It's been a year since I was vilified, pilloried and condemned.

June 10, 2008 was, for me, a day unlike any other. There I was, Pamela Tsigdinos, pictured on the home page of the New York Times with a link to a feature about my husband and me -- Exhibit A: one of the many millions of "involuntarily childless" couples making our way in a child-centric society.

We had tried for more than a decade to conceive, first the old fashioned and then the high tech way. Neither nature or science cooperated. It was a blow to my sensibilities. Each month delivered a painful reminder that my DNA had reached the end of the road. It's not easy to accept that your DNA ends with you what with  everyone else's DNA reproducing all over the place.

In the wake of unsuccessful treatment and in the early days of accepting a life as "involuntarily childless," I began to suspect that society harbored an ugliness about couples who can't have children (or  choose not to), and sadly, my hunch was proven correct. The vitriol came out loud and clear in comments that accumulated in a NYT Well blog companion piece. I was one of six women who recorded audio segments about coping with infertility in a fertile world.

The vast majority of the comments  that came in were, to put it nicely, sniping and judgmental. Ironically they were from parents. (One can only wonder what they're teaching their children.) Fortunately, I'd developed quite a thick skin, essential to surviving in an era that has spawned mom's clubs and a bona fide "mommy movement." I was able to read the comments with an arms length fascination. I had grown accustomed to the hostility and prejudice after years of facing mind-boggling insensitivity. The casual, dismissive remarks I faced  in my day to day work and social life stung deeply at first and then in time landed with more of a dull thud.

In the past year I've been watching, like a sociologist, the response to those without children.  Call it a hobby. I've set Google alerts to track stories or columns about those without children and the evidence is mounting to support my theory that there exists a clear bias against childless/childfree individuals. Seems a vocal contigent of those with children possess a primal, "cull the herd" mentality that is in a word, chilling.

No kids? No need for your kind in our society. Can't or won't reproduce? What good are you?

Clearly infertiles are not "blessed," nor are our genes sufficiently worthy. The childfree types? Selfish hedonists who consume valuable resources.  (Never mind that my peeps are consuming far less resources than those who have multiple children.)

My attempt to make sense of the skewed perceptions and prejudices led me to start a blog and then write a book called Silent Sorority.

If you'd care to read more on the topic, check out:

The U.K.'s The Observer, where you'll find Polly Vernon's piece, "It Takes Guts to Say: 'I Don't Want Children'.  She writes, "I did not know that voluntary childlessness is an unacceptable crime to cop to. I thought I was merely expressing an opinion. I thought that people who want - or have - children, would accept that I do not, just as I accept their choice. After all, it's my (notional) babies I am rejecting, not theirs. I was wrong.I stated my case. I listed my reasons, even though it annoys me that the child-free have to justify their status...The reaction to the piece was terrifying. Emails and letters arrived, condemning me, expressing disgust. I was denounced as bitter, selfish, un-sisterly, unnatural, evil. I'm now routinely referred to as "baby-hating journalist Polly Vernon"."

Also in The Observer, Ruth Sunderland's "Childless is Not a Synonym for Weird" includes this example: "according to one female columnist, who argued that non-mothers in the workplace are selfish, hungover, predatory bitches vying for the attention of male executives. Women who did not choose their childless state don't fare much better - these unfortunates are dismissed as "the unwilling barren". Tricky, then, to choose between professional personae: pitiable, wrung-out victim or materialistic, unnatural hag."

Nice, huh?

In Australia's The Courier-Mail, Jillian Whiting's piece, "Childless Women Have it Tough at Work, includes this comment from a woman without children: "It's like I'm a serial killer," she told me. "The first question is always, 'So - do you have kids?' And when you say no, the conversation falters. They have no idea what to say."

These observations and examples are only a few of many that I've collected over the year, which takes us back to me, a hesitant "poster child" for the involuntarily childless in U.S. I could have remained silent but decided that it was more important to talk to the New York Times to (hopefully) elevate the dialogue, fully recognizing that I'd be an easy target for some pointed barbs and word bombs.  What's telling is that while I used my real name to share my experience, those with the meanest things to say hid behind an alias.

I now jokingly tell those who ask if I have children that my husband and I have simply evolved to perfection. My experiences have led me to a new theory: those who heap scorn on those without children have some serious work to do in the evolution department.