Cameron Diaz on her Childfree Status and Why the Planet Needs More Non-breeders
It's significant that one of the world's "sexiest" women has gone public that she may never have children. When Cameron Diaz told the UK's Cosmopolitan Magazine this month that the planet doesn't need any more children, she acknowledged it's not easy for a woman to address the topic. "I think women are afraid to say that they don't want children because they're going to get shunned," said the actress.
When it's still okay to ask "are the childless weird?"
While Diaz added that she thinks attitudes are changing, there are still plenty who fail to see a choice to not have children as one of the most selfless things a woman, or man, can do for the planet (one U.S. person= 20 tons of CO2 per year).
The same magazine that published her interview turned around and asked in an online poll: "Are women who don't want children weird?". While there was plenty of support for non-breeders, there were the inevitable comments like "isn't [it] natural for women to have children?" and "as women we are or should be born with a natural instinct to have children".
My family is about to require 24 acres more productive land: I'm pregnant.
As a disclaimer, I should say I'm one of the selfish. I have one child and another on the way any day now, but I didn't take the choice lightly.
For me, having children -- and adding to our planet's ecological footprint is a matter that deserves conscious thought, and shouldn't be treated as a duty or simply an instinctual act. When considering that every American requires 24 acres of productive land, according to Harvard ecologist E.O. Wilson, all my eco-diapers and vegetarian meals seem a bit trivial (see my videos demo-ing a flushable diaper and our daily beans & rice).
Not breeding as an "unacceptable crime."
It's a shame, for both our planet and reluctant potential parents, that too many people still see having children as something we all should do, or should at least want. When UK journalist Polly Vernon wrote an editorial about not wanting kids, she discovered that "voluntary childlessness is an unacceptable crime to cop to" and she was "denounced as bitter, selfish, un-sisterly, unnatural, evil".
Filmmaker Nancy Rome agrees, telling Harper's Bazaar that the childless, like herself, are outcasts. "We are doing something that is viewed as un-American, unfeminine, un-Christian, uneverything."
When bosses see the childless as lacking "essential humanity."
Instead of thanking the child-free for being "all that is stopping our local councils from slapping an even bigger charge on us for residential parking, or the mayors of our cities from resorting to more congestion fees," according to Vernon, we continue to penalize them.
Recent research shows that a childless status could even hurt the careers of childless women. Lancaster University professor Dr. Caroline Gatrell found that some employers see female staff who don't want children as lacking "essential humanity". Gatrell explains that these women are seen by bosses as "cold, odd and somehow emotionally deficient in an almost dangerous way that leads to them being excluded from promotions that would place them in charge of others".
Absurdly, the voluntarily childless are being penalized even though our planet doesn't need any more people: many estimate we've surpassed earth's carrying capacity -- the population size our world can sustain longterm -- by a billion or two people. Population growth, according to the Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown, "contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, crowding in national parks, a growing dependence on imported oil, and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives".
Breeding for athletes or children as status symbols.
Yet somehow the childless are not seen as heroes, but as "weird". I emailed a voluntarily childless friend of mine -- no she's not single and desperate, but married and attractive -- asking if this topic came up a lot for her. "I get asked a lot why I don't have kids. Two good looking smart people blah, blah," she emailed back, "A friend asked recently, I'm not making this up, 'Hey, I just heard you're pretty athletic. Your husband's athletic. You two should have kids because I bet they'd be athletic.'"
Birthing a basketball team is not the only weird reason to have kids. In recent years, NPR has covered the "competitive birthing" trend -- having more kids as the "ultimate luxury in America today" -- and Slate has reported on having "kids as status symbols".
Our current population bomb.
Another disclaimer: I come from more than a basketball team of siblings, but I don't judge my mother for choosing to add six more to the world. I love having so many siblings, but I know my mother never chose to have us as status symbols or due to "natural instincts". In fact, she felt pressure to stop after the first few thanks to dire warnings of population explosions by the likes of Paul Ehrlich in his late sixties book, The Population Bomb.
The world's population has nearly doubled since my mother first began giving birth (in 1969, there were 3.6 billion people). Today, there are 6.8 billion people and rising. It's estimated there'll be 9.1 billion of us by 2050. The UK's Optimum Population Trust estimates the world's sustainable population is 5 billion and our current, and projected overpopulation, is "rapidly destabilising our climate and destroying the natural world on which we depend for future life".
Warning: Kids can be depressing and why Ms. Diaz is still thinking about it.
I'm not arguing that we should stop having kids, but that we should see it as a choice. As Florida State University professor Robin Simon explained after publishing the results of his study that parents experience higher levels of depression than childfree adults (even after the kids move out): "I adore my kids. I would do it over again. There are enormous emotional benefits. But I think [those benefits] get clouded by the emotional cost... People should really think about whether they want to do this or not."
I respect my mother for making a conscious choice regarding each of her pregnancies and that is really what I'm getting at, that parenthood shouldn't be seen as a given, a duty, or the fallback option, but rather something we elect to do.
Cameron Diaz seems to understand this freedom we all have from our biology. "I have three nieces and a nephew. I know what it's like. I've changed the diapers. I've seen three births, so I totally get the whole picture," she told Parade Magazine. "I don't think it's a compromise to have children. I don't think it's a compromise not to. I think it's just a different choice."
Follow Kirsten Dirksen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kirstendirksen
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I have one biological child. Raising her has enriched my life. I also have a great career and ample resources. I considered other choices: adoption, no children, etc. I made the choice that was a good fit for me. If I decide to add another human to my family it'll be through adoption. Once again, that's just what works for me.
For the most part I don't give a damn about other people's choices just as I don't give a damn about sexual orientation or religion. Unless it becomes hateful...
As for having children, I've read some ill advised rhetoric from both sides. The thing is, the really hately stuff seems to be coming from a subpopulation of the childfree crowd. I stumbled across a website/board and it was saturated with hate. Children were called crotchfruit. Mothers were called moos and breeders. The posts did nothing but mock women who have chosen to reproduce and parent. It was way way wayyyyyy over the top.
Those contributors were about as bad as the nasty homophobe preachers who tell their congregation gays are molestors or the pro-lifers who shout out at young women walking into abortion clinics that they're going to burn in hell.
It's colored my reaction when I hear 'childfree'. Where I never paused before I now stop and wonder if the person is as verbally violent and hateful as those who posted to that particular board.
Ah, yes, one of my favorite contentious topics. I'm involuntarily childless and as such routinely find myself on the receiving end of either pity or hostility. The assumptions made about those without children always tend to the negative. Cameron Diaz and Polly Vernon have each surfaced the vitriol that I myself faced when the New York Times wrote a feature about me and my experience moving forward in building a live without children after nature and science found their limits. I always suspected that society harbored deep hostility toward those without children, which is why it's strangely satisfying to see those who cast aspersions about those without children outed for the judgmental, narrow-minded types they truly are.
Cameron Diaz rocks!
you need to do more research, ma'am. childfree and childless are NOT INTERCHANGABLE terms. childless implies you want but cannot have children. childfree is a specific choice based on recognizing that you do not want or need children to be fulfilled. i'm childfree, not childless. there is a huge and marked difference.
i support Cameron Diaz even more now. my respect for her just grew by miles. if more women came out against mindless childbearing, we'd all be better off.
oh, and using the term "breeder" or "non-breeder" is considered quite offensive. breeder carries the implication you just pop out kids without care or thought. it's a slur, used to reference a specific type of parent that feels it's their only goal or job in life to continue to shoot out kids.
See Kirsten Dirksen's Profile
I'm glad you brought up the term breeder. My childfree friend who I quote in this post also raised the point that breeder can be an offensive term. I suppose I liked it- even referring to myself- because it reflects how I feel sometimes as a "breeder" (of 2 kids) that I am beholden to my biology in some sense.
Your comment about "mindless childbearing" aptly reflects what I was trying to avoid. I also don't feel I needed children to be fulfilled, but finally made the decision as a more conscious choice.
As for the terms childfree vs childless, I had read that childfree is the preferred term and that it is probably more appropriate to use "childless by choice" or "voluntarily childless". I apologize for the shorthand.
thanks for your reply. i just read your post and fired off my response.
for me, breeder is the term of someone who has kids probably because they "should" have them. there is no thought, no plan, no bother of what kind of parent they will be. they are the first to tell us childfree that having kids is THE BEST THING EVARRR. *LOL* it's definitely an insult in the ChildFree community.
childless implies that the person might want to have kids but some type of fertility or biological issue is present. it also can apply to a woman who maybe wants kids but isnt' married. or is married but hasn't had children yet. in the ChildFree community, the terms are NOT interchangeable.
but hey, at least SOMETHING of the ChildFree message is getting out there. even the more negative connotations people shove onto us still puts our lives out there. i did know that you were coming from a place of respect, i appreciate it. i have a lot of friends who have children who respect my choice to remain ChildFree. and they have the best kids. i'm not a child hater. i just know that having one is not for me.
Great thoughts!
Too bad Corporatists need population to sustain the ponzi schemes.
Too bad the govt needs contributors to the social security scheme, and the coming health care scheme and all their other schemes.
These systems can easily be tweaked for stable populations or very slowly decreasing populations.
It appears not to have occurred to you, but SOCIETY needs children in order to survive.
Cultures need children or they will in time die out. You applaud childlessness. Does this mean you also applaud the extinction of our society through lack of progeny? Some people would call this self loathing. I call it societal suicide.
No having 8 kids (Kate & Jon) is societal suicide. The birthrate on the planet should and must be reduced. And it will voluntarily or involuntarily as we overwhelm the resources of the world.
The earth cannot sustain its population the way it is. Water is becoming a shortage, more desert areas are expanding.
We need to populate the earth respectfully, not just to fulfill a woman's maternal needs or for a man to feel manly.
It's like your family budget....can we afford it, no.....do we need to continuously populate the world without regard to sustaining life, no.
I totally think we need more women like Cameron speaking out about the acceptableness of either choice. As a mother (of one) I know what it takes, and I think it is crazy to assume that everyone should automatically have children.
See Kirsten Dirksen's Profile
It's exactly that sentiment that so many "assume that everyone should automatically have children" that motivated this post. There's so much societal pressure to reproduce that it's refreshing- and important- to hear more voices talking about the other option.
Another self-loathing enemy of our society.
Apparently you haven't looked closely at Western Europe, where the birth rate has fallen to a little over one child per woman amongst native Europeans. In Germany, something approximating 30% of the children under 18 are not even of German ancestry. They are Muslims and many of them do not even speak German. More to the point, they are not culturally Germans. Germany is Bier, Brot und Beethoven. These Muslims don't bake German style bread, their religion prohibits beer, and they have no clue who Beethoven is : cultural death occurs as the Muslims replace native Germans in the population. The same thing is happening in several other countries in Europe.
By all accounts, anti-abortion sentiment is a case of plain old sexism: Taliban-style ideologues who want to keep women in poverty.
You go, Cameron!
patton oswalt has some good jokes about the breeders.
http://comedians.comedycentral.com/patton-oswalt/videos/patton-oswalt---sobering-up-and-babies
I've heard lots of great jokes about the pillow-biters too, but I have the manners not to repeat them in public, unlike your tasteless comedian.
Why so much hate?
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