For at least five years, singer and television presenter Ricki-Lee Coulter has been telling us she does not want kids.
Not even a little bit. Not today, not tomorrow, and not even next Friday.
In Sunday’s Stellar magazine, Coulter said, “People on the street ask me, ‘When are you and Rich having kids?’ Stop!”
Things people who don’t want kids always hear. Post continues below.
The public response to the Australia’s Got Talent host’s decision can be summed up as follows:
Excuse me dear but we’re all struggling to understand exactly what you’re trying to say. Your four word statement “I don’t want kids” leaves a lot of room for confusion. Do you mean that you certainly DO want children, but you suffered a malfunction of the mouth and it’s all just an embarrassing misunderstanding? Or have you just not decided YET that you’d like to have kids? That’s fine, you still have time. It’s just – and don’t panic – but you appear to have said something very strange about not actually wanting children which clearly isn’t what you meant so if you’d just like to have another go at answering that question we’d all be very interested in what you have to say! Good girl.
You see, a furrowed brow has emerged across the country. Something just isn’t adding up.
Top Comments
My experience is that the male partner gets off a lot easier on this issue. My husband and I made the decision to remain childfree together, well before we got married. However, he’s been asked if he was really OK about not having kids when I wasn’t present. It’s happened half a dozen times that I am aware of. I find that so annoying they think perhaps it wasn’t his choice too. They don’t seem to notice how quickly he gets bored with their children and how often he complains about places where there are too many kids.
I think that's partly to do with the fact that women are largely the final arbiters regarding whether a couple has kids or not. If she's dead against the idea, it's not as though a man can get pregnant and bear kids himself. Conversely, an ambivalent man may be easier to convince, given that it's not his body having to go through pregnancy, birth and breast feeding, and it's still considered normal and acceptable that men make very little comparative career and lifestyle changes to accommodate parenthood.
“If she's dead against the idea, it's not as though a man can get pregnant and bear kids himself. Conversely, an ambivalent man may be easier to convince…”
But the male partner can choose to marry someone else who wants kids. He is the final arbitrator on who he marries and what sort of life he wants to have. An ambivalent man doesn’t need ‘convincing’ to be childfree. If he really wanted kids – he would probably have them. Still seems to be doubt that men can make these choices for themselves without being over ruled or convinced by a woman.
My point is that ambivalence towards parenthood in men is probably quite common, but a man choosing to acquiesce to a partner's desire to have children is also likely to be common, as doing so has little *comparative* negative bearing on his lifestyle, profession and bodily autonomy - it's an "easy" concession to make. As such, I believe a significant proportion of "ambivalent" men who would otherwise be child-free often end up as fathers regardless. I don't think you see the same proportion of "ambivalent" women (or those who ultimately want to remain child-free) ending up as mothers.