There was a time, in my early twenties, I wasn’t sure I wanted kids. The idea of losing all that personal freedom wasn’t very appealing.
Right around the time I turned 24 I began warming up to the idea, and putting kids in the long-term plan. And then a couple of years ago… BAM! Completely out of the blue, every cell in my body became primed for childrearing. I was skeptical about the notion of a biological clock until this happened. Since then, the urge to procreate has grown ever stronger, and somedays I’m just overcome with a powerful urge to nurture something (needless to say, my cat has become very spoiled.) It’s beyond weird. I didn’t even used to be that interested in small children, and now it’s like I have baby radar.
So my question is, those of you who are not interested in having children - have you experienced anything like a biological clock urging you to procreate? If so, it is a case of your rational mind overcoming your biological instinct - or do you feel no such instinct?
I guess on a broader level I’m just curious if most women experience this biological urge to have children, or it’s just a few of us. And I wonder if child-free women never have that urge at all.
Not for me. I’ve never had a drive or desire to have children. I have tons of nieces and nephews, so it’s not like I’m not around kids. I’ve occasionally imagined myself and a mother and… no. Doesn’t appeal to me at all. No biological urge yet, and if it’s gonna show up it better get to it as I’m already 42.
Nope. Any mothering needs I had were covered by co-parenting the Bros. Realizing how much of a parent I’d been to them helped me both realize that I’d already “mommy-ed” (BTDT, got the puked-on Tshirt) and that, if I had been a Mom, I might not have done as horrid a job as I used to fear I would (Mom, her sister, their mom, and both of their grandmas, were pretty bad mothers in different ways - from the mild case of letting her good-for-nothing husband run roughshod over her to the worst one of sexually abusing her own children).
Yes and I think it was prompted by my best friend becoming pregnant for her first time. I started having a lot of dreams about either being pregnant and being really excited about it, or about actually having children.
At no time in my life have I wanted children and I still have no plans to have them. I’m 37.
I’m 41. I somewhat confusedly figured out in my early teens that, no, I really didn’t have any “aw, let me see the baby” feelings or any desire to have children. I still don’t want any and am very satisfied with my decision. My husband thought he wanted one when we were dating, but we were honest with each other about our feelings; I was willing to keep an open mind and he was willing to risk never having a child. Turns out he lost any desire to have a child.
Interestingly, my sister (3 years younger) has no kids either, also by choice. Her husband is also more than fine with that. We had a good, loving home environment with very dear parents. Our dad died when we were in college, but our mom is happy with getting pictures of the “grand-bunnies” or “grand-kitties” (her words) from us.
A friend of mine in her late 30s has no kids and wants none. The only time she’s told me about overwhelming “Must. Have. Baby.” feelings, those feelings also were at the same time as very intense manic swings in her (now under control with meds and therapy) bipolar disorder. So for her, those feelings were just side effects of her “must do everything!” manic periods in which she wanted to launch a zillion little projects of all kinds.
Sure I did. In my mid-twenties, the urge to have a baby was extremely powerful, and very biologically-based. Every month when I ovulated, I WANTED A BABY. I would look at babies in the mall and smile and wave and think about snatching a cute one (kidding).
But…three factors tell me the answer is no:
I’ve known all my life that, unless you’re really wealthy or you just don’t care about the kid, you give up a lot to be a parent, in terms of being able to pursue your interests and in having time to yourself. I know intellectually that kind of sacrifice would probably leave me extremely depressed. I’m just not cut out for that, personality-wise.
My (extremely fit) sister died in her twenties of early coronary artery disease. I can’t get any doctors to take this seriously; they treat it like an anomaly and shrug their shoulders, but looking at our family pedigree, my siblings and I are heavily genetically loaded for atherosclerosis. So no one will give me an angiogram and tell me where I stand. I could have a time-bomb in my chest. It’s very likely for me that I wouldn’t live to see my kid reach age 18.
Because of #2, the only way I would have a kid is with a partner I would absolutely trust to raise it to 18 if I were gone. My family is not competent to do so. I have an attitude about marriage that seems to be different from about 99% of the population. I also had never found a man I really had a rapport with until very recently. He’s 49 and is too old for kids (in our opinions). I’m 34, and it took me 20 years of dating to find even a hint of what I’m looking for in a lifetime partner. The odds are against finding another guy like that who is also baby-ready, in the next 6 years, isn’t good.
The biological urge has waned with time and the recognition that I’m just not that person. But, I do still find myself wishing that I could have the experience of having biologically-related children in teen years and adulthood. It would be the younger years that would be too hard.
I’m 45, and don’t remember ever having an urge to have my own child. I love my friends’ children, and I do squee over other people’s infants, but always in the back of my mind is the feeling that I get to give these children back to their parents when I am done with them
Very, very, very rarely do I remember feeling a feeling like “I’ll never know what pregnancy and childbirth are like,” as if that’s something that adult women do, and I’ll therefore never be an adult. But that feeling is fleeting.
I always assumed that at some point, I’d really, really want to have a kid, because that’s just what happens to women, right? I figured when that happened, I’d have one. It was part of the plan.
But then, it never happened. When I see infants, 95% percent of the time, my first thought is “ick, keep it away from me.” The other 5% of the time, it’s “Oh, that one’s cute. But still, keep it away from me.”
I’m 41 now, and if I became pregnant, I’d be really worried about all the things that happen in late pregnancy, and I honestly don’t know if I’d go through with it. I don’t want a kid enough to change my life for it.
I occasionally wonder what it would have been like to have one, and if I really missed out on something good, but overall, I’m OK with being childless. I think one ought to really, really want a kid before having one; being wish-washy isn’t fair to the kid or yourself.
35, and no, I have never remotely wanted children, nor felt any urge to procreate. I feel no attraction to babies (most of them are ugly and, IMHO, disgusting). I don’t feel any desire to touch them, and I won’t hold them unless I have to (ie, to help out the mom/dad for a minute.) Lest you think I lack exposure to babies, my nephew is almost a year, and my best friend’s baby is about 6 months. They are both cute and cheerful babies. It does not make me want one of my own.
Seldom interested in holding babies, interacting extensively with kids, etc. (But show me a puppy and I lose my friggin’ mind and turn into a blithering idiot.) I like my life just way it is, and it’s plenty hectic. Can’t imagine dealing with a kid on top of that.
I could probably raise a kid if I had to (reproductive accident, relative’s kids dumped on us), but it’s not something I’ve ever wanted to pursue.
Never once felt the “biological clock” go off, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gone from neutral towards small children to actively disliking them. Maybe things would be different if I’d had one of my own (hormones are powerful things), but I don’t have any way to know. For the sake of my hypothetical kid, I’m glad I didn’t take that chance!
I’m 56 so kids aren’t happening-at least in this life time.
When I was younger I would very occasionally have what I guess was a maternal twinge so I’d get a puppy or a kitten. Worked every time.
No, I never felt any overwhelming urge to have a baby. There’s a lot of rational reasons why I wouldn’t be a good mom, so that’s all for the best. I’ve come around to the idea that kids are pretty cool, provided I don’t have to be responsible for them. Babies, however, just bore me to tears.
I’m not particularly adept, socially, so it doesn’t surprise me that I never really grokked the social cues about babies, aside from apparently lacking the biological ones, also.
ETA: I’m 43 now, and single, and happy as an aunt. My sister’s a terrific mom - I could never do what she does. So it’s all worked out perfectly.
I’m 32. Never wanted kids. Well I sort of thought I did once when I had a real boyfriend but I got over it (it wasn’t going to happen any time soon then anyway).
My biggest obstacle is that I have never been in a loving partnership with anyone. I do not know what it is like. So any time I picture myself with a kid I picture myself raising a kid alone.
Honestly, there are times when I feel really shitty about how I raise my dog, and how hard it can be to do it alone and how much of a burden it makes for my parents. And this is just a DOG!
So me + baby - partner = nightmare. It all sounds like a nightmare.
Couple that with everyone I know having kids and everyone seeming to be so fucking miserable about it. All they ever tell me is how tired they are, how broke they are, what bad parents they are, blah blah blah. They don’t seem any happier than I am. My secret is that I get to hang out with kids all the time but I don’t have to take them home.
Oh yeah there’s also the fear that not only will I have a kid by myself, I also will have a handicapped kid who will drain me emotionally, physically and financially and then die early and I will still die alone, but also broke.
Oh AND since I’ve never been in a loving relationship/equal partnership, I haven’t had a chance to be taken care of or babied myself. Or have anyone dote on ME. So I can totally see myself being resentful of a kid if I finally got that special man to pay attention to me and got knocked up. I would probably be a real jerk mom.
I’m pretty glad I never got the biological urge. I would probably hate myself.
I’m 56 and have never wanted kids. My standard joke is “Biological clock? They forgot to install it at the factory.”
I’m notorious for an incident when I walked past a group of female coworkers oohing and aahing over someone’s new baby and saying “Yeah yeah, coochie coochie, whatever.” Partially done for effect, partially because that’s really how I feel.
I’m 46, and like twickster, I too apparently was absent at the factory the day they installed the biological clocks. I have known from the time I was a tiny kid that I had no desire for children (my mom used to laugh at me and tell me that she was going to laugh harder when I turned up with a kid someday) and I have been absolutely unwavering in that. Any maternal instinct I might have seems completely primed toward little furry creatures with pointy ears and whiskers; human babies do nothing for me and I have no interest in caring for them, giving up my freedoms for them, or even interacting with them when they’re somebody else’s.
Kids really hold no interest at all for me until they’re old enough to carry on intelligent conversations and not be annoying (depending on the kid this can be anywhere from about 8 to 11), and even then I wouldn’t want one of my own.
