Odds & ends

• I've been tired and going to bed earlier for the past week or two. And after reading one of Mel's recent Friday Roundups, I realized why!  (Personally, I blamed all those late-night World Series games! lol) 
• "What Might It Look Like Not to Have Children?"  Glynnis MacNicol at Good Decisions (who is childfree by choice) provides links to a decade's worth of her writing on the subject. 
• Pamela Tsigdinos recently discussed "Surviving the Trauma of IVF" on the Beyond Pronatalism podcast. 
• Y.L. Wolfe explains "Why People Who Don’t Have Children Deserve a More Inclusive Label" on the Life Without Children Substack. 
• Subhead: "Childless, childfree, non-parent…we shouldn’t have to define ourselves as the inverse of those who have kids."  
• (Related: The THIRD post I wrote for this blog, back in November 2007, pondered this question of unsatisfactory terminology: "Am I childLESS or childFREE?")  
• Here's an excerpt from Wolfe's post: 

Why do childless and childfree women often do so much soul-searching trying to settle on just the right label when mothers just get to be mothers without any need for distinction or an understanding of how they got there?

I can’t help but think that the answer is simple. Motherhood is the approved lifestyle choice for women in patriarchal cultures. Therefore, no matter how you got there, you get your gold star and no expectations to explain your circumstances.

Being a woman without children, however, will earn you judgment, criticism, and even hate. You can’t just say you don’t have children. People want to know why — and even though it’s rude as hell to ask, they will.

Maybe it just feels easier to preempt the invasive questions by carefully choosing the word we want to use to describe our non-parent status.

• This story, from The New York Times Magazine, is just WILD:  "She Was Ready to Have Her 15th Child. Then Came the Felony Charges."  Subhead:  "MaryBeth Lewis’s desire to be a new mom again, at 65 years old, led to a custody battle like no other."  Among other things, it touches on IVF, donor gametes, surrogacy and adoption. (Gift link.) 
• Related to the NYT Magazine article and the Lewis case, Jill Filipovic wrote a thoughtful post for her Substack, asking "Is it a Reproductive Right to Have Your 15th Child at 65?"  (Subhead:  "When women's desires and children's rights collide.")  
• Unfortunately, I believe it's paywalled for subscribers only -- but I can give you a taste of what's in it. The opening reads: 

Reproductive freedom is a core feminist principle. So are the rights of children. What happens, though, when those principles conflict? And in an era of incredible technological progress in assisted reproduction, should there be any limits to what women can choose?

• And, near the end, there's this: 
  
  

  To be clear, I am a big supporter of reproductive medicine and technological progress, including IVF and various forms of assisted reproduction (I have more misgivings about surrogacy, but still think it should be legal, if tightly regulated). And most people, when handed these new technologies, use them in ways that I find totally reasonable and largely ethical.

  
  

  But there are always outliers...

  
  
• (I thought Jill Filipovic was childless/free, but a recent Instagram post showed her husband wearing a baby carrier and the top of an infant's head peeking out in some photos. I can find nothing she's written about having a baby -- and a few of the photos show her doing some pretty crazy yoga poses, with a body that looks anything but post-partum -- unless they've adopted...??)