DOI: 10.5176/2251-1865_CBP13.18
Authors: Nicole Massey-Hastings, Mudita Rastogi,
Abstract:
Choosing the Childfree or Parenting Lifestyle (CCOPL) is a psycho-educational, therapeutic program designed to assist couples with making the decision to become parents or not. The assumption underlying CCOPL is that to be effective parents who raise happy, healthy children in a functional familial environment, couples must choose a lifestyle centered around parenting rather than simply trying to fit children in to their current lifestyle. The fundamental goal of CCOPL is to help couples to realistically assess their motivations for both having children or remaining childfree. Couples are also guided through assessing the personal, emotional, relational, and financial costs associated with both choosing the parenting lifestyle and choosing the childfree lifestyle. Fittingly, the point of intervention is preventative rather than reactive in that it seeks to help couples think through this important decision prior to becoming parents. CCOPL seeks to increase the quality of life for both childbearing and childfree couples by giving the couple permission to explore goodness of fit and congruence of parenting with their personalities, their lifestyle, and their relationship. CCOPL is theoretically grounded in attachment theory, theories of family structure (including the critical role of marital quality, parenting style, and Structural Family Therapy), the importance of parental role identification and its relationship to parental satisfaction, and finally, the decision-making process of choosing to become parents or not. CCOPL’s therapeutic stance is derived from both couples and individual Emotion Focused Therapies and from an enduring respect for diverse paths to life satisfaction. Initial pilot study findings are discussed in this extended abstract.
Keywords: couple therapy, reproductive decisions, family formation, childfree, parenting,diversity
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