Finally, a book for us...

Bookstore shelves bulge with offerings for parents and (almost worse) parents-to-be and wanna-be's. Everything from fertility, to adoption, to minute-by-minute monitoring of a woman's pregnant days. What was once a natural phenomenon (and still is for most forms of organic life), has been turned into an industry. Few would dream of conceiving, much less being pregnant, without a dozen guidebooks to help them along the way. Now, try to find the books for us childfree people--books that talk about how we made the decision, how we live our lives, and what we can learn from other people's experiences. It's slim pickings indeed. All this only fuels the societal conception that to be pregnant and to be a parent are not choices, but the only proper progression.

Despair not though, at least one new book on the topic will be hitting the shelves in the US in October (it's already out in the UK), and it's straight up and honest, bound to enrage any parents who accidentally pick it up. In an article titled "The brat trap" in last week's issue of Time Out London, Nicki Defago, the Brit author of Child Free and Loving It!, wrote: "I'm amazed by how disapproving parents can be towards happy non-parents. Perhaps they didn't realise they had a choice too!...I wouldn't dream of judging someone on the basis of their decision to procreate, but for the record, parents have children because they want them, not for the greater good of society. If they're as truly unselfish as they claim, why could they not offer a home to one of the many thousands of children awaiting adoption?"

The joy of birth control

"I have never given birth. Now I'm starting to wonder if I ever will. Looking back on my lifelong quest to avoid pregnancy, I have to say that birth control is one of those things I just cannot get enough of. The pill is just an appetizer for me. Condoms, diaphragms, foam, whatever. Honestly, if I could build a dam of mud and twigs up there, I would."--Cathryn Michon, The Grrl Genius Guide to Life

Talkback of the Month (or the aging parental mindset)

Scene: 5 year old's birthday party. Kids are running wild.

What they say, “I think you notice that you're aging more if you have children.”
-- mother of birthday boy

What she means: My time is more valuable than yours because I am in charge of a living, breathing, birthday-having, small person, while you have a meaningless life filled with fluff.

What I want to say: “In case you haven’t noticed, we childfree women have mirrors too and you can bet we notice that we're aging.”

What I say, Nothing.

Of course, maybe she's right, but not in the way she thinks. Maybe she notices her aging more because she is aging faster than we childfree-folk. Have you ever noticed how grown up your breeder friends think they are--giving answers to all of life's questions, molding small minds, forgetting about real adult fun, and our unavoidable human fallibility and fragility? The burden isn't the children, it's the mindset, and I guess it can have an aging effect.

If you are easily offended, read on...

Here's our latest guilty pleasure, the Lexicon of Spawn, which has new terms for everything you've thought but haven't dared to say about the child-challenged.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Diaperwhipped – catering to every whim of a spoiled child

Spoggrenfrau – A woman who derives her identity and self-worth from her children

Thinker - Two healthy incomes, no kids, early retirement