In looking over this thread, I am not seeing a Great Debate so much as a sharing of Humble (or Not So Humble) Opinions, so I think I’ll send this thread to IMHO.
[ /Moderating ]
I seriously like both my parents. Really like them. They are kind, generous, interesting people that - as a grown up - I enjoy just talking to. I respect them and they respect me. And they did a great job raising me and my sisters. My youngest sister has been having a rough time of late, but it isn’t my parents fault - if anything - its that her attitude as a teenager and a young adult was “my parents don’t know anything” rather than a wiser “hey, they actually do have life experience I can learn from.”
You know one now.
Count me as another who liked both of her parents (past tense only because my father is dead) and thinks they did a good job raising me.
I have no desire to have children, though I understand why others might. As for me, I have absolutely no maternal “instinct”/urges. I don’t feel compelled to coo over children. I’m fine with playing with friends’ kids, but I’m awfully glad that I’m not responsible for them. I’m also terribly selfish with my time and would absolutely suck at being a parent.
What I hate are people who tell me “oh, but it’s different when it’s your kid(s)!” Well, what if it isn’t in my case? You can’t return kids to a store or something. Those neglectful parents out there who play computer games while their kids let themselves out of the house and burn up the yard come from somewhere, after all, so how are they so sure it’ll be “different” for me?
I don’t think I’ll ever have kids, but my biggest reasons are:
- I feel quite ambivalent about marriage. My mother let herself get “swallowed” by Dad (quite against his intent) as a reaction to her own parents’ constant fights (they’re the kind who like having an excuse to make up). I shudder to think what would I unwillingly inflict on any poor man dumb enough to marry me.
- A kid by myself? Uhm… nope.
I’m not “against having kids” in general. I can see your reasoning but I don’t share it.
Married-brother says he doesn’t like Mom. I know for sure there are times when he’d like to strangle her. She’s selfish, gets personally offended when Reality refuses to conform to her expectations, and for many years expected married-bro and myself to be available to her 24/7 (she’d call us from the other end of the house, where we were studying or working and she knew it, to hand her something that was 1 inch away but, you see, the nest of pillows in her armchair would have been disturbed if she’d risen). But - my SIL is so much like Mom it’s scary. So apparently there are things in Mom he does like, hmmm?
Or maybe he just missed Logic class completely 
You might change your mind, you might not New Girl. I’m 37, never wanted kids and still don’t. I even had a vasectomy to be sure I don’t accidentally make any. Being a dad just doesn’t interest me. I suppose if for some reason I feel the need to influence the life of a young one I can join Big Brothers. Or date a woman that already has kids. In the meantime I’ll be sure to save up the cash for a really nice nursing home.
And for Sal Ammoniac I have a cat. Way less work than a dog 
I’m person #5 or so who can refute this. There was a time when I didn’t like my parents (not, thankfully, the same time). I’m past it now, mostly because they really did do a good job raising me. If they hadn’t, I might feel differently.
If you don’t want to have kids because you think you might suck at it, that’s legitimate; one of my uncles chose that route and the family doesn’t reproach him for that. Who’d know better, right? But it’s not inevitable.
Yeah. They’re worth it, though. At least mine are, to me and my husband. And my siblings and I were, to our parents.
Babies don’t thank you much, when they are very tiny. Children are more thankful, until they are teenagers, when most go through another ungrateful period. Grown children are entirely capable of showing gratitude to their parents, though. My parents know how grateful I am for all they’ve done for me. My oldest child (almost 20) has expressed similar gratitude to me and his dad. That’s a real payback day (to circle back to your complaint number 1), the day your kid says to you: “Thanks for everything. You did a good job raising me, even though I know I was a pain in the ass from time to time.”
I’m heard arguments on both sides of this. Anyway, my husband and I have 2 kids – just enough to replace the two of us.
Life takes your youth, whether you have kids or not. I don’t even know what you mean by the not-ever-being-yourself-again stuff. Mother or not, I’m always me and always have been.
There is at least as good a possibility that your kids will grow up to become your good friends. I love and respect both of my parents, flaws and all. I spend a lot of time with them and we get along wonderfully, with respect and affection on all sides. It’s early days yet (again, my kids are 18 and almost 20), but all indications point to my husband and I having a similar adult-to-adult relationship with our kids.
It doesn’t and it never has. You could make a case that my life revolves around my family, I suppose, and my kids are part of my family. Of course, when the kids were small, I often had to put them first, but even then I had other things in my life. Again, I am me. My kids don’t define me. My husband doesn’t define me. My parents don’t define me. I am me.
Certainly it does. As I said, I both like and love my parents. They made mistakes, of course – everyone does – but, overall, they were (and are) wonderful parents.
None of this means everyone ought to have kids. If you don’t want them, don’t have them. I have several dear friends who don’t have children. Their lives are full and happy. They aren’t defined by their childlessness any more than I am defined by my motherhood.
I find it kind of sad that when this topic has come up in the past it has always involved Childfreers vs. Parents. As if those two groups are the only ones in the world. There’s plenty of folks just like me, young and unmarried with no children, but who plan to have them someday. Others who would love to be parents, but who can’t reproduce or adopt for various reasons, or who choose not to have children because of fear of passing along some horrid disease, or because they recognize they wouldn’t be good parents. It’s not just Child-Haters versus Soccer Moms. There are thousands of reasons people do and do not choose to reproduce, each as varied and complex as the people who make them.
In my experience, people are too busy with their own lives to care whether or not you have kids. Maybe your mom nags you about giving her grandchildren, but she’s your mom, that’s her prerogative. Regardless of whether or not you ever choose to have kids, just get on with your life and try to live it to the fullest.
I want to cast my vote as someone who has awesome parents, and I love them, and right now I am totally totally against having children myself.
I could go on about why I feel that way, but I would just get yelled at 
I mentioned this “problem” to another Doper once and he accused me of being “soulless” heh. All in good fun tho
I don’t want to have children, but I think my reasons are…instead of making a judgment, I’ll go with “different” than New Girl’s.
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My parents are not healthy people, nor were their families in general. There is probably a significant amount of genetic unpleasantness lurking in my genes, since several of their disorders (both physical and mental) are heretitary. I’m doing okay myself, but I’m still young enough to be blind-sided by a few of the things they deal with. I don’t want to curse a kid to inherit any of them, and more than I’d like to develop the problems myself. It would be bad for the kid, and the guilt would be crushing.
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I’m not at all enamored by the idea of being pregnant (seems like having a parasite, mostly) and I don’t like babies. I don’t mind their messiness but they’re helpless, they don’t communicate well, and they make me nervous. I love kids, but they’re babies first.
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I’m selfish. Not about money, since I enjoy buying things for people just because, but about my time. I don’t want to resent a baby because it takes up the time I’d like to spend writing, reading, or doing other things. I’ve sometimes resented pets/friends/family for this reason, despite loving them a lot.
I can sort of picture myself as a step-mom or adopting children (age two or older) but not as a biological parent. Unless, of course, I can mentally resolve 2 & 3 and they develop better tests to alleviate my fears about #1 in the next 5-7 years.
I like both my parents and think they did a great job raising me.
I don’t like both my kids as much, but I probably will when they aren’t 16 and 20.
The expensive part of raising kids was always the least of their potential irritation. They were never sickly, so I didn’t fear for them. They didn’t take as much time as one might think, so I did and do have a life. If they hate my flaws, whatever. I don’t want them to thank me or feel remorse for Father Time aging me. People who don’t want to raise kids shouldn’t do it and certainly shouldn’t look to be patted on the back by anyone for doing it.
My mom and dad are nice people. Lots of people like them.
How old are you anyway?
I don’t think that New Girl or I should ever have to hear a ‘you’ll grow out of it’ speech from someone who thinks that they are older and thus their experience more valid.
So you dismiss New Girl’s opinions because she’s young based on the fact that you were open to the possibility of having kids when you were ‘young’?
No matter what your disclaimer was in your first sentence, your post boils down to ‘I was young and unwise and thought I didn’t want kids. Now I’m old and wise and I do want them.’
I find it sad that every time this topic comes up, someone goes and tells the childfree person that they will grow out of it.
IMO, this is a reason people seem to have kids. However, I also see it as a tiny personal tragedy.
It’s another tragedy that people feel they have to have kids to do this.
There just seem to be too many couples that have kids because they’ve run out of ideas for living, and KIDS are just the next thing to do.
(For reference, I’m 34, married for 7 years.)
Well, a lot of them do.
It’s somewhat of a valid question. I mean. . .it’s a valid question if you want to go after New Girl on a personal level instead of responding to her ideas. Of course, her original questions were sort of framed personally, so she invited it.
“Do you really want your whole life to revolve around a child?” is a silly way to actually start a debate or a poll about the subject of having kids.
Just wanted to respond to this point:
Once anything happens to you in your life, you will never be ‘you’ again. We constantly change, and experiences we have today shape who we are tomorrow. Sure, having children is one of those experiences, and a rather large one, but then, so is moving to New Mexico, or traveling around the world, or deciding to start your own business. They all change you. That doesn’t make them bad.
Not really sure why anyone would believe this. There’s plenty of space and plenty of food on the earth to handle any population explosion.
Just because people choose to live in densely populated areas and the world food supply isn’t distrubuted more evenly doesn’t mean population booms are dangerous.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about this lately and came to the realization that having kids is an incredibly selfish thing to do. And of course it being selfish does not mean it’s a bad thing* - most everything we do in life is for selfish reasons.
Having kids is a 100% voluntary choice. We do it because it makes us happy, it brings us joy to care for someone and to have them love and depend on you, and makes us feel good knowing that we have family to be there for us when we grow old, etc.
But what irks me to no end is how so many parents go on and on about the “sacrifice” they make in being parents. Like they are some kind of martyrs or saints. No one asked you to reproduce; you did it because you wanted to. Yeah it’s hard work and costs a lot, but you receive something of great value in return.
*It is a very bad thing if you have kids and don’t care for them properly and are not prepared to give them everything they need. As in, it’s unethical to do something as monumentous as creating another human being (to make you happy) when you’re not prepared to care for them to the fullest extent. I have seen this way too often amongst my friends and acquaintances (and just in the world in general) lately.
Yes it happens.
I “seriously” like both of my parents. I think they are awesome beyond all description. And I think they did a perfect job in raising my brother and I, I have no complaints whatsoever. (I’m no saying we turned out perfect. Yes we have disappointed my parents on occasion, but I’m crazy about my parents, and I know they are my #1 fans and love me more than anything.)
Of course, I have always considered myself extremely lucky to have the family I have. Most people are not so lucky.
Yep, love the 'rents, still don’t want kids. And all the elaborate reasoning, stats, etc., just strikes me as overblown - it boils down for me to nothing more than “I don’t wanna.” (I’m 37, so please, no condescending head-pats or ‘you’ll change your mind when you grow up, dear’)