Hi hon.
I am especially glad we don't have comments today. Some of them would be wonderful and affirming and perceptive. But far as I can tell, there is a longstanding argument over the virtues of having kids that moves from location to location in blogland. I hope the people who would be moved to write the great comments will send emails, and I am delighted that we aren't hosting a round of other people's fight.
I have a lot to say about your main point, which dovetails eerily closely with recent thoughts of mine. But we're running off to play catch in thin winter sunlight, so instead I'll ask you about a side point. When you say this:
My theory is that people who have kids view people who don't have kids as though we are spending our lives hanging out in the skate park, practicing tricks. They don't necessarily think we are bad people, but they think what we do and care about is trivial and a little bit selfish and silly.
Who is "they"? People with kids? Like, real people you know who actually have kids, and you can read it in their eyes that they have come to view your life as frivolous? Is this a generation up from you, applying pressure? Is this your peers? Like, real live peers that you have dinner with? People in the supermarket, who peer at you with disdain you over carts of mac and cheese? Do people actually say this?
I fully, absolutely believe you if you have experienced it, but I damn near never do. I think my grandparents were slightly disappointed they haven't seen my children, but they didn't say so, and besides, it was swamped by the bigger disappointment that I haven't landed a husband. The only person who outrightly said anything like "you should have children" was a very lovely and deeply religious recent Moroccan immigrant that I met on the playground with the nephews. She was so clearly old-school, though, that I just enjoyed her straightforward worldview. But other than those, I can't think of anyone who is dismayed by my frivolous childless existence. Real people look askance at you? If I saw them doing it, I would glare at them. I would think curse words.