ALWAYS by people with children, always with that smug “You’ll be sorry someday” and that arrogant pitying “You’ll never know.” Never mind asking them how, exactly, would they know.
With slightly lower numbers, that’s us too.
YES!! I wish I’d said that.
.
This is something that genuinely bothers me. I am 28, my husband 34. We both are on the fence about what we want. I have the maternal instinct and we both think we want a family. The thing is, sometimes we wonder if maybe we would live a more fufilled life without children. We both love travelling and living life without borders, and i’m afraid that having a child would reign us in much more than we’re willing.
I have quite a few friends with children who have become distant and judgmental of me because we havent joined their ranks. I am so afraid to become someone like that. But this whole, “You’ll never know” thing is always thrown in my face by them, by my mother and by alot of society. The only fact is, both paths lead to “you’ll never know”… I just have to figure out which is best for me.
I just posted this the other day on a different thread. A little redundant, but I think it may be appropriate in this thread as well.
Since my late teens, I felt no desire to ever be a parent. Babies had absolutely zero appeal for me (in fact, my honest reaction to a baby was revulsion); older children had no effect or interest for me; I didn’t like or dislike them – just nothing. Only when they reached their early teens could I began to relate to them as pre-adults.
My wife cared even less than I did about children, so we chose to remain childless. That was 40 years ago, we’re still happily married, and we’ve never felt the slightest twinge of regret.
So I think it’s safe to say that I never had a “Daddy chromosome” or whatever. BUT… about twenty years ago, when I hit 40, my “Grandfather” switch must have gotten turned on, and for the first time in my life I found myself enjoying the little sticky people, and that appreciation has only grown stronger since then. (Although babies still repel me.)
Old, childfree and totally satisfied with that. I feel that the world is headed for very hard times and the best thing I ever did for my progeny was sparing them that.
One of my mother’s friends was married a couple of times but mostly spent her life working, travelling, and generally being a ‘party girl’. She died when she was about 80 but before she went I once asked her if she ever regretted not having kids. “Hell, no!” she said most vehemently. “I’m glad I never had any. I’ve enjoyed every minute of my life, and when I see the sheer hell my friends’ kids have put them through - they went into it thinking it was going to be all sunshine and puppy dogs, and that only lasted until the kids started to walk and talk!”
Another thought: if any Greener-Than-Thou types have the audacity to start the “how small is your carbon footprint” sermon, “We chose to not reproduce” settles the issue quickly.
.
Yeah, how about that. Over the past 40 years, all the times I’ve heard “how sad for you, you’ll never know, someday you’ll regret blah blah…”–
it’s never been an elderly non-parent saying it. Not once.
What’s more, when I have been the recipient of the sanctimonious reprimand, I sometimes felt that I detected an undercurrent of envy.
.
We take that into account sometimes when we’re making decisions; for example, buying our second-last washing machine, we figured we weren’t as worried about efficiency because we do a fifth as much laundry as a family with kids. 
I’m 44, with the same answers.
I’m pretty young for this thread, but while I love kids, I don’t think I’ll ever raise any. Mostly because I’m not (and I’m not sure I’ve ever been) ready to do so, whether financially or responsibility-wise or whatever. It’d be WAY above anything I’ve ever done before, even with another person around to help, and I’m just not sure I’ll ever be prepared to take that leap. The thought of being that responsible for molding a young mind is kinda scary! (I can take the level of being an uncle, but not a parent!)
I’m 44 and I think I have the BEST kind of Kids, somebody elses!, I’m the “live in Uncle”.
I always tell folks that I got the Grandpa gig without having Kids! When the Kids are cute and friendly they are mine, the rest of the time “you need to go find your Momma” and I go hide from the outside world in my one of my “Mancaves”.
To quote one of my friends “I don’t have Kids because I enjoy sleeping late and having extra money”
Unclviny
When my grandma, then in her 70s, was in a nursing home, her first-grade teacher was there, and must have been in her 90s. She had never been married or had kids, and was having a blast running the social events for all of the “old people”. She was magnificent - I look forward to being her at that age. For now I’ll enjoy being an auntie!
The sample size of people in their 60s or older who are childless or childfree is significantly smaller than those of us in our 30s or 40s, due to societal changes if nothing else. You may have a hard time finding a lot of data.
A good friend of mine (actually, my ex) didn’t want kids, and had the vasectomy to prove it. Now, at 52, he has no regrets. But he does enjoy his godchild (my son) enormously/ Plus, he got involved with a lady who got her first grandchild just when he and she got together.
That is so beautiful. :)
We were childless until I became pregnant at 38 (7 yrs ago), and it was a blast. We had a fabulous time, and we put energy into causes and politics in a way that isn’t possible for us at the moment.
Now that I have kids I’m delighted to & wouldn’t go back for nothing – but yeah, being childless was great in other ways.
People* should NOT be pressured to have children.
*except for my kids - I want grandbabies in 20 years!
Another fifty-ish childfree couple checking in.
Coulda had 'em, but didn’t really want it bad enough to overturn our life.
Most of all, we both were insistent that somebody be the full time parent. The idea of the two-career household & kids raised by daycare, an illegal alien, & TV is/was appalling to us. We didn’t insist that it had to be the same person all 18+ years, but one of us would have had to be non-working from about 1990 to now. The nature of our respective careers made that a non-starter.
Now? No regrets. The fact we’re happily married for good helps.
My only concern is great old age when we get too frail to manage our affairs. We are financially set well enough that I don’t doubt our ability to buy the day-to-day practical help we’ll need if we live long enough to need it. But who will make decisions for us in a trustworthy manner when we can’t? How do we hire that out? And what if we get it wrong?
The story of scheming children or extended family stealing the clueless old folk’s money is a cliche precisely because it happens so often. My wife sees that all the time in her work. So having kids is no guarantee that 60 years later they will take good care of you. But *not *having kids *is *a guarantee that you won’t have them available to (maybe) take good care of you.
The next generation of our extended family is small and geographically scattered. So we can’t count on in-depth help from that quarter either.
55, childless by choice. I was a severely abused child and did not want to risk abusing my own children. It woud have killed me.
I once had a very vivid dream whee I met the people who were supposed to be my children. My son (who looked just like my brother) had to become the father of my daughter because I didn’t give birth to them. “She was supposed to be my sister, but I had to be her father because you wouldn’t be her mother.”
Freaky in the extreme.
Or you might have kids who will still be dependent upon you when you’re in your dotage. Whether to to being lazy bums (in which case you can cut them off), or being disabled (in which case I suppose you still could, but it’d be a scummy thing to do)… having children really does not guarantee support as an adult.
I’m younger than the age group in the OP, 43, and childfree by choice.
I love children - in small and easily controlled doses. My friends’ kids love me madly, and I love them all and enjoy their company, but that enjoyment is based partly on their own little perfect selves and partly on the fact that when I’m ready for something else, I can move on without guilt.
Basically, I’m selfish and I realize that about myself. I do not have within me what it takes to focus solely on the health and welfare of another human being for years. I want to be able to stay out all night, or change plans at the last minute, or go camping at the drop of a hat, or…whatever…and only have to worry about the dog.
I’ve gotten some “you’re so selfish not wanting to have kids!” statements in the past, to which my reply is, “yep.” I’ve also gotten, horrifically, the “you OWE it to the world to have kids because not enough smart white people are having babies!,” to which I’ve given the only appropriate response (either verbal or nonverbal).
I’ve also heard the “you’ll change your mind when you meet the right person” (for me, the right person ALSO doesn’t want kids), or “it’s different when it’s your own,” and that latter one bothers me the most. What if it isn’t different, for me? What if I decide to get pregnant and have a child, all the while expecting to want to be a parent once the child is born (because after all, it’s different when it’s your own), and…my lack of interest doesn’t change? Now, I’ve got a child I don’t want, and that’s kind of a permanent thing.
I occasionally get the “I’m going to die alone!” feeling, and I have to admit that the thought does bother me somewhat. I just am making sure to cultivate lots of really wonderful friends of all ages to ensure that when I die, I’m missed immediately, and my body isn’t eaten by my cats 
Selfish or not, the fact is: what you want is what you want. It’s not like you can change who you really are and what you really want.
How unfair would it be to the kids you fortunately didn’t have, to have had them despite not wanting them? It would have really sucked to be them. (And would have sucked to be you, too, but these critics don’t seem to give a good goddamn about your feelings, so we’ll just stick with the part about its being a lousy deal for the kids.)
I think the right answer to that one is, “If that’s so, I guess I’ll find out when I find that person. I’ll be sure to let you know.”
It is permanent, and it’s a shitload of work as well. I’m glad to finally be a daddy, and the Firebug adds an incredible amount of joy to my life. But I’m exhausted all the time, and there’s just no free time anymore. It only works for me because this is what I really, really want. If I didn’t want kids, it would be a nightmare, and I’m sure I would hate the kid.
Nobody should have to have kids they don’t want. Nobody. Ever.
And as a corollary to that, why anyone should urge parenthood on those who aren’t particularly eager for it is totally beyond me. They must hate kids or something.
I never got the whole, “you’re so selfish!” thing. I’m having kids because I WANT them. It’s not some noble venture to pass on my awesome genes to future generations - it’s selfish. Kids are something I want. I think that’s the way for most people who have kids on purpose - they do so because they want to.