Early Childfree Influences
were a time of a lot of divorced mothers, since no-fault divorce was introduced in California. I saw many of my friends' mothers lead these horrible lives as single mommies. These women's ex-husbands usually did not pay any child support and the mothers were too often trying to make ends meet by working two crappy jobs and were just plain wore out by their lot in life. Forget about finding another mate. Many men were not interested in an already-made family and being coerced into feeding these extra mouths. But of course my friends' daddies had these great jobs, cool cars, and fancy girlfriends while these men's ex-wives had only the indentured servitude of raising kids on their own."
Pete added, "I don't know if I really had an influence except to see how miserable we made our parents' lives and I got the object lesson from that."
Occasionally it's our own experience with children that create an abiding belief that we do not want any of our own, as in Monica's experience. "My earliest influence was spending my first fourteen years with a steady stream of new babies in the family. Motherhood seemed like a death sentence - fun was over and hard work was eternal. But the biggest influence was my childhood. I was teased heavily as a kid by my cousins because they loved the way I reacted to it. It made me want to hit them and throw things, and it often reduced me to tears..."
Working with kids can also present thought-provoking ideas about not having children, as one day care worker explained: "This may have been a little late in life, but through college I spent my summers working at a day care center on a military base. The clincher came at the end of the first summer when I was standing outside with a co-worker and he said 'Boy, if you want kids after working here, you're crazy.' That moment started me thinking about the possibility of not having kids, and I still think of that on a regular basis."
Of course, if we can't recall an early influence, we can always become an influential childfree example ourselves. Monica L. said, "As for childfree relatives, I don't have many. I have one great-aunt and one uncle who are childfree, but they're not married. I'm glad to be an example in my family, as most of my younger cousins are
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