Married...Without Children

So I was researching the Duggar family today— mostly because they freak me out and I firmly believe that those Quiverfull folks are theologically unsound and mentally unstable, but also because, well, they do have some great money-saving tips— and I ran across an organization called No Kidding! [exclamation mark included].

It's apparently an organization of people who are either not having kids yet, or who are unable to have kids, or who just don't ever want kids for one reason of another. They hang out and do stuff and talk about things and don't have to deal with people constantly asking, "So when are you two going to spawn?"

And I kinda want to join. Okay, so yeah, their website looks like 1996 threw up all over it, but still, it's an intriguing concept for a social group. I mean, Adam and I are going to be childless for another ten years, so if I'm sick of being asked about my womb NOW, imagine how much worse it will get in a few more years, when more of my friends are married/preggers/thinking about getting preggers.

Plus, it's hard to find these types of people to talk to. All the people on my Babies Not On The Brain board at The Nest have quite suddenly decided to become pregnant and create little tracking devices in their message board signatures that tell the world when they're due/ how far along they are/ when they'll be ovulating next. I am not making this up.

Now, as I've said before, I'm not trying to hate on people who DO have kids, as long as they're responsible, mature parents and they didn't just pop those kiddos out so they could have something cute to dress up in little bonnets every day. I'm just saying that I want to schedule my child (Adam and I both only want one, as we like the idea of a small family) in a pretty specific place in my life, and if modern birth control allows me to do that, why not give it a shot?

Wikipedia has a great article on Childfree; these are the most interesting statistics from that page:

• The number of these women who are without children is unknown, but the National Center of Health Statistics confirms that the percentage of American women of childbearing age who define themselves as childfree (or voluntarily childless) rose sharply in the 1990s - from 2.4 percent in 1982 to 4.3 percent in 1990 to 6.6 percent in 1995.
• Overall, researchers have observed childfree couples to be more educated, more likely to be employed in professional and management occupations, more likely for both spouses to earn relatively high incomes, to live in urban areas, to be less religious, to subscribe to less traditional gender roles, and to be less conventional.
• David Foot of the University of Toronto concluded that the female's education is the most important determinant of the likelihood of her reproducing. The higher the education, the less likely for her to bear children.

I'm not all that surprised about the religion part, but I must say, they can't be counting all that many Episcopalians in there. I know plenty of people at my church who don't have the urge to procreate. The more I see of non-denominational/ evangelical Christianity, the more I think there must be some terrible mistake and we're actually reading two completely different Bibles.

So anyways— babies. I'm going to make a poll about this, I think...keep an eye out for it.