Never bring up the question "Do you want kids?" around people you don't know.
Instead of the nice, diplomatic discussion you envisioned starting, what you're likely to be met with instead is outrage. Inevitably, the warring factions of Kid-Friendly and Kid-Phobic will cock-fight, and what you'll be left with is a steaming pile of bruised egos and leftover potato salad as people storm angrily from the table.
For some reason, the intensely personal and subjective choice to bear children is one of the most polarizing topics known to man. On both sides of the childbearing spectrum, both those who want kids and those who don't seem so feel so strongly that their personal choice is "right" that they're willing to say some incredibly vicious and hurtful things in order to prove they're on the right side of the argument.
This is something we found out the hard way when we published an article last year detailing millennial's reasoning for keeping the gene pool free of their DNA.
Six months after publishing it, we still get hate mail about it. In fact, the study's author (me, hi) was being e-trolled about it so much that she published a best practices guide for how to troll her correctly.
… Sensitive subject, that one!
However, no matter what side you're on, you can't ignore the growing amount of data that shows childlessness is the increasingly popular option for young people who value their careers and life goals over parenthood. Birth rate trends show that the percentage of younger women who've opted out of parenthood have steadily risen since the 1970s thanks to increased contraceptive availability and affordability, and today, more couples are choosing to raise small dogs than they are small humans.
Yet, despite the relatively recent popularity of childlessness, new studies are showing that people who don't want kids are perceived negatively by others.
Leslie Ashburn-Nardo, an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, decided to investigate why. She conducted a study using 197 undergrads, all of whom were give one of four anecdotes about a married adult's decision to have kids. In one anecdote, an imaginary couple was described as not wanting children. In the other three, the pretend mom and dad either had kids, or wanted them. The participants were then asked to rate how psychologically satisfied they thought the fictitious couples were, as well as to how the participants felt towards them.
The results were pretty brutal. In addition to perceiving the childless couples as "significantly less psychologically fulfilled than targets with two children," they also reported significant "moral outrage towards them." I
"Not having children is seen not only as atypical, but also as wrong," the study says.
Why, though? What do you care if your neighbor doesn't squeeze out a human six-pack of ice-cold kids?
Well, according to Ashburn-Nardo, the results of her research indicate that people see raising kids as a sort of "moral imperative," something you have to do in exchange for reaping the benefits of societal inclusion and acceptance.
Thus, Octomom-ing is "both a prescriptive and descriptive stereotype for men and women," her study's findings say. "[W]hen people violate strongly held norms and expectations such as those regarding parenthood and interest in children … there are potentially serious consequences. … This backlash is justified in the minds of perceivers because the targets are thought to have brought it upon themselves by not fulfilling their expected roles."
These findings also explain why so many people have such a vehement opposition abortion. Even though they're not actually having the procedure themselves, they see other people's choice to as a fundamental affront to what they know to be true about life roles, which in this case, is that men and women get married and have kids. When they don't want those kids, some people's reality falls apart, and they feel threatened.
Well … that's kind of stupid, isn't it?
Any time you have a hard belief about what's right and wrong — like that people should have children or shouldn't have abortions — you should hold yourself to whatever moral standard you see fit in order to fulfill that belief. That's fine. However, you cannot reasonably hold other people to the same standards. Not if you want to be happy — they will always disappoint you. Even if they're like-minded, not everyone has the same reality and background as you do. They're unlikely to make all the choices you want them to. Expecting them to is a waste of time, and a mistaken assertion that your beliefs and lifestyle are the only "correct" ones.
Most of all, you can't fault them for making individual decisions about their own bodies and their own futures, especially when they have nothing to do with you. People come from a million different backgrounds and have a million different goals for their own life, which exists independently of yours, and there's nothing that says they can't make their own choices.
That doesn't stop people from believing it does, though. That's why, six months after we published that article about why some millennials don't want kids, we still get vicious hate mail about it. Even when you present data that clearly demonstrates not everyone wants kids (in fact, half of couples between the ages of 15-44 don't), there's a pervasive stigma present; one that portrays anyone who doesn't want uterus full of people as morally and socially insufficient.
So, what we can we do? Not much, unfortunately! According to Ashburn-Nardo, this stigmatization is unlikely to dissipate anytime soon. Great!
"It's something we should work to change, but it certainly won't be easy," she told Broadly. "Any time there's an imperative, freedom of choice is taken away. People are led to believe 'this is how things should be.' But that's how many social stereotypes operate, and their prescriptive nature makes them very difficult to change. My findings did not differ from those of similar studies conducted in the 70s, 80s, 90s — what I added was the moral outrage explanation. So, despite all the changes in so many other domains in those 40-plus years of studies, the bias against childfree people remains."
Welp, here's to 40 more years of hate mail, then. Bring it on.
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