Doesn’t apply to me, but currently the main method used by happily-married couples in Spain to avoid “when are you going to make me a grandmother?” is…
not doing the paperwork.
I’ve got cousins and friends who’ve been “living in sin”/“married” (depending on which definitions you use) for years; at least one couple, over twelve years. So long as she doesn’t splurge on that white dress, people don’t expect children.
Many weddings are not the signal of “we belong together” but of “we’ve decided to go for a kid”. Mom is chaperoning her parents to a wedding next month; Grandma couldn’t understand that there is no bridal list, but heck, “they’ve been living together for six. Years! What would they have a list for, a laser toothbrush? No, Momma, there isn’t such a thing as a laser toothbrush I don’t think. Don’t call it a ‘donation’, makes it sound like they’re beggars! It’s still a gift. Yes Momma. Want me to call Auntie and ask for the account number? No Momma, you can’t give it to them at the wedding. Because nobody does…”
37 here, and Mr. Athena just turned 50. We’ve been together for almost ten years, married for one. Second marriage for both of us.
I always figured at some point I’d have a kid. Someday, I’d look at an infant, and think “OMG I have to have one!” instead of “Yuk.” So far, that hasn’t happened. OK, I’ve seen cute kids, and there’s times that they’re appealing, but not more appealing than, say, a puppy. So far, I’ve got plenty of puppies, and no kids.
At 37, I’m pretty sure now that I’m never going to have that “Aha! I need a kid!” feeling. And it seems to me that you should want to have a kid, not just feel like it’s the next thing on the checklist (Married - check. House - check. Good job - check. Kid - errrrrr…)
Mr. Athena is more or less in the same boat I am. I think if either of us really wanted to have one, we would. But so far, we both just kind of go “Not for us.” We have a heck of a good life going right now. We really like each other, we spend a lot of time goofing off together, we have a nice house, disposable income, etc. Why would we want to give all that up and possibly put a strain on our relationship (that we’ve worked hard to make what it is) to raise a little alien?
I’m 40, hubby is 51. We’ve been together for 19 years, happily married for 17 next month. Never had any desire to have kids, and I don’t foresee any regret.
We often say that the reason we choose not to have kids is that we DO recognize what a huge job it is, and we’re willing to admit that we just don’t want to take it on. We like living in Grown-Up Land, and we get enough kid-fix from nieces and nephews, friends’ kids, etc. Plus we both cop to being a bit screwed-up ourselves and unsure of ourselves when it comes to guiding someone else’s life. Some days it feels as if we can barely run our own.
On the flip side, if something happened (accidental pregnancy, had to take in somebody’s kids), we’d suck it up and deal and probably do just fine.
I didn’t get married young, but more or less assumed I was not going to have children and was OK with it, and was focused on the positive aspects of childlessness. I strongly object to people who say that being childless by choice is selfish. I think it’s the complete opposite and that childless people should be congratulated for thinking things through and not going for it ‘just because’.
I ended up leaving it to fate and getting pregnant at 36, and we ran with it. What CairoCarol said above applies 100% to my subsequent stance on the matter.
Having kids or grandkids doesn’t guarantee they’ll care about you when you are old. Nursing homes are full of people whose relatives don’t give a shit about them (sometimes understandably, sometimes not).
I’ve never wanted kids either. No maternal instinct whatsoever. I told DH this when we were dating and it looked like it might get serious. He was, and is, fine with it. I’m 45 and he’s 52. Married 19 years. The only person I feel a tiny little bit sorry for is my MIL. Neither of her sons has spawned, or wanted to, and I think she would really have liked grandchildren. But that’s also not a good reason to have children.
It wasn’t all that long ago when there was really no such thing as a childless-by-choice couple. The concept gobsmacks the older generation of folks today. Not all that long ago, you grew up, got married and had kids and that’s just the way it was. I’m glad I grew up in the age of decent birth control!
We have a No Kidding chapter here, too, and I really like the people who are part of it. I think we probably all would have made decent parents if we’d chosen to do so - for the most part, the members are well-educated, intelligent and have good jobs - but I also see how difficult it is to raise a kid these days (DH is a middle school teacher, and oy, the stories sometimes), and I’m glad I didn’t take on the task.
People who don’t have kids are definitely the minority, and as such, we have some unfairness in our lives. As minorities go, we don’t have it too badly (we blend mostly - people don’t know our parental state unless we talk about it), but there is certainly prejudice out there.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m a member of a CBC social group; we often go out for group dinners, and there has been the occasional time when a restaurant refused our reservation when they found out what kind of group we are. Like you mentioned, there can be a lot of unfairness at work - the moms seem to come and go as they please*, but you are expected to work your 40 hours (and cover for them). And that’s not mentioning the fifteen calls a day they get from their kids.
One thing I am still having trouble understanding is why my choice not to have kids is so threatening to some people. They seem to take it as a personal affront that my husband and I are choosing a different lifestyle than theirs.
*Yes, I know, some moms have arrangements made where they make up their lost time, or lose pay, or whatever. And some moms don’t. They just leave, and get paid the same as everyone else.
SO would like to have children, but he respects my ambivilence. There’s also the fertility issue (I’m 46, he’s 41), so even if we wanted to have a child, we’d probably have to go the the assisted reproduction route. I have a girlfriend who went through that with no success and plenty of tears. No thank you.
Sociallizing with other CBC couples is the best! Everyone shows up for the events on time, we have interesting discussions and lots of laughs, and the subject of children just doesn’t come up. We have had the very occasional discussion of our parental choices, but usually in the form of a bitchfest - comparing stories of relatives and casual acquaintances bugging us about having kids.
What the heck does that mean? You mean the restaurants were SO “family oriented” that they refused to have patrons that didn’t want “families”?!?! Or was your group motto something like “We’re not going to have children so we like to go out in public naked and fling food across the room”?
As an aside, featherlou, my wife and I are still planning to attend something with your local CBC group when her business travel schedule settles down.
We’ve been together nine years, married for nearly seven. My wife was one of those who never planned to have children; I was always ambivalent towards the idea. At any rate, neither of us was a “must have children” sort of person. We can certainly get our fill of children if we want–we have two great nephews nearby who always enjoy seeing their uncle and aunt–but we’re happy not to have any kids of our own. So I guess we’d fall into Category 1, although as we are getting older (we’d both be classed as mid-40s, though I’ve got a few years on my wife), we’re approaching Category 2.
No kids, and none coming (dig?). Very much by choice.
I don’t see any compelling reason to have them. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do all the things we want to do in the next 20 years even WITHOUT having them.
Also, it would almost surely be the end of my wife’s business.
His health is such that I simply don’t want more responsibility for another life. He doesn’t like kids; I’m ambivalent at best. We both lack patience. So, it’s a good thing that we don’t want children.
We don’t get hassled about it much. Just a few comments from a few people that we can ignore.
The only thing I noticed about your post that I didn’t get from most of the responses is your fear of regret. When my wife and I decided that we wanted kids, a large part of the decision came down to the fact that she is pushing 40, and we both knew we would eventually want kids. However, when the time came, there was this voice in the back of my head screaming “No more sleeping in! No more random weekend trips! Gotta get a sitter to go to dinner!”. As such, I think we would have waited longer, if for no other reason than the lifestyle change seemed very intimidating.
In other words, there was a part of me who didn’t want to take the plunge “right now”, but knew I’d always wanted kids and wanted a family. Once the decision was made, I didn’t regret it for a second.
I’m not sure you’ll get any “I regret it” responses, for any number of reasons. I know those people are out there, but think they’re unlikely to post to this thread, or unlikely to even post on the dope, or just don’t want to discuss something they feel is so painful. All that said, I have no problem understanding married couples who decide not to have children. That doesn’t perplex me one bit. If it’s truly the route you want to take, then you should feel no regrets.
I think it became an issue because we were booking ethnic dinners (that’s one of the ongoing social events - regular ethnic dinners - the more ethnic, the better), which are often family-run, and I guess some families from some cultures are so pro-children that they’re anti-not-having-children.
We should totally change our group motto to that.
Capatalist Lion Tamer, I have read statistics that place the number of people who regret having kids as high as 30 percent.
My wife and I have been married 28 years, and we never intended to have kids. I came from a family without a good example of what a father should be like, and she had worked for two years as a 3rd grade schoolteacher. Early on, I got a vasectomy, and when my MIL’s pestering about grandchildren got to be dreary, we told her about it. The subject did not come up again.
I have never regretted it, and I feel pretty sure she didn’t, either. When our married friends talked about their children, it was seldom in a good way.
As you well know, I’m not one of the childfree, but we certainly spent a lot of time discussing this when we were deciding whether or not to have kids.
And the one piece of advice that made the most sense to me applies either way: people don’t tend to be unhappy about either choice as long as they made it deliberately. You’re more likely to be unhappy about not having children if you kind of stumble into that because of biological clocks or other happenstances; you’re more likely to be unhappy about having children if you did it without thinking because you figured it was expected of you.
Whatever you decide, you’ll always have moments where you wonder if it was the right choice – but you’ll probably be happy you made a decision.
Much as I love my kid – which is, last time I checked, a whole bunch – I can certainly envision having made the choice to be childfree. It, ironically enough, kind of runs in the family – my mom’s one of seven kids from a Catholic family, and she and one brother are the only ones who had kids. The rest all decided not to – and they’re all happy. As are we. (Though adding a second kid? Ummmm…)
SO and I are 40, and we’ve been together for 15 years. Up until recently, I wasn’t willing to say 100% that we would never ever want to have kids, but I’m there now. After this long, neither of us is going to suddenly change our minds.
Neither one of us has wanted to have kids, although if it had happened, I’m sure we would make good parents and would love him/her. We both enjoy our niece and nephews, and our friends kids, but we also enjoy sending them home at the end of the weekend. I do occasionally wonder what life would be like with a child of ours, and what that child would be like. But that’s as close to regret as I’ve ever gotten.
Other then my father, we really haven’t had anyone who pestered us to have kids. That might be at least partially because we aren’t married. It may also have to do with the fact that there are several people in our circle of close friends that have made the same decision.
