school teacher has a message: get off my back. "We're living in a society that has not adapted to the changes in the world around it. We still prize procreation," says Leslie Lafayette of Roseville, California.

Lafayette is the feisty founder of the ChildFree Network, a four-year-old organization with a mailing list of 5,000 people and regional chapters in 33 cities. She sees great potential for growth, and projections from American Demographics suggest she may be right. An estimated 24 million married-couple households had no children living at home in 1995, and that number could top 3 million in 15 years.

The ChildFree Network boasts a political and social agenda that seems almost heretical in an age of "family values." One of its primary agendas is working to eliminate extra benefits or tax breaks for people who have dependent children. "If people choose not to, why are they bashed over the head about it as if there's something wrong with them?" Lafayette asks. "You feel as if you're completely left out of a big club."

Joe Hoenigman of San Diego found social fulfillment in the ChildFree Network, because it connected him to others who had chosen not to have children. "People want to talk about their kids. That's what their life revolves around, and rightly so," says the 45-year-old Hoenigman. "But it's not what my life revolves around."

Hoenigman is a financial advisor and tax consultant. His wife, 42, is director of education for a nonprofit organization.

They were married later in life and decided not to have children. "I didn't want to be 65 with a teenager in the house," Hoenigman says. "That would not work for either side of the equation." About 50 people belong to Hoenigman's local chapter. "Everyone is positive about what's going on in their lives," he says.

Some members of the ChildFree Network are infertile. Others simply never found the right mate, says Lafayette, the group's founder. "People have different reasons for being childless," she says. "But most choose not to have children."

Tax breaks for families with children aren't the only things members of the ChildFree Network are grousing about. They also want changes in what they perceive as workplace inequities. Why do people without children always have to cover on the job for those who have kids? Why do insurers pay for in-vitro fertilization procedures? "We find that appalling," Lafayette says. "Why am I subsidizing somebody who wants to have kids? Infertility is not a disease. No one ever died from it. It's unfortunate, but there are so many children to adopt."

The bottom line for the ChildFree Network is that times have changed and society needs to change with them. "One hundred to 200 years ago, we needed to populate the fields and the factories," Lafayette says. "Let's be truthful about it. We do not need children, except for the continuation of the human race, which we do not have to worry about." For more information, contact the ChildFree Network, 7777 Sunrise Boulevard, Suite 1800, Citrus Heights, CA 95610; telephone (916) 773-7178.

some of his problems and got some pretty good direction."

"I think that a computer was brought across to empower women's lives, make it easier, make it more efficient: You're a busy woman, you have your children, you have your job, you have your husband. It can empower you as a woman. I think that's a very respectful way of presenting a product."

"It's a power--'Look what I can do, look what I can accomplish.'"

THE CONS

"I feel ambivalent. [Technology has] been both a wonderful thing in my life, to make it more convenient, and yet it's become an intrusion. E-mail has become hellish. I now have people cursing at me through the mail. I curse back at you now."

"What drives me crazy sometimes is I feel in some ways that I'm almost totally accessible. Ten years ago, if I didn't have an answering machine, it was no big deal. But now, if you don't have answering machine, people wonder why."

"I think the ease of access is what scares me the most. In all honesty, we can get dirt on anybody. I saw the movie The Net and I know it was fiction, but it is too close. It made me paranoid."

"I have a computer in my house that is actually in my 16-year-old son's bedroom. All he does day and night is spend his time on the computer. He does not have very many personal friends. It is addictive. He doesn't want to socialize or belong to a group. I'm happy he's not into drugs, sex, smoking, and drinking, but I worry. He's almost anti-social."

"I got an e-mail: `You did a great job on that project.' To be honest, it would have meant a lot more to me if the man had walked down to my cubicle and said, `You did a nice job.'"