Watch some Netflix, read a book, fire up the PC and play some Beat Saber, go out for some beers at a comedy club with some mates... It's a hard life not having kids.

My weekends feel pretty empty too. Sometimes I just sleep in late on a Saturday then go out with friends or bum around all day watching TV on a Sunday. Oh, the crushing emptiness of it all.

Original article in Dutch.

Google traslation below (cause i didn't feel like translating everything myself).

I really don't understand how this is such a radical thing to do? People seem baffled by the idea of working less. Why?

>Lonneke (32) is well educated, childless and works parttime: “I don’t want to work more than 3 days, period.”

>She is well educated, has no kids and is young. Still, Lonneke Backelandt works only three days a week. Simply because it makes her happy. “I’ve become a more fun person because of this.”

>It is one of the discussions in which the minds often run high: the fact that so many women work part-time in the Netherlands. Especially since there are more and more economists who state that we simply cannot afford this anymore with all the shortages in healthcare and education.

>Sensitivity

>Lonneke understands the sensitivity around this theme like no other. Still, a few years ago she chose to work less. "I have to defend myself very often for my choice."

>Despite her financial independence, the candidate civil-law notary must regularly explain her conscious choice. "Also because I am not a mother, or for example have to take care of a sick family member. I want to invest my time in myself. That seems to me to be my right."

>Firm burnout

>The reason for her choice is also that she ended up in a serious burn-out a few years ago as an aspiring notary. "I then decided to change my life and decided to put it on the table as a hard requirement. Work no more than 3 days, period."

>Her employer was certainly not immediately enthusiastic when she submitted this proposal. "They really had to get used to it. How are we going to set it up? And who is going to set it up? And who is going to do all that work? That kind of questions I got. It certainly requires an adjustment and not every employer is geared for that."

>Better concentration

>Her current employer eventually tacks. Lonneke still reaps the benefits of her decision every day. "I really notice that I have become a much happier and more fun person. I don't do fewer things in my life, but with a much better concentration."

>Lonneke wants to tell her story to make others think. "A lot of women, but also men are stuck in a kind of mold that makes them not happy at all.

I love this sub and I love you guys. Xx

Reposted a different way.

I have no children, due to a combination of a thankfully childless first marriage, and a second late marriage to a wonderful woman who wants to make a family with me, but is infertile due to a lifetime of endometriosis. She will be having a radical hysterectomy later this year, completely ending my chances of having biological children with the woman I love, with a stark finality.

We certainly plan to adopt later on, but my job right now is to get Mama healthy enough to meet our children someday, so we're stuck in between. Meanwhile, another Fathers Day comes and goes, and it's really hard.

Anybody else? Why didn't it happen for you [yet]? How do you deal? I'm compensating with spring cleaning today.

And to anyone who is childfree, I respect your choice, but I don't really seek to have mine changed, so please don't turn this into a discussion about how grateful I should be. I am old enough to have seen my peers raise their children and give them grandchildren, so I know the whole story from beginning to end, and I still would prefer to have children.

Title says it all.

For step-parents with no bio kids, only stepchildren, do you still consider yourself childless?

I do.

SO and I are not married. Legally I have no responsibilities or rights when it comes to SD10. Morally, I feel like SD has a mom and dad (although he's trash, he's still her dad), if anything, I am more like an Aunt.

Sometimes I see folks on here comment saying "you are no longer childless if you have stepchildren" and I couldn't disagree more.

Not gonna explain myself too much but I'm wondering the take of other stepparents who don't have bio kids. Do you consider yourself child-free?

A year and a half in, and I don’t feel I’d be able to stay around as a stepparent if my husband died. I feel a tiny bit of guilt, and haven’t discussed that with him yet. I feel like it would devastate him, and I haven’t yet wanted to have this conversation. Also, I guess it would depend on how old the kids would be if this ever happened, but who knows if I’d ever feel differently.

My best friend of 20 years does not have any kids, and mostly likely won't ever. I hated it when people who had kids used to tell me, "you can't understand unless you're a parent," but it is so true. My best friend who complains about not having enough money to buy more shoes, who is a well to do lawyer, living in her parents free condo just doesn't understand why I can't go on a retreat with her to Thailand and "leave the kids with your husband," when we can barely buy groceries now. With having twins and loosing an income, isn't it obvious why? She tells me "just budget and save." There is NO EXTRA money to be saved for something like that, and if there was I would put it in an account to save for my kids' college. I am so frustrated with it (and she is probably frustrated with me too) but I cannot relate at all to her now. Not to mention my childless sister who has "no spare time" because she works 40 hours a week. Apparently I need to make some mommy friends who I can relate to.

An Economist article I forgot I read 2 years ago, and it should cheer some people up! It's really well researched, and the data points blow bingo-ing out of the water. Cheers. Copy/paste because paywall.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/07/29/in-defence-of-the-childless

--------------------

"No kidding"

In defence of the childless

More and more Westerners have no kids. They should not be criticised for it

Print edition | Leaders

Jul 29th 2017

ONE by one, prejudices are tumbling in the West. People may harbour private suspicions that other people’s race, sex or sexuality makes them inferior—but to say so openly is utterly taboo. As most kinds of prejudiced talk become the preserve of anonymous social-media ranters, though, one old strain remains respectable. Just ask a childless person.

They are not subject to special taxes, as they were in Soviet Russia; nor are they driven from their homes, as they still are in some poor countries. The childless nonetheless come in for a lot of criticism. “Not to have children is a selfish choice,” Pope Francis has intoned, perhaps forgetting what the Bible says about motes and eyes. Others point out that non-parents are failing to produce the future workers who will pay for their pensions. Childless politicians are charged with not having a proper stake in society. “He talks to us about the future, but he doesn’t have children!” complained Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founder of the National Front party, of Emmanuel Macron, who went on to win the French presidency. Similar attacks on Theresa May and Angela Merkel also failed—but researchers find that many voters quietly agree.

The charges against the childless should be thrown out, along with other social calumnies. In many rich countries, between 15% and 20% of women, and a slightly higher proportion of men, will not have children. The share is rising (see article). Some have medical problems; others do not meet the right person in time; still others decide they do not want them. Falling sperm counts in rich countries may play a role, too. Whatever the cause, the attacks on the childless are baseless.

If non-breeders are selfish, they have an odd way of showing it. They are more likely to set up charitable foundations than people with children, and much more likely to bequeath money to good causes. According to one American estimate, the mere fact of not having children r

After Napoleon's (first) defeat and exile, the restoration monarch Louis XVIII was brought in to rule France. My impression is that there wasn't much enthusiasm for him beyond royalist circles, and that he was perceived as being imposed on them by outside powers. Less than a year later he fled France without a fight as Napoleon returned, in an event that seems to have revealed a serious lack of support for the Bourbon restoration. It seems that such a humiliation would be the end of an already weak figure like Louis, but he ended up ruling relatively peacefully, and was the first French ruler to die naturally and in power since 1774. How was he able to come back after Napoleon's second act?

TL;DR: LINKS TO ALL ACCOUNTS AT SECOND HALF OF THE POST!

It started with the Qreeper I found yesterday. Color me shitfaced but it's been a while since my eyes were offended by such naked Qtipping on the ahem MAINSTREAM social media.

I kept on clicking and saving a few links. Before I knew it, I stumbled on to a huge network on QAnon accounts. And they made it so easy.

For those who were out there scouting when Parler went offline: all of the platforms that didn't immediately ban them were pretty crappy and a lot of them didn't even allow you to look up other users unless you found their content. Even GAB didn't have a correctly working seach function for tags, keywords or users lol.

Image with two examples of themed follow/reshare lists.

The Qnuts worked around this by extending the old school "follow 4 follow" culture into themed follow lists and "beacon accounts" (like the gab follow back girl). They are now using that same method on Twitter to connect with likeminded idiots regardless of previous platform or location.

They will communicate their flavor of crazy through emojis, keywords or attached images. Like covid bioweapon meme at the bottom of one list, cabal adrenochrome at the other.

As far as I know, it's still not allowed to be openly QAnon on Twitter since midway 2020, and after the insurrection they purged so many at once that several GQP whined about their missing followers and their numbers being slashed.

I did my best to weed regular "conservatives" out. I stuck to people with clear Q names, bio's and content. Some accounts are on multiple lists.

>So for your daily dose of armchair activism/volunteering/finger workout, please jump in and help report these accounts so Twitter can commence the purgenings.

Follower lists at the top, individual accounts at the bottom

Edit: Reporting instructions: Please use the inplatform reporting options (instructions [here](https://

My relationship with my wife is better than ever, my health has improved, my mind is clear, my goals are set, and I am happy. My son is proud of his dad. I am enjoying every day instead of just going through the motions to get home and pour a drink. You all have been so supportive and kind. I will not drink with you today.

I have Fursula unfriended and blocked on Facebook so I don't have to see her garbage and she can't see anything I post. DH, however, doesn't have her blocked. So when need be, we use his account to check up on her craziness. Yesterday, he was scrolling through his newsfeed and found this gem.

The best part? We're not entirely sure SIL even wants kids. Apparently my brother put off proposing for a long time because they weren't on the same page about potentially having kids. But yes, let's go ahead and wish her a happy mother's day because that might speed things along. /s

*Side note- DH saw the post because my sister was tagged in it. Fursula isn't on DH's friends list, either.*