Oh, and it doesn’t get cheaper. $2k a month in daycare becomes saving for college, sports fees, new shoes (apparently teenage boys outgrow shoes about every fourteen minutes), private school if you don’t live in a good district, music lessons, a smartphone, and extra airfare every time your family does vacation. Teenage boys also eat enough to feed a starving nation. But if you have girls, you aren’t off the hook - you’ll probably spend less on food and they don’t outgrow shoes as fast, but they have bigger wardrobes and more crap that seems essential for life.
Having kids is no guarantee they’ll be there to do those things. My parents have friends who had two kids - both kids predeceased them. My own parents have only me in town - and my husband might end up following a job to the other end of the country at some point. My mother in law had two - and my brother in law has passed on - so its only my husband - and he doesn’t do odd jobs in his own house.
Have you considered some kind of cage? Wire mesh, plenty of air, make sure you fill the water bowl … I admit it wouldn’t look good to any authority figures paying an unexpected visit. 
Not really. I’ve seen too many elderly people whose children/grandchildren are unwilling or wholly unsuitable to care for them to feel like I’m any worse off than anyone else. Just a week or so ago I was listening to a client talk about how it’s a family’s responsibility to keep an elderly relative at home as long as humanly possible, and preening about how her mother will never go into a home because the family is taking care of her. Unfortunately, the only relative able to stay with the old lady is a junkie who the entire family knows is robbing her blind. That poor old woman would be a whole lot better off if in a home–or on an ice floe, come to that.
I’ve dealt with attempted guilt trips about it, if that’s any help. We were living out of state when we got married and moved back right about the time people tend to decide it really is about time you started having babies. My family wasn’t so bad, but then again my brother reproduced early on and I could just wave the niece around to distract them. Plus they can read my “you’re getting on my next-to-last nerve” signals pretty well and were willing to back off before I became unpleasant. My in-laws, otoh…:eek: The sil on that side is 9 years younger than us and was still in high school when we got married. And Og love 'em, they’re the sort of people who, when you actually say the words “I don’t want to talk about it” will keep peppering you with questions for another 15 minutes. Mil made so many little comments and digs and sighs and whatnot that DoctorJ finally had to tell her point blank to shut the hell up about it before I lost my shit. She spent a few more months making a big production out of how she’s not allowed to talk about it, but eventually moved past it.
And your husband is right–other people’s desires in life are not your burden to bear, especially when attempting to fulfill those desires will be detrimental to your welfare and that of your family. By family, I mean you and Derek. People refer to having children as “starting a family” but it’s totally inaccurate. You guys started a family the day you promised to spend the rest of your lives together. It may be a little family, and it may be different from most other families, and you may even feel broken right now, but I think by now we all know the Lilo and Stitch quote about that. Your responsibility is to you and him and your marriage, and if your resources allow, then you can see about making other people happy.
Babies and young kids are just relentless. I love babies but taking care of their every need is just unbelievably tedious. I do have a kid but I was a kid myself when she was born so I never really had a chance to worry about it much first. If I’d had any sense, I would have. At least now I’m long past the stage where I can’t even take a shower in peace, but then that’s just traded for other fun things like having to panic every time your teenager is late coming home and isn’t answering their phone.
Supposedly, some people never just feel smothered by the incessant responsibility and day-to-day work of taking care of some little tyrant, but I assume those people are either crazy or lying. Next time you’re just finally able to relax after a long day at work or whatever, remember, if you had a baby, there’s a really good chance you’d still be many hours from being able to relax. That’s what I tell myself when I start thinking I want another baby. When I used to do childcare it was easy, because I got reminded every day when I was always glad to see them go home (although I did really like them). And I don’t believe in that “it’s different if it’s your own” thing either. Yeah, you love them to death, but that doesn’t make the tedious stuff any less tedious.
One additional benefit that came from deciding not to have kids - when my husband’s career hit a wall in his mid-thirties, we were able to make the sacrifices necessary for him to become a (much, much happier) professional helicopter pilot, something that would have been impossible with children.
We don’t worry about being alone in our old age. We have a number of single and childless friends close to our age (late 40’s-late 50’s) and the possibility of putting together our own co-op and taking care of each other is starting to be chatted about.
My wife once sent me a picture of the cleanup from what she dubbed “Poopfest 2013.” I’m sure you can imagine the outcome.
We’d probably have a house by now if we didn’t spend so much on childcare.
Besides the money, time is what I miss the most. Actually, it’s a clean house. By the time we get home, make dinner, get her ready for bed, get her to sleep, we’re already beat. We get an hour and a half to ourselves. The last thing I want to do is do dishes.
I’m 42 and childless by choice (though I love kids and wouldn’t trade my role as “Aunt Jenny” for the world), and as I see what my friends who are parents have to deal with I think I’m the most grateful for not having to deal with other parents. At school events, playdates, etc. I’m sure I’d be able to find some friends out there, but I feel that most other parents would simply annoy me and I’m not sure how I would handle it if my kid wanted to play at someone’s house and I sincerely felt that the other parents sucked.
I’m also extremely grateful for not having to deal with schooling a child. It seems like a complete nightmare to me: not just the tradeoff of a quality education vs being able to pay your mortgage, but the day-to-day dealing with homework and PTAs and bad teachers (most are great, but there are some bad ones!) and after-school activites, etc.
No kids does NOT equal having no one to live for. :dubious:
I just adore children…other people’s children.
Lemme tell you a story about what happened to us in January of this year.
We took my daughter to the indoor playground down the street from our apartment and were there for about half an hour when a little girl in a pretty pink dress ralphed all over the place. In my mind I immediately thought, “Oh, I hope that little girl’s parents filled her full of milk and orange juice or something else that would make her vomit like that instead of this being stomach bug related.” The next night my daughter got out of bed about an hour after bedtime and was holding her tummy and crying. She started getting really sick and, because she was barely 2 years old she didn’t have the ability to tell us she needed to get to the toilet, so she threw up on everything over and over again.
This seemed horrible enough, but then about 6 hours later my husband started throwing up too. And then 2 hours after that I joined in the fun. And as the shining star on top of the vomit-tree we have only 1 bathroom. Do you know what you do when you have three people who need to vomit simultaneously and only 1 bathroom? Well, you put the toddler in the bathtub and listen to her scream and wail while she throws up while you lean over the toilet so you can hurl while your husband vomits into the bathroom sink.
And then the toddler was the first one to get better, so now we have 2 vomiting adults who need to trade off taking care of an energetic 2 year old who is upset because she can’t have any milk yet. And then once I felt better I discovered that my husband did not and realized that I had to take him to the emergency room because he is diabetic and hadn’t been able to get any food or fluid into himself for 48 hours. So I get the kid dressed and plop her on the bed so that I can get dressed only to find that today is the day that she notices I wear a bra and becomes adamant that she needs a bra too. She cries and yells because she wants to wear a bra and I was in a hurry to get out the door to get my husband medical attention so I took the top of the toddler bikini my mother in law bought for her and tell her it is her bra and put it on her under her shirt so that she will be quiet and go with us to the emergency room.
Seriously, go pour yourself a cocktail and watch HBO or something to celebrate that you will never have that experience in your house.
I do admit that I worry about not having someone to care for us in our old age, but we’re going to use some of the insane amount of money we save to invest in long term care insurance, and make a deal with one of my nephews that if he looks out for us in our old age, he gets the bulk of our estate. He’s a good guy and would do it anyway, but why not repay the favor?
We went through this rough patch when we kind of hit our last wall on having kids, but I really believe that it’s never a good idea to define yourself by a negative. Sure, I’m not a dad, but I’m also not a professional baseball player, or an astronaut.
The trick is to enjoy your life on your terms. We come home, switch on some jazz, make a couple of Manhattans and sit on the porch with our dog to talk about politics (the dog tends to just listen, he’s quiet that way). If we had kids, our day would be very different, not necessarily better, just different.
Never will you have a small person vomit in your hair. And in your ear. And down the back of your shirt. At two thirty in the morning.
You’ll never have someone come up to you, wipe their runny nose on your pants, then run away again.
You’ll never find a gummy vitamin stuck to your ceiling.
Two words: Diaper Blowout.
Or find that someone (“not me!”) decided it would be fun to play with the bag of flour and accidentally spill it all over the kitchen. It literally took me *months *to get all of that clean. I’d think I’d found it all, then a couple days later…oops, missed that spot!
Anyway, you get the idea. I’m truly sorry for your situation. Life just sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?
I apologize; I got to writing my piece, and felt a little guilty as if I was bitching about having kids, which I wasn’t trying to do at all, so I threw that in without thinking.
The bit about not having someone around to take care of me when I’m older? Haven’t given it a minute’s thought. Actually, I give much thought (and voice more of those thoughts than my wife would like me to) to growing older and infirm, but the part about not having anybody around to take care of me? It doesn’t bother me in the least. Partly because I figure that whatever is fated to happen will happen no matter what and partly because I’ve always figured that having kids does NOT ensure that there’d be someone around to take care of me in my old age! Certainly that’s not a reason that I would have ever come up with to try to have kids. Not in a million years.
One of the best posts I’ve ever read. Anywhere. Thank you.
- Good one!
Wow. Now that’s a scenario that I never would have envisioned. Being childless definitely has its advantages!
Wow! This definitive study sez it all.
All the money you save from not having kids can go towards paying for reliable, thorough care. I think counting on grateful kids to look after you is a much sketchier proposition.
No guilt at all. I don’t tell anyone else that they can or can’t have kids, and they return the favour.
I worked with a guy who introduced me to the concept of the “early check-out plan” - don’t take good care of yourself, don’t live too long. 