...and I am telling you I'm not going.

Buzz Bishop, who blogs at dad-camp.com and Babble.com, wrote an opinion piece entitled "Get Outta the 'burbs- My Problem With Married Couples Without Kids". It was syndicated via Babble on Shine Parenting, part of Yahoo.com, and from there found its way to the computer screen of my sister. This is my rebuttal to his piece.

Once upon a time, a boy and girl fell in love. After the appropriate amount of dating, they became engaged and were married in a lavish ceremony (that was held on a Friday so they could afford it), celebrated by their family and friends. The girl climbed the ranks in an acclaimed children's hospital as a nurse, and the boy climbed the ranks in the tech field. They bought a condo and then, a few years later, they moved their wedding gifts into the house of their dreams. A brand-new, two-story, two-car garage, four bedroom home on a neat lot in the suburbs, a veritable monument to the dreams they had of life, love, and children.

Houses were built around the house the boy and girl built, houses filled with couples and their young children. The new suburb bustled with the sounds of happy families, while the house the boy and girl build held only the sounds of contentment. They had worked hard for this house. It was theirs to enjoy (and pay property taxes on that benefited hundreds of children that were not theirs). Soon there would be a change of scene but for now, they were happy and proud of the home they worked so hard for.

Time went one, but it was still the boy and the girl. They had hoped to welcome children but instead, the girl found herself battling an unknown foe in her body. Soon enough, the illness had a name, and it slowly began to build a storm inside.

Outside, the girl battled a different foe. This one did not cut like a blade or pierce like a bullet- instead, it sliced like a thousand paper cuts and pricked with a million pin pricks. Whispers and gossip swirled around her, sometimes behind her back, and sometimes to her face concerning her "choice" of lifestyle("Oh, you don't have any children? Are you going to stay in that big house?"). The girl now had a soul that joined her body in betrayal. She wondered if she should be ashamed for having so much material that she didn't have to share. She tried to keep a sense of humor about the situation, trying to laugh off the comments of people who suggested she didn't deserve the things she had earned. She even took a picture of a car window, with stick figures proudly proclaiming a family consisting of a husband, a wife, and a pile of money in place of stick-figure progeny.



The picture lifted from IG as featured in the
"article" (click to be taken to the original piece)



Then one day, a writer "wrote" an opinion piece on how he felt about childless couples who move to the suburbs. With nothing to support it, he claimed that childless couples are the reason children aren't attending a better school. He derided couples who spend less on travel cost as a family of Two, rather then a family of Two Plus. The Twos can enjoy a single king-sized bed, while his family of Two Plus has to reserve a suite. "Married couples with kids just don't get it, " he declared. It was bad enough that the article was poorly written, with half-assed arguments and unsupported "facts" that were hastily loaded into a gun aimed directly at the girl and boy. It was worse that slapped at the top of the "article" was the very picture of the stick-figure family the girl had posted to Instagram, complete with the outline of her head, hairless from her illness, reflected in the glass of the car window.

We all make our own choices in life, with a healthy does of you never know what can happen thrown in. One person decides to build a big home and fill it with children. Another makes the same decision, but the children never come. Yet another makes that decision and didn't ever want kids in the first place.  Those three houses can exist as part of a whole community as long as one doesn't start flinging garbage over the fences at the other. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, of course. My opinion is that this "article" was nothing but poorly written, poorly supported, poorly aimed garbage, flung in a forum where it didn't belong. He claimed in a rebuttal piece that it was aimed at two specific couples, but when a writer uses a huge forum like Babble.com to tell "you" that your decisions should confine "you" to certain areas to force you to make certain choices, that's wrong, no matter what Newsweek sources he uses to fortify his case. Especially when that opinion is punctuated with a stolen Instagram picture from one of the very childless couples he rails against.

The original picture posted to my sisters IG
account, e-mailed to me by her.

This last bit is just for myself. Buzz , my name is Brie. I am one of those selfless, married couples who decided to have a child. That child, my son PJ, is the light of my life and I would not only pay exorbitant property taxes to ensure that he gets a good education, but I would die for him. As it stands right now, our son is Autistic, and attends an amazing public-school program in a part of our town that we currently rent in and likely could never afford to buy a home in. It never occurred to me to blame the people who already live there for the affordability (or lack of) of the neighborhood. Instead, my husband and I take personal responsibility for the growth and well-being of our child. When he succeeds, it will be because we made the best of the hand we were dealt, along with a shit-ton of hard work.

Also, the story I told above? That's about my sister. She and her husband own a home in the suburbs, and for you to suggest they don't deserve it, and that living there somehow is a threat to the households with children is irresponsible and petty, even if it is just an opinion. As someone who once sent his children to private school, you have also contributed to the decline of demand on the public, neighborhood school. He who lives in glass houses shouldn't throw bullshit blog posts.

After this, we will all go our separate ways, with you continuing to write for Babble.com and your blog and me continuing to ignore them both. I hope this note stands to remind you that as a Dad, as an example to other fathers and, most importantly, an example to your beautiful children, it is your responsibility to use your pen (keyboard?) to draw good and not blood.