Article content continued

So, there is that. But there is also this: a Canada where one in five women will not have a child in their lifetime, whether by choice or circumstance.

“In a sense we have a reduction of the overall number of children people are having, which is a continuation of something that has been going on since the 1970s,” says Kevin McQuillan, a sociologist at the University of Calgary. “But there is also a turning away by couples from having children, period.”



.

Having children used to be the point of being a pair. It was the great aspiration — along with finding love everlasting — a biological impulse to go forth and multiply and, later, once your babies reached a certain age, to cajole them about the merits and benefits of doing their bit to join the ranks of parenthood while giving Mom and Dad some grandkids.

No more. Gone are diaper changes and ballet classes, replaced by hot yoga and shopping trips to New York City. Monica Zeniuk belongs to Babes without Babes, an Edmonton social club for child-free women. She and her husband have been married for 18 years.

“The benefits of not having children are in the driveway, in our closet and stamped on our passports,” Ms. Zeniuk told Postmedia reporter Misty Harris. “Kids are expensive. And the marriage mortality rate is huge, without the added pressure of financing a child through its life.”

What she forgot to mention was how our kids can break our hearts.

Studies have revealed that there is a mismatch between the messaging we receive about parenting, about how sweet it is — with its inherent emotional rewards — and the reality of the mayhem-ridden slog many moms and dads face when wrangling their brood.