Dear Businesses: Here Are Some Reasons You Might Make More Of An Effort To Embrace Families + Kids

It’s not just important for the community, it’s also important for the bottom line

When I was still young, wild, childless and free, a friend of mine would regularly lament the idea of having kids. She appeared to be anti-children. She was in a Facebook group for people who had no intention of having kids. She would often say cruel and bitter things about women who had children, or children in general. I never really understood her beef with kids. Maybe she couldn’t have them, maybe she just didn’t want them. Whatever her reasons, she made it clear, often, that she had no place in her life or in her heart for kids, and a very small amount of room, if any, for people who had kids.

That’s fine and all, but it’s also kind of weird. She was a kid once, but it’d been so long, she’d forgotten that someone stayed up with her all night long, held her when she cried, wiped her butt and her tears, taught her how to tie her shoes and brushed the knots out of her hair.

Maybe she hadn’t forgotten, but maybe she just never knew the truth about what it took to get her to the present. It wasn’t just a flippant errand, it was a life long commitment that someone had made. How could she know…