My wife and I were almost 40 and married ten years before we had our child. We never heard a single word from my parents, hers or anyone else that could be construed as even encouraging us to have children. Not one time.
My brother and his wife are harassed all the time, they claim. Maybe it’s because they insist that their parents and siblings accord their cats the status of grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Birthday cards, Christmas presents, mentioned in my parents holiday newsletter. And they are aggressively “child free” effectively banning children from their home.
And they wonder why people with kids are not friendly to them.
I’m not referring to those who’ve postponed parenthood. I’m referring to those of us who’ve made the conscious decision to never have children - often beginning very young, but then articulated in adulthood - and are greeted the way I mentioned in the original post.
It’s happened to me, but minimally compared with other people I know. In my teens I got a few variations on the condescending and smug “You’ll change your mind”, and in recent years I’ve encountered multiple co-workers who evidently had never encountered a childfree person before, e.g. “Where are you going to find a [partner] who doesn’t want children?” But, like I said, I’ve caught very little flack compared to others. I was prepared to fight for sterilization, because it can be very hard to get, but luckily I had a doctor who was completely fine with my decision. My GP was a bit stunned that the surgeon agreed to do it for me, and suggested that had the surgeon known about my history of depression, he ought to have checked me out a bit more thoroughly before deciding to proceed.
Regarding some very ugly sentiments from some childfree people, yes, those who loathe all children prima facie are being ageist. I don’t want to make an excuse as such, but at least some of the venom is blowback from the kind of treatment I describe, though that doesn’t make it OK or fair.
Hmm. I’m 31 years old and have never been overly fond of children, but I’d very much like one of my own and have felt that way for several years.
In general, I’ve gotten way more ostracism for not liking kids than not having kids.
Not that I am terribly vocal about it, it’s just that when in their presence I don’t really know what to do with them. During my ill-fated pregnancy earlier this year a colleague of my husband’s heard I was pregnant and invited me over to meet her 11 month old son. I didn’t really know what to do with him. I sort of had to feign interest. It was really awkward.
I know enough people who don’t like kids generally but who love their own kids to be confident that I will do just fine as a parent. Plus there are children in my life whom I already adore.
[QUOTE=Lemmy]
I’m not referring to those who’ve postponed parenthood.
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But for a lot of people who postpone parenthood, there’s no meaningful difference in the treatment you describe. I’ve heard most of the things on the BINGO card by this point in my life. Just by telling people I want to adopt I’ve gotten ‘‘you’ll change your mind someday.’’ Not enjoying the company of children is supposedly anathema to womanhood so that’s got me raked over the coals more than once. Every time I get sick, even if it’s just for a day, I have to field questions about being pregnant (long before that was a thing I was actively trying to do.)
I think this is changing, because I have a number of friends who don’t plan to have children and it seems to be normalizing, at least in particular sub-cultures, for example, academia.
Mostly I think there are two extremist camps - those who think parenthood makes them superior and those who think being child free makes them superior. Both types are nauseating and they are ruining it for everyone else.
Good to finally have a definitive answer from the SD. I now know why my life is worthless and meaningless. But some prices are just too high to pay. There is no way I’d deliberately inflict life on someone. I hope. I’ve never considered a vasectomy before now.
I’m childless somewhat by circumstance and somewhat by choice. Never had a strong urge to replicate my genetic material and married the wrong person at the time of life when it would have made sense to have kids. By the time I met and married the right fellow, it was too late – and we were both fine with that. (Since he died 7 years ago, I’m even more fine with it.)
Provoked by nothing more than my matter-of-fact statement that I had no children, I was recently told by a smug person (who has kids, naturally) that I was a dead branch on the tree of life. Nice, huh?
I pointed out that trees do better when they receive regular pruning… so maybe he should be grateful for people like me.
I had a child so I had an excuse to play with toys.
Me too. I was 39 when I had my son, I prior to that, there were plenty of times in my life when I was pretty sure that either I wouldn’t have children, or if I did, I’d adopt. But my personal experience in deciding to have a baby with the man I married when I was 34 does not make me think that changing one’s mind about this is a universal experience, especially because when I was a teenager, I really wanted children.
I did get a few notable “You shoulds” when I was childless: one man, once, when I was only about 26, told me I should be having babies, because that was what women were “for,” but considering that he was a serious alcoholic, whose wife left him, took their two kids, and he didn’t even know where they were, I didn’t consider him a reliable source of advice. I had a couple of people tell me I would want kids when I got married, and a couple of people tell me I should have kids because I was so good with them. Maybe aside from those people I can count on one hand, people left me alone, because I was involved with children. I worked at a couple of public schools when I was an interpreter, I was a volunteer tutor at the school for the Deaf.
I do like children, but I like them as people, which means I don’t get sentimental about them, and occasionally there are asshole children I don’t like. I taught the b’nei mitzvah class in my synagogue’s religious school for years, and I was always happy to work with kids when I did community living services, while some people weren’t (although, that may have had to do with dealing with parents, more than with kids, but I was good with parents).
But I think that some people do give child-free people a hard time-- and it is the sort of “anti-child” types. Now, I’m not saying a person doesn’t have a right to dislike children, but you really shouldn’t go to a playground an expect a sympathetic ear, just like you shouldn’t go up to someone walking a dog and expect them to want to hear all the reasons you don’t like dogs.
Personally, I believe people who say they don’t want children, because I couldn’t care one way of another, but when you talk to someone is, say, a Duggar, you are asking for an earful on the joys of parenting, and how everyone should experience it, if you bring up the subject, even to make it crystal clear that you would be the worst parent in the history of Western civilization.
In other words, some people have a “thing” about taking sides on this. People on one side or the other say a lot and hear a lot, and then complain a lot about these exchanges (or lament them). But I think 10% of the people are doing 90% of the complaining.
That said, there are probably occasionally people who become targets for some unknown reason. I have noticed that while there are any number of childless celebrities, there are 2 or 3 who seem to be constantly the subject of speculation of impending parenthood. The tabloids are desperate for these couple of people to have a baby, for some reason, and seem to think wishing will make it so. I suppose in some families, one person might become a victim of a campaign like this, while other childless people in the same family get ignored. If anyone posting here is one of these victims, I am truly sorry.
Meatspace? This sounds more like a thing that happens in the Metaverse.
I know lots of people who don’t have children and it seems to me that if people don’t attack their choice not to have them, they don’t get attacked. Except by their mothers who are worried about grandchildren.
Basically if you come into some gathering yammering about how YOU will never have children, and by choice, and the gathering includes a bunch of people who DO have children, then that’s when the trouble would start. Otherwise, no.
One of my friends who is childless actually espouses the view that it’s selfish to HAVE children, except of course not in the case of her friends–then it’s okay. (She’s probably just saying that.) As far as I know she’s never been hassled about this choice except by her mother.
But everybody cares 20x as much about everything in the Metaverse.
And they tend to be the ones who don’t self-censor.
My brother and his wife don’t have children, but his wife’s sister, who has Down Syndrome, lives with them, and they are first on the list to get custody of our son if anything happens to my husband and me. They are the only among our siblings, step-siblings, and cousins, who don’t have several children of their own, and are stable, and also willing and able to take our pets, so our son doesn’t lose his parents and his pets.
I had started a thread a few years back asking about the effect of having kids on your life that I, as a person that doesn’t have or want children, may not have considered. I was curious about the ways people approach life differently than I do. Mostly it was good, funny at times but also very informative. Then we come to this…
[QUOTE=Susanann]
Everything.
It sounds kinda a meaningless, pointless, lonely, directionless, empty life, and who the heck is going to get all your money and family heirlooms when a childless person dies? What was the point of having accumulated a fortune if no kids or grandkids are going to get it?
I can not imagine how pointless EVERYthing would seem.
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After being told by most people that she was nuts, she later added the following gem -
I love my son, but I was happy before I had him. He doesn’t give meaning to an otherwise meaningless life. I wouldn’t trade him for the world, now that I have him, and if something happened to him, I would be devastated, but if I had not had him, I think I would be just as happy now as I am. I enjoy him a lot, and doing things with him; watching him grow up is fascinating, but I think an adopted child would be just as satisfying. However, he is the child I have, and I love him fiercely.
If someone feels depressed or empty, I think having a child to try to fill the void would probably be a mistake. I think you need to find out why you are unhappy, and then when you are doing better, decide if you have something to offer a child, and not what a child could do to “fix” your life. Children, especially newborns, are exhausting, and not rewarding immediately in proportion to the demand (once they start smiling at you in a few weeks, and letting you get more than two hours of sleep at once, it gets better). It’s not something an already-depressed person needs.
I mostly got the condescension when I was still in high school, by family and friends of my parents who were convinced I’d change my mind. In college, no one is thinking about the baby train. And by the time I got to that point in adulthood where people get worried about my supposed biological clock, I’d made a point of surrounding myself with a better class of people. I have very few conversations that have anything to do with kids now, except with my mother who likes to dish on what my nieces and nephews are up to.
I don’t like kids, and it’s not ageism – I dislike anyone who doesn’t behave well in public, regardless of age (and yes I’ve met a number of “adults” who behave that way, and I didn’t like them either).
Serious question, because I do not grok this thought process at all. Using the operating definition of “selfish” as meaning “acting in a manner that benefits myself at the expense of someone else,” WHO exactly am I acting at the expense of by not having a child? My parents? Am I then acting at their expense because I didn’t become a doctor, too? I don’t believe it’s selfish to live my life for myself rather than as an obligation to someone else – quite the opposite, I believe that’s the only healthy approach. A life of constant self-sacrifice without any self-care is going to run a person into the ground.
The “selfish” label is strange. I think it comes from a belief that people are fundamentally duty-bound to think outside of themselves. There’s no doubt that raising children is a great way to do this. Not only can a person feel like they’re doing something for someone else, but it’s self-serving too.
The only beef I have is that people think being without a child is the same thing as being childfree. Recently a guy asked if I had children and when I said no, he implied that I was “one of those”. That annoyed me more than the preaching he did afterwards about how having a child improves you as a person.
Do guys get the same looks/statements of pity or scorn or disbelief about being childless that women do?
We have no kids, by my choice. My husband would have been ok with having them, but is equally happy without them. He says he’s never been given the “oh you poor dear” speech that I’ve gotten, nor the subsequent look of disbelief and slight drawing away when it was made clear that no children were wanted.
It’s my impression that women are more expected to want kids than men and so the deliberately childless women get a bigger reaction. But that may well be just an impression because it’s mostly women I’ve discussed this with.
Did that make any sense? I’ve only had one cup of tea this morning…
Slight hijack: any of you childless people who want children, I have a 13 year old and a 14 year old I am willing to part with. Best offer. But I probably can’t pay you more than $500 each.
I have lots of real-life friends who don’t have kids. Mostly they have reported no hassle (it has come up) except occasionally from their parents, which I think is a little different.
The only one I know of who has reported lots of hassle is one who started a blog about being childfree. She started it because she’d mentioned it to a few friends in real life and often got the responses you say, and the thing is, I was there for one of those, and although I backed her up because she said she was certain, her body language and tone of voice didn’t convey that, because she’s a quiet person. So it seemed to most there like she was bringing it up in order to be talked around or at least to get alternative points of view, not to have everyone say yes, you’re right, move on.
She also mentioned lots of “yes I know buts…” in her blog when discussing her decision. As in, yes I now but I’m the last of my line, yes I know but I’m in a good position to have a kid… (etc etc). She basically gave people loads of ways to argue with her. In an ideal world it would have been just “my body, my choice,” but in the society we live in she felt she should give more of a reason, to try to support other women who were trying to make the same choice; giving more of a reason, however, gave people more reasons to argue with her.
Sometimes even the commenters supported her overall choice, her bringing up those specifics made them argue against those specific reasons because the only real reason was she should get to choose!
When you bring something like being childfree up online you’re opening it up for discussion. Hell, when you bring up something like eating cheese online you’re opening it up for discussion. Same with real life, though to a lesser extent.
Well I have never wanted children and I have been harassed all my life about it. Sometimes it is mild and sometimes it is major. Sometimes it’s just condescending comments and sometimes its downright offensive, calling me selfish or just stupid.
I am going to be 39 this year and it still hasn’t stopped, though it has reduced in frequency. Sure there is a portion of militant childfree folks but there are way more pushy and obnoxious parents who think they know what’s best for you.
