‘Child-Free’ Backed in ‘Baby-Bonkers’ Society : Families: Although she never planned to be childless, Leslie Lafayette decided to skip motherhood. Now she heads a national organization to help others who are childless.

Leslie Lafayette didn’t set out to be childless.

“It just never happened,” said Lafayette, who endured three miscarriages and twice nearly adopted a child.

Eventually, after talking to hundreds of parents, she decided to skip motherhood. Now she heads a national organization to help others who are childless, either by choice or chance.

Lafayette, 47, said she founded the Childfree Network last summer to provide an alternate voice in a society that has gone “baby bonkers” and shuns adults who do not become parents.

“I think there’s almost a conspiracy in this country . . . to hide the realities of how hard child-rearing can be,” she said. “It’s hard. It’s really demanding. It’s very expensive. It’s not always a rewarding experience. Not everybody’s cut out for it.”

Lafayette, who is divorced, was 36 when she first heard her biological clock ticking.

The high school English teacher, who also runs a small public relations company, traveled frequently on business. “Everywhere I went I would ask people (about having children). I would say to them, very confidently, oh, I’m going to adopt, I’m going to have a child. I would expect everybody to be very excited about it.

“What I got in response really surprised me. What I got was at least 50% saying if they had the chance to do it again, they wouldn’t do it.

“Nobody ever said: ‘I don’t love my kids.’ Everybody loves their kids. But I think they find parenthood to be a lot more challenging, for want of a better word, and . . . a lot less rewarding than they had thought it would be.”

Lafayette’s last miscarriage occurred when she was 42. “It remains, to this day, the single most painful episode of my life,” she said.

She considered adoption, developing relationships with two potential birth mothers. But two months before the birth of one child, Lafayette decided against becoming a single parent. She chose to remain child-free.

“I would be lying to you if I told you I haven’t had many ambivalent feelings about it. And I’ve had a lot of times when I’ve cried about it, and gone to the supermarket and seen the little kids in the cart and thought, in another life, in another world, wouldn’t that have been nice? But you have to get beyond that.”

Society does not make it easy, she said.

People who do not have children are often viewed as selfish or immature, she said. They often feel invisible in a child-oriented society.

An example, she said, was the “family values” rallying cry of the presidential campaigns, which intensified the pain and pressure for many childless people.

Lafayette agrees with Vice President Dan Quayle, although for different reasons, that television character Murphy Brown should not have become a single mother.

She said the show’s writers implied an intelligent, attractive and successful Murphy Brown was somehow incomplete until she had a baby.

“I think there needs to be a sequel to Murphy Brown called ‘Son of Murphy Brown,’ when we see Murphy at 62 or 65 with some 17-year-old hood for a son who’s running her over in her wheelchair to take the car keys.”

The Childfree Network’s membership numbers over 100 and is growing fast. Lafayette said she receives up to 50 letters a day, mostly in support of the group.

“Bravo!” wrote a woman from Okemos, Mich. “It is about time our secret is revealed. We are not all grieving bravely because of our ‘childless’ state. Society does take a strange view of us.”

Membership costs $15 a year, and includes a quarterly newsletter. The first edition, published this fall, included columns on financial planning, travel and the psychology of being childless.

The group is not anti-child, Lafayette said, but believes in helping people to make informed decisions about parenthood and promoting childlessness as a valid option.

“Something’s wrong somewhere,” she said. “There’s a message that goes out--have babies, babies, babies. But nobody’s talking about raising children, who are different from babies, to be responsible, productive adults.

“In our society, people spend a lot more time deciding what car to drive than they do whether or not to have children. . . . Let’s applaud people who make the decision not to have kids. That’s OK.”