Two Is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice

Laura S Scott

Basic Books, Oct 27, 2009 - Family & Relationships - 264 pages

Fall in love. Get married. Have children. For most couples, marriage and children go hand in hand. And yet, the number of people choosing childlessness is on the rise. These are the childless by choice-people who have actively decided not to have children—rather than the childless by circumstance. 

In Two Is Enough, Laura S. Scott explores the assumptions surrounding childrearing, and explores the reasons many people are choosing to forgo this experience. Scott, founder of the Childless by Choice Project, examines the personal stories of people who have faced this decision and explores the growing trend of childlessness. Scott’s expert knowledge and analysis offer a picture of the childless by choice-who they are, why they’ve chosen to remain childless, and how they’ve had these conversations with loved ones. 

Honest and unapologetic, Two Is Enough recognizes the challenges of being childless in today’s society and offers suggestions on how that same society can change to make room for the childless and the childfree.

Contents

• Dedication: 263
• Contents: 265
• Introduction: 1
• Chapter 1: 13
• Chapter 2: 25
• Chapter 3: 41
• Chapter 4: 75
• Chapter 5: 111
• Chapter 6: 151
• Chapter 7: 171
• Chapter 8: 197
• Appendix A: 219
• Appendix B: 233
• Notes: 239
• Resources: 247
• About the Author: 251
• Acknowledgments: 253

About the author

Laura S. Scott was in her sixteenth year of a voluntarily childless marriage and living in the suburbs of a small city in Virginia when she first got the idea to start the Childless by Choice Project. At the time, she was writing screenplays and marketing her first feature script, a first place winner in the Virginia Film Office's Governor's Screenwriting Competition. A former fashion and publishing entrepreneur, she had also worked as a freelance nonfiction writer/editor, personal productivity coach, and a volunteer for youth. Scott also founded and leads the Blue Ridge Association of Dramatists and Screenwriters (BRADS), a regional group of scriptwriters and filmmakers.

Fueled by curiosity and introspection, Scott traveled to ten American states and two Canadian provinces to survey the childless by choice and do video and audio interviews in order to determine why, for millions of North American couples, the question "When should we have kids?" has morphed into "Should we have kids?" She has since been interviewed and consulted on this topic by university scholars, writers, and producers for national magazines, regional newspapers and news organizations, including NBC News, the San Francisco Chronicle, CBC Radio, and The Roanoke Times.

Her Childless by Choice Project website (www.childlessbychoiceproject.com) serves as a reference and marketing tool for journalists, project participants, researchers, and the general public. A proposed Childless by Choice film project is in the development and early production stage, and is fiscally sponsored by The Southern Documentary Fund (www.southerndocumentaryfund.org). Scott lives in Roanoke, Virginia.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Two Is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice
• Author: Laura S Scott
• Publisher: Basic Books, 2009
• ISBN: 1580053211, 9781580053211
• Length: 264 pages
• Subjects: Family & Relationships / Marriage & Long-Term Relationships; Reference / Personal & Practical Guides; Social Science / Sociology / Marriage & Family