January 13, 2005

-The following is an excerpt from the January, 2006 issue of Me First! NOW! Lifestyles! magazine.

The Baby Bust Bounce Back Phenomenon

    Kip and Marti Webster are a typical Generation X couple.  Kip is thirty-eight and an investment strategist who works in downtown Dallas.  His wife Marti is a graphic designer who works from home while taking care of their two young children, Mason  age five and Tyler age eight.  They married at thirty and now make their home in a revitalized suburban neighborhood in Fort Worth.  Recently the Websters like many of their generation have made a key decision.  After years of centering their lives around their children, they have decided to turn back the clock and join a growing national trend and go childless.  Kip is frank in his assessment:  "We've spent all these years living for our children, saving for their college education, trading our VW Jettas in for minivans, and spending all of our disposable income on diapers, car seats and pediatricians.  Now Tyler is in second grade and the private school bills are really starting to kick in.  At first, it was tough, but Marti and I finally saw the light and decided to just cut our losses and dump the kids."  Marti was equally candid.  "It was just killing us," the former mom of two said.  "All the sleepless nights, no time to ourselves, and the constant whining and crying and bickering were just sapping the life out of us.  Since we got rid of the kids, it's been wonderful.  We've got more money and more time for each other.  I've converted Mason's room into the home studio I have always wanted, and Kip finally has room for that pool table he has had his eye on."

    All over suburban America thousands of Gen X couples like the Websters have also weighed the pros and cons and decided to go childless.  A successful grassroots "Dump The Kids" campaign  has sparked legislation which has redefined the parent-child relationship legally.  What was formerly rather stridently referred to as "child abandonment" has now been renamed "infant reprocessing" or "parental re-tasking" and no longer bears any legal stigma or responsibility.  Generation X lifestyle expert William Sollipshire sees this as part of an ongoing revolution.  "Let's be honest," says Sollipshire.  "At first, these kids seemed like a good idea.  Everyone was doing it, and it looked like it would be fun.  But frankly, these youngsters have worn out their welcome.  They pee, they puke, and they make your house or condo look and smell like a zoo.  Now, at last, a lot of sharp, forward-thinking Gen X adults have rightfully said, 'Enough is enough.'  This new boomlet of ex-parents or X-Ps as we call them have made the jump and are not looking back.  They are driving an economic boom in a lot of key market sectors.  For example, luxury vacation companies are seeing unparalleled growth.  Jewelry and expensive home theater systems are big success stories, and Volkswagen is selling Passats and Jettas like they are going out of style.  It is an exciting moment to be an X-P with a lot of money and time finally available to these Gen Xers again."

    On the other side of the issue, conventional child adoption and welfare centers have been overwhelmed by the glut of new children pushed into the system.  Fortunately, as with everything in America, the laws of supply and demand have driven the economy toward new opportunities and enterprises.  Multi-national companies such as McDonalds and Wal-mart have been quick to develop new popular "pre-internship" programs which will accept children age eight or older.  With conventional orphanages and foster homes swamped with infants returned by their Generation X parents, new "for profit" outlets for child disposal are popping up all over the United States.  High end placement companies like The Family Tree are popular.  After beginning as a single shop in Austin, Texas, there are now over thirty Family Tree outlets in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Austin corridor with full inventories of children of all ages and races.  The Baby Station chain in Atlanta has also met with initial success.  However, with profits to be made in the rapid turnover of young children, other discount chains have been quick to capitalize on the "baby bust bounce back" phenomenon.  The Pets-mart chain has developed a trial Kidz-mart concept store in Piedmont , North Carolina.  Located in a bustling outlet mall between an Old Navy store and a Victoria's Big Secret Discount Maternity Shop, Kidz-mart has quickly made a name for itself with a wide variety of pre-owned and remaindered children.  Similarly, discounters such as Tuesday Morning and Big Lots are experimenting with the placement of a few racks of children in high traffic areas in their stores.  "The youngsters are pretty much loss leaders for us," explains Verne Wademore, Vice President of Big Lots, Inc.  "You get someone in the store to pick up a kid or two and they wind up looking around and buying twenty or thirty dollars worth of garbage pail liners or fabric softener.  After awhile, the little ones pay for themselves."

    In the bigger picture, social services experts and statisticians have been asking, Where have all the children gone?  "The answer in broad strokes " says child demographic cartographer Niles Watson, "is that re-purposed children are trending towards concentrating in states like West Virginia, California, and Michigan.  With the Bush administration's ongoing changes in the regulatory environment, the archaic, centuries-old child labor laws have been relaxed and made more 'user friendly.'  Our studies based on tagged children show an exodus to towns like Spittle, West Virginia."  Spittle is a bustling coal mining community where families are glad to have an extra  pair of little hands to glean coal from the rubble, help with the laundry, clean up tools, and perform other menial tasks.  In Modesto, California, immigrant families have opened their arms in welcome to new children, often buying carloads of them from suburban outlets and bringing them back to become part of "la familia."  The harvesting crews of families like that of Jose Rodriguez have directly benefited from the Generation X baby bust.  Aside from his own children Juan, Paco, Maria, Pablo, and Pepe, Jose Rodriguez has added new family members Courtney, Brooke, Ashton, Sarah Michelle, Blaine, Taylor, and Fallon to help bring in a record crop of avocadoes in the Modesto Valley that this big, augmented migrant family calls home.  In Penury, Michigan,  Frank and Carla Dombrowski, an older retired couple, have welcomed over twenty-three new youngsters into their home.  Says proud dad Frank, "There's always room for one more in our house and in our hearts.  Besides, the car seat assembly plant next door always seems to have a few open spots on the production line.  Just the other day when I was collecting the payroll, the foreman Mickey was telling me they were downsizing ... no, they weren't cutting any of the jobs out.  They were just cutting down on the size of some of the tools so they'll fit the little ones' hands better.  They were even adding booster seats to the work benches so it'll be easier for the kids to work the lathes and fabric punches.  That's how plain nice and thoughtful the folks here in Penury are."

    Back in the Webster household in Dallas-Fort Worth, there are hard decisions to be made.  "We've agonized over it for  weeks," Marti explains, "and we've finally decided:  we'll be going to Cozumel this year.  Kip was pushing for one of those two week Alaskan cruises and I know it is beautiful up there, but we've spent so much time and money on our scuba equipment and getting certified that it would be a terrible waste not to go somewhere we can dive.  Of course, there's more to it than just diving.  We're staying at this really highly rated luxury resort that has a spa, parasailing, hang gliding, all meals included ... the works." 

    "And the best part," ex-dad Kip adds, "is that it is strictly no kids allowed!"  Yes, it is an exciting new time for Generation X-Ps all over America.