WHILE WORKING ON this book, I sometimes found myself contemplating
a variation of Leo Tolstoy's famous "happy families" line from the opening
of Anna Karenina: People who want children are all alike. People who don't
want children don't want them in their own ways.
Of course, the original maxim isn't exactly true, since happy families come
in all varieties, and unhappy families can be miserable in mind-numbingly
predictable ways. And since most people eventually wind up becoming parents,
whether by choice, circumstance, or some combination thereof, my version isn't
necessarily an airtight theory either. Still, in thinking about this subject steadily
over the last several years, I've come to suspect that the majority of people who
have kids are driven by any of just a handful of reasons, most of them connected
to old-fashioned biological imperative.
Those of us who choose not to become parents are a bit like Unitarians or
nonnative Californians; we tend to arrive at our destination via our own
meandering, sometimes agonizing paths. That's one of the reasons I put this
anthology together. Contrary to a lot of cultural assumptions, people who opt out
of parenthood (and, to be clear, this is a book about deciding not to have children;
not being able to have them when you want them is another matter entirely) are
not a monolithic group. We are neither hedonists nor ascetics. We bear no worse
psychological scars from our own upbringings than most people who have kids.
We do not hate children (and it still amazes me that this notion is given any credence).
In fact, many of us devote quite a lot of energy to enriching the lives of other people's
children, which in turn enriches our own lives. Statistically, we are more likely to give
back to our communities than people who are encumbered with small children—not
just because we have the time but because "giving back" often includes returning the
kids to their parents at the end of the day.