Hello all,

This is a good article but more interesting to me is the podcast referred to. Enjoy.

Playdates, Podcasts Ready for Child-Free Couples Outlets help couples handle the pressure from family members who expect children.

By DAVID FUSARO
Columbia News Service

Childless by choice, Edie Sellers enjoys clowning around with her best friend's
youngest son, Ian.KEVIN SELLERS / Columbia News Service

Edie Sellers' marriage was just a few hours old when relatives started asking
the couple when they were going to start a family. Sellers, a resident of Point
Richmond, Calif., remembers the astonished looks on her relatives' faces when
she said her marriage would be childless.

"Their heads kind of tilt to the side," Sellers said, "and they get this little
look like, 'I'm trying to compute this, but it doesn't work. It's not an
equation I understand. How could you not want children?'"

This disconnect often isolates childless couples from their childbearing
friends. As a remedy, many couples who have proudly adopted the term "child
free" are joining a growing community of like-minded people. One such couple in
the San Francisco Bay Area has started an Internet podcast devoted to child-free
issues. Many couples say these outlets help them handle the pressure from family
members who expect children and the loss of friends who have gone off to start
families of their own.

This perception that childless-by-choice couples are rare persists despite the
fact their ranks are growing. In 2002, 6.2 percent of women age 15 to 44 said
they were voluntarily childless, up from 4.9 percent in 1982, according to the
National Center for Health Statistics.

Christine Fisher started the Adult Space Childfree Podcast in March 2006 to
reach out to this growing community. Fisher, known as "The Fixed Kitty" to her
listeners, says she's known since the third grade that she didn't want to be a
mother.

"I never felt the urge to play with dolls," she said. "My Barbies went
spelunking and scuba diving. They had sword fights."

The Fixed Kitty and her co-host and husband, Henry, post their podcasts on their
Web site (gettingby.net/blog/nfblog/) about once a week. The programs include
listener comments, news on issues like birth control, interviews with leaders
of child-free groups and experts on child-free sociology, rants from The Fixed
Kitty on the hassles of choosing to remain childless (she says she's been asked
if she was abused as a child) and a segment called "happy stuff" that highlights
the joys of existence without children.

Sellers, 40, says she and her husband, Kevin, 37, have enjoyed greater freedom
to socialize and travel because of their decision not to have children. She
adds she doesn't think she's the mothering type.

"If every fertile female would make a great mom, we would not have any screwed
up kids," she said. "Obviously some people don't make great moms."

As comfortable as the Sellers are with their decision, it can stir up strong
reactions in other people. Edie Sellers has been accused of ripping off Social
Security because she's not creating children to help sustain her retirement.
One man tried to change her mind by calling her selfish.

"He didn't understand that I came to that conclusion, and that's why I'm not
having kids," she said. "He thought that it was going to be some kind of
elucidation to me that I'm selfish and I would go, 'Oh my gosh, you know you're
right. I'd better go out and have sex.'"

The most difficult part, childless couples say, is the strain that often occurs
in their relationships with friends who have become parents.

"You become more and more marginalized by your own friends," Sellers said.
"Essentially you're shunted off in the corner."

The decision to remain childless can also put a strain on family relationships.
Missy Andeel, 36, of Prairie Village, Kan., says she and her husband, Mark Orr,
also 36, have had difficulty reconciling their decision with their family's hope
they would have children. Although she understands the desire of her parents and
in-laws to become grandparents, Andeel says the conflict has at times been
painful.

"Maybe a couple years ago we were certainly experiencing anxiety when we would
go home to a family holiday just wondering what questions we'd get," Andeel
said. Now, she says, she has learned tips from a large online community of
like-minded couples. "I just try and listen to them and acknowledge that
they're allowed to have their feelings," she said, "and that I understand."

Before joining an online social network for childless couples a year ago, she
and Mark knew only one other child-free couple. Now, as a member of No Kidding
(nokidding.net), she can communicate with 10,000 other members who are
childless by choice. The group, which has 79 chapters in six countries,
including the United States and Canada, has helped Andeel come to terms with
her decision.

"We had bought a crib. We had named our kids. We had done everything that I
could think of to try and get that old maternal instinct to kick in," Andeel
recalled, "and it didn't kick in. And so for a good six or eight months I
thought there was something really wrong with me."

Jerry Steinberg, who calls himself the "founding non-father" of No Kidding,
opened the group's first chapter in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1983
because he saw his social circle shrinking as friends married and had children.
He had also recently split with his first wife because she wanted children and
he didn't.

"We were able to find a compromise on every issue that arose, but the issue of
parenthood has no compromise," Steinberg said. "You can't have half a kid."

Steinberg, who met his current wife through No Kidding, has seen the organization grow steadily over the past 24 years. In early April, new chapters were about to open in Manning, S.C., Huntsville, Ala., and Las Vegas. The individual chapters run their own monthly social events and meet at an annual national convention.

Steinberg is adamant that No Kidding remain purely social and not become a political advocacy group. But the Fixed Kitty has no such qualms: She closes each of her shows by urging listeners to "keep from breeding."