I’m almost 40 and I’ve never had event the slightest flutter of wanting a child. I never have. As a little girl I was actually offended when people gave me dolls to play with. I love caring for animals of all kinds, I’m fond of the elderly and taking care of them, I can entertain children and make them laugh, but no human babies, please.
I’m 24, so maybe I’m too young, but I’ve never really had a serious urge to procreate. My reasons for having a kid, when I do contemplate having one, would be completely selfish (someone to take care of me when I’m old and feeble, for one thing). I like babies, but not the screamy, poopy parts. Nor do I like tantrumy toddlers or mouthy teens. I’m not very nurturing in general, and I feel like comforting a child after they’ve fallen or something would seem more like a chore than anything else. My mom, funnily enough, was the same way (and in fact it weirded me out as a kid whenever she’d call me “hon,” or “sweetheart,” because she rarely did that and it always sounded forced, or something).
I’m also an intensely private person who likes to be alone. I lock the bathroom door every time I’m in there, and I most certainly do NOT want kids barging in. Nor do I want to give up my hobbies and downtime.
It’s not that I haven’t met kids I liked–I’ve met plenty–but I tire of them very easily. I’ll be playing with a kid, then about five minutes later all I want them to do is go away and leave me alone. Maybe it is different if you have your own, but frankly I don’t think I really want to find out.
I’ll be 50 in Nov. and I’ve never ever wanted kids. I like some kids in very small doses, but it’s a rare thing. I avoid babies as much as possible. I used to sort of enjoy teaching kids to ride (horses), but then I was in charge, and generally a new enough person to automatically get respect, or at least full attention. Also, horse crazy little girls will do ANYthing to get their horse fix, so they were on their best behavior to make every second of that horse time count. Which is good, 'cuz I have zero tolerance for whiny shit.
For the last five years, my answer has been “not my own, but I’ll be happy to show pics of the nephews!”
Last year a guy asked a new female coworker whether she had kids; she said “no” and seemed about to say more but he cut in with “oh, you’re so lucky! I’ve got three!” There was a moment of silence and then another woman said “you know, that’s actually a pretty insensitive thing to say, for all you know she might be about to start IVF. Plus, if your kids blow goats maybe it’s you who should’a kept them out of the barn.” Turns out the new coworker was getting married in a few months and wants kids.
And 2ManyTacos, I’ve met guys whose biological clocks were ticking like crazy (the problem when a guy’s bioclock does is that it’s constant, a woman’s tends to be cyclic). They all had about ten years on you, though.
I didn’t particularly want kids, but part of that may have come from living with a bitter screwed up mother who badmouthed anyone having kids! For whatever reason, me and my brothers were an irritating burden to her. (so maybe she was one of the broken-biological clock women!) So I grew up with the idea “baby=bad”. I had little love or nurturing from mom. When I got married, after years and years of trying to not get pregnant, we decided, what will be will be, and surprise! a year later, the test was positive! Oh, I was utterly terrified. I felt like I was gestating a time bomb. I didn’t know any other pregnant women or mothers of babies, there just weren’t any in the family or living around us, so I felt like I was going through this all alone. I also suffer(ed) anxiety and depression. (I digress - and may I say I now have a beautiful and smart adult daughter who is my #1 source of pride, and I love her unto death.) But no, no bio clock ever went off, not that I felt I was too special to be a mother, not that I didn’t like kids (I was mostly indifferent), but I really didn’t think I would BE much of a mother. Turned out to be wrong, but that was my mindset, I was was entering an unknown country all alone without a map.
Happy Birthday Monday to a fellow Leo!
As to thread topic: A couple other people mentioned what they do in social/non-social (work) situations when the question comes up. I’ve thought of more politically correct answers, but the one that always pops out of my mouth is: “Oh, god no.” Pretty much results in a subject change and it never coming up again. Works for me!
It’s both. It sometimes hits young women. Sometimes women in their 20s or 30s. And, as you’ve read in this thread, sometimes never. Every woman is different. I had friends in college who couldn’t wait to get married and start families. I was like you in the financially-secure-want-to-do-something-in-my-life-first before even thinking of getting married, never mind having kids. Different strokes, you know?
I have a few childfree friends who feed their need to nurture through pets. I’m right there with them 
Some women fall in love with the idea of having a child but fail to realize the reality of actually having one.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, the woman is a very close friend of my family so I’m not going to spend too much time criticizing her, but still, I won’t sugercoat the fact that she really is a piece of work (in more ways than just her parenting sensibilities, believe me) and a lousy mother to her son.
Those of you who bring up your biological clock as being comparable to your sex drive really bring up an interesting question. As a man, I can tell you that my sex drive is absolutely DEVOID of any desire to have children; indeed, when I’m in that frame of mind, I just DO NOT want any children to result from my activities.
So, if you say that your sex drive and your “child-rearing drive” are intrinsically linked, does that mean that you engage in sexual activities simply BECAUSE of your intention to have a child? Are you able to have sex simply for its own sake, or does the need to reproduce have to be there in order to ignite your sexual desires?
I can only speak for myself, as a woman who has never wanted anything to do with kids, that desire to have kids (none) and my sex drive (high) are definitely not linked in any way. I’m more cautious in my sex adventures as a single woman now, but in my 20’s and early 30’s I was a bit promiscuous, and when I did have monogamous relationships my partners were either ecstatic with our sex life or worn out. A few women have mentioned their before-menstruation extreme urge to “make baby now” for a couple of days. I have similar timing, it’s just “have sex now” and not related to wanting to procreate at all.
Aside from no longer being 37, this is so true for me! I have no urge to have kids, never wanted any and I have absolutely no interest in other people’s offspring. Most women are supposedly scared of spiders. Eight-legged crawling things I can deal with, but babies? Eeek!
Back in my 20s those before-menstruation times were definitely more “have sex now” than “make baby now”. The baby part didn’t enter the picture until I was in my mid-late 30s. I found that curious until it hit me as to why babies suddenly became such a hot topic for me and why there are so many women in that age bracket hoping/praying to start a family…
I forgot about this important caveat. It is pretty hard when you grow up around a bunch of women who expect that everyone wants to have children. The funniest thing was, out of the three women in my family:
one never had kids (she’s never even had sex)
one adopted me but could never have kids
and the third one had three, me and two boys later on
So the two women who never had kids always expected I would. It could be their upbringing…but as I’ve said before, i think there was something missing in me right from the start. I’ve never had a particularly nurturing demeanor, nor a need to take care of anything helpless.
I HAVE a kid, and I’ve never felt a biological urge. I have always wanted kids in the abstract, but also have always disliked other people’s children. We had planned/scheduled having a baby, and then we did it. Love my child, find him captivating, want another/more, still don’t have “the hunger”.
Is it maybe a function of having been on/being on hormonal birth control?
Speaking again as someone who hasn’t had an urge, I think it’s something you really can’t understand until you’ve truly walked a mile in their shoes. Just as women who have always wanted children can never truly understand my complete and total disinterest, I don’t think I can ever truly understand a woman who wants children above all else. All the time I hear about the heartache and angst women go through, the need and desire to have a kid, the financial difficulties they put themselves through - which is even harder to understand! if you spend all that money on conceiving, what will be left when you have the kid? Sometimes marriages break up, hearts break and I make sympathetic noises but I don’t get any of it. But that doesn’t make them or me wrong.
It’s analogous in a way to depression…For most of my life I never had even a little problem with depression. I was born with the most upbeat spirit there is. For most of my youth I was actively hostile to depressives, like why can’t they just cheer up?. (Bear with me now!) As I grew to adulthood I began to understand it’s probably mostly a chemical & biological thing and it’s no one’s fault. But I still couldn’t fully internalize it, though I became much more sympathetic. And then i finally had my first bout of depression. Mild as hell, and I got over it really fast but I finally had an inkling of understanding.
I think the biological clock is similar. And whether we like it or not, I think we are still hard-wired to want to have babies. Evolution does not weed out those few of us who don’t, because there’s enough having babies it doesn’t matter, and those who want babies often have babies and presumably pass along the urge to want babies as well. So that would explain why women aren’t always sensible about it.
In the end, we all want different things, which is a good thing. However, I do wish people in this country would realize that not only are more women deciding to not have babies, a shit ton of women are deciding to delay childbirth into their thirties. I think it’s almost half of all women of childbearing age. So I wish we would not be thought of as much as birthing machines as we kind of are. Sure, abortion is important to women in many ways, as is birth control, but there are a gazillion other issues that are important to women, too.
Or who plan children and discover that the outcome cannot be planned or controlled.
“What?, you aren’t perfect.”
My daughter has a friend raised by such a mother. The girl is bright, pretty, respectful - but not bright, pretty and respectful enough for mom.
I had the same thought while reading this thread.
I had some pretty nasty experiences with hormonal birth control. The very first side effect I had, no matter the method, was a nonexistent libido. Not having to deal with hormonal fluctuations gave me the opportunity to stretch my intellect and develop many interests. That’s not to say I wasn’t interested in having relationships. I was, but it was rare to find a guy who wasn’t purely in it for the sex.
The minute I came off the birth control – WHAM! But, as I said upthread, the only time I ever had baby fever was when I was ovulating.
Heh, things are so changed now that I’m menopausal. Total about-face. I couldn’t care less about babies now. Ditto sex.
I think this is a really important point. Sometimes there is so much animosity between childfree women and women who have or want to have children, it seems like they are not communicating at all. I believe it’s because they really can’t communicate at the most basic level. There is some deep, biological urge to have children that some women get and some women don’t, and there’s no way to communicate what that feels like from one group to the other.
It would be like a straight man and a gay man trying to convince each other to be aroused by a woman or a man. Totally pointless.
30, tenatively planning to have kids one day.
I get it now and then. Mostly, I’ll be going abour my day and then suddenly have an insane thought…“wouldn’t it be neat to be pregnant?” It comes out of nowhere, and I recognize it has no place in my life right now.
Still, it is pretty cool. I can make people. I can make a whole darn family if I want. Neat.
I agree. I have intellectually decided that women who have this strong urge aren’t lying to me, and so I respect that they do indeed have something happening with them that I haven’t experienced. Communication the other way does actually seem to be getting better, as it becomes more common and more well-known that there are many, many perfectly normal women who simply don’t want to give birth to kids.
This discussion reminds me of a billboard ad that a local fertility had in a few places around town.
Full sized highway billboard with a picture of the world’s cutest baby ever, at the sitting up, smiling and reaching for everything stage. (Keep in mind I’m NOT a baby-person, and even I thought it was a cute kid.) The caption read “Want one?”
My first reaction was “oh dear god NO! No no no, thank you”
Then it made me sad and angry, because I can only imagine some poor woman* who really did yearn for one having to see that every day on her commute. 
I’m glad to say that ad campaign didn’t last long.
*I guess that would apply to some men too, come to think of it.