There have been several articles on workplace issues in the last few months posted to Childfree News, one on a similar issue in South Africa, one from a HR site, and one on the latest Hewlett whine-and-flop.

Most notably, California lawmakers are considering a bill that would make parents a protected class for purposes of employment discrimination. This is notable, since such protection is actually rare, and typically reserved for such classifications as race and religion. The general law in the US is that all employment is at-will, and aside from these rare exceptions, employers are free to let people go for any reason. Could this signal the demise of one of the last vestiges of capitalism and free-market economy that America supposedly believes in? Or is it an anomaly of the law signaling just how far pronatalism has come?

The original article has been removed, although one lone comment remains. I cannot find trace of the bill elsewhere; it may well have died in committee. Californians, keep your eyes peeled for news in case a call for action is later required.

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The New Environmentalism

In light of the recent article in the Globe and Mail article, (see commentary on Childfree News) and Kugel's recent blog entry, I thought that it was about time we start talking about this. Perhaps as the new issue.

Now I should admit right off, I do not expect any progress on this issue. At least not yet. Instead, I think our next goal should simply to put the issue out there so that people can get used to it. It is uncomfortable for many, on both sides.

The right wing will write us off, because many of them are not keen on environmentalism to begin with. Therefore, they have all the more reason to dismiss an idea that uses environmental ideals to clash with some of their sacred values, such as "family" and opposition to birth control (and immigration, but more on that later)

Those who are environmentalists will not just oppose this idea logically, like their conservative counterparts. It will be deeply offensive to many, because it is, in essence, calling them hypocrites. It is telling them that to faithfully and fully live the life they profess to, they will have to give up something very dear to them. They will have to change more than their car, do more than install a solar panel on their house. The most profound thing you can do for the environment is also the greatest sacrifice.

It will also offend parents, because it hits at an emotional level. While they cheer Gore's statistics on overpopulation, their peace of mind relies on not connecting those facts with the son or daughter they love so dearly. They do not want to acknowledge that their child is part of the problem. Of course, their child is no more of a problem than you or I - once we are here, there is nothing to be done. But since they were the ones who made the conscious decision to bring that person into the world, it may well attach a sense of guilt. It may be over and done with, but it remains something they could have done differently. The fact that it was the wrong for the planet pits a human who they adore against ideals they are committed to. That is going to make people very uncomfortable.

This applies, to a lesser extent, to environmentalist who is planning to have children. Their desire to have a child may be deeply ingrained. It may spring from an emotional attachment to their spouse. Or it may be something they want so badly that they are emotionally attached to that decision, that future person.

The idea that creating a biological offspring is one of the worst things one can do to the planet will not go over easy. We will have harsh attacks launched against us by both sides. By very angry people. They will remain attached to their self-image as Earth Mother when they sport a bump. They will continue spurting their idea that their child will save the planet. That the children are the point of environmentalism. (I address these issues in my other blog, but will deal with them more at length in an essay soon)

We will not change their minds any time soon.

What we can do is get the idea out there. Make it infiltrate the subconscious. Make them start launching logical attacks on it. For those who had never made the connection, they may well hear the flaws in their reasoning. It will nudge the door open, just a crack, for these ideas when the world is ready.

In the meantime, get ready for an uphill battle. Get ready to feel like Ann Coulter crashing the Democratic Convention after-party.

Then in a dozen years or so, when the idea is not so new, we can begin a real dialog. And maybe people will be ready to listen.

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Don't Have Children, Save The World
In a society that holds up childbirth and parenting as the moral gold standard, the idea that procreation might be an irresponsible environmental choice is not a popular one -- even among environmentalists.Please see the link; the article is not easily available online, but I except and respond to it extensively in the Childfree News blog.

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As if to settle the debate about which party best represents out interests, Democrats in California have proposed a health plan that would exclude the childless. Gov. Schwarzenegger's plan would be more universal.

Democrats go their own way on healthcare

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Potential parents opt to put the planet before procreationBy Jennifer WillisPamplin Media Group, Apr 10, 2007COURTESY OF MICHELLE SCHNEIDER

http://www.forestgrovenewstimes.com/sustainable/story.php?story_id=117589671435170700
For Michelle and Kevin Schneider, seen here in fall at Oktoberfest in Munich,Germany, one of the benefits of not having kids is being able to travel.Besides Germany, the couple spent six weeks in Australia in 2005 and isplanning a two-month tour of Europe.

We have a global population problem. Some Portlanders are doing — or, not doing— something about it. They are choosing not to have children. According to the 2001 State of World Population report from the U.N. Population Fund, the number of people worldwide surged from 1.6 billion to 6.1 billion over the course of the 20th century. In that same period, carbon-dioxide emissions increased twelvefold.

“Most people would rather focus on the symptoms — pollution, sprawl, speciesloss,” says Albert Kaufman, founder of the Portland chapter of Population Connection. “If we don’t bring the number of people down, these are just stop-gap measures.” Based in Washington, D.C., Population Connection advocates stabilization of the world’s population at a level that can be sustained by the planet’s resources.

Seeing population at the core of environmental issues, Kaufman decided 10 yearsago to forgo having children.“We can put up all the windmills we want,” he says. “If we can’t stop reproducing at 70 million a year, nothing’s going to prevent us fromoverwhelming the planet.”

The current global population is just over 6.5 billion. The U.N. Population Division expects the number of people to grow to 9 billion by 2050. “The human population is out of balance with the rest of the natural world,”says Ramona Rex, Population Issues Coordinator for the Sierra Club’s Oregon chapter in Portland. “It took the whole time that humans were on the planet to reach 1 billion, in 1800,” Rex says. “So you can see that the human population has really escalated.”

Rex attributes this to positive developments: With advances in agricultural technology, medicine and sanitation, more people are living longer. “The flip side is that we are on a finite planet,” she says. More people means a heavier demand on limited resources, like arable land. “We’re starting to talk about water shortages,” Rex says.

During our own children’s lifetimes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that average temperatures across the planet will increase by 2.7 degrees to 10.5 degrees Fahrenheit, thanks to global warming. “In the developed nations, we’re consuming fossil fuels,” Rex says. “In the impoverished nations, we’re losing the forest covers — for example, the Amazon being the lungs of the world.”

Adoption’s always an option:Portlander Sheri Strite was 27 years old when she started considering overpopulation — around the same time that she opted for sterilization. “I thought there’s a lot of problems that the population’s going to cause,” says Strite, now 51 and single. “There are a lot of children who don’t have loving homes.”

She realized that if she decided later to be a parent, adoption was an available option. Strite hasn’t regretted remaining childless. She says the only possible downside might be not having someone to care for her in her old age.“But nothing’s certain,” she says. “Life is full of surprises.”
Kevin and Michelle Schneider, age 33 and 30, are the founders of Childfree and Happy in the Rose City, a support network for Portland singles and couples who don’t have children. The group first met in January and has nearly 50 members. Michelle Schneider had gotten pregnant last year, but the couple lost the baby only eight weeks into a very difficult pregnancy.

“It was unbearably bad,” she says. “I was so sick and miserable. I don’t know if I want to go through that again.” After that experience and after considering the public school system, the proliferation of drugs, and the value the Schneiders place on their own freedom, along with the planet’s population problem, the two decided they will remain childfree.

Within a developed society, it is not uncommon for some people to remain childless, while others have large families. It’s a matter of striking a balance that keeps the population from growing even larger.“If you look at all of the developed countries where women have opportunity, have choice, have access to contraception, the average birthrate is at replacement level of two children or fewer (per family),” Rex says.

Strite and the Schneiders fully support people who choose to procreate, even if others don’t understand their decision not to.“It does frustrate me that there can be so much judgment flying back and forth,” Michelle Schneider says of the criticism that not having children can be viewed as selfish.

“If it weren’t for those having kids, the human species would die off! But there are enough people in the world,” she says.

Do your own thing:Besides opting not to procreate, Rex says there are other ways to be a part of the population solution. People can support federal legislation for international family planning, and urge Oregon state senators to approve the Access to Contraception Act — requiring coverage of prescription contraceptives by health care plans — which recently was passed by the Oregon House of Representatives.

“My involvement in population work is not about saying someone shouldn’t have kids,” Kaufman stresses. He says Population Connection is working to ensure women’s health and welfare, and to allow access to contraception and sex education for everyone so they can make informed choices. Happy with her own choice, Strite encourages others to make the decision that’s right for them.

“If you feel that you want a family, a question is, Do you feel that you wish to procreate?” Strite asks. “I think that if you do, that’s great. If you want to make another choice, that’s great, too.”

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Bush's budget proposal would cut the childless from Medicaid bennies.

Hill Democrats Critical Of Bush's Budget Plan

So far, all I have is one line buried in a generally critical article of the entire budget proposal:
Democrats also panned the president's proposals to stop enrolling childless adults in the program . . .We all know that defending the rights of the childless is not high on the agenda of either party, so this provision is likely to receive little attention. If anyone knows more about this, please let me know. In the meantime, I'll continue to dig for details.

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In the Childfree News Blog, I post an article and follow-up letter to the editor about MomsRising:
Childfree News: Reader Responds to Bias Against Moms

The author the letter to the editor made some very good points. The truth is, the campaign for workplace equality doesn't need to enact change to be successful. We could very well justify our mandate just by combating the powerful forces evidenced by the MomsRising movement.

It makes sense that these women would be campaigning for more perks. Hell, if I could get such popularity for one of my choices that I could get employers to subsidize it, I can't say I'd turn down the opportunity. The problem begins when these women are given such unstoppable political clout that no one is there to say when.

It seems like this is where the childfree are needed most - when a movement is so unstoppable, so supported by both parties and major players that no one stops to ask what the cost is, whether the program makes sense, and whether basic fairness is being subverted. With Moms Rising gaining heavy momentum, we need to be here to remind people that there is a limit to how much society can give, give, give to parents who want to take, take, take.

Podcast: Australian PM race

I'm resuming my attempt at podcasting - this time with proper RSS syndication. I will be true to my word of this being a multimedia project by issuing more podcasts in the future.

audio file

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Action Alert: Has PC Pro-Natalism Caused a PR Disaster?

As posted on Childfree News, after a child was so disruptive she had to be removed from a flight, AirTran refunded the family's tickets (yet still flew them home), and offered them three free round-trip tickets.

I was worried that all these perks signaled that the company was apologising for their actions, that they were somehow saying their crew acted incorrectly. Should they have delayed the flight another 15 minutes? Indefinitely? Said "screw the FAA" and taken off with a child screaming in the aisle?

Here's my letter:I was very dismayed to hear about the recent incident in which an uncontrollable child was removed from a flight. The flight crew in question acted in the best interests of safety and the other passengers, yet your actions in refunding the flight, issuing an apology, and offering free flights undermined that severely. That sends the clear message that the crew acted improperly, and is nearly a reprimand to them.

Certainly, your actions will prevent your flight crews from handling such situations similarly in the future. This means that the safety and comfort of all passengers will be held hostage to extreme political correctness, and to the behavior of a single person. I will certainly avoid your airline in the future, and will seek those who reward, and do not punish, appropriate employee behavior.
They responded:While we are thankful for your support, we regret that this incident escalated to the point of having to remove the child from the flight, as our objective is to allow our customers to reach their destinations as scheduled. I am not at liberty to discuss the travel record of any passenger, however, please understand that our company's decision to compensate the family was based on several factors. Nevertheless, we are sorry you do not agree with this aspect of our decision. Our company consistently strives to improve our future performance and this matter will certainly be included in those efforts.Of course. Since the bulk of the response was explaining the incident as if to someone who objected to the crew's actions, I assume that they have received many parental complaints, and few about their apology. (And hence have not drafted a pat answer to complaints like mine) Indeed, when posting this issue, many childfree people have glossed over that aspect in their haste to applaud the crew. While I join them in doing so, I also think there are broader concerns at issue here.

The precedent that is set by their apology, in addition to the media attention, sends a message to flight crews that pro-natalism, not safety is the dominating force. If an adult passenger had been disruptive, had refused to comply with FAA guidelines, and was removed, there would have been no apology, no free tickets.

AirTran's behavior puts us all at risk. The next time a flight attendant has to deal with an unruly child, the temptation will be to allow the child to stay, jeopardizing everyone's safety. They will be compelled to, at least, let the incident go on longer. Although the 15 minute delay of this flight certainly caused a chain reaction of missed (passengers) and delayed (crew) connections at their destination, a longer delay will compound this effect. How long is too long? How many hundreds must miss their flights, how many flights must be delayed for the sake of allowing one unruly child to remain?

If anyone else is afraid that the attitude of pro-natalism is out of control, please write AirTran and let them know they should not have apologized for their crew's appropriate and considerate behavior.

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Legislative Alert- Abortion Opponents Come Together to Promote Birth Control.

I read about this in Glamour Magazine - offline. However, it appears to be getting little attention - I retrieved this in the Great Falls Tribune.

There's even a chance now that Congress will approve legislation that would expand women's access to birth control and help prevent unwanted pregnancies, Keenan said.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid opposes abortion but supports increasing women's access to birth control. In 2005, Reid teamed up with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. to introduce legislation that would, among other things, increase federal birth-control funding for low-income women, require insurance companies to pay for contraceptives just as they do for male impotence drugs, and provide funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs.

"We hope that all young people are abstinent," Keenan said. "But if they are not, then you have to provide them with information to make good decisions."

She waves off any suggestion that access to information on birth control encourages teens to become sexually active.

"It's like saying that air bags promote car wrecks," she said.

The offline article implied that this, and a mirror bipartisian effort in the House - are progressing presently, even though the article refers to 2005. I'll research this more shortly and post my results here.

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There are a handful of cases which highlight potential unfairness in the current child support system. For example, courts have held non-anonymous sperm donors liable for child support, even when the mother explicitly agreed to support the child fully herself. A court in Sweden recently upheld a similar ruling.

The law examines child support rights from the perspective of the child, so the acts of the mother, no matter how heinous, will not supersede the right to support. The right to payment stems solely from biological parentage, and does not depend on the will or the deed of the man in question. And thus courts have upheld payments in extreme cases, such as boys who were statutorily raped and in cases where women took the sperm from a condom and impregnated herself without the father's consent. These are just the notable cases, there are also myriad circumstances in which a woman lies about or sabotages birth control to get pregnant, and is still entitled to child support.

Although these cases seem extremely unfair, it is hard to counter the argument that the child still deserves support, and still deserves a living. A man paying $800 a month for a child conceived from sperm stolen from oral sex proposed one solution: a separate suit against the mother. An Illinois court recently reinstated his suit for emotional distress, providing some hope that this solution could stick.

I would go one step further. If the mother's actions were the sole cause of the child support obligation, why not force her to indemnify him for the payments? In the majority of the cases in which the mother has custody, this may seem impractical. The funds that she paid him would go straight back to herself, and would be taken from the same coffers that are providing current support for the child. This would effectively cancel out the child support and would not result in more overall provisions for the child's welfare. But what if such cases were instituted against non-custodial mothers, or after the child turned 18? Could the father obtain the value of his payments from the mother, now that her funds are her own and the child is independent? Such a result would seem to be a tad fairer than our current system.

And yet this is not the worst of it. A court ruled today that a man still owes back child support for a child that is not his, and whom he never claimed to parent. An Arkansas Court found that payments due before the paternity test were not waived, since the results of those tests only apply to future payments under state law. Existing laws already oblige non-biological fathers to pay child support when they become de facto parents by acting as such.

This departs from the justifications above; how can that basic entitlement inure to the child when there is no biological relationship?

I'm not quite sure whether this qualifies as a 'child-free' issue, and I welcome your feedback on that point. However, I have always suspected that, even as a woman, it is my childfree tendencies that have lead to my outrage on this issue. No one could trick me into having a child. Indeed, I would hold all the decision making in my hands while the man would nearly equally pay for that choice. Perhaps it is the absence of any ticking biological clock that allows me to feel that way; perhaps it would make a woman understand, even a little, why a woman would dupe a man into paternity. Or perhaps it is that in this pro-natal culture, we are very nearly the only ones left speaking on one side when someone cries "for the children!" on the other.
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