Do You Have Kids?

With more and more people not having kids, how will our lives unfold? Whether by choice or by circumstance, childfree and childless life is very different from parenthood. Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No takes on topics from the shifting meaning of friendship and family to what we leave behind when we die. Weaving together wisdom from women ages twenty-four to ninety-one with both her own story and a growing body of research, Kaufmann brings to light alternate routes to meaning, connection, and joy.Today about one in five adults over age 40 will never have children. Non-parents don't talk much about what not having kids means to our lives and identities. Not that we don't want to; there just aren't obvious catalysts for such open conversations. In fact, social taboos preclude exploration of the topic. Our family-centric culture doesn't know quite what to do with non-parents, so there's potential for the childless and childfree to be sidelined, ignored, or drowned out. Even so, there's widespread, pent-up demand for understanding this perfectly normal way of being. In this straight-shooting, exhaustively researched book, women without kids talk candidly about the ways in which their lives differ from societal norms and expectations?the good, the bad, and the unexpected.