I don’t usually venture far into the “childfree” community because the anti-children rhetoric makes me grit my teeth, but when I came across this 10-minute video on Facebook today, I decided to ditch my planned post and share this with you because, well, wow.
If you have time, watch it and come back.
In this video, “Childfree Kimberly” aka Kimberly Fisher shares “Why You Should Get Married and Not Have Kids.” She offers a list of advantages to having a childfree marriage. They include: privacy, quality time with your partner, no requirement to “stay together for the kids” but a chance to choose every day to stay together, freedom to grow together rather than fall into separate mom and dad roles, spontaneous dates to do fun things together, and no child getting in the middle of your marriage.
Here’s the thing. She’s right. All of these points sound like great advantages to not having children. Kids do interrupt your privacy and make it hard to spend quality time together. They are a consideration in everything you do, whether it’s going out to dinner or deciding to split up. They’re also expensive, messy, and frequently annoying. When children enter the picture, your relationship changes and not always in a good way.
We could argue the other side, the advantages of having children, the magic of creating a human being, the joy of having a big family, the satisfaction of carrying family genes and traditions into the next generation, the companionship of grown sons and daughters, help in old age, etc. We would be right about that, too.
Many parents would say that raising children is difficult but rewarding, that you feel a love like you’ve never felt before. Kids can also break your heart. People who never wanted children might say, “Who needs all this drama?”
I wanted to share this video at Childless by Marriage because it may help us understand why our partners are unwilling to have children with us, especially if they have already gone through it with someone else. They want the privacy, freedom, and connection uninterrupted by little ones screaming, “Mommy!” or “Daddy!” It makes sense, but what if you can’t imagine life without the little ones? What if you want all that drama? It’s certainly something for you and your partner to talk about.
If you are physically unable to have children, maybe this video will offer some consolation.
Let’s talk about it here, too. What is your response to this video? Would you show it to your partner? What would he/she say? If you were to make a list of reasons why you should get married and HAVE children, what would it include? I’m so glad you all are here to talk about this stuff.
For more on Kimberly, visit her Instagram site: https://www.instagram.com/kimberlyfisher.cf/ or her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChildfreeKimberly
Childless by Marriage 
She makes too many assumptions for me to really believe her argument. For example, she argues that childless couples get to ‘grow together’ and parents don’t. Much too simplistic. Childless couples could grow together, perhaps more so when they are young-ish, but could just as easily spend their additional leisure time taking up seperate hobbies, interests and activities that interest them but not their partners. And parents can ‘grow together’ before thay are parents, or when parenting is done, if they really can not manage it whilst they are parents.
I would question the Google research result she uses at the start that marriage satisfaction rates fall more for couples with children compared to those without. I suspect second (or third) marriages are included in the “marriages without children” group, and people entering those marriages are more likely to already have children and be less likely to expect to have children from their marriages. Additionally, they are more likely to be a little older and perhaps under less life pressures such as from work, careers, big mortgages and to be more able to enjoy leisure time and holidays together.
And, she is only 6 years into a marriage, that is not long in the grand scheme of things. And (lastly) she seems to struggle to keep looking at the camera while she talks, so, I get the feeling she is not as confident in her argument as she would like us to believe.
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