I don’t like kids in general very much, but I don’t feel like I didn’t like them as a child myself, though. I didn’t have a perfect childhood (strife in the home and all that), but I didn’t feel particularly ostracized as a child (except that one time, when they thought I was a devil worshipper, but that’s not important right now).
My husband had a pretty normal childhood, and he has less use for kids than I do.
Sorry; I was the outcast geek until about 16, but I like kids very much.
I’ve always been more comfortable around kids/people 2-3 years older than I am. When I was a kid I couldn’t stand anyone younger than me. I mostly hung out with my (3 1/2 years older) brother and his friends. I never had a lot of friends of my own, just 2 or 3 that I got along with. I wasn’t teased or picked on much - just the occasional “shrimp” or “midget” comment. I was quiet and kept to myself.
For years I’ve said that I don’t want children ever. Mr J agress but IF for whatever reason we change our minds in the future, we plan to adopt.
He’s 26 and had a pretty rough childhood. I’m 21 and had a decent childhood. Nothing traumatic.
I think that you might discover that people who spend a lot of time on messageboards as a whole tend to be from “social outcast” backgrounds, not just the ones who don’t want kids, so that might skew your results.
Speaking for myself, I was definitely a total outcast as a child (I literally had no friends at all and can remember spending many recesses hiding inside the classroom reading books)…but yet I love children now and really look forward to having some of my own. Obviously I realize kids can be, well, jerks from my own experiences, but I guess as an adult I am more understanding of the psychological and social factors that lead to such things as bullying.
I think my experiences with being a misfit have actually encouraged my desire to adopt a child someday, to try to give them some of the love and acceptance that I missed out on myself.
I was a social outcast for most of my childhood. Picked on, teased, tormented by the “cool kids”, and beaten up once or twice. Braces, thick glasses, asthma, no fashion sense, and a college-level vocabulary by seventh grade.
But I love kids. I’m a big teddy bear who enjoys crawling on the floor with the rug rats. I’d probably make a good kindergarten teacher, if it weren’t for all the bureaucratic B.S. they have to put with nowadays.
All in all, stoid, I’ll bet you’re right, and that there is a correlation. I think I’m probably just a statistical anomaly. Which is pretty much true of most aspects of my personality.
I couldn’t stand kids when I was one and they couldn’t stand me. But now they’re great! I love hanging out with them! And I know exactly why, too - I’m bigger than they are, most of them are at least slightly in awe of my adult status, and “shut up, kid” is an effective response to just about any dumb insult they can come up with. (Plus I’m now the one with all the cool toys that they want to see.) They’re not my peers, so I don’t need their acceptance… and I’m convinced that they can tell that. If they act like little brats, I don’t have to run to authority - I AM the authority. 
I , too,think you might be onto something there. I’m in my mid-20s, and only in the last year or so have I been open to having children. Coincidentially, I moved cross-country, away from my family & hometowns & such one year or so ago. :dubious:
Another one: my mom was a lonely nerd too, but had 5 children and prefers to work with kids.
I was a social outcast and the primary target of the cool kids all through school.
I love kids (other than mine).
When I was a kid, I wasn’t bad enough to hang with the bad kids, and I wasn’t good enough to hang with the good kids. I was pretty sure God didn’t want to talk to somebody like me, and I sure as hell didn’t get any answers to my prayers. I saw in my dad’s face that I didn’t fulfill his dreams of a child.
I didn’t want to have children, because I figured when the chips are down, a parent will behave just like Mom or Dad. I refused to subject another child to what I went through.
I learned much later that Dad’s treatment of his children was rooted in his own self-hatred. He was a very toxic guy, and it wasn’t my fault. He would have been the same nasty dad no matter how good I was. If I had known then what I know now, maybe I would have killed him. That would not have helped anything. I’m just blathering, here, I’m not a killer by any stretch of the imagination. Still, I was sure I belonged on the Group W bench. I have always been drenched in shame.
I don’t mind children, I just don’t want them around 24/7. I constantly fear I’ll treat them as my father did. None of them deserve that. I’m really a very kind man, but I fear my genes kicking in. Tears stain my keyboard. I am not my father, but I fear it every day.
The one friend I can think of who adamantly does not like kids and has never (as long as I’ve known her) not wanted to have any of her own, had by all accounts a very happy childhood, and was pretty popular. I always found it very confusing, and assumed it was because she was the youngest child in her family, and wasn’t used to growing up with little kids around. In contrast, I too had a happy childhood, though I was never really Mr. Popular, and often got on better with older people. But I had two younger brothers, and my house was always filled with them and their friends (and my friends and whoever my sister had over), so I was used to and really liked kids, and hope to have my own brood some day.
Yup, that’s me.
I’m currently trying to get pregnant, and I hope that will change my view on kids. However, I sometimes worry that I currently can’t seem to find little kids cute. Little dogs, kittens, even baby snakes and newly hatched spiders…all of them have me going “awww…”. But babys and toddlers? No. Nothing cute there. Just intimidating, demanding, and a bit deformed human beings.
I dislike kids. However, I had a pretty normal childhood if I remember - no problems mixing in.
I consider myself misanthropic these days anyway. But I prefer adult company than having to put up with snot nosed brats or brain dead teenagers.
Another outcast here.
I’ve always preferred “tween” age kids (ages 9-12) to any other age group.
Younger kids seem…I don’t know, messy and goop. I love watching them, but I just can’t relate to them.
Babies scare me to death, but I chalk that up to having almost no experience with them.
Another total outcast here too, and I really don’t like kids at all…
I wasn’t particularly popular, but I wasn’t a complete outcast. It was babysitting as a teen that turned me off of having kids. I don’t dislike kids; I just find them too exhausting and troublesome to take in more than small doses and don’t find the rewards of being around them worth the effort of dealing with them.
I had no friends as a kid – and I hate kids now.
I don’t like to be around kids, and your conditions don’t hold for me. I liked them until after I graduated and started living without a roommate. Yoou then get to like not having someone to invade your personal space, and the fact you don’t have to comprimise your postion or even argue it. That is precisley what childern demand of you more than adults. They screem and run around, and you have to watchout for them, which adults don’t normaly require. I can’t stand anything repetative, loud , or screaming and crying. It puts my neeves on end I don’t like contact with kids at all, because the adults are so damn paranode. I get nervous when a kid approaches me and at least one adult isn’t present within 5 feet. I expect an adult to come in the second the kid is there and accuse me of wanting to kidnap, molest, hurt, ar do anything to their kid. The last 5 years, I haven’t even known what to do when a kid is lost from the guardian. I always invision them calling cops on me for kidnaping the kid when I’m heading to a store help desk. A kid lost at a park would be a worse nightmare. A long time ago I didn’t have any problem hauling a kid to someone that can help find the guardian.
What’s wrong with yours?
I was a little nerd as a kid (my how times have changed). I had a group of nerdy friends, but we were basically social outcasts.
I’m going to be an elementary school teacher soon; in fact, I’m posting now instead of studying for a test :(. It’s not because I think kids are precious little angels, but because I’m oftened entertained by being around them–the kid who brings me a coccoon she finds on the playground, the kid anxious to show me that awesome picture of a helicopter in his dictionary, the kid who, on being shown a (to me) mildly interesting pattern in a mathematical function, drops his jaw and plunges wholeheartedly into looking for a way to extend and explain the pattern. These things are cool.
I find that even the kids who are royal pains in the ass when dealing with one another are often pretty interesting folk when I talk to them one-on-one. I wish I could figure out a surefire way to convince them to treat each other with the respect they treat me, but I’m not sure how to do that.
Daniel
I want to add that I seen a number of young adults that liked kids start to hate them after years of this. People always asking when they would have a kid. Maybe 10 times at a party. The answer I don’t know. foloowed by that’s to bad.
The next stage is telling them I don’t want kids so they sht up. They then want a why not answered. The reply is I just don’t
The next stage is when are you giong to have a kid. foloowed by never. Why not? I hate kids.
The next stage iswhen are you going to have kids? Followed by I hate them. I’m never going to have kids.
This finaly ends in most relatives not asking again after a couple years of the final stage.
By that time people do hate kids, because they learned to hate them through this process. Blam a lot of child hate on the relentless badgering of relatives for people to have kids.
I’ve watched this happen to many young adults over the years, and noted the attitude change each year. As childless adults we gather at events and talk about the badgering peple, and seem to have all developed down that path originaly. The extras come into play after the above happens.