I’ve been thinking some years now about getting a vasectomy. I have no children, and am going through a (fairly amicable) divorce. I don’t currently want children, never wanted children, and honestly can’t imagine ever wanting children. I don’t feel any need for the gratification of bringing my own child into the world, nor the need to have a child as an “expression of love for my partner”, or any of the other reasons my acquaintances mention for having kids. I don’t even like kids in general. If I had to choose about raising kids, I figure those already born but with no parents need care more urgently than the newer model with a min. 9 month delivery time.
I do know several men who never wanted children, but then had them (accidental pregnancies, spousal pressure, etc.). Some of THEM are now happy fathers. However, none of them is a happy husband! This might be skewing my views on “what if I change my mind” - they’ve all sacrificed happiness, either the happiness of the freedom of not being responsible for children, or the happiness of a joyful relationship - or, indeed, both.
The thing is, I’m obviously hesitant about making a permanent usually-irreverable decision without 100% certainty, as opposed to 99.9%. I’d like to hear from your experiences - should I get a vasectomy? Did you (or your male partner) spend most of your life not wanting kids, but then suddenly change your mind, and feel you made the right decision after having a child?
Note: due to my divorce I’ll be shacking up with family for a while, which means sharing a house with my 3-year-old niece. That should provide me with more insight.
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Note 2:* I realise I could simply just not get a vasectomy and then be very careful about birth control. That’s true, but it would be nice to only have to really worry about disease prevention rather than pregnancy prevention. Also, it eliminates the hassle of “why won’t you have kids with me” conversations with any future partner I might have.
Sex without any chance of pregnancy is a huge benefit of vasectomy. I had one after I had kids, (and I’m very happy I have my kids), but given your point of view, and assuming you’re at least 30 years old, I’d say go ahead and do it. In the off chance you change your mind in the future, well, you can suck it up and live with it. There are worst things in the world than being infertile. And yes, you will be be restricting your pool of women willing to marry you in the future, for good and bad.
I’m aware I’d be restricting my dating pool, but losing out on relationships with women who DO want kids is no loss at all I reckon. At the same time I’m OK with dating single mothers (though I’ve never done so) - I think I could be happy in the “caring hairy biker uncle/stepfather” role with the right woman, much more so than the role of “first-time father with first-time mother”.
PastTense - what’s your experience with hesitant fathers changing their mind? Or, alternatively, men who had vasectomies who regretted it?
It’s good to remember that it’s possible to make a baby after having a vasectomy. Especially if you don’t go back for the checkup to see if it was completely successful. It’s rare, but it happens.
So don’t trust it until you’ve passed the confirmation check. And even then, remember it’s only 99.99%* safe.
ETA - my dad was happy with his vasectomy, but he already had three kids.
*Not a real statistic.
I got one after I was done having children. My wife and I discussed this after my second child was a couple years old. I knew I did not want to have any more children - with her or anyone else. Do you really want to be dating with a loaded gun?
Besides, it is reversable. I know one guy who had two kids, then got snipped, then a few years later his wife decided she wanted another one, he got un-snipped, then re-snipped again after the 3rd was born. Ouch, but it can be done.
I think there is merit to your observation about happiness and fatherhood/marriage - that may be better discussed in a different thread.
Seriously, at 30 you have no idea what you will think when you’re 40. I know several people who swore to me that they never wanted kids around that age (well, a little younger - 26-28, but that’s not that different) and later closer to 40 had kids and are happy both as parents and as husbands/wives.
Definitely freeze some sperm and then have the surgery. Explain to any woman that you date what the situation is (that you are infertile, don’t want to have kids, can’t imagine having kids, but that you have some sperm frozen if that ever changes). And then enjoy!
Getting a vasectomy was one of the best things my husband ever did. The freedom from worrying about birth control failure has made our lives so much more wonderful and enjoyable than before.
Toffe—wait until you can get a discount.
The local hospital runs a two-for-one: get a vasectomy, and they throw in a free prefrontal lobotomy, no extra charge!
It’s called the “Little Off Each End” sale.
OP, you sound like my husband. He seems happy with his decision to have a vasectomy, but I don’t want to talk you into something. I think this is just such a personal decision and no one can know what you want better than you do.
I will say that if you don’t want kids, limiting your future dating to people who also don’t want kids (or new kids) is the way to go, rather than leaving it open to your being convinced later.
My SO has two kids from a previous marriage. When they divorced, he thought he would never want more kids and he really didn’t want an accidental pregnancy. So, he got snipped.
About 3 years later, we met. I didn’t have kids and didn’t really want any. However, after a few years together, we realized that we did want to have kids together. You can have sperm retrieved for IVF even after a vasectomy, but we opted to have the vasectomy reversed. A year later, we are expecting our first child together.
I relay this story to point out that a vasectomy doesn’t have to be permanent. Of course, reversing it is costly (~$10,000, not covered by insurance).
But at 30, one is a capable adult, and has been for years. I had a vasectomy shortly before I turned 31, and I was (and am) completely childfree. I knew when I was about 10 that I didn’t want kids, and I was around 20 at the latest when I started looking forward to getting a vasectomy once I had my own insurance and was living on my own.
I was prepared to fight for it. I’ve been reading stories for years about how difficult, frustrating, and insulting it can be for non-parents to get sterilized. As it happened, I didn’t need to do any fighting. The doctor asked me how old I was and how many children I had, then he made sure I understood that I needed to be completely sure I wanted none. As he was leaving the office, I mentioned that “On the vanishingly small chance that I do change my mind, I don’t have the weird hang-ups about adoption that many people seem to have.” Do people really want to make sure their kids look like them? Why do people want to adopt infants? Wouldn’t you want to skip the diapers-and-incoherence stage? It was actually completely unnecessary, but I was on a hair-trigger.
I had the operation a few months later, and it was hands-down the best decision I ever made, unless I count “deciding not to kill myself.” I didn’t bank any sperm, because that never occurred to me, but I suppose I would have done it if the doctor had insisted on it as a condition, though that would have been an awful thing for him to do, and a wasteful thing for me to do. I felt a sense of deep relief after the operation was over, and I felt it again when my semenalysis came back sterile. I feel it again every time I encounter all the many factors that lead to my childfree sentiments.
I knew that, according to Planned Parenthood, I could combine a condom with coitus interruptus for a virtually foolproof contraceptive practice, but now I don’t have to go to all that trouble. It’s not too difficult, and I’m baffled by why there are so many unplanned pregnancies, but in any case I only need to be concerned about disease prevention. Of course, I would need a sex partner too, but that’s beside the point.
Kids were a dealbreaker for me anyway, so I don’t really care about relationship complications. It also means I can’t get “oopsed”, i.e. fall victim to contraceptive sabotage, which devious people of both sexes sometimes practice.
Do it! Oh, keep in mind that reversal is highly unreliable, among other things.
I like the idea of banking a little sperm if you do decide to have one. To me, it kind of feels like you are making a decision not only for your future self, but for your future partner without their consent. I’d also strongly reconsider dating single mothers if you don’t want kids. Those kids are not going to look at you like an uncle, they’ll look at you like a father. Seriously, do you know anyone who thinks of their mom’s husband as a caring hairy uncle? Better not to step into that role if you don’t want it.
My ex got a vasectomy after we’d been together a couple years. I was a single mom with 1 kid at the time. He had 2 kids from his previous marriage. We were planning to eventually marry but were not engaged at the time. It was 100% his decision. I’ll spare everyone the rest of the story, but I will say this:
The procedure, expense, recovery, etc were really quite minor. He had no pain at all.
The sex afterward was carefree seeming and very very fun.
I came out of that relationship thinking that a vasectomy can be a big red flag, and I would never date someone who had or wanted one ever again.
I had the female version (getting my tubes tied), and I have zero regrets. I am also childfree by choice, have been all my life, and I could have had the operation done at 30 rather than 45 with the same result (except for the 15 extra years of worrying about getting pregnant). I say do it.
As for dating single moms, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you don’t particularly like kids, and don’t particularly want to be around them, why date a single mom? Sure, your dating pool would be more limited, but trust me when I say there are plenty of childfree women out there - probably far more than you realize.
Thanks all for the helpful and informative replies!
I get what you’re saying, and hear it all the time in other contexts (e.g. careers). But if we’re essentially saying that 40 is the new 30, then 50 must be the new 40, 60 the new 50, and where do you stop? At what point can an adult decide that they know themselves?
I’ve had to bounce around career-wise because of circumstances, so my preferences there don’t matter much. But in quality-of-life issues - when I was 15, I wanted to ride motorcycles, travel, and settle down with an intelligent, sexy, caring woman. When I was 20, I wanted to ride motorcycles, travel, and settle down with an intelligent, sexy, caring woman. When I was 26, I wanted to ride motorcycles and travel, and got married to what I then thought was an intelligent, sexy, caring woman. Now I’m 30, I’m finally actually riding motorcycles, still travelling like I did all along and still loving it, and hope to eventually settle down with an intelligent, sexy, caring woman, after enjoying being single for a spell.
I look back and I can’t see that I’ve changed very much over all these years, except for getting ever more independent and confident. What I want out of life seems the same.
Jeez, if you’d told me that a few months ago I could have had the double surgery and would be able to stand watching TV all day, and so would have gotten along great with my wife, and wouldn’t be getting divorced.
On the other hand, I didn’t, so I’m getting divorced and am happier than any prefrontal lobotomy could surgically make me
Agree on all points. For some reason, myself and several acquaintances ended up in relationships or marriages with women where we clearly stated at the start that we never wanted kids, and the women/wives in question figured that “we’ll come around eventually”. Being able to say “seriously, I’m sterile and didn’t freeze anything” gives me a higher chance of being taken seriously, instead of ending up fighting or splitting up over it later when so much has already been invested in the relationship.
Thanks for sharing, and I agree completely on the above. I’m terrified of having a child and then not loving it. Everybody just says “but you will!”, but what if I don’t? Then there’d be no escape for the child growing up unloved by their father, and I’d either have to suffer in an unhappy family or suffer from my conscience for leaving. Also, why try to get my own kid when there are unwanted or orphaned children alive right now?
On preview: PrettyDorky: if getting a vasectomy and not storing sperm is a decision also being made for a future partner, doesn’t that imply that having children can be a compromise decision? That is, wouldn’t that statement be denying that anyone can veto having their own child? I’m not sure I agree. My soon-ex-wife after a few years treated the decision about having kids to be a compromise, where we’d compromise on the number but not the fact. (not a reason why we split up) I disagree that one can compromise on a binary decision.
May I ask why you see a vasectomy as a red flag?
Oh, and PrettyDorky and Cat Whisperer, I see your point about dating single mothers. I meant more that I’m not considering having children already a deal-breaker, and I’m not afraid of caring for someone’s kids. But it’s not something I’m looking for, and I’d be very careful about easing into a situation like that, especially because of how it might affect the child.
Don’t want to hijack so I’ll just share a little: In my experience, I didn’t know whether I wanted more kids and expressed my reservations about drawing a line under that option so young (I was 26 at the time). But as I said, it was 100% his decision and he went through with it. Basically, I was forced to decide not to have kids again, or to not be with him. I would have preferred to feel like WE had made that decision together.
Following that, there were lots of major life decisions where compromise was not an option- it was basically his way or the highway. In retrospect, I feel like his decision to have a vasectomy should have clued me in to how he operated.
Since my opinions are unique to my experience, and thus heavily HEAVILY biased, I don’t know if it’s actually even relevant. I am having trouble articulating this… You could very well choose to only date women who, like you, are firmly against having children. Or you might meet a lovely person who loves you but is undecided about children. So you’ve effectively said, “If you are even considering kids, I’m not the guy for you”.
Now- at the same time, your point about when does an adult get to decide they know themselves- that’s a very very good point and it gives me pause. If you KNOW, really KNOW, then why not eliminate the burden? And why not screen your potential mates accordingly? Makes sense.
ETA: When you factor in the adoption option, I think that’s totally reasonable. Your children don’t have to be your genetic copies. But if you are worried about not loving a kid, you’re definitely not going to want to adopt, right?
