We are child-free, also by choice, and also because I don’t feel I would be a good parent. I don’t like children, I don’t appear to have any maternal feelings at all, and I don’t think that I would enjoy the whole child-rearing experience at all. Someone (who didn’t know me apart from via t’internet) looked at my reasons for not having kids and promptly told me I was being selfish!
If you don’t think you’d be a good parent then you are right to question the wisdom of having kids in the first place. Far too many people these days seem to regard children as their right rather than a privelige (got into that argument on another board discussing whether or not the UK health service was right to pay for IVF treatment…so don’t get me started!), if you have good reasons for not having kids then don’t do it. If the particular traits you’ve identified are preventing you from being a parent and you think that’s something you’d like to do, then you have to work on those things and try to improve the situation to a point where you think you would make a good parent.
As others have said, if you’re at all unsure then you shouldn’t contemplate parenthood - apart from anything else, it would be unfair on the child. Having said that, I have several friends who thought they’d not make good parents but once the child arrived, they found it a totally life-changing experience and have never looked back. Maybe it’s one of those situations where it’s just different if it’s your kid!
Then I would suggest testing out your belief.
Offer to babysit some kids. Help out at a day care (or church nursery or something similar). Accompany your friends who have kids on trips to the zoo, (or, better, the grocery). Take a parenting class. (I would not suggest fostering. Many jurisdictions make you take a parenting class and offer support, but the kids who make it into foster programs generally come with issues beyond those of kids raised from birth. It is neither fair to the kids nor even to you for you to “practice” on them.)
Not wanting kids is sufficient reason to not have kids and no one should ever be pressured into having them. However, with the staement I quoted, you set up a completely different dilemma.
The one thing that I would say if you eventually decide that you have no business rearing kids, please be very sure that you and any future spouse are 100% in agreement before that relationship goes to hell over such an issue. This is one issue that cannot be “worked out” after the commitment has been made.
Oh, and ahem
I predict, wthout reading any of the posts so far or any of the ones to come, that you’re going to get a lot of replies from folks who’ll pretend they have answers they don’t have.
The problem with your original post is that it’s quite impossible for any of us to translate your subjective interpretation of your alleged personality deficiencies into a prediction of how you’d perform as a parent. It’s a preposterous challenge.
You claim that you have low patience, impulse control problems, and don’t deal well with people who act irrationally. Also, you were violent when you were a kid. I could take that as being a set of serious problems - or being a description of almost any living human, depending on how one chooses to interpret those claims. I mean, who doesn’t need more patience, impulse control, and ability to deal with jerks?
Your description of yourself COULD be a description of someone who will be an awful parent. It is also an excellent description of my father at age 23, and he turned out to be an exceptional parent. Conversely, people who’re patient and have control of their impulses can make lousy parents. We certainly can’t tell you.
What IS for sure is that if you don’t want kids it wouldn’t make sense to have them. Or, you might arrive at a point in your life when you do want kids, and then it’d make sense to have them. What you do not want to do is rationalize doing something you’re uncomfortable with based on a set of rather arbitrary criteria. If you meet the right lady and genuinely want kids, have them. People can and do change for the better, or learn to compensate for their deficiencies, when they have children. My Dad did.
In my experience, every soon-to-be-parent has the same feelings you’re having without being in that situation. Everyone - from my coworker who’s in her 30’s to my 17-year-old cousin who knocked up his girlfriend. Every single one of them thinks things like “What if I’m not good enough for them?” or “What if I hurt them?” or “What if I totally fuck up?”
I used to think I’d be a horrible parent because of the same things you’ve mentioned. I have a horrible temper, am extremely impatient, and am easy to provoke into violence. I also have obsessive-compulsive disorder and bipolar disorder, which would, I thought, totally interfere in child-rearing.
Then I started dating my boyfriend, who has two daughters. I still don’t want kids of my own, but I think that I could deal with it if it happened.
The only way to really know how you’d act around kids of your own is to, of course, have them. But if you don’t want them, don’t have them. If the idea of being a parent frightens you because you don’t know how you will act, I applaud not having children. I applaud, also, your clear thinking on this. You know what a big responsibility children are, and that you’re not just having kids, you’re dealing with a human life. That’s very responsible of you, and something most of society lacks. Good job.
We have a list of reasons to tell the persistent busybodies. Our favourite is, “We can’t have them - the government won’t allow it. Not since the…incident.” And look at each other and quickly look away.
I’ve noticed that, too.
ScareyFairie, I don’t accept criticism that not having kids is selfish any more. The vast majority of people who get pregnant on purpose have kids simply because they want them. If that isn’t selfish, I don’t know what is. You could argue that choosing to not have kids is self-aware.
I *know *I would make a really great mother. I like most kids. But I choose not to have kids. There are many reasons. The most selfish is I don’t want to give 18 years of my life to a stranger. The least selfish is that I didn’t get much love from my parents but got some replacement for it from my single aunt, etc. I want to be that person. I want to be the person who has an excess of love for all children who might need a llittle more. It sounds a little corny but when I look at my little niece I think - maybe one day she’ll need someone to talk to. Maybe she’ll want to bring something up with another adult before her parents. Maybe she’ll need a sounding board. Or just an extra hug. If I had my own kids I could still provide that but my own kids would take a lot out of me. This way I can spread the love.
Don’t talk to me about people lecturing me, though! Especially since I have a lot of the traits of being a good mother…I hear it constantly. Just at Christmas the SO was holding his niece and half the people who saw the picture later waggled their eyebrows and said “Practicing.” Yeah, maybe for his nephew!
I’ve found that giving a little smile and moving on to a different topic seems to work, at least so far. Looking neutral or annoyed about it seems to tell nosy people to pursue the matter, like maybe we’re trying or there’s some infertility advice to be given. Looking comfortable or even happy seems to shut down quite a few people.
That’s been my experience, too, as well as people who’ve made their children’s lives miserable (abuse of various kinds).
As to the OP - if a hypothetical person has no interest in having kids (whether or not they believe they’ll be a good parent), they shouldn’t have them. If this hypothetical person, however, would like to be a parent, then I agree with previous recommendations to seek therapy at working at whatever issues there are - prior abuse, anger control, whatever. If after a dedicated, sincere effort you still think you wouldn’t be a good parent, then you may be right.
Even without a therapist, I think this is the most important thing I’ve seen in the replies so far (and not just because that’s the first thing I thought of :o ). You don’t seem to be asking about people who dislike children, but rather people who are unsure about themselves. I think those people would do well to address what they see as their problems now, and maybe worry about children in time.
I don’t believe that having children should be the expected default. I thing that people should not even seriously entertain the idea of having children unless they have strong innate desires to do and good reasons why they should intellectually.
I always wanted children and never thought about not having kids. I had daughter number one and the first year was absolute hell. I found out that I like children but I really don’t like babies. After the first year it got better and now she is, at 4, probably my favorite person in the world to be around. My second daughter became brain damaged within hours at out the blue from an astronomically unlikely genetic disease and died at six weeks after 4 weeks in Childrens Hospital neonatal ICU with us at her side 24/7. Some version of that could happen to anyone because they can’t screen for everything.
Daughter number three is 5 months old now and healthy but that brings us to the earlier problem that I don’t like small babies. She wants to be held 100% of the time otherwise she breaks into blood-curdling screaming fits. I keep her every weeknight and least one weekend day while my wife and I switch off work and I have almost snapped a few times. The only thing that keeps me going is that she will mature fairly rapidly.
If you don’t absolutely want to have children and you have temper issues then it probably isn’t a good fit. I have some temper issues and the strong desire to have them is the only thing that keeps me going. Imagine working a stressful day at work, rushing to pick up the kids from daycare, and then the baby literally screaming in your face for 3 hours when nothing you do seems to help. That happened to me night after night with no end in sight. That is what my toddler was like for me up until about 6 weeks ago but it still happens to some extent.
I certainly don’t recommend it unless you have a conviction anymore than I would recommend someone causally taking on priesthood.
I am the mother of three kids – an eleven year old girl and four and a half year old twin boys. I always wanted kids and now I have them and I’m glad. I still look at other people’s kids (most of them, anyway) and say “Go home! Don’t come back…” (without the “until you are 18!” part). Of course, I also look at most other people and say the same thing. I also have a cat who I esteem more highly than I do most people. And a husband who complements my deficiencies brilliantly (vice versa also tends to apply). With all the love and support and moderate planning and decent income and well-formed fairly adult, farily rational personalities at play in the equation – it is still barely tenable from time to time. That’s not a surprise to me, nor to my husband.
But, don’t go reproducing just to please us strangers. If you want kids, find a way to make it work. If you don’t, then dandy. But don’t look to this body of at least semi-strangers to condemn you as a poisoned well of potential parenting. If you have impulse control issues, it means you are a former child with some lingering after-effects. Like all of us. Does that mean you would be a more empathetic, sympathetic parent who understands childish rage in another, smaller person and might be able to offer some coping methods that are within a child’s potential repertoire? Could be. Does it mean you might have to put a screaming kid in a crib for safety and go hide in the bathroom until you fnd some shred of your grown-up self a few times? Probably. But that’s a major parenting skill: knowing who needs a “timeout”. But, just because you probably have the skill doesn’t mean you have to use it.
Some are born to parent, some achieve parenthood, and some have parenthood thrust upon them. And some live great, productive lives with none of the above. But, even if you decide against parenthood – just on the off-chance of the “thrust upon them” possibility (which I know is a nuanced concept), you might as well not psych yourself out too bad about the impossibility of you performing the duties of parenthood effectively.
Jellyblue and others have already beaten me to this, but get therapy. It’s only been the last year or so that I’ve been comfortable admitting (both to myself and others) that I simply don’t want kids, but before then I knew that if I ever did have a kid I’d most likely need/want some therapy (hell, sometimes I think I might need therapy just to make a long-term relationship with another adult work). Don’t let self-doubt keep you from doing something that you want to do.
Also, remember that (ideally) you won’t be the only parent: you’ll have someone else there to help you, just as you will be there to help your partner.
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately myself. I’ve always wanted children but doubted that I’d make a good parent, so I’ve put off having children. In addition, I’ve never had an SO who would have made a good co-parent, or a relationship permanent enough to make me consider the possibility. I lead too transient a life and that doesn’t show much sign of changing. I have certain other issues that make me doubt my ability to be a good parent. I do think that if you are doubtful about your ability to parent, you should not have children. It seems to me the most sensible course of action you could take.
Well either you wanted us to give advice on whether you are or aren’t fit for having children, or you just want us to feed you the answer you want. If the latter, then sure, just say which placation you want us to feed you. If the previous though, we need to know more about you to be able to answer anything. If that all has to stay private then we’ve no way to judge anything.
Don’t have kids. Your OP shows no indication at all that you even want any, only that you wonder if you’d be a good parent if you did have kids. Wanting to satisfy your curiousity or settle a bet is not a good enough reason to have kids, you have to want them. You don’t. FWIW, I don’t have kids and never missed having done so. I accept my likes and dislikes; you should too.
Neither. As I said earlier, I wanted a theoretical discussion. If it’s easier, pretend I’m talking about a hypothetical person with the thoughts outlined in my first post.
Exactly the reasons why I do not have children of my own. When I finally “grew up” enough to gain control over myself, I wound up being a stepdad and have done the best job I could at it.
Does anyone have thoughts on the “ideal” age to have children? I am not sure if I will ever have children, but I do know that at my current age of 21 I am way too self-centered and egocentric to fully give myself to the duties required of being a parent.
