Empty Nest by design: A guest post

Thanksgiving with friends. Not family.

Something big was happening in America around 1971, the year I graduated from college.

It wasn't an event. It wasn't in the news. It was an idea drifting out into the zeitgeist and changing lives. Women in my circle of friends were deciding that they would have great careers and exciting lives of significance. They decided they wouldn't bear children.

There was a combination of reasons for a shift in expectations about childbearing. Paul Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb laid out a moral argument for childlessness. America began having "Earth Days." Educational institutions changed; it switched from unusual to normal for women to enter the professions. Betty Friedan had written The Feminine Mystique describing women's frustrations with being a stay-at-home wife; my friends, male and female, had read it. Soon Gloria Steinem will be founding Ms. Magazine. The Vietnam War was underway and there was the thought that maybe it was cruel to bring children into such a messed-up world. Good contraception was available. The idea of sex between consenting adults disconnected from marriage and pregnancy.

Ideas in the zeitgeist translate into personal behavior  as preferences and expectations and self image. Who am I really? For many of my classmate friends in high school and college, it resulted in their not having children, or having very few and having them "late" by prior standards. That Norman Rockwell painting of grandparents hosting a Thanksgiving feast for a large family at a long table is nostalgia and cliché; not description.

College classmate Erich Almasy describes his journey. 

Erich Almasy and Cynthia Blanton on a trip to Nepal. Dole Foods was a client of their consulting firm.

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

A Life without Progeny

Peter asked me to expand upon the comment I made about children, and my lack thereof. A recent news article pointed out that over 75 percent of people over age 72 are white and that less than 50 percent under age 18 are. MAGA and white supremacy will go away as we Boomers die off and the races of color who have made the United States a true melting pot take their fair share. 

Children. Probably the most momentous decision any couple or even an individual makes. I met my life companion (so hard to come up with the proper expression) as I was leaving college to venture to Alaska and later, Egypt. Cynthia had taken a year off (now euphemistically called a gap year) to earn enough money to finish her senior year. She had broken up with her boyfriend of many years three days before we met and was on the rebound. Needless to say, I pounced, and since I had made clear that I was about to become a world traveler, she decided it was an easy one-night stand. How wrong she was. We spent a good part of the night talking, and came to common agreement on many things that seem to daunt couples of much longer duration. We agreed on religion (none), politics (liberal), and children (none).

The last perspective seems an odd one for people aged 21, so a little background may help. Cynthia was a child of separation. Her parents were not the best of friends and may have gotten married because Cynthia came along. This was not uncommon in the late forties and early fifties before birth control was readily available to women, and that makes such a difference! Her father led a pretty much independent life and her mother had a lot of trouble coping. My parents also had me prematurely. In fact, as I much later found out, they weren’t married until I was four months old. Theirs was a combative marriage. Both were well-educated, opinionated liberal individuals, my mother from northern Wisconsin and my father a Jewish refugee from Vienna, Austria. The latter was something I didn’t fully understand until his death in 2004.

Cynthia’s rejection of motherhood was understandable given her upbringing. Mine, less so, since I was a largely happy child whose parents spent time both educating and nurturing -- until the end of my freshman year in college, when my mother had a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed (poorly) with bipolar disorder. This amazing woman (a feminist before the word was coined) was suddenly gone from my life and I found myself drifting away from my father and younger sister. Living in Boston while they lived in Los Angeles made this distance easier. I seldom thought of family.

I eventually returned from my adventures, and Cynthia and I embarked on our POTOSLT (Persons of the Opposite Sex Living Together) relationship, which lasted 24 years. With no children plans, we didn’t need holy matrimony, and we married in 1995 only because the company I joined did not provide health insurance for unmarried couples. So romantic! 

We now live in Mexico and celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday with the families of two Mexican friends (brothers who married sisters) and their four adorable children. Thanksgiving is not a Mexican holiday, even though the turkey, sweet and white potatoes, green beans, cornbread, and even the pumpkin pie all originated here. In our almost 55 years together, have we missed the sound of little feet, growing into adults, followed by more little feet? No. We have worked together, traveled together, fought together, and enjoyed life and love together. She is my best friend, although her dog Max and my dog Tomás try to claim precedence. Over the years, many friends and acquaintances have questioned our decision, speculating that we would regret it. Some people just aren’t cut out to be parents. It’s not that we don’t have family. Cynthia is very close to her younger sister and I have finally become close to mine. In fact, my sister Lisa and I will be traveling to Vienna in August to discover more about the relatives we lost in the Holocaust.

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