>Child-Free in Tennessee

>This post originally appeared on the Nashville Scene blog, where it made people foam at the mouth.

The child-free movement is getting some media attention lately, possibly because it’s uber-hip to be a parent right now.

Child-free social groups have been around for years to help adults without kids to connect. I can sympathize with the need to be around others whose lives don’t revolve around Little League and PTA meetings (I’d generally like to be around people like that myself), but geez Louise, local child-free groups. Bitter much?

At the top of the Nashville No Kidding! website, you’ll find this quote from the TV show Northern Exposure:

“They’re slobbery and they’re whiney and they look at you just like they could see right into your soul and they’re unpredictable and they smell and they’re noisy and the world revolves around them and why!? I don’t get it. They’re not interesting. They can’t tell jokes, they don’t have opinions, and they’re boring, you know? They’re just boring and annoying and I don’t want to have one.”

And over at the local Childfree Meetup site, Nashvillians sound off about being bratless.

“I find that people without kids are the only people worth my time,” writes a guy calling himself Omnibus.

“I can’t stand kids, they give me hives,” a woman who goes by Wingnut chimes in.

In the San Francisco Chronicle’s article on the child-free, grievances also are aired about work-family benefits, lactation rooms for working mothers, friends who disappear after having children and constant criticism/disbelief from acquaintances and strangers over the decision to remain childless.

Apparently, living a child-free life isn’t all about partying and sleeping in on weekends. But I’m here to tell you that parents don’t have it any easier. For instance:

• I can’t take my well-behaved, non-screaming toddler into a nicer restaurant to eat without getting dirty looks from the host and waitstaff, who just assume that she’s going to throw a messy tantrum and I’m going to do nothing about it.
• On that note, Jackson’s makes the world’s best deep fried cookie dough eggrolls, but doesn’t have highchairs or booster seats.
• While the rest of my family bought up cool vintage t-shirts, I had to wait outside a store on Melrose Avenue last summer with my toddler because the sign in the window said, “No solicitors. No panhandlers. No strollers.“
• Having kids means either staying home with them and being treated like a loser by your working counterparts, or working and feeling guilty about putting the kids in daycare.
• While there are plenty of child-free organizations, there’s no group for those of us who have kids, but don’t really want to talk shop with every other parent with whom they have a conversation. Might I suggest one called P-WHOP (Parents Who Hate Other Parents)?
• We’re forced to endure our child-free friends accusing us of falling off the face of the earth after we had kids, when really we just couldn’t find a freaking babysitter.

Basically, it all sucks, whether you have a kid or not. Feel better?