Childless Living Is Easy To Do

Mary Malone writes:
As you know, I'm an old fashioned girl. Five children, a husband who serves me well, fecundation is my second favourite hobby - after baking.
But there aren't many like me left. My pride and joy is my family. Cleaning dirty knees, wiping snotty noses, reading a bed-time story, discussing life's conundrums with the teenagers, snuggling up with my man, mine is a cup of love that overfloweth.
The more you give to your children and your man, the more you get back in return. You love them to bits and they break your heart, you nurture the little darlings specifically so that one day they will grow up and leave you, and form their own families. They appear to give you nothing, but in fact they give you everything.
All too often these days there is an aversion to children. They are an obstacle to consumption, an affront to the egotism of adults who want to remain eternal children.
For millions and millions of adults, children are no longer a part of their everyday lives. At home, at work, there are no children. For the first time in human history, the daily experience of childhood is no longer an integral part of life. These days it is all too easy to go weeks or months without ever speaking to a child.
Children are kept apart in special children zones called nurseries and schools. Regarded as nuisances they are segregated from the adults. Children are condemned to lead a false existence, growing up in their special spaces, with their special activities, even eating their own special food. Children and their parents often seem like two different species, the child in its child zone, the parents working hard at their waged labour, looking at each other like strangers, enemies who are obstacles to each others primary function - consumption.
There is so much consuming to do in the world of adult children, so why saddle yourself with the burden of a child? Why not outsource childbirth to the Third World?
 Such is the unhappiness that I see all around me. You have to send your children to school, and in the era of internet mobile phones, it is impossible to keep the poison of consumer propaganda out of the children's lives.
I sometimes wonder if I am to be end of the line.