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_______________ THE NURTURE ASSUMPTION BY JENNIFER KAHN (03/19/99)
	The truth is, most people who will become bad parents don't give parenting enough thought even to avoid it. They probably don't care enough to consider the alternative. We have enough abusive actual parents around to know that there's no instinct that tells a potential abuser to use contraception. I will bet you that, were Jennifer Kahn to unexpectedly find herself a parent, whether through an accidental pregnancy or a relative's death, she would be just fine. She'd surmount the hassles and survive the trauma and apply herself to being a conscientious and loving mother. She shouldn't have to even imply that she isn't "good enough" to parent, in order to explain why she chooses not to. -- Ali Todd Three cheers for Jennifer Kahn! Three cheers, because that's how many children I have, and also because I sincerely believe that too many people have borne and kept children about whom they feel ambivalent -- or worse. The childless cannot be categorized automatically as selfish or shortsighted. Among our family's dearest friends are couples who have never wanted to become parents, or who chose to undergo or forego expensive fertility treatments that left them child-free in the end, or who simply are divorced or never married and have rejected single parenthood as an option. Add in the millions of people just like them, and those who have made the painful decision to either abort an unwanted pregnancy or give a child up for adoption, and there you have a fairly sizable group of folks who have the right to remain childless, and who should not be pressured to answer nosy, presumptuous questions about their status. -- Leslie Goodman-Malamuth Washington Sometime last year I stopped telling people I wasn't sure I wanted children and began telling them I didn't like children. This isn't really true, but as a 33-year-old, happily married and economically secure woman, it seemed to be the only way I could get those same people -- many already parents, others looking forward to it with dewy-eyed excitement -- to stop applying their ideas of adulthood and parenthood to my life. Before, they thought all I needed was a little convincing. Now they just think I am mean. I have no childhood traumas or toxic parents to point to as a reason for my unwillingness to reproduce. I work, but I'm not career-driven to the point that would make children inconvenient. I do believe that it would be worse to have a baby for the wrong reasons -- i.e., because other people wanted me to -- than to not have one at all. By choosing not to have children, I have opted out of the world's biggest sorority. I can see why that would make me lonely, but why it makes other people uncomfortable, I have no idea. -- Jody Fisher Dallas Methinks Jennifer Kahn protests too much. Women who don't want children don't have to have them. She's imagining that there's someone who cares whether she wants to have children. Why all the justification? A child is not a pet (horse), nor is borrowing someone else's remotely equivalent to having your own. She actually refers to the female child as "it." Does she forget that she herself was once a baby girl? And like many people who don't want or like kids, from her descriptions it's obvious she completely misses the point of what parenthood is all about, and seems to be in denial about the fact that all species have a very strong instinct to procreate. -- Claire C. Goodman Jennifer Kahn may not have found many resources to support her choice not to have children. But, once again, the Internet comes to the rescue. A good starting point is the Childfree-By-Choice Web site, which lists books and links, and contains a number of articles. There is also a newsgroup (alt.support.childfree) for those who have chosen not to have children. -- Mark Dulcey Dorchester, Mass. SALON | March 25, 1999

R E C E N T L Y+| TIPPING THE ANTITRUST SCALES BY ANDREW LEONARD

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