I thought I had explained that in another comment, but rereading the comment, I see that it was badly phrased. Here, then, is my objection with slightly more elegant phrasing:
Refusing to call yourself 'childfree' further encourages the redefinition of a highly useful term from "person who's made the conscious choice not to have children" to "crazy person who hates children."
I think this redefinition is extremely unfortunate, because the term was created to serve a useful purpose--to make a deliberate contrast with the common term 'childless.'
This redefinition becomes infinitely more likely when people don't merely refrain from using the word to describe themselves, but also make loud public statements about disavowing the use of the term to describe themselves.
I didn't want anyone to read your public statement and walk away from it thinking that it was okay to associate the term 'childfree' with the very limited subgroup of crazy child-haters. So even though I didn't think it was likely that I would convince you, I still felt it necessary to speak up in an equally public way.
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Date: 2006-04-12 10:45 pm (UTC)Refusing to call yourself 'childfree' further encourages the redefinition of a highly useful term from "person who's made the conscious choice not to have children" to "crazy person who hates children."
I think this redefinition is extremely unfortunate, because the term was created to serve a useful purpose--to make a deliberate contrast with the common term 'childless.'
This redefinition becomes infinitely more likely when people don't merely refrain from using the word to describe themselves, but also make loud public statements about disavowing the use of the term to describe themselves.
I didn't want anyone to read your public statement and walk away from it thinking that it was okay to associate the term 'childfree' with the very limited subgroup of crazy child-haters. So even though I didn't think it was likely that I would convince you, I still felt it necessary to speak up in an equally public way.
-J