burbs

Married couples without kids don't get it.



My best friend is married, no kids. He moved in to his childhood neighborhood, across from his old school which is now closed. It sits empty because too many empty nesters sucked the demand dry. Meanwhile, the edges of our city have kids being bused as schools are bursting at the seams.



If you don't want to have kids, get out of neighborhoods with schools. Move downtown, or to a chic restaurant district where you need half the space and your "no curfew" lifestyle won't be cramped by strollers on the streets.

Another colleague moved to the burbs and lamented the lack of social scene. She and her husband live in a 4 bedroom 3000 sq ft home. It's just the 2 of them, yet she was perplexed why she couldn't meet anyone who didn't have any kids complaining that she was "feeling especially isolated, out in these-here burbs". That will happen when you moved into a subdivision sans kids.

When you're a couple and you make the choice not to have kids, you don't get it. You're a DINK (pardon the double entendre). You've got two incomes and half the expenses.



Related: The 17 biggest lies parents tell their kids



When you have kids, a weekend escape isn't just a quick flight for 2, it's a flight for 4, and you can't get the king sized bed, you need the suite, and then the dinners are not for 2, they're for 3, or 4, or 5. What might cost you $800 for a quick getaway will cost me $1500.

These people are most likely the type of whiners that are now having children banned from a food court in Australia. These are the type of people who are complaining about kids on airplanes. Married couples who have no kids are the types of people who are trying to get kids kicked out of restaurants.

As many of us delay having kids until deep into our 30s, and then some find it's too late and skip the process altogether, we're finding ourselves with a Me generation of adults, not adolescents.

Yes, a recent study shows that married couples without children are happier than those with, but selfishness will do that to you. Besides, I could just as easily point to a study done a year earlier that says breeders are happier than non-breeders.

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Happiness is a relative subject, it would appear. My childless friends are happy having a last minute golf weekend away, and I'm happy sitting in on a Wednesday night baking cookies and reading Dr Seuss.

Perhaps parenting is a case of 'delayed happiness.' It may be stressful and hectic now, but when I'm old I will have children and grandchildren to keep me company and I will be showered in family. I wonder how happy a childless couple will be when they're at the end of the line?



-By Buzz Bishop

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