No regrets at all about having my son.
As a single guy now, I often get asked if I want more. The answer to that is that it depends on the person I am with. I have no objection to having other children, and in some ways would like it, but if I fall for a person who doesn’t want to have children, then I am completely fine with that too.
My son is only 1 month old so at this point the only experience I’ve had is lack of sleep, poopy diapers and sore nipples, but I’ll give my perspective.
My labour and delivery was a disaster. During the last part of my pregnancy my blood pressure skyrocketed and I had to be induced. Induction is kind of a nasty thing - it’s a bit like experiencing 36 hours of labour in about 2 hours - it’s not pretty. I needed and epidural which took too well and I wound up bed bound, things went wrong, baby was turned the wrong way and I went into shock, his heart rate was dropping with every contraction, etc, etc. requiring an emergency c-section. I was slipping in and out of consciousness during the procedure, feeling like I needed to throw up, etc. It was 13 hours of hellishness.
So, they hauled Junior out and he started screaming his face off (which is good). They were checking him out, making sure he was OK and he screamed the whole time. They brought him over to me after he was sorted and set him on my chest, still screaming. I looked at him and said ‘Hi there.’ and he stopped yelling and just laid his head on my chest.
At that moment I knew why people elect to do that more than once and it made the whole gong show of a pregnancy and delivery worth it. I suspect that most of the rest of my life will be a bit like that.
This kind of stuff is what gets us [del]childless[/del] childree folks’ hackles up. The implications that we don’t have a family because we don’t have children, and that our lives are empty and pointless.
[It is possible that Leaffan is only speaking about himself, so I don’t mean it personally (that is why I removed his name from the quote tag).]
I have no regrets about having kids, but I have a few regrets about the timing. I wish I’d waited longer and spent more time enjoying my relatively carefree pre-kid lifestyle.
Frankly, I can no longer imagine my life without kids (well, I can, but it’s grim) but I kind of envy people who make the decision to go kid-unencumbered. My sister-in-law, for example, travels the world and spends two weeks on complicated hiking trips, and does a ton of things that would be really tough to do if she had kids. So I envy that a little.
This.
Maybe if I was told I couldn’t have these two particular children again, I might think twice.
Regards,
Shodan
BTW OP - if you don’t want children I think thats a totally reasonable choice and people who give you a hard time about it are douche bags.
I don’t have kids yet, but want to have them very badly. I’ve always known that being a parent isn’t great for everyone, my own mom regrets having us (she has three surviving children) and has never enjoyed parenting. Nonetheless I have a strong feeling it will be something that will bring me a lot of fulfillment.
Yeah, I’d say that’s a commonly mistaken belief. I’m only in my mid-20’s, but I am looking forward to being able to do things that sometimes just aren’t practical with kids (once again, not a bad thing).
Thanks. I’m just at that stage when people are moving away, settling down, etc., and it’s some sort of blasphemy if you aren’t into the usual route(s).
I just came in to say I think buttinskis is a great word.
Committing this retort to memory. Thanks!!
I’ve witnessed an acquaintance get this same “why don’t you have chiiiilllldren” b.s. and she pulled an amazing, Oscar-worthy performance. She looked the buttinsky straight in the eyes, and, as her own eyes grew big and began to shimmer and water, she placed one hand on her own abdomen, cradling her womb, and whispered almost inaudibly, “It’s … too painful to talk about.” One single tear trickled down her cheek when she said it.
Now, she’s child-free by choice, but for that one second, she conjured up a world of hurt and pain and disappointment and infertility, and the look on Buttinsky’s face was priceless. I bet she never asks a woman of childbearing age that question ever again.
I’m 42 in a couple of weeks, and people are still asking me (though some of that is probably because I just got married a year ago). I just tell them “I only believe people should have children if they are dying to have children, and I’m not. And if I’m going to change my mind on that, I’d better get cracking.” That usually gets them to leave me alone.
One of my friends (I can’t remember who) tried to console me by saying that in a few years, everyone will probably leave me alone about it.
I just wish my wife and I had been able to have kids when we were 15 years younger. My deepest regret about adopting the Firebug is that there will be so few years of overlap between his adulthood and my years of being vigorous and physically capable - I’ll be in my 80s before he’s out of his 20s.
Other than that, nothing remotely resembling regrets. I have never loved anyone as intensely as I love my son, and I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.
Doper parents, on the whole, had children for fairly considered reasons, and not just because “everyone else was doing it” or “babies r soooo kewt!~!” I think we have a higher propertion of people who consciously chose parenthood. I should imagine the amount of regret would also be lower than normal.
Speaking generally though, lots of people hate their children and abuse them horribly. (although many abusers claim to love their children; maybe its more correct to say they don’t know what love is?). Point being, not everyone bonds with and protects their children the way it’s “supposed” to happen. I remember reading in a blog where a woman she said that she felt no conenction to her baby, it was like a wild animal in a zoo that she couldn’t comprehend. The baby wasn’t newborn either. What a terrible feeling, one that is very taboo to articulate in our culture.
I love my kids but yeah there are some days when I’d willingly send them back where they came from. But if I didn’t have them I would have spent the last 8 years aching painfully for a baby, so all in all probably better I had them.
However if someone discovers that pause button mentioned upthread I’d like to order a retrofit.
Really?? Somehow my wiring has never gotten the message that muddleheadedness was part of the essence of love of any sort, parental love most specifically included. I’ve never felt a tension between being intensely in love with someone, and being clear-eyed about what that person was like.
Because Lord knows I’m aware of the Firebug’s faults and problems, which are abundant, and of the years of tedious work that I’ll need to put in over the years to civilize the little rascal. But that’s neither here nor there in terms of my love for him.
I don’t regret having children, but it’s certainly not all roses and sunshine. There are trade offs. I got very little sleep for about four years (my kids are 5 and 3). Our ability to be spontaneous has disappeared. Dinners out have to be planned for, travel without kids is nearly impossible because we don’t have relatives close by who can take the kids for more than a day or two, and getting everything done is much more difficult when you have two young kids to contend with.
The thing I find most difficult about having kids, though, is how vulnerable I feel I’ve become. I used to feel that there was nothing I couldn’t handle. Now, I don’t know how I would cope if something happened to my children. I’m also fearful of something happening to me because I don’t want my kids growing up without a mother. I never used to worry about my own safety before.
I can’t imagine a more personal choice than deciding to have or not have children. Anyone who comments negatively about someone being childless is a cretin. However, equally cretinous are childless people who refer to people with children as “breeders”. It’s condescending and offensive.
Hell, I dislike it when people get criticized for not wanting kids.
Parenting is hard fucking work, and nobody who doesn’t really want to be a parent should ever be pressured into it, AFAIAC. If you really love your kid(s), it’s worth the work, as hard as it is. But how could it be worth it if you didn’t particularly want your kids? Then they’d be nothing but a burden that you’d probably come to hate. I wouldn’t wish the work of parenthood on anyone who wasn’t enthusiastic about having kids.
I just want to second every last word of this post. Thanks for saying it so well.
My first thought is that what you do is none of my business, but you asked…
Back in the 60s when I got married, I don’t think anyone gave it a thought. You got married, having kids was part of the landscape and you didn’t think much on it. So we had two (one of each) in quick succession (17 months apart). Lots of work. Not very expensive at first, but that changed when they got older. I hated changing diapers, especially dirty ones. We used cloth diapers.
A few years later, my wife started clamoring for a third. Why? Well, she just liked having an infant around. So we came to an agreement. She would change all the dirty diapers. We kept pretty close to that. She did at least 99% of them, while I did my share of wet ones.
So they grew up, went to college, moved away (shit!!), got married, started their own families (six grandkids by now) and it was all worth it. A few weeks ago, we did baby-sat for my daughter’s 2 YO for a week (the daycare was on vacation). God, it was wearing on us 70+ grandparents. My daughter, BTW, had decided against having kids. But when she turned 40 she changed her mind. It was hard on her and hard to conceive, but at 42 1/2 she produced a son. With whom she is besotted. She pays something like $1800/month for daycare. But she loves her job and is afraid she cannot get another one like it if she left to raise the boy until he was in school. So she pays over $20,000 of after tax income every year for the daycare. And she is with him practically every minute she is not working or sleeping.