Voluntarily childless folk, and adoptive parents

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hi there-- This is a two-parter. I’m just looking for thoughts from people who have decided not to have kids, especially people who are over 35 or 40 and continue to not have kids. What were the reasons? Any regrets? Any deep sighs of relief and thanks? Have your feelings about it changed over time, or do you feel the same way you always have? What’s the experience been like?

Follow up poll-- any parents here who decided to adopt kids instead of having your own, although you would have been able to (like, all your kids are adopted, and none contain your DNA)? What were your reasons for that decision? How old were you? How do you feel about the experience?

(Where this is coming from, part 1: I’m turning 35 soon and we just still haven’t decided that we we want to have kids. We enjoy their company in small doses but just don’t know if we want them around all the time–sort of like how I feel about dogs–and I feel like it’s not something that I should do because I don’t have much against it, but rather because I want to, in a positive way. Like, you’re told that one day “when you’re older, the time will come” etc etc that you’ll see a new baby and suddenly maternal instincts will kick in full force and you’ll need to have a baby ASAP? That’s not me. I’m starting to suspect I’m one of those people who don’t have that drive, but I feel like I should.
I guess my fear is that those apocryphal maternal instincts arrive when I’m 40 it will be too late, or I’ll be 50 and suddenly regret it, or my husband will have a similar late realization. Will we be happy enough spoiling nieces and nephews and taking in foreign exchange students and owning parrots and university teaching?)
Part 2: If we do decide to raise kids (like, the maternal instinct kicks in or we change our minds in the next few years for whatever reasons), we don’t really have much sense of a need to have our OWN, and we think we’d like to adopt. Like, there are enough kids out there already and we might as well bring up some of the surplus)

2

I’m 42, and today is my hysterectomy’s first birthday (any excuse for cake!). No kids by choice, and still not wanting any. I suppose there is a theoretical chance that I would want to have/adopt kids in the future, but that chance is at the same level of probability of my becoming a lesbian or a fundamentalist christian. If it hasn’t happened by now, I’m betting it won’t. Besides, I’m the one in charge of my desires, not some alleged biological clock. If I did eveything my ovaries told me to, George Clooney would have non contact orders out on me in three nations! :slight_smile:

3

I really hate what having children does to people’s personalities, and the thought of that happening to my wife (and to a lesser extent, myself) makes me murderous.

4

I’m 52, female, never had kids, never had a second’s regret about the decision to not have kids.

5

I’m forty-one and female and childless. I grew up expecting to have kids just like everyone else, fully planned on having children all through my twenties, started to get a little worried as I approached 30…but after much soul searching I realized I didn’t want to get married just to have children and I didn’t want children so badly that I’d try to be an adoptive single mother.
I am not at all sorry that I don’t have children. I like my nieces and nephews but they don’t make me wish I’d had my own. Occasionally I’ll meet a wonderful child that makes me wonder if my kids might have been kind of okay, but if I think about it for more than thirty seconds I realize that I probably would have messed up any kid that I had to live with round the clock for years.
So to cut a long story short, I’m still quite glad that I don’t have children, and I don’t want any now, and I can’t imagine wanting them in the future.

6

40, female, in a 15 year relationship, and childless by choice. I babysat, I had friends with younger sisters, and I don’t ever remember dreaming about having kids. It’s not that I didn’t actively not want them, I just didn’t actively want them. I’m sure I’d make a fine parent, but not actively wanting one seems like a fine reason not to have one.

I love my niece, nephews, and my friends’ kids. I occasionally wonder what our children would be like. I don’t want any of my own. As I went from 30 to 40, I became more and more sure that I don’t want any of my own. Finally, at age 40, I think I’ve convinced my parents that I won’t be having any.

7

I’m still young enough to change my mind (30 in April) but I decided almost ten years ago that having babies isn’t something I have any interest in. All along people have told me that I’ll feel differently when I’m “older” but thus far the idea of biological children is no more appealing now as it was then. I don’t want to be pregnant, and I don’t want to deal with a baby who can’t communicate with me.

On the other hand, the idea of adopting has become more appealing over the past couple, three years. Unlike many people who don’t want biological children, I do like kids. Not babies, not toddlers, but children and teenagers are pretty neat people. I can almost picture myself adopting siblings. I can’t understand why most people are so drawn to adopting babies since that’s the part I’d most like to miss. Kids between say three and fourteen who need to be placed together, on the other hand, that sound good as long as the proper therapy for them is out there at the time. I’d have to wait until I am either a. much more finacially stable or b. married to actually go through with it, though.

8

I’m only 31, I hope that’s Ok if I answer. I’ve known since I was 17 that I was fairly ambivalent about having kids, as I grew older the feeling solidified, and now I am against them. I love kids and I know I would be a great mom. However I just haven’t the least interest in my own.

The reasons are varied and complex and I don’t feel like going into them here as I’ve been challenged in the past. The main one is I don’t think kids should ever be the default option (grow up, go to college, get married, have kids…) No one should ever have kids until they really really want them. And I don’t. So I won’t.

9

My husband and I have been married nearly twenty years, now. We agreed before marriage not to have children. He claims not to like children, though when he interacts with them, he is great. I suspect that it was because his own childhood was so lousy that he thinks he’d be a terrible father. I’ve held the opinion that there were already too many people being born since I was in my early teens, and I’ve never changed my mind about that. I admit to thinking about what having kids around would be like occassionally, but I don’t have any desire for them to be mine, necessarily.

10

38 male, no kids, never wanted them, no regrets. I’ve dated women that have children of various ages and for the most part it just confirms I’m not interested in that much extra work and responsibility. The kids always enjoyed me being around and I was always a good role model I just can’t see doing it 24 hours a day for a minimum 18 years. I don’t date women that have children anymore. Yes, that significantly shrinks the dating pool.

11

48, married 8 1/2 years, no kids. We talked about not having any before we were married, and after, we agreed about it. Neither of us has any parental instincts, and as mentioned about someone else, I had such a lousy childhood that I think I’d be a total failure as a parent. My wife gets her contact with kids from being a piano teacher. She says that’s enough for her. I don’t get any exposure to kids at all, really. No regrets.

I’d be terrified to have a kid these days, what with the crystal meth and the crack smoking and the rest of that stuff they’d be exposed to. Plus the possibility that the next scourge to come along by the time they’re old enough to be swayed by it would be even worse than what we have now. I spent a long time angry. Now I’m not angry anymore. I cannot spend the rest of my life getting angry, or trying like mad not to, or turning to drink to sublimate the urge.

12

My wife and I are both well into middle age. We made a conscious decision never to have children. First of all, I simply do not like children, do not respond well at all around them and feel no need or desire whatsoever to be a parent. Second, while my wife does not dislike children, she feels no special attraction to them, and she quite simply does not want to experience the “miracle of childbirth.”

My wife is Thai, and she is quite unique among her fellow Thai women in not wanting to have children. When we were younger, we were badgered to have them, especially by her family (well, they didn’t “badger” us, but they did bring the subject up often), but we held our ground.

13

Late 40s, married 20 years, no kids by choice.

When we were young (i.e. HS / college-age), wife & I always assumed we 'd have kids. By the time we met, got married & spent a couple years together, we decided it was time to decide.

We looked at each other & said “OK, who wants to be the full-time parent for at least 10 of the next 20 years?” Sound of crickets. No takers. So, no kids right now.

We revisited this decision consciously & deliberately every few months over several years. Same answer every time. So, no kids ever.

Now, 15 years later, we have no regrets. I think most kids are great. I enjoy my various nieces, nephews & neighbor kids. Wife feels the same way. But I’m 100% glad I don’t have them.

Sure, there’re times I wonder what having a family might have been like, or how old they’d be now, or … But I also wonder about the jobs I didn’t take, the college I turned down, the women I didn’t marry. I’ve been making potentially life-changing choices almost every day for ~10,000 days now, and the number of branches not taken on that tree of possibilities is mind-boggling.

I can only say that I’m happy on the branch I chose.

My advice: If you want kids, have kids. If you want to want to have kids, wait until you actually want to, or actually don’t want to, then do whichever. If you think you ought to have kids to fulfill an expectation, especially somebody else’s (parents, spouse, church, “society”, etc), then do NOT have kids.
Something to think about … Even at old age on your death bed you’ll never know whether you made the best decision, because you’ll never know how all the roads not taken would have turned out. So don’t over-analyse it, or try to work out the scenarios. Do what you think & feel is correct at the time. Make these decisions soberly, not frivolously. But don’t become paralysed by the gravity of it all.

Each of us will not live 99.99% of the possiblities our life presents to us. We only get the one path fate & our decisions grant us. Millions of people never have kids who want them and most have a fine life. Millions of people have kids they didn’t exactly want, and most of them have a fine life too.

In one sense, it’s not a decision you can screw up too badly since kids, or lack of kids, will build the reality of the rest of your life in such a way that, in hindsight, it’ll appear to have been the best (or at least a good) decision. [Sure, there are gross exceptions, folks who die in childbirth or are crack-baby factories, or … . But for ordinary folks like us, it’ll work out fine whatever you do.]

14

I’m 25, husband is 34. We have a LOT of reasons not to have kids. I have medical problems (uterine and tubal scarring from PID and I suspect I have PCOS) that make things both difficult and risky. Both of us are “late starters” - I’m a junior in college and he’s in his second year of law school. By the time we’re settled, it’ll be too late really.

We have moral objections to having our own children; if we should decide to raise children later we’ve decided that it makes more sense to adopt - there are plenty of kids out there that need a good home (and I stress that it is our PERSONAL morality, I have no problems with people who desire their own biological children, but between our feelings on the subject and my medical problems, it just makes sense for us).

Both of us have nieces and nephews that are seemingly unwanted and often neglected. I don’t want to be a neglectful parent, and I think I owe it to our collected nieces and nephews to set a good example and be supportive of them whenever possible. Sometimes geography gets in the way, but we try when we can to at least be there in some sense. I really love both my nieces and nephews by blood and the kids by marriage, and I can’t wait until we’re done with college to spoil 'em all a bit.

The biggest though is that we plain just don’t want 'em. We aren’t good with kids in general, being pushy, Type A impatient people. I can spend a day with one or at most two nieces or nephews and that’s it, I’m done for a while. I like quiet, and solitude, and freedom most of all. The husband and I plan just to have a smallish condo so we can spend most of our free time traveling.

All that, plus my weekend activities include fast motorcycles and sloe gin, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. :smiley:

15

This is me as well, word for word. Same age as you, even. I figure that if I were going to have kids, I would have had them long ago. Babysitting is okay once in a while, but it’s great to be able to hand them back to their parents and then leave. No more worries, messes, screaming, crying, whining, etc. for me to deal with once the job is over. And just some random stuff: I loathe Chuck E. Cheese, McDonalds and most other fast food places that cater to kids; I don’t care much for theme parks, especially Disneyland; I can’t stand most kid movies and TV shows. Just the whole kid-universe in general is not something I can stomach.

16

45 here. I suppose I’m childfree by choice - I just never have had a strongly ticking maternal clock. I like kids; I have a niece with whom I’m very close (I’m helping her through college, so…so much for avoiding responsibility!) and I enjoy being around kids. If I were to meet “the man” and he had children, I would welcome the opportunity to be a part of their lives.

VCNJ~

17

There is a desperate need for people to adopt older kids and sibling groups.

There is also a reason why there is a desperate need–even beyond the “We want a baby to hold” desire: sibling groups and older kids who need adoption have generally had to have been removed from a less than perfect home and those kids tend to come with all sorts of issues.

I do not want to tell anyone to avoid doing that, (the kids need parents), but I strongly urge anyone who chooses that path to get all the training possible before adopting, getting the kids into counselling right away, (if they are not already–even if they seem fine), and developing a strong support team (family, friends, and professionals) even before the kids come into the home.

18

I’ll bite, what does having kids do to people’s personalities?

19

I can field this one: Go to your local mall, find a store such as Baby Gap, Gymboree, etc. Hang out there for about an hour and observe the mindset of these people. You will see.

20

Male, 44, no kids, no regrets. Like being my nephew’s favorite uncle, though (he’s 20).

I don’t hate kids but I do share VCO3’s horror at what happens to people when they become parents. Once people become parents, suddenly that’s all they are; they cease being men and women. Don’t gimme any of that crap about how having kids changes everything. European couples don’t give up themselves entirely like American parents do, and somehow they manage (Read Judith Warner’s Perfect Madness : Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety). And frankly I think that altogether too many people become parents because, hey, you’re supposed to. Ugh.