I just turned 30 and this has only really occurred to me now. Thanks for saving me 15-20 years of additional bullshit. :)

Oh, no, I rely on the pity of internet strangers to make me happy. So thanks.

Yes. Life is not as simple as "go be happy". I want to go into all decisions informed, and the decision of whether or not to parent is no different. I believe far, far too many people have children because "it's what you do" without having really considered the fact that it is optional, and might not even be that…

This makes me think she could have joined that hipster, Mumford and Sons, folksy post punk movement, but no, she had to go all ratchet and do the cultural appropriation thing instead. Either could have made her a lot of money.

I don't even understand why this is a debatable topic. Either you have kids or you don't. It really shouldn't make any difference to anyone else what your reproductive choices are.

Orgasms can also be hard work. And mind-numbing, but in a totally different way.

Perhaps this is why so many people aren't interested in having kids? They think that the currently in vogue way of doing it seems too much hard work.

because it seems like people roll that way

You're right it's actually ridiculous that marriage is such a big deal and having a kid is not. You may well (hopefully) discuss having children, but no one "proposes" it, there's no date set! No pre-parental counselling. It's kind of crazy.

I'm only just 30, and while maybe I didn't know that being child free was a lifestyle option, I also never grew up with a vision of me as a parent. My cousin would play with her Cabbage Patch Dolls, and even then I could see she would take the path of motherhood, but I couldn't see it for myself. I still can't see it…

Perhaps the "bitterness" you think you're picking up on is in fact the child-free person's exhaustion of having to defend their choice yet again. What you might think of as harmless revelry can in fact be very tiresome in a society that wants everybody to have kids. Your choice is already validated, so why not just…

Ah. I was bitten just last week by a feline patient at work and I didn't bother. I'd only go in for some antibiotics if it went nasty, but that's just me. I suppose I am fortunate enough to live in a country that has no rabies though.

But surely because cat bites requiring hospitalization are so rare, any difference in the number suffered between depressed/non depressed people is unlikely to be statistically significant? Or at least this should be recognized as a limitation?

...And Tend to Provoke Them Until They Bite

Toxoplasmosis comes from cat poop, not cat mouths. I suppose given the close contact between cat butts and cat mouths it could be transmitted orally, but "ingestion of feces" is the actual route of zoonotic infection. And the cat who made the poop also had to be recently infected to shed T. gondii.

And it's not just cat bites, it's cat bites that are so severe they warranted reporting/going to the hospital about. This confounds things further.

"Trying to link" is not how you science - a correlation has already been established though, so perhaps they are now trying to find a causal mechanism?

A classic case of correlation =/= causation. So:

Is there a point to preserving the earth for "future life" if you believe we're all just soulless meatsacks anyway?

A query to RedEye's resident foodies Lisa Arnett and Kate Bernot defined "bespoke" anything as a pretentious way of saying "custom."