Not a parent, but I’ll put in my two cents anyway.
Through my 20s, I knew I wasn’t anywhere near interested in being a parent, Since it wasn’t on the plate any time soon, I figured it either would happen or it wouldn’t, and I didn’t have a strong opinion either way.
When I hit around 29 or 30, I started realizing that it was a realistic possibility financially and emotionally. I also realized I was going to need to make decisions sooner or later, or I’d be effectively deciding not to have them. It’s still not really a burning desire, but it is starting to be a “Yeah, I guess I do want to do that.” Interestingly, my SO has always wanted kids, and has been looking forward his whole life to being a father. I guess different people are different!
NONONONONO! Have the honest conversation, but do NOT get married if you’re disagreeing about this. I’ve known too many couples who either broke up due to this incompatibility or one side acquiesced and was resigned, but never really happy, with the decision.
I got a tubal ligation almost 15 years ago now. I’m turning 38 next month and have never had a single baby pang, through all my friends’ adorable kids. You may change your mind, you may not. Either way is OK, but if either of you start thinking marriage, you need to be on the same page about this, or let her go find a guy who also wants kids.
This pretty much describes me as well. I wasn’t longing to have children but I did look forward in a way to settling down and having kids. The circumstances ended up being other than I expected but it happened when I was 34 and again at 35 and I could not imagine life without my children.
25 and I don’t want kids and can’t see that changing anytime soon. I don’t abhor them, I just can’t see myself trading in free time for them. Everyone with kids is effectively poor, sleep deprived and feel they are never a good enough parent or employee.
My saving grace is that my mom didn’t want kids until she turned 30. Like a lightbulb went off, ding! Luckily my dad was waiting in the wings, praying this would happen.
But I can see myself changing. I live in the city in a phenomenal ethnic and gentrifying neighborhood. I have super easy access to everything I could possibly want.
But I hear the helicopters and the garbage man and the noise and, from age 17 till now I relished it.
Now I think “someday…”.
An older friend of mine from high school, in her late 20’s, is married with a mortgage. She lost her license in high school for driving more than 30 miles over the speed limit and used to party and get stupid.
Her facebook status last week? “Who let these kids throw a party in the adjoining townhouse!? It’s 11pm fer chrissakes!”
I’ve never wanted children, didn’t even like playing with baby dolls. My sister feels the same. Heck, my mom has said she loves us dearly but wouldn’t have had kids if it weren’t expected. My dad just always knew kids were what he was going to do. He would have been okay with none.
I have no idea if my feelings are nurture or nature. Doesn’t seem the spiffiest genetic trait to have if our goal is continuation of the family line/species. Yet here we are (for now).
My wife and I didn’t want kids all the way up until the day we did. It just kinda works that way some times. I’ve had friends sneer at the idea of having kids, and then a few months later they are all excited about getting (planned) pregnant.
Huh? What I said wasn’t a criticism, it was an observation (though I definitely forgot the word young by accident. People with teenagers don’t have that far-away look in their eyes).
My husband and I desperately wanted kids. Don’t ever let someone tell you you’re not meant to have kids, or that you just need to relax: our final, successful pregnancy came as a result if more than three years of trying (and three miscarriages) and during he most stressful period of my life. My father died unexpectedly on oct. 2nd; my husband and I stuck with our fertility plan and found out we were pregnant with our son on Nov. 2nd.
Fertility and pregnancy has always been a big deal for me, but I’ve also always known I’d have a baby somehow. Here he is, and I wanted the hell out of him.
I always, always wanted kids and I often felt I was just marking time until I could have them. I checked all the boxes first - I wanted to be financially, emotionally and physically ready - and at 26, began trying for a baby. Four years later, the stress of infertility broke up my marriage and I reevaluated and decided never to have children, and in less than a year I found myself pregnant.
After some soul searching I decided to keep the baby even thought no aspect of my life was child-ready. It was a good decision. Everything has worked out pretty well, considering. I’ve settled down with a new partner and had a second child. Motherhood is everything I thought it would be and I’m very content. For the first time in my life I feel like I’m doing what I am supposed to be doing.
I did always worry about how I’d cope with the early mornings and lack of free time, but it’s been ok. Being a bit older has made me better able to cope with those things. I still have meltdown moments, collapse in a heap moments, but not too often or for too long. I accepted that as part of parenthood before I ever joined the club.
I never wanted kids, mostly because of the attitudes of my parents. My dad thought the world was full enough with poor third world people. My mom had that sour 80’s feminism when women defined themselves as anything BUT a housewife and mother, and celebrated that by being deliberately bad at both.
My husband untill I was 37 didn’t want kids either.
Then, due to a depression, I threw my life around, met my now husband (who was 32 then), got pregnant, miscarried, married anyway, and got pregnant again, because my husband wanted kids and I doubted my reasons for not wanting them were good reasons.
I don’t regret having my son, even though the first years are sooo tiring. But that is largely due to him being such a sweet and cool kid. I didn’t expect that.
TLDR answer:
Dude: some people your age really feel they are ready for marriage and kids. If they do, meet each other, and follow their dream, more power to them.
If you don’t, and you’re only 23, then for gods sakes don’t start a family. Even if that might mean breaking up with this girl.
I think the question is not “do I start a family now I don’t want” and more “She wants kids in ten years or so: right now, I don’t ever want kids, but I imagine there’s a chance I will change my mind. Do I break up with her right now because there’s a good chance that in ten years we will want fundamentally different things, or do I stick it out and have faith that somehow we will work it out between us? It would be awful to invest ten years and all my emotional energy into a relationship only to have it fall terribly apart and possibly ruining her chance to ever have kids, because she’d then have to be lucky enough to find another compatible partner before her fertility collapsed. On the other hand, what if I let go of a relationship that is good and meaningful because of an issue that isn’t real? What if in ten years I want kids, and regret sending away the best person I ever met for a reason that turns out to be moot?”
I don’t know what the answer is. My husband more or less didn’t want kids when we married, and I more or less did. However, it was something we could talk about. Furthermore, I knew, going into it, that both people had the veto on kids: It’s too hard to do if you don’t do it as a team. I decided that if push came to shove, it wasn’t a dealbreaker: I wanted my life with him more than kids. I wouldn’t have married him without that understanding. Ten years after we married, we had our son, and it was entirely a mutual decision. We couldn’t be happier.
Male, 35. Due to a crappy childhood, I felt already as a small kid that my job was to have a family one day and do a better job than my parents did. I was self-centered and lazy as a young guy but, nearing 30, I felt that I wasn’t getting any younger and would never be in a better position to have kids (I was wrong). Also, my SO wanted kids at that point at dealbraker-level, so there was that. The thought of not having kids ever would’ve been unfathomable: I needed to keep my genes alive, have a legacy, have children to look up to when I grow old and wither. So, I had kids at age 29 and 32. Impossible to imagine life without them, now.
I always wanted to have kids, I was raised conservative and religious, but it turned out that I wanted them for different reasons than I thought I did. I always knew that I would be a better parent than many people that I saw reproducing, and I wanted a chance to make a difference in the world, something more than myself. Now, getting a kid the old fashioned way is literally sucking the life out of me, so as soon as I’m done gestating #2, I’m out of the growing-my-own business. I still think I’m a better parent than many, so I’m open to more parenting, just not reproducing again.
It’s interesting that people are saying they never played with baby dolls or liked other people’s children… because I never did either. I kind of abhor other people’s children, actually, unless the kids are unusually well behaved.
I always assumed I’d feel very differently about my own kid though, and I was right.
IME, there are two kinds of ‘I don’t want kids,’ and you might want to try figuring out which one you are. There’s ‘I do not want kids ever,’ which judging by my pool of friends very often turns out to mean ‘I do not want kids ever.’ And then there’s ‘I’m OK with the idea of kids per se, I just can’t imagine it ever being the right time.’ Which very often, somewhere down the line, turns into ‘Huh, look at that, I guess this might be the right time.’
The second one is roughly what happened to me and my husband. When we met we were 25, and we were both vaguely OK with the general idea of kids, but AAAIIIEEEEE NOOOO NOT NOW. (Or any time soon.) Then we hit our early thirties and gradually started realising that, while we’d had a blast doing all the young-and-free stuff, we’d done it very thoroughly and we were ready for a new stage of life. Neither of us ever felt the deep craving for kids that I’ve heard other people describe, but giving up free time and sleep for that new adventure no longer sounded like an insane idea.
We’ve got a small one and one on the way, and it is in fact a whole new huge adventure.
I wish there were an “other” option. It’s not that I’ve been baby-hungry since birth, but having kids always seemed like an inevitability. Then a couple of years later, it seemed more and more an adventure, so we started having kids. Had we not been able to have kids, it wouldn’t have been a travesty, but I’m glad we did. Love them like crazy.
