Two Is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice

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Two Is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice (eBook) Pub. Date: 10/27/2009 Publisher: Avalon Publishing Group
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Two Is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice Pub. Date: 10/1/2009 Publisher: Avalon Publishing Group

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Overview

Fall in love. Get married. Have children. For most couples, marriage and children go hand in hand. And yet, the number of people choosing childlessness is on the rise. These are the childless by choice—people who have actively decided not to have children—rather than the childless by circumstance. In Two Is Enough, Laura S. Scott explores the assumptions surrounding childrearing, and explores the reasons many people are choosing to forgo this experience. Scott, founder of the Childless by Choice Project, examines the personal stories of people who have faced this decision and explores the growing trend of childlessness. Scott’s expert knowledge and analysis offer a picture of the childless by choice—who they are, why they’ve chosen to remain childless, and how they’ve had these conversations with loved ones. Honest and unapologetic, Two Is Enough recognizes the challenges of being childless in today’s society and offers suggestions on how that same society can change to make room for the childless and the childfree.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Scott, founder of the Childless by Choice Project, contributes to the growing literature on people choosing to forgo having children. She bases her observations on an extensive survey, exploring the decision-making process that relates not only to the ramifications of this decision but also to living a childless life in a pronatal world. Scott discusses this emotionally wrought topic in a measured, neutral tone that will appeal to those making these decisions and their extended families.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781580052634
Publisher: Avalon Publishing Group
Publication date: 10/1/2009
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 222,928
Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.20 (h) x 0.80 (d)

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Average Rating 3.5

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doctor_beth

Posted November 3, 2009

more from this reviewer

Excellent reveiw of the factors which contribute to a decision to live a life that is childfree by choice

This book stemmed out of author Laura Scott's Childless by Choice Project, a research project comprised of several different components. In the Introduction, Scott, herself a woman who choose to marry and yet remain childless (or childfree--she uses these two terms interchangeably) by choice, notes that she wondered whether she was alone in her decision, and if not, how others arrived at the same choice that she made. She further explains that she had two main goals when starting her research project: 1) to determine what people identified as their most compelling motives for remaining childfree, and 2) to better understand the decision-making process which led to someone identifying themselves as childless by choice. Based on these goals, Scott designed a questionnaire which would yield the data she sought; she then recruited a total of 171 childless by choice individuals to respond to her survey. Finally, Scott supplemented her survey results with an additional series of 28 in-depth interviews she conducted with various childfree couples.

The chapters which follow present the main findings of Scott's research. There is information on "Who Are the Childless by Choice?," the decision-making process that occurs along the path to becoming childless, and the a list of the resulting "Eighteen Reasons (and More) Why We Don't Have Kids." The latter chapter may surprise some who believe that childfree individuals are "selfish" or "must hate kids"--comments that participants in Scott's interviews had been subjected to in the face of their decisions to remain childless. As it turns out, however, the highest-rated motive statement in Scott's research was "I love our life, our relationship, as it is, and having a child won't enhance it." Rounding out the top three motives were "I value freedom and independence" and "I do not want to take on the responsibility of raising a child." In general, Scott found that the couples she interviewed did NOT take their decision not to have children lightly; in fact, through her research, Scott discovered that childfree couples often spend more time talking about the decision to have children than those who actually HAVE children.

The more I continued to read this book, the more I could relate: yes, I myself am childfree by choice. I particularly appreciated the final three chapters. Chapter 6 addresses "The Myths and Realities of Living Childfree." As Scott points out, the #1 assumption regarding those who are childfree is that they dislike children. This is definitely not the case for me (I absolutely adore my 10 nieces and nephews!), but going back to the motives noted above, just because I like kids does not mean that I want the constant responsibility of raising one of my own. In Chapter 7, Scott talks about what it is like for the childless by choice to have to live in a "pronatist" world. I'm sure that those who DO have kids never give this a second thought, but American society is definitely extremely biased towards families and children. There is general a lack of understanding for anyone who chooses not to conform to this standard by not having kids of their own, which can result in prejudices, stigmas, and even preferential behavior in both social settings and the workplace. I believe this can be a particular challenge for women of child-bearing age--for example, at family gatherings, I often find myself ha

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nonfictionlover

Posted November 16, 2009

Good Topic, Informative, but a rather Dry Read

I was very excited to see this book come out, as there has been very little written on the choice NOT to parent in a long time. (And what has been written, hasn't been too thorough.)

I was glad to see Laura Scott did perform a survey on the childless, which no authors have done to this point, but DISAPPOINTED to see she only interviewed 171 childless! (A very small pool that is not representative of an entire country.) Since the childless numbers have grown to 20% in the U.S., I would think she could have found more respondents in the two years she spent conducting the survey.

Plus, she only interviewed those who intentionally CHOSE not to have children, leaving those who are childless by CIRCUMSTANCE and those who are UNDECIDED out of the equation. Yet she contradicts herself by discussing the "childless by circumstance" quite a bit in the book, even after she has stated in the beginning that her focus is on the "Childless by Choice." Many of us are a cross between the two camps. In other words, we made a choice not to have kids, only AFTER we realized all the circumstances weren't right to be a parent. I woul
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