Notes from a Childfree Couple

I am in a stage of my life where most of my friends and family have young children, and my husband and I have decided not to have children. From what we’re experiencing and what we’ve seen on these boards, there is a definite division between parents and childfree people.

Here is my perspective on being around parents and kids:

  1. You love your children. Fine. I get that. But you must realize that I don’t. I like them okay, I guess, but I don’t have the bond with them that you do. Your children are the centre of your world, just the way it should be, but please remember that they aren’t the centre of mine.

  2. Please don’t assume that I want to “mommy” your children. I don’t want to hold your baby, I don’t want to feed your children, I don’t want to do any of the traditional “mommy” things with them - I’m not built that way. Your kids are going to get interesting to me around 10 or l1, when they start being capable of having interesting conversations.

  3. Please don’t assume your children are always invited along. There are some situations and affairs that are not for children, and sometimes I just want to hang around with my friend or sister the way we used to before the kids came along. Please also know that I will not be at all hurt if you decline my invitation because you want to spend time with your kids. They come first; I know that.

  4. When we are at a gathering of adults and children, please be aware that you are still responsible for your own kids; this isn’t the place for you to kick back and let all the other adults there look after your kids for you. Please don’t allow your children to become a problem for everyone at the affair. Also, please remember that I don’t have kids, and I have no idea what is hazardous for children like you do.

  5. When you are talking with childfree people like us, please try to include some topics that aren’t about children/labour/pregnancy/etc. We just aren’t particularly interested in these aspects of human life. We can have a conversation about these topics for awhile, but please take note when our eyes glaze over, and move on to topics that have some relevance for us as well.

  6. We have decided not to have children. This is a considered decision that we have discussed and worked out between the two of us. It involved many factors, and we feel we have good, valid reasons for our decision. We also feel that we don’t have to justify this decision to anyone, or even tell anyone about it.

I’m not trying to be a selfish asshole here. I know your kids are the most important things in your life, that they take most of your time and energy, that they are the focus of everything you do. All I’m asking is that you try to remember that we’re not in the same place you are.

Fair enough :slight_smile:

I can more or less agree. I would however make it clear when an invitation is for sans kids. If people know me reasonably well and that I have a daughter, if I’m invited I sometimes assume it includes my wife and daughter as well. It’s just like I invite a buddy over for a bbq, it’s usually implied his girlfriend is also invited even if I don’t really like her.

So, I try to pin down if invites include the kid but I forget sometimes. You could take on the other side and provide gentle reminders as well. Just 2 cents

I agree as well, featherlou.

In fact, I feel the same way about pets (i.e. I don’t want to cuddle them, scratch them, be drooled on by them, I don’t find them cute, I don’t want them brought to events where they’ve not been invited, etc.)

I get it!

I forgot to mention that I do have a child and was wondering if you’d like to see some pictures? (grin)

Okay, just for that we’re sending Dolly the Vicious Attack Hound to root, drool, climb, and shed all over you. When we come to pick her up, we’ll be sure to bring video of her and the other critters.

Oh, thank you. May I print this out for child-free friends? Some people don’t understand that others (hub and I) aren’t really interested in children.

We are the sort of selfish people who didn’t want to devote our lives to regenerating ourselves. As a result we are social outcasts who have nothing productive to do.
As good village people, we should probably ask to have our taxes increased so we can continue to pay for other’s mistakes.

Excuse me if I sound bitter. When my sister the welfare queen’s 5th or 6th child died because she had him in her water bed and rolled on him, she said “when you have as many children as me, you have to expect one or two to die”

Bitch won’t close her legs, but expects everyone to love her undisplicined brats.

I treat my pets better than she treats her kids, but she complains whenever someone hints that she should do such things like wash their clothes or bodies.

Sorry for the hijack, I really hate my sister the welfare queen, and I just had my dawg killed.

I’ll be sending you my dry cleaning bill for cleaning the furniture and clothing and a big fat bill for the carpet cleaning.

:slight_smile:

While I fully appreciate your feelings about your sister and her horrific parenting techniques, I find the fact that you call children a mistake. I’m sure you only meant it in the context of your own sister’s situation, but just so you know, a statement like that could really offend someone like me.

Just sayin’.

Add ‘offensive’ in there where it belongs, please. It’s only 8:27am!

feathlou, I have never thought you were a “selfish asshole,” and your OP doesn’t change that. But I can’t join the camp of people who agree with you. Having children and caring for them is a powerful human urge, and the sheer numbers of your friends who have children should tell you where your views stand in the greater scheme of things.
I’m not saying this to chastise you or anything. I just want to make a point. Given that your views are apaprently at odds with the reality you inhabit, you can either
1 - Adjust to the way of life your friends have chosen, even if it isn’t necessarily how you feel like living. Learn a little about what is unsafe for children. Hold the baby now and then, if only for appearances. When you invite friends with kids, expect the kids to show up too, and prepare for it.

or,

2 - Get a different set of friends.

I think the headaches you’ve detailed here are more common with the parents of younger children, and those seem to be the type of kids you’re describing. I’ve seen lots of new parents, and to a man they think their kid(s) are a blessing/source of deep philosophic insights/world’s most fascinating gizmo all rolled into one. It’s a phase that will pass, about the time the rugrats start backtalking.

But if you can’t wait for it to do so, there’s always option #2.

Angry as I am, I’m pretty sure I didn’t call all children mistakes. Some children are. I think its possible that you and I aren’t usining the same dictionary.

Its also possible that I have spent so many years doing cat rescue that I have started to look at unwanted children born to so-called mothers that I want all unresponsible parents fixed to stop the overbreeding.

Did I mention the first kid that died? Sister the welfare queen was holding her 2nd or 3rd son while she threw gas on the fireplace.

Our frigging welfare system won’t fix queens because its “elective surgery” and won’t allow others to pay to have a breeder fixed because its a money gift and she would lose her food stamps.

shit

Just to clarify, by saying I agree with her, I don’t mean I hold the same opinions as Featherlou. I love babies, kids, toddlers! Pictures of other people’s babies are cute!

The point I was making is that if she doesn’t like them, she shouldn’t have to pretend that she does. Some people just don’t want kids, and I’m glad they recognize them and don’t just have them anyway.

Maybe her friends with children should be a bit more considerate and only bring children to social gatherings where they’ve been invited. It would probably be easier to get new friends.

We are in the exact opposite situation. All of our friends are childless and they just don’t get that we can’t just pop over to Spain for a week’s holiday or stay out until 3am. NO SMOKING IN THE HOUSE means NO SMOKING IN THE HOUSE (even if you blow it out the window!).—so, there are rantable issues on the other side as well!

I know enough people who have no particular drive towards having children (and enough people who actively do not want any) that I’m rather dubious that it’s something that everyone should automatically warp their lives around.

Keep in mind that it’s a comparatively recent development that people had a consistent and reliable choice about whether or not they wanted to have children; the etiquette of the matter is still very much in flux, and it’s not uncommon for people to behave abominably towards the childfree. (It’s also not uncommon for a subsection of the childfree to in return behave abominably towards parents and their offspring; however, that isn’t in evidence here.)

I’ve also seen a lot of strong evidence that many, perhaps most, people – including parents – are often completely inept at dealing with children of particular ages. “Your kids are going to get interesting to me at 10 or 11” is a sentiment I’ve seen expressed very frequently. Some people are very good with babies, and not so good with children of other ages. I know someone who does part-time teaching because she’s very good at and very happy to work with teenagers, but not children in any other age group. I think the desire to limit one’s interactions to beings that one can interact with sanely is entirely worthy of respect.

I get the distinct impression that new parenthood is very time-consuming and life-enveloping. People are entirely likely to talk about the stuff that’s current in their lives; that means that many new parents just won’t shut up about their kids. (I’m fortunate in that my friends who are new parents at the moment are aware that not everyone wants to be tuned to the all-baby-all-the-time channel and put effort into talking about other parts of their lives.) Just about everyone has a subject or two that they can wind up being frightfully tedious about.

Just because “everyone is having kids” doesn’t mean that the desires of the childfree can be just rolled over and ignored. The choices of the majority don’t say a bedamned thing about the needs and capabilities of specific individuals. Those choices are not intrinsically superior for their popularity, nor do other people necessarily have to make concessions to those choices because they are popular ones.

I’m speaking as someone who does have a strong and active urge towards motherhood, mind; I’ve just observed that there’s a bell curve of such desire, and as I’m on one side of it, featherlou is on the other.

I back you 100% on the rest of your post that it’s hard for me to point out that this statement (though widely believed) is 100% wrong.
While our own children should be a very important of our lives, making them the “center of our world” is a terrible mistake to make. (by the way, I’ve got 3 kids. The youngest turns 18 next month).
Before our first came along my I convinced my wife (yes, there was a debate) that the best thing a parent could give their children was a mother and father who were still in love with each other.Romantic love! Our marriage was to be the foundation of the family, not the fact that we procreated.
I turned out to be right, and my wife even occassionally brings this up. You see, in the last few years we’ve observed friends who made their kids the “center of their world”. Now the kids are grown and moved away and alot of these people we know are getting divorces, having affairs, etc. Why? Because the last 18-20 years they were so concerned with “making their children the center of their world” that their relationships with their spouses were put on the back burner. Now their kids are gone, and they have nothing to talk about. A persons kids should be important, but too many folks make them such a priorty that they became very 1 dimensional. Not good.
The rest of your thread is right on, though.

Joking about the dog aside, I have to agree with just about the entire OP.

I don’t assume that my husband is invited on girls’ nights out, nor do I assume that I’m invited to his poker games. Nor do I assume that I can take my dog to parties with me. It doesn’t take that much thinking, usually, to figure out that a gathering isn’t appropriate for certain family members. If I can go to that much effort, surely to goodness parents can, too. No, I’m sorry, but a destination wedding following a weekend of hard drinking and carousing is just not appropriate for your 3 year old. I can’t imagine what made you think it would be, frankly.

I love my buddy Al, she’s one of my oldest and dearest friends. I’d give her the shirt off my back, or the food out of my mouth in a heartbeat. But I swear to God, if this kid she’s about to have is the well-spring of three more years of blow-by-blow descriptions of the pregnancy, labor, and birth, I just may have to kill her to protect my sanity.

Of course, maybe the birth discussions will stop our weekly updates on Adventures in Potty Training. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll still listen attentively and make all the appropriate noises despite being bored out of my mind. To do otherwise would hurt my friend’s feelings horribly, and I’d never knowingly do that to her.

Still and all, I don’t think the accomodations should be as one-sided as Lizard has suggested. If I don’t want to hold the baby, I shouldn’t be expected to hold the damn baby. I don’t go around expecting people who don’t want to pet my dog to rub her tummy, do I?

Friendship and consideration are two-way streets. We should bend a little to accommodate each other’s interests, desires, and lifestyles. Otherwise, we’re no longer friends; we’re just captive audiences for The Amazing Baby Show.

The childfree just want the same respect and consideration from parents that we’re expected to give them. Is that so much to ask for?

BTW, I fully agree with pkbites on the “center of the universe” thing.

I say this every time the subject comes up, but to the best of my memory, no one’s ever responded directly. Here I go again, hoping people are at least reading and taking heed.

My mom was one of Those parents; the kind who will take it as a gross insult if her kid is dis-invited to a gathering. I can’t count how many times I was dragged somewhere I knew I wasn’t wanted, with no one to talk to, nothing to do, and nothing I could eat. Once I sat out a party drinking tap water because there was nothing else that didn’t contain alcohol. Thank you, mom, for the self-esteem.

The next time someone balks when you tell them you don’t want kids at your gathering, try this. Look them in the eye and say gently, “Do you really think Dylan/Kaitlin will enjoy him/herself at the bridal shower?..I wouldn’t enjoy it much myself, if I there was someone there who felt so out of place.” It’s worth a shot.

So, at the age of 8 or so, you knew it wasn’t a “kids welcome” kind of thing, but your mother couldn’t? Was she just that dense/unobservant, or was it more a stubborn “love me, love my dog” deal?

pkbites - I also think that’s an important and healthy attitude. We may be past the era of “seen and not heard” re kids, but it is very important for them to understand that adults need time too, and for adults to get their own time. Learning that we are loved and cherished, but cannot always be the centre of attention, is a vital part of growing up and developing as an independent, unselfish and un-needy human being.

It’s always pointed out how the kids suffer most through divorce. So I think keeping a strong focus on the marriage - not just the family aspect of the marriage, but the romantic and coupleship aspect of it as well - is critical.

I also agree with the OP.

desertrat - your sister’s situation sounds quite horrific. I can’t help fearing if she doesn’t keep her kids clean and safe the authorities will remove them. Keeping children clean and safe is the minimum duty of a parent, surely.

I should also mention that Ana’s posts don’t count because she doesn’t have a real child, she has a cute pixie :wink: