Childless by choice

By: Samantha Marshall
Published: March 11, 2007 - 6:59 am

Manhattan lawyer Craig Lamster always knew he didn't want kids. He was so adamant that when he and his childhood sweetheart got engaged, he made not having a family a condition of their marriage. A decade later, at 36, the proud "father" of a one-year-old German shepherd says he and his wife have no regrets.

"If I had two kids, I'd either be shelling out $20,000 for the right preschool or commuting three hours a day," Mr. Lamster says.

New York is a magnet for people like the Lamsters. Known as dinks — Dual Income No Kids — such couples are less likely here to feel socially isolated by their procreating peers.

Though the city doesn't collect data on couples who are voluntarily childless, the number of births here hit a 25-year low of 122,725 in 2005, 1,374 fewer than in 2004, according to the latest statistics available from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Despite the nagging of relatives, the routine loss of friends to the diaper brigade and a sense of guilt about not spawning the next generation, a growing contingent of New York couples are keeping the population statistics down. They cite a plethora of reasons for not creating a brood — from a devotion to their careers to having met later in life. Some want to enjoy New York diversions like theater and fine dining unencumbered by child care concerns. Others say they simply don't have the instinct to breed.

One of the biggest turnoffs is the rising cost of raising and educating offspring in a city where the price of private schooling can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per child.

"The economy is definitely driving the family choices people make," says William Helmreich, a professor of urban sociology at City College of New York. "The trend is growing for people to go childless."

The steep financial commitment struck childbearing from the to-do list of Suzanne Coyle, 39. She and her husband did the math and realized that they wouldn't be able to afford the mortgage on their Long Island home if they had kids. Both work full-time to maintain their lifestyle and don't intend to add another debit column to their budget.

"Day care would take up an entire paycheck, or a paycheck and a half," Ms. Coyle says.

For some couples, the New York lifestyle is too compelling to clutter it up with more responsibilities.

Sydney Masters, 38, a Manhattan publicist, says her hectic life with her author husband leaves no room for children. She spends her free time riding horses on the show jumping circuit and attending glamorous parties. The closest she comes to caring for a dependent is looking after her beloved West Highland Terrier, Angus, "whom we often treat like a child," Ms. Masters says.

Free to help others

Careers get in the way, too. Author and self-help guru Mick Quinn, 44, runs workshops around the world with his 33-year-old wife. When they married three years ago, they chose not to be parents "so that we would be free to dedicate ourselves entirely to our work of guiding others," Mr. Quinn says. His wife even had herself sterilized two years ago.

Ms. Masters wouldn't go that far. "But the only way I'd have a child is so that I could have a pony," she says.

As with all complex personal decisions, there are pros and cons to going child-free. A revolving door of relationships is one of the drawbacks.

"It's a little more difficult to meet people," says photo editor Debbie Cohn-Orbach, 46, who feels let down when couples whom she and her husband befriend have children and slowly disappear from their lives.

Familial pressure can be another downer. Couples often pay for their freedom by enduring endless questions from frustrated in-laws hoping for grandchildren.

Lost friendships

Even friends who have kids "want me to suffer along with them," Ms. Masters says. "Once you get married, that question of when you're going to have children is always next."

To help dinks cope, support groups are sprouting up nationwide. No Kidding!, which has about 50 members in the New York area, acts as a social network. Childfree Meetup, whose current city membership includes about 125 couples, posts playdates for adults. The lifestyle has its own publication, Dink Magazine, which offers advice to on how to invest and spend disposable income.

Laura Ciaccio, a 30-year-old law student who founded the local chapter of No Kidding!, has never wanted a baby. She and her like-minded husband are content and don't want to risk changing the dynamic of their 11-year relationship by having a child. Getting married two years ago didn't change their feelings about starting a family.

"I'm not too fond of infants, and I don't want to go through all that," Ms. Ciaccio says.

Ms. Cohn-Orbach, who satisfies her desire to nurture by volunteering at an animal rescue shelter, occasionally misses the company of kids, but she wouldn't welcome having them around nonstop. "It's selfless not to have a child, since I know I couldn't be perfect at it," she says. "Why do a half-assed job?"

HAPPY MEALS NOT REQUIRED

Child-free couples don't pay for tuition or orthodontists, but they help keep many other industries in New York healthy. Designer clothes, alcohol, and pets and their accessories are just a few things on which dinks spend discretionary dollars.

Nationally, such couples spend 60% more on entertainment, 79% more on food and 101% more on dining out, according to American Demographics.

"The restaurant industry in this city would collapse if many more people had children," says William Helmreich, a professor of urban sociology at City College of New York.