Recent high profile debates have centred on issues such as same-sex adoption, class sizes in schools and whether to allow people who kill or abuse their children the opportunity to have more.
Children are the common denominator in all these diverse and widely reported subjects, and it is little wonder that some people believe we inhabit a child-centric world that can make the childfree feel marginalised.
Childfree is the word used to describe people who voluntarily have no children. Because they've actively made a choice to not reproduce, childfree is a more apt description than childless which comes with its inherent implication that something or someone is missing from their lives. As far as the childfree are concerned, they're suffering no lack whatsoever - but rather have gained plenty in terms of independence, leisure time and financial freedom.
This phenomenon was explored in student Theresa Riley's University of Waikato thesis which developed into a book entitled Being Childfree in NZ: How couples who choose not to have children are perceived. Riley noted the presence of strong social norms for couples to have children and her research found that childfree people are commonly stereotyped as being anti-children and selfish.
In fact, accusations of selfishness are fired from both sides of this particular debate. The childfree are deemed to be selfish if they don't want their nice, cosy lives disrupted by messy, demanding offspring while parents are considered selfish if they mindlessly choose to conform to society's conventions, create someone so they'll have a caregiver in old age or opt to manufacture a mini-me just to fill a vacuum in their lives.
