My mother is not likeable. It is not my fault. I certainly am mature and able to recognize that I have tried to like her and relate to her, but she’s not normal. I hope you interpret this as the truth and not some biased perception of my own. I’ve had more than a few outside observers tell me that she is out of her mind. My mother, by the way, did not stay who she was. Her condition worsened when she had kids to place all of her burdens upon and take out all of her problems on. She tries her hardest to completely control the lives of myself and everyone in close contact with her and when I resist she reacts irrationally.
I don’t want to hate my mom. I wish I had a lovable, fun mother like some of my acquaintances. But the fact is, I never have and I never will. Otherwise I consider myself a fairly healthy and sane individual.
:rolleyes: No, that’s not the point of my post. My point is to convey to New Girl an idea that I find myself more often trying to convey to older folks. Folks at different stages of life cluster around certain behaviors and desires. That doesn’t mean all teenagers don’t want kids, or all older folks do, but it’s worth recognizing these tendencies. And if you’re an older person who does want kids, acknowledge that there’s nothing odd or irrational about being a younger person who doesn’t, and if you’re a younger person who doesn’t want kids, there’s nothing odd about being an older person who does.
I am not being condescending. On the contrary, I’m acknowledging that my own desire to have kids may be based less on rational argument than on changes happening in my body. What’s condescending about that?
catsix, of course, thrives on misunderstanding other folks’ posts and finding offense where there is none; I’m glad she’s got a hobby. I don’t know you, though: is that something you like to do?
No offense, but I want Mississippienne to explain her remark herself.
See, she uses the term “childfreers.” I want to know what she means by that term. Is it referring to those people who look down their noses at people who do have kids & call them “breeders?” Or is it all childless adults?
And should that “wouldn’t even make an okay parent, let alone a good one” be taken at face value, or was there anything else behind it? Like “not good enough for kids,” for instance.
I don’t want to be overly sensitive on the issue, but I have been the butt of some unkind treatment by people with children over my childlessness, and I guess I feel like standing up for us (myself).
I know it hasn’t been said here, but it’s been said, so: we’re not all selfish, immature, or bad people. We don’t all hate kids, or think our pets are more valuable, or whatever. And we don’t appreciate being told we’ll change our minds (in that “I know better than you” attitude some people do use), or that “it’s different when they’re your own.”
Personally, nothing in the world makes me angrier or more heartbroken than the ways in which many parents in this world mistreat their children. If I were a child-hater, that just wouldn’t be so.
I really do appreciate those who are able to see both sides of things, those who don’t villainize those who make different choices from their own, those who just try to get along with others.
[size=-2]Whoops - how the hell did I end up on this soapbox? crawls back down[size]
For all I know, you’re right: I dated a girl when I was a teenager whose mother was certifiable. And I mean that: I think she could have been involuntarily committed. My girlfriend had a hell of a childhood.
Her mother got better.
Last I heard, they’ve managed to reconcile–my jaw nearly dropped to the ground when I heard it, but that’s what happened, and I’m thrilled for the both of them.
I’m not saying you’re wrong about your mother. I am saying that, if your own mother is making you scared of becoming a mom yourself, that’s not an entirely rational response. There’s no particular need to be rational about this issue (see my previous post), but if you find yourself conflicted about becoming a parent, this is an issue you might want to look into.
I’m willing to take your word for it that your mother is Not Okay. I’m just pointing out that from your own unsatisfying relationship with your mother, you’ve somehow extrapolated that **everyone’s ** relationships with their parents are fraught with blame and bitterness. And that’s silly.
If you want to fight with me, there’s a forum for that.
If you want to accuse me of trolling, there’s a button for that.
Otherwise, kindly stop telling people that I’m a trouble-maker. You refuse to entertain the possibility, at all, that perhaps what you said was condescending and that maybe I pointed it out because it’s something I’ve heard dozens of times from people who think I’m gonna grow up some day and want kids. (I’m a hell of a lot closer to 30 than I am to 18.) Perhaps faldureon agrees with me because he/she thinks I was right?
Or are you going to insist that disagreement with Daniel means someone’s just trying to provoke a fight?
I didn’t say that everyone’s relationships with their parents were fraught with blame and bitterness. I said that hurt always plays a role and no one is thrilled with both of their parents, which I’ve found to be very true. Saying that you are completely satisfied with your parents is a nice thing to say, but when it boils down to it, it’s something you say on a good day and is more complementary smalltalk than absolute honesty.
I never said that no one loves their parents or that no one enjoys spending time with them. I know better than to exude my specific circumstances onto other people’s.
But that is simply a condition of life, and relationships. Of course my parents aren’t perfect, but I love them dearly and think they’ve done a great job. If they were perfect I might hate them! Likewise, I love my husband dearly and think myself lucky to have him–but he’s not perfect. But on the whole, yes, I’m thrilled with him and with my very nice parents, who are as satisfactory as any human beings can be. Can they say the same about me?
If you love someone, hurt will be involved. That is true for any relationship. There is no such thing as a loving human relationship without some hurt in there. That’s just life. If you’re looking for a relationship with no hurt in it, you might as well give up right now.
So then, how does that become an argument for not having children? Because they’ll find out we’re flawed human beings? Welcome to the real world, kids; if we had perfect parents who never hurt us, it would be an awful shock to meet the rest of the world, wouldn’t it?
I’m late to the party, and I’ve read the rest of the thread, but I thought I’d go back to the OP anyway. When I was 16 I decided that having children was not for me.
1.Too expensive, and not only financially.
2. I didn’t like babys, so I didn’t want to have one of my own.
3. I didn’t want to grow up too fast.
4. I didn’t want to pass my parents bad habits to my own children.
Almost 30 years later, I haven’t changed my mind. I tend to adopt young adults and mentor them for a few years, and that seems to fulfill any latent maternal instinct that I have. But I decided young, and never changed my mind. Well, once, in the 60’s, for about 15 minutes…
And just to throw something controversial into the mix, any time anyone says the phrase “it’s different when they’re your own children”, I just remember, it wasn’t different for my dad, why would it be different for me.
I don’t doubt you that your mother is an unlikeable person – the world is full of difficult and unlikeable people and many of them are parents. My maternal grandmother was a nasty, emotionally abusive alcoholic and she gave my poor mother merry hell every day of her long life.
You lose me with the above wrote, though. You see, there are plenty of difficult, nasty people in the world, AND there are plenty of decent, likeable people too.
I am telling you with complete honesty that I am perfectly satisfied with both of my parents and I wouldn’t change a thing about them. They have flaws, as all people do, but their flaws are parts of what make them them – the weeds that grow in rich soil.
These views might be a little overoptimistic. Yes, it’s true that the world overall isn’t likely to suffer any direct drastic consequences from overpopulation—we (at least on average) won’t be so crowded that we don’t have room to live or don’t have enough food or are smothered in mountains of garbage and so on.
However, human populations do put a strain on certain global resources and capacities. For example, greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel use are linked to population size, especially in the high-consumption developed world.
Population is not a problem all by itself, but it exacerbates the problem of inefficient and unsustainable resource use. We certainly aren’t at a point where we need to consider not permitting people to reproduce beyond certain specified limits, but we’re also not at a point where we can dismiss the idea of overpopulation as a total non-problem. It definitely does make ecological sense not to have more children than you really want to have.
Yes, the demographic strains imposed by aging populations are going to be a problem, but there are other potential problems, like drastic climate forcing and bloody resource wars, that would be worse. It wouldn’t make sense to blindly reproduce ourselves into full-blown environmental crisis just to have more young workers making our Social Security payments.
Actually, sport, you got it right this time. I know what I intended, and I didn’t intend to be condescending. Hell, I wasn’t even talking to you, which makes your accusations that I want to fight you patently absurd. Since I know what I intended better than you do, I see no reason to entertain your delusions about what I said.
I am simply answering your question. Yes, I am opposed to having children and don’t plan to have any. My SO is on the same page. There are many reasons but the most important one is simply - we don’t want to. And I firmly believe you shouldn’t bring another life into this world until you at least have that. I don’t want to take the chance I will fall in love with it, as many people seem to insist on telling me. I’ll get a parrot, thankyouverymuch.
One more thing - I fear the expectation on people to produce kids often creates unwanted kids. If we could just back down on that expectation a little, and let prospective parents really think through all the issues, I think more kids would be born loved and wanted. I fear for too many people it’s simply the “next” thing to do. Grow up, finish high school, go to college, get married, have children, etc.
In case it’s not clear, I think that’s a totally worthy way to view the world. Not everyone wants to have kids; there’s nothing wrong with not having kids. Minds, however, do change, and I don’t see any good reason for painting oneself into a corner on this issue. If you never change your mind, awesome; if you do, that’s also fine.
I think this is true. For many (maybe even most) people, having kids is something that happens rather than something they specifically plan for. I think it’s equally true of people who don’t have kids – some of them are ‘childfree’ in that they don’t want kids and purposefully avoid having them, and the rest (I suspect the majority) don’t have kids because they just never happened to have them.
I know this is true of my husband and I – we got together and decided to get married, we never really discussed whether or not we’d have kids, we both just kind of assumed that we would… And, sure enough, we did.
And this is true of most the people I know IRL who don’t have kids – most of them didn’t plan not to have kids, they just didn’t happen to have them. Among the people I know well, I know 5 women my age (mid-to-late '40s) who don’t have kids. Of them, only one is childfree by choice. She always said she wasn’t interested in having kids and she’s never wavered in that choice. All of the others would say it just ‘didn’t happen’ – they married later than average, or they didn’t marry at all, and having kids just never happened…
Is this bad? I don’t know. I admit it sounds bad, a bit, to say that people mostly have kids just because it’s the ‘next thing to do.’ It seems it would be better if only people who’d really thought it out had kids; and if all the people who really want kids could have them. But that’s not the way it seems to work – most people do just move through the steps in life without a whole lot of in-depth planning.
I also agree, BTW, that some people shouldn’t have kids. My grandmother whom I mentioned before is one example. While I’m obviously glad that she did have children (I wouldn’t be here typing this if she hadn’t), she was a disaster of a mother – of her three children, only my mother made it to adulthood more or less unscathed.
And, while I wouldn’t say that my in-laws shouldn’t have had aany children, I do think they had more than they ought to have had. My husband (who, in the interest of full disclosre, I will state does not have as good a relationship with his folks as I have with mine) is the oldest of 7 kids. 7 children was far more than they could financially and emotionally support. The oldest 5 kids suffered through a fairly dysfunctional and difficult childhood; the youngest two (who were basically raised alone after the oldest 5 were out of the house) had an easier time. It’s pretty obvious that my in-laws had the resources to support 2 or 3 kids – 7 was 4 or 5 too many.
I know you were replying to Anaamika, but I just want to say that I completely agree.
Whenever I talk about having kids I say “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure,” even though I’ve never wanted to have a child, don’t want to have a child now (I’m 34 and single), and can’t imagine wanting to have a child any time before I’m 40. But I’ll never say “I don’t want kids,” because, well, who knows? I definitely wouldn’t be doing it on my own, and having that kind of a relationship in my life might just change everything. I mean, it might not – when I search the online personals I tend to look for men who either don’t want children or already have them – but it might. Like I said, who knows? Some people take “I’m not sure” as really meaning “I don’t want any,” but when I say it I actually mean it.
Really, do you think so? Wow. I’ve never really considered that. When my husband and I started talking about marriage, we also started talking about children, finances, and all that life stuff. (We thought 3 kids didn’t sound like enough, but 4 sounded like a lot, and agreed to see what happened. We also agreed that I would go to grad school before we started. We have 2, and various factors mean that we are done.) I figured most people at least talked about whether and when they wanted to start having children. Now I may need to start a poll thread.
Some people take “I’m not sure” as really meaning “I don’t want any,” but when I say it I actually mean it.