No kidding

Does American society discriminate against the childless? Elinor Burkett says yes -- and that it goes deeper than we think.

interview by Michelle Chihara

ALL KIDDING ASIDE: Elinor Burkett points to rampant pro-family bias in federal policy. "With taxes, as in the workplace," she says, "we have come to make the word 'parent' synonymous with the word 'needy.'"

Elinor Burkett pisses off Betty Friedan. In 1998, when Burkett called Friedan to discuss an article Burkett was writing, the legendary feminist and author of The Feminine Mystique was so riled at Burkett's proposal that she yelled at her and eventually hung up.

The article in question was about a growing culture clash between mothers in the workplace and the childless women who work alongside them. Drawing on her background as both a reporter for the Miami Herald and a history professor, Burkett turned that article into a book, Baby Boon, which was published in March by the Free Press. In it, Burkett takes a cold look at the workplace and government entitlements being doled out to parents whenever politicians jump on the "pro-family" bandwagon.

In this year's presidential race, Burkett says, both candidates are "awful" when it comes to legislative proposals that reward people simply for having children. "I don't think there's a scramble for the center," she says. "I think there's a scramble for the soccer-mom vote." She argues that the principle of equal pay for equal work is threatened by child-based perks. She attacks Bush for offering breaks to wealthy parents that are unavailable for needy childless workers. She pans Gore's Social Security proposal for rewarding women who stop working to take care of children, while ignoring women who drop out to take care of sick parents.

In her book, Burkett also documents a growing backlash by "child-free" Americans against a society that they feel does not respect them (see "Born Free," below right). The Phoenix spoke with Burkett from her home in New York City.

Q: You've made some very provocative arguments, but let's start with something relatively mundane. Do you really believe in widespread "adults only" areas?

A: Absolutely. I think the problem is not the kids, it's the parents. In my generation, when I was growing up, if our parents took us to the movies and we started screaming, they took us out. We can no longer count on parents to be considerate of us. That's the problem.

I don't think it would be a problem for us to demand, as childless people, that parents be more considerate of us or of other adults. At health clubs where there are pools, children are going to use the pool in a different way. What is wrong with certain hours that are child-free hours? I don't understand why it should be a problem to accommodate everybody with different interests. Very often, parents make it into a political statement, though.

Q: Most of your arguments center on benefits given to parents in the workplace. You say those benefits discriminate against people without kids. Is there any kind of space to make allowances for the special needs of parents?

A: I believe in equal pay for equal work. I think it's extremely dangerous to tamper with that.

If you and I are sitting next to each other at desks, putting in the same amount of time, been there the same amount of time, have the same merit, then we should have the same compensation. Compensation packages that reward people for fertility and not for excellence in their work seem to me to be overtly discriminatory against those without children.

There are ways to take care of that without pulling compensation from parents. You could say, everybody's worth X dollars. Parents can use some of the benefits in subsidized day care. Non-parents can use it in more life insurance, or more vacation time.

Time, however, is a problem. I should not be expected to work inferior shifts, to take crappy assignments to Omaha, or to work overtime, just because everyone else has children. That's not my responsibility.

Either I or my employer or the government has to work more because someone else chose to have children? I don't understand what moral justification there is for that.

Born free For many people who've chosen not to reproduce, the hardest part isn't child-friendly public policy. It's the social stigma. "When my parents found out that I had had a vasectomy, they told me I was being stupid," says Paul A. Sihvonen-Binder, a soft-spoken computer scientist in Amherst. "They actually said I had good genes and that I should pass them along." It's worse for women. "Men don't have the time-clock thing. They can procrastinate forever," says Ilene Bilensky, a 47-year-old hospital shift worker in Littleton, Massachusetts. "And when men don't have kids, they're seen as irresponsible, just flighty. Not sick or unnatural or a `traitor to the tribe.' " The opprobrium drives child-free people into safe spaces such as the alt.support.childfree newsgroup (available through www.deja.com). With no kids listening, newsgroup discussion can get rather coarse -- some members refer to parents as "breeders," children as "spawn," and giving birth as "whelping a sprog." They say some of this is tongue-in-cheek -- and, even when it's not, it's an understandable reaction to a country that will jump in instant obedience at the words "for the sake of the children!" Many of the most memorable voices in Elinor Burkett's book come from Greater Boston and New Hampshire, but the local child-free community is just starting to get organized face to face. A chapter of the nationwide social organization No Kidding! kicked into high gear in Boston with the September arrival of Lori Copeland, a feisty Virginian paralegal with long experience at bringing the progeny-free together. Their next dinner is in May (for more information, visit www.nokidding.boston.ma.us). -- MC

Q: What about health care? It's always going to be more expensive to insure a family of three than to insure one person. Should we make no allowances for that?

A: But are we compensating on the basis of need, not work? Look, I'm an old lefty. If we wanna go to a Marxist compensation system, hey, I've got no problem with that, no problem whatsoever.

Yes, it's expensive to raise a family. But that's not how we compensate people. If I'm supporting elderly parents and you are independently wealthy, do I get more health benefits than you do? That's not how our economy goes. We don't pay CEOs more money because they need more money.

When I worked for the Miami Herald, I supported three dying roommates with AIDS, three times. Should I have been paid more money for that? How is that going to make the person next to me feel, if I get greater compensation for the exact same work?

Q: But looking at the public sector, surely parents deserve a tax break to help feed their kids?

A: I think we should have a much more redistributive tax policy than what we have. But with taxes, as in the workplace, we have come to make the word "parent" synonymous with the word "needy." It doesn't make you needy to be a parent. Some parents are not needy. I'm in favor of skewing the tax system so that needy people, irrespective of family status, have less of a tax burden.

I don't think we should be taking anything away from anybody needy. And I don't think the non-needy should be getting an additional tax credit.

If George Bush has his way, people who earn up to $200,000 a year will get a stay-at-home-mom credit. We're going to give you a tax credit to stay home with Junior when your family income is $300,000 a year, at the same time that we're kicking people off the welfare rolls?

I, as a childless person, ask myself: are we attempting to help the needy person? Or are we rewarding fertility? There's a difference. I totally support the former and am disgusted with the latter.

Q: You seem to think that the problem comes mostly from the baby boomers' overblown sense of entitlement.

A: My mother was a working mother. If you talk to any black person, their mother was a working mother. Women have been working and raising kids for generations.

Today's middle-class and upper-middle-class working mom thinks she's unique in the history of the world, and has unique problems. I grew up in a world with a lot of women juggling these things. They didn't seem to believe that it was anybody's responsibility but theirs, and they decided to do both. When we're talking about poor people, in that case I have a lot more sympathy. When we're talking about people in my social class -- people with nannies and plenty of money -- and they decide to pursue a high-powered professional career simultaneously . . . That's your problem.

Q: Some child-free people complain about tax money spent on schools. Is public education discrimination against the child-free?

A: I and most of my childless friends are huge proponents of public education. It's part of a nation's infrastructure. Even if I don't have a car, I know we need highways and a public hospital. That's part of the infrastructure of democratic and civilized society.

When this becomes a contentious issue is when it's about school vouchers. When parents demand vouchers, they're demanding that I give them my money to send their kids to the Christian school they want them to study at. That's not okay with me. It's one thing to create a public infrastructure -- it's another to donate money to send kids to parochial schools.

Q: Betty Friedan accused you of pitting "women against women." But you consider yourself a feminist. How does this relate to feminism?

A: The second wave of the women's movement began by demanding more access to the workplace. Well, what would allow women to do work outside the home was that husbands would step up to the plate and do 50 percent of everything else. By every survey, that hasn't happened. Their husbands won't do it. So I have to? It's my responsibility to do their job because their husbands are jerks who won't do half the housework?

It's incredibly and unbelievably important not to fall into the trap of using "mother" and "woman" interchangeably, after years of it not happening. It's extremely dangerous to be going back to defining biology as destiny and not possibility.

Q: Can you sum up the values that are driving you to advocate for this?

A: It's about respecting each other's choices, rather than getting into some kind of pissing match over who's making the greatest contribution to the future of the country. There are 14 million of us who are childless. If we each had 2.2 kids, think how crowded the schools and the roads and the cities would be. Sometimes it's a contribution to not have kids.

Michelle Chihara can be reached at mchihara[a]phx.com.