How do you look impressed, excited, and googly-eyed, when a friend or acquaintance, announces [yet another] grandchild? To sit mutely by has excluded me from gatherings; they are the losers for it, not me. I never got "the mommy" gene, never wanted children, and told...

By Carol Austin It was Mother's Day. 'So Carol, Are you a mother?'' 'No.' I responded without elaboration. I am gratefully beyond child bearing years. Months later he asked again as I navigated through a busy traffic intersection. My answer was the same but I added,...

By Dakota Sands I am a boomer in my late '60s a feminist before there was ever a movement in the '60s. When I graduated high school I openly announced to my father I wasn't going to have children. He told me I was a suffragette and offered an explanation. He...

By Terry Lee Hess My friend says that by not having children, I have not lived a full life. I cheated myself out of it. Period. There is no need to debate this. It is a given. And, in every conversation we have wherein she always mentions her daughters or...

i see one of the writers at an eclectic party of writers, artists, & musicians once a yr, and at that party she told me of the book which i purchased & read. i was born in '51, i'm probably not the target audience & i found it to be an interesting testimony to the...

By Melissa Myer As many of you know, I opted out of the parenthood track. The politically-correct word for this is “childfree”. I have mixed feelings about this word, but it’s more accurate than “childless”, which suggests that something in my life is missing, lost....

By Grace McEvoy Nineteen sixty-one, the year of my birth, is considered by some to be the last year of the baby boom. That puts me in the generation that grew up with many cousins and siblings but in my case, not one niece or nephew. Socially, things changed quickly...

By Carol A. Provence Bringing children into the world is a speculative venture.  It has all the elements of a gamble, something resembling Russian roulette in its potential for disaster.  Yes, seems we no longer worry as much about the hazards of dying in childbirth,...

By Norman Witzler The sixties were nearly over. JFK's goal of putting a man on the moon had just been accomplished that month, July 1969. I was there riding the very crest of the baby boom as a horny spectator. My 14 year old body was in full adolescent mutiny with...