What is my point?
I have been working with a fellow student on our projects. We have met to go over code issues when his blog wasn’t aligning properly (I’m an old hand at html) and have had a few discussions about our projects. After the in-class discussion, he e-mailed me on a matter that had been troubling me – what is the goal of my project?
A student pointed out that if I simply wanted to advocate for cafeteria plans, pitting the childfree against parents isn’t the best way to accomplish that. They’re right. Yet when I considered scrapping the whole Childfree Issues thing and focusing on the plan itself, the idea left me cold. It was more than just the fact that I would have to start from square one. It just wasn’t my goal.
My classmate’s email helped me hone in on the problem:
LT,
i had some thoughts on your project. i think your benefits issue and invisibility issue are kind of tension with one another and it’s probably best to focus on one for the purposes of the project. the benefits issue as you express it doesn’t seem to have a lot of appeal to parents or companies – they’re not getting anything out of this – as i understand it, you’re appealing to their basic sense of fairness, which is especially difficult if they’re not sympathetic to the childfree issue. i’d think the best way to get support on the cafeteria plan would be to show how this could benefit all kinds of employees, i.e. giving them more choice, as opposed to making it a “childfree rights” sort of issue.
the problem with that kind of argument is that it makes the childfree constituency more “invisible.” my gut reaction is that the best idea is to compartmentalize the benefits and childfree-awareness issues into separate projects.
hope this helps,
XXXXX
The first step is to get people to self-identify. While there is a vocal childfree community, the majority of people who will choose to have children do not join it. I have friends who don’t want kids, and they do not make friends on that basis, or even attach a label to it. It is not something they seek out. Furthermore, as a commenter on my blog noted:
The childfree person is seen as disparaging the lifestyle choices of parents and syblings of alternate views by speaking out about not having children. . . .Many childfree people simply decline to talk about it to avoid arguments that have no fundamental solution because it would equate with the “your living your life wrong” arguments that generally have no result other than to fracture relationships.
If the real challenge is to get people to admit to ones around them that they don’t want children, (the compounding effect being the recognition of that subgroup by society) then first one must change society itself to make it more of an acceptable choice and erase that stigma. It is a cyclical process – one feeds into the other. It also happens to be a process I started a long time ago, the first time I went on CNN to discuss my choice. By being just a normal couple speaking openly about a very personal decision, Vinny and I hoped to break stereotypes and make Americans realize that some people just don’t want kids.
Obviously, this aim is a bit large for a single semester project. What I am trying to do is the second step – getting those who do self-identify to speak more openly and address the issues that are common to all of us.
My goal, simply put, is motivation.
People complain frequently on childfree discussion boards about various unfair policies, such as taxes, employee benefits, stork spots, etc. I have noticed for some time the lack of any sort of organization to channel the frustration people were feeling into action. By creating that channel, I can harness the energy that is already out there and translate it into visibility, into advocacy. If people call talk shows, write letters to the editor, and talk more about these issues, even the small subset of childless people who already self-identify as childfree can make more of an impact than they are now.
This is why my project is two-part and two-stage: the blog to last long after class and the website to begin advocacy on a single issue. It can help to get the ball rolling, show people what to do and embody the future of my project for the purposes of the course.
Since the goal is motivation, divorcing the dichotomy from the project is counter-productive. I don’t want workplace benefits, I want childfree people to start feeling less invisible, or at least to see that visibility is within their power.
I’m not sure how well I can compartmentalize – it is certainly possible to create a separate project just to hone in on the benefits package. Perhaps I can package this separate project as a tool for those I am trying to motivate.
One thing is for sure. Nothing ends when I hand this in.
(In case you’re wondering, the poster is from Australia, which spells sibling differently)