In this group, no parents are allowed

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BY CARA PESEK / Lincoln Journal Star

Some might have stayed home because the temperatures were low and snow had started to fall.

Some might have had other plans on a Saturday night. Some might have decided not to make the drive from Omaha to Lincoln.

But not one person backed out because of a sick child or baby sitter cancellation.

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Aaron Alai, left, and Sandi Karstens socialize during a No Kidding gathering at Doc's Place Saturday night. (William Lauer)

Because the members of No Kidding, who spent last Saturday playing pool, chatting, eating and drinking at Doc’s Place in the Haymarket, don’t have children.

And they don’t plan to.

Some are unable to have children. Others have jobs that require long hours or lots of time away from home. Some were in their 30s or 40s when they married and felt it was too late to begin a family.

And some just plain don’t want kids.

But first, before even beginning to discuss their reasons for being child-free, No Kidding members stress one key point:

“We are not child haters,” said Sara Church of Omaha, who belongs to the Lincoln-Omaha chapter of the group.

Church said for her the choice to not have children was a matter of timing. She was 32 when she married her husband, Patrick. The couple didn’t want to have children right away, nor did they want to be first-time parents as they approached middle age.

“For me, it just wasn’t in the cards,” she said.

But the Churches found their decision to be socially limiting. Many of their friends have children, which has made planning excursions with them more difficult.

And when they were able to get together with their friends with children, they found they had less in common than they once did.

Hence, No Kidding. 

The group began in Vancouver, Canada, in 1984, founded by a man named Jerry Steinberg. 

The history of the Lincoln-Omaha group goes like this:

In 2004, a couple named Julie and Paul Jonsson moved to Omaha from San Diego. They had belonged to a No Kidding group there and missed it. So they organized one in Omaha.

A story ran in the Omaha paper. Church read it. So did a lot of other child-free Omahans.

The group grew. Couples from Lincoln started driving to Omaha for the weekly events — things like brunches, happy hours, dinners, the occasional concert.

The Jonssons moved away and others stepped in to take over the organizational duties.

And this year, the group’s 40 or so members decided it wasn’t fair that the Lincoln people had to do all the driving. They began having some events in Lincoln, too.

Sherrie Bacon and her husband were among those who always made the drive.

Members of No Kidding are careful to stress that the group isn’t a support group for people who can’t have children, or a dating service, or anything other than a social club.

But Bacon said the group does feel like a safe haven from the judgment she sometimes detects when she mentions she doesn’t plan on having children.

“Lincoln is a very child-oriented town,” she said.

As Aaron Alai sees it, most of the United States is child-oriented.

Alai, a 22-year-old fisheries and wildlife major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said he’s already sure he doesn’t want to have children.

As someone who studies the environment, he worries about overpopulation and believes having a child would further stress the planet’s resources.

Plus he just doesn’t really have the desire.

But when Alai, 22, explains that to girlfriends, friends, pretty much anyone, they give him the same response.

“They think you’ll come to your senses,” he said.

He doesn’t think so.

Alai went to his first No Kidding event, coffee at Starbucks, earlier this month.

And there and at Doc’s on Saturday night, no one told him he’d come to his senses. 

Instead, conversations touched on work and music and pets, and the Cole Haan/Nike Air hybrid shoes that Oprah has been wearing recently that 40-year-old Kim Babics of Omaha had admired.

Not once did potty-training or Little League or related topics come up.

“You meet nice people but you don’t have much in common if you don’t have kids,” Babics said.

The members of No Kidding all have at least one thing in common.

And many members have found other shared interests, too, she said.

“Everybody’s so open,” Babics said. “We enjoy each other’s company.”

Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.