Wow. I feel definitely out of the loop in this crowd. I always wanted to have kids, even when I was quite young. I never even considered a life without children…it just was not a picture that fit. I wasn’t desperate to have one, it was just part of the way I saw my life. We took our time (in our minds) and had two kids. My personality did not get lost, or set aside; my identity, wants and needs all were mine, I never “lived through my children”, and I always found time for my own interests. In fact, I had more time then to pursue my own interests than now when I’m working full-time as sole support of myself.
Did my children “complete” me? In a way, yes. If you look at your life as a tapestry, there would be an empty space where the pattern of my life didn’t get completed according to plan if I’d been childless. We would have adopted if we had been infertile, but I think I’d always would have wanted to know what pregnancy was like.
My life hasn’t worked out according to plan, and my children haven’t turned out as I dreamed, but I never regret having them. I would always regret not having them, just as anyone who has a goal regrets not acheiving it.
I know I’m horribly old-fashioned, and I truly believe that people who do not have a desire to be parents should not be parents, but it is so disturbing to hear so many young people so adamantly opposed to being parents. Has my generation done such an awful job as parents ourselves that so many of our children reject the desire to start their own families?
kb, I don’t think the desire to be child-free has anything to do with the job your parents did. It has a whole lot to do with having more options, many of which we tend to find far more attractive than parenthood. It’s like the jobs women choose. When my mother was growing up, a respectable educated woman could either be a teacher or a nurse. The fact that lots of educated young women choose not to be teachers doesn’t mean that their teachers did a bad job; it just means that there are more attractive options for them now.
I had a happy childhood, and I like to flatter myself that Mom and Dad did a really good job raising me. However, I’m an adult, and that means sorting through everything I picked up from them to find what does and doesn’t work for my life. I have no desire to burden myself with shitty diapers and screaming tantrums and fifteen million "but Mooooommmmmy"s and all the rest of it. It’s just one of those things that worked for my parents that doesn’t work for me.
As for the OP, that ridiculous old idea is still alive and kicking pretty damn strongly. People tend not to come right out and make comments about being a “real woman” as much these days, but they still get the idea across, trust me. I’ve been told that I’ll lead an empty, pitiful, pitiable life without children, that my live will be devoid of love and fulfillment without them. I’ve been told that I’ll be sorry when I’m 60 and have to rely on my cats for company (sometimes I wonder if people even think about who they’re talking to before they let the crap fly) because I won’t have any kids or grandkids to come see me. I’ve been told that I’m missing out on the most wonderful experience a woman can ever have. I have even been told that if I truly loved my husband, then I would want to have his children.
Most of the people who have told me these things have been under the age of 35.
I’ve heard this, and if you go to some churches on mother’s day, you’ll hear it too.
ugh.
Thing is, my gene pool is not one you want to go sticking your toe in. Lots of scary things.
My Dad said to his brother one time, “Some genes just do not need to be passed on any further.”
And he was right. Their trip through the world is ending right here, with me. It’s a decision I’d made years ago – but to hear him echo it was a surprise and a big relief. My decision was made in a hospital bed, I was stuck there and thought, how could I ever possibly put another creature through this?
I have always had a strong urge to mother… but never with a child… with pets, or garden plants, or friends of mine.
It would be practical of me to have kids… at least one. In about 20 years, I may be disabled to the point of needing part-time care. And if I had a kid, they would be grown by then, blah blah, perhaps they would take care of me.
But that’s not the reason to have them.
So I’m not going to.
AntaresJB, you crack me up! …" I could not handle kids and I would be a shitty mother. I’d rather have kittens. They’re cuter and they grow up a lot faster."
kittenblue, welcome to my world. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want children. They were always part of the way I saw my future. But it isn’t something I would expect from everyone, and I respect the choice of those who don’t want kids. I just don’t understand it.
And while I would never say it to them, I do think a fair number of young women who say they never want kids will change their minds. People do change about a lot of things as they grow older.
I don’t know that not wanting children is becoming more prevalent. It may be more obvious, since it’s actually a choice now. And I think that may explain some of the, “Oh, you’ll change your mind,” attitude. I’d guess that a lot of older women either did that themselves or knew women who did, when they didn’t have any real choice about whether to have children. They either made the best of it or discovered, sort of by force, as it were, that it was a good thing. But I’m sure many of them would not have had kids if they had been able to make the choice ahead of time.
My own mother was like that. I think if she had been born thirty years later she would not have had babies. She married a man who already had a family, and who was fifteen years older than she. She used to tell me that if she had been able to choose she would have stopped at two, if she had any. (Guess who’s the third child?) Oddly enough, that never fazed me. I knew what she meant, and I also knew beyond doubt how she loved me. But she was happy with what she had, and I don’t think she regretted what she didn’t get to do. In fact the last words my dad ever said to me were, “You know, for a woman who didn’t want kids, she sure is happy with the ones she’s got.”
Absolutely not. I’m incredibly lucky to have the most amazing wonderful fantastic set of parents ever. My mother was the most beautiful, special, fantastic perfect mother in the world (she passed away about 2 and a half years ago), and my father is the absolute best ever. (But maybe I’m just a bit biased. ) My parents did a spectacular job of raising my sister, my brother, and I.
If anything, the fact that my mom and dad’s parenting skills were so amazing makes me less interested in creating offspring – my parents were so fabulous, I would want any children I might have to enjoy that same wonderful relationship with me as I did/do with my mom and dad. And I know I couldn’t do it. I know I couldn’t live up to that.
But only a miniscule part of why I don’t want children. One of the very important things my parents taught me is to do what I feel is right and to be an independent young woman who sticks with what she knows she wants. And children are not what I want. I can’t explain it, but I shouldn’t have to. When I see a baby, I think, “aww, that’s kinda cute,” but that’s only when it’s someone else’s baby. It doesn’t inspire any wish for one of my own. Seriously, I have much more maternal instinct towards animals, especially kittens and cats. Stick a baby in front of me and I’ll go “eh,” but stick a kitten in front of me and turn into a tremendous snuggly mushball and start saying things like, “Oh who’s a widdle fwuffy face? You is, you squishy fuzzy baybeee…”
And that was a bit of ranting, again, I guess… but the point is, my parents’ raising of me doesn’t have any bearing on my lack of desire to bear children. I just don’t want any.
Well, hon, sounds like you’re a very well-adjusted person and you’re probably a fantastic parent on account of it. Don’t focus too much on the “I don’t want kids” theme here - fact is, we’re a spectrum, and it includes some folks such as myself who would have been happy to have kids, but for one reason or another it just didn’t happen. I don’t think anyone on this thread is opposed to people having kids who want to have kids.
Bravo for you - obviously parenting is very important to you and I’m glad things worked out
Hmmm… maybe it’s just that I never thought of children as a “goal”. If I had made a list of things I wanted to do in life at, say, age 18, “having children” would not have been on the list. Neither would “getting married”. In fact, I pretty much assumed I’d stay single, and I’m sure I would have been happy being single - I loved being on my own, had lots of friends, and so forth, never felt isolated - but I met a man I loved and we got married. We’ve been happily married for 14 years now. I would have been happy either way, but married is the way my life played out. It wasn’t a goal, but it was a life-changing experience along the way.
When younger, I felt the same way about children - still do, as a matter of fact. I’m happy childless, and I think I’d also find parenting very rewarding. As I mentioned earlier, my husband and I will not be generating our own offspring (if we had be able, we probably would have), but if a relative’s child or the child(ren) of a close friend was suddenly orphaned we’d be willing to adopt. It’s just that we don’t feel strongly enough about this to actively pursue parenthood.
(What does hurt is that the child of one of my husband’s cousins WAS suddenly in need of guardianship, but the relatives refused to consider us because we had never had children of our own, therefore God must think us unfit or something like that.)
Nope, I don’t think that’s the problem at all.
Back, oh, about 100 or 150 years ago, a woman who said she didn’t want to have children was regarded as mentally ill, and attempts were made to “cure” her. If you are at all aware of what sort of hell-holes 19th Century insane asylums were, and what constituted the practice of “mental health care”, you realize that a smart woman who didn’t want children would simply never express the idea openly. She’d put off marriage as long as possible, quite likely - hence the stereotype of the “spinster aunt”. Even as late as the 1970’s, lack of desire for children was seen as a mental disorder.
In other societies, a childless woman was seen as cursed, or even as a witch. In ancient Rome, a woman was only legally adult after bearing three children. And so on, and so forth.
The difference is, we live in a society where a woman can state “I don’t want to have children” and not be denied legal rights, burned or hanged or otherwise executed, imprisoned with violently insane people, or forcibly medicated. Therefore, you “suddenly” see “a lot” of women going childless. Truth is, they’ve been there all along, it’s just that now they’re visible.
And it’s true, some will change their minds - but many will not.
Honestly, the world does not have a people shortage - I don’t see that a percentage of women choosing paths other than parenthood to be a crisis. As you yourself pointed out, it’s better that people who don’t want to be parents don’t have kids.
I am 19, and my nesting instinct or whatever you’d call it, has kicked in for quite the while now. I want a bunch of kids and always have, but I want to be completely self satisfied before I have them.
) My parents did a spectacular job of raising my sister, my brother, and I.