I’m 42 and have known since I was 4 years old that I never wanted to be a mother. It’s seriously one of my earliest memories - I didn’t want to make my bed, my mother was exasperated with me and said “you’ll be sad you treated me so badly when you have kids of your own”… and I remember being just appalled at the thought of being a parent.
I just don’t enjoy children. I like peace, quiet, and order, and the freedom to do what I want without having to factor in children. Plus it looks super stressful to be a parent. I have 2 nephews and a niece, and while they’re good kids, their parents always look so utterly exhausted and overwhelmed. And I’m definitely not good at being an aunt - interacting with children just doesn’t come naturally to me.
Everyone told me I’d grow out of it. I had to fight to get my tubes tied in my mid-twenties (for real, I had to see so many doctors and had a botched Essure procedure at Planned Parenthood before I finally found an OBGYN who would take me seriously!).
No regrets rugrats!
I swore against having kids-for lots of reasons-, same as my wife. But accidents happened and we became parents. As the cliche goes “it is life changing”.
It alters who you are and your idea of importance. There was stress, and exhausting times, but now they are adults they are my favourite people :)
It is a threshold moment situation, if you like your life how it is never have kids. If you have kids your life becomes different. No path is better than the other; just altered.
If there’s one thing childfree people love, it’s how there is always a parent ready to reply about how rewarding kids are.
I hear ya, but I don’t mind - it’s a discussion thread, after all! - and it’s interesting to see a different perspective than my own.
I mean, yeah. Only one of both groups had both experiences.
Child free people love to shit on an experience they know nothing about, sure parents are ready to reply to those.
Nobody is telling people to have children…
Then you have kids growing up with shit parents… the threshold isn’t worth it
it is a fair point. On another platform I got pummeled for suggesting that a terrible family that killed their young kids, had done them a favour; in that they didn’t have to endure a lifetime of abuse, and also would not pass on the learned abuse pattern to the next gen. To cold a suggestion I guess.
I’m gonna have my uterus removed because of that. I’m much younger and although I have some pain during my period it’s not debilitating at all, so it’s not that much medically necessary.
It was also super easy to get a doctor to do it. I’m glad things are getting better in this regard.
I can’t wait to not have to deal with bleeding, pain, and libido killer contraception.
Even though I do want children myself eventually, I think those doctors are silly for wanting to limit the person from their wishes of no children. It’s bonkers.
“Oh, you want to do any <insert medical thing that is either somewhat reversible or not at all>? Why, we know better than someone who probably has already took years thinking about it!”
Medical gatekeeping is real. It’s annoying. It’s why abortion, fertility treatments (of many kinds), HRT, and so on, all honestly should be way easier to access with the person’s own consent.
They might argue, but what about the regret rate, the 10 people that according to some rag paper regret it for life. And then they promptly ignore that many 100,000s of people actually have been enormously helped by it, and that they won’t magically go away if you make it harder to access – you’ll just make it unsafer for them, because now they rely on trenchcoat abortions, poor surgeries, lack of safe medicine due to deliberate underfunding of training, forbidding life-saving medicine, etc.
We oblige no duty to breed. Instead, we have a plight to make life enjoyable for ourselves and for each other. This goes their way too.
It’s not such a binary thing. For example, you can obtain some, hodl for a bit, and later return them for a profit. It’s basically like the stock market, except people refer to the money you get as a “ransom” rather than a “profit” for some reason. What many people outside the industry don’t know is that it doesn’t officially become a crime until police get involved. So just insist on “No police!” in your sales calls. /s
If my life were financially more secure and if the climate didn’t seem objectively fucked in the future I could imagine myself being a happy father of kids
Kids for me. They have improved my life more than anything else. Having the first two pushed me to go back to school and get a real job. I got more when my ex & I split and I married a guy with kids; we have a staggering number between us, most were teens or older when we got together and they are all close now, so they have a network of family to help and socialize with. The youngest is almost done with high school so we are in the final stretch of having them at home. The Thanksgiving feast here is insane, so many people, chaotic and fun.
Now - having said all that, I always knew I wanted kids, not necessarily to birth them but to raise them. Babies are adorable , little kids blistering cute, teenagers so much fun and occasionally helpful, and then they grow up and are actual people. It is work I find fulfilling and it helps the world to have educated, sensible, open-minded people. Most of my kids don’t want kids themselves and that’s fine! Everyone has their own life to live.
So for me, kids. For you, whatever you want, I don’t think it’s essential to become an adult and don’t think it’s the only way to get a family either.
I’m struggling with teenagers being enjoyable, both of mine were monsters. They are adults and doing well now, but I wouldn’t re-do the teenage years if you paid me. I’m glad your experience was much better.
I had two terrible toddlers, but once they were kids they were cool. Two who I guess will get a midlife crisis, because they never caused trouble as kids or teens. The rest I got when they were teens or older and while not all of them (bio or other) were academic superstars or high performing athletes or anything, they were all reasonable and interesting and diverse people by teenage years.
I’m in my mid 40s now but I knew even when I was a kid that I never wanted kids. I see my friends and family now struggling with their own children and I just cannot imagine that life for me. I have no regrets not having kids, but if I ever did, I know it’s better to regret NOT having them than to regret having them.
