Will my Biological Clock tick? Want Kids?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been dating a wonderful man for about a year and things are pretty serious. He is the man I want to be with for the long haul. We’ve discussed marriage and children, and are in agreement that marriage would come first (ideally). He 110% wants kids. I’m not so sure.

I’ve worked with kids in various capacities from my teenage years on, and with the whole gamut of ages. I like kids. They can be adorable, but they can also be huge pains. If I’m with children for more than an hour at a time, my patience quickly wears thin. At one point, I worked at a daycare and nearly every day wanted to pull my hair out in frustration. Even babysitting just a couple kids, I do it only for the money. If I wasn’t making money, I probably wouldn’t want to be in the same room as children for an extended period of time. In general (of course there are exceptions) I can’t stand babies, love toddlers, like preschoolers, barely tolerate elementary-middle schoolers, and somewhat like high schoolers. If I could keep a child at the toddler age forever, I’d want one right now. But that’s not how it works. I digress…

I am well aware of the joys of parenting, and have wonderful parents who gave me an amazing childhood. However, from working with kids, I also know the nitty-gritty and the mundane ugliness of raising children.
I also have concerns about what kind of world I would be bringing a child into. This isn’t utopia. Depression and anxiety runs rampant through my family. My boyfriend’s family has their share of genetic goodies. The world is a scary place. I’d be adding to my anxiety levels ten times over if I had a child(ren) running about.

The world has way too many people for my taste, and 95% of them frustrate and annoy me. We’re running out of resources. We’re wasteful and materialistic. People in general kind of suck. When I imagine the world 100 years from now, I see a rather bleak picture. Why would I subject an innocent child (and potential grandchildren) to that? Yes, there is the potential that my child could be the one to cure cancer or [insert amazing feat here], but the likelihood of that is pretty much nil. It’s more likely that I will just be adding another selfish, materialistic, consumer (like me) to a world that needs far fewer. This potential child will have heartbreak and pain, and a thousand other things I cannot protect them from. Is life worth living? Overall, I guess so, but usually life is a lot of long depressing valleys interspersed with short peaks of goodness. Do I want to make another human go through all those valleys just to experience the fleeting peaks of happiness?

I also am extremely introverted. I work and go to school, and then I have a solid 5-6 hours of alone time before I go to bed. I relish that time. I need that time. If I had a child, my alone time would be cut drastically. I need at least a couple hours alone every day to just work out my thoughts and get things done. I have great difficulty accomplishing things if I can’t cut out a solid block of time to focus.

I, like every other human, like sleeping. I’m not one of those people who can function on less than 6 hours of sleep. I can get by on 6.5 hours, but less than that makes me grouchy, moody, and depletes my patience even faster. I don’t like to think about what the first six months of a potential baby’s life would be like if I’m running on 5 or less hours of sleep a night. Also, my boyfriend needs more sleep than I do… not sure what he would do if his sleep suddenly got cut.

Lastly, my boyfriend wants 4 kids. I only want 1. Maybe 2… maybe. I just don’t think I could handle more than one and keep my sanity. Parenting is not like a day job that you can clock out of. If they get sick at 2 am, you’re up with them. If they need to go to the doctor, you have to take them. If they can’t sleep, you have to deal with it. If work is stressful and the kids are being fussy in the evening and won’t let you relax, too bad. Once the kids are at the age where they start having sports practices, or school plays, or cub scouts… you now have sports practice, school plays, or cub scouts. Your free time goes out the window. Like I said, I value my alone time, and I need a lot of it. And once they turn 18, there’s no guarantee they’ll be self-sufficient. Hell, I was a lot older than 18 before I moved out of my parents’ house.

Oh, and then once I have an empty nest, my parents will be at the age where they might start needing help. I exchange an adult child for another adult child so to speak. Will my child feel the same sense of duty / being trapped, and feel like they have to take care of me in my old age? I wouldn’t want that for them.

Boyfriend and I are in our mid twenties, and I will not be done with my schooling until closer to 30. After I’m done with school, I’d like to work for a couple years at least before having a baby. At this point, I’m thinking I’d want to put the baby in daycare after a month or two of maternity leave, and get right back to work. If I’ve put in all this effort to go through school and get a good job that I like, I’ll want to be working! I don’t want to be a stay at home mom. I’ll either go the daycare route, or hire a nanny. But that makes me think that I really don’t want to be the one raising my own child… so why have a child at all?

Boyfriend wants children. No doubt in his mind. My parents want grandchildren. I’m not going to have a baby just to make my parents and my boyfriend happy. I think a child should be wanted 100%. Accidental pregnancies happen of course, but in an ideal world, every child would be planned and wanted. So, if I have kids, I want to want them. But at this point, I’m really on the fence. The thing is, with my boyfriend being so sure about it, I’d hate to have us get married in the next couple years and me decide I don’t want kids. Then we’d be married to partners who want completely opposite things. Even if we don’t marry in the next few years, I don’t want to waste his time (or my own) on this relationship if we’ll end up having different goals for our lives. How can I know what future me will want? My 30 year old self may be in baby fever mode, or I might be ambivalent. I don’t want to hurt my boyfriend by being with him for several years and then us having to end the relationship because he wants kids and I don’t.

Is it likely I’ll change my mind? Will I want kids in a few years? Or do I already have my answer… and I need to make a difficult decision about my relationship? Anyone have a similar experience and care to share?

2

Study hard. Work hard. Get rich. Hire other people to raise your children for you.

3

You are in the same place I was all those years ago.

Once she (I’m male) made it clear that we were going to live in the same tiny burg with her parents and make lots of babies, I RAN - like the wind.

If boyfriend really wants kids (let alone 4 of them), it is not fair for either of you to continue this relationship.

The “He’s Perfect” (except for this tiny thing and that tiny thing…) person is not only NOT perfect for you, he is not even close.

I never wanted kids, and never had kids (and, yes - I would know, so keep your snickering to yourself).

p.s. - she never did get married, but did live out her life (she came back pregnant) in that burg. Her parents died within a few months of each other. She died 4 years later after her life took a nasty turn. I suspect suicide.

4

I’m thinking this’ll get more response over in In My Humble Opinion. I’ll move it over for you.

5

I don’t know if it’s likely you’ll change your mind, but it’s a bad idea to go in hoping you will somewhere down the line. Both parties should know what they’re getting into. A friend of mine would be a great mom, but at 30 she married a widower in his 50s who had grown kids and he made it clear he didn’t want more. Everyone freaked, but she made the call to marry him and not have kids, instead explaining why Grandma is only three years older than Mommy. She’s happy, though I have a gripe: the fuckhead she married whines about how he regrets she gave up having kids of her own, now that he’s closing in on 70. It was her choice to go along with it, and she sure as heck can’t have them now, so why go on about it?

6

I think you should assume you WON’T change your mind and be honest and break up with the guy now. My first long-term relationship, I told the man up front I had no interest in having kids. He serenely assumed I’d just change my mind (because, you know, all women want kids), and two years later started pressuring me to have kids. I dumped him. If I’d realized he was going to do that, I’d have broken up with him right away and saved us both a lot of grief.

7

OTOH …

You are not getting married right now. And you are being straight-forward and honest with said man-friend that you do not, at least at this point, see yourself living that four kids life, and are not sure you want any kids at all.

Whether or not his time is being wasted or not with you at this point should be for him to decide.

The issue that matters is if you think you are somehow wasting your time being with someone for now that might not end up being your life partner.

If you think you’d be better off being unattached and open to finding the potential life partner who also will not want kids, then break it off. But you’d have to have very little respect for him indeed to make the decision for him of what is best for him.

As to what you will think in five years? Danged if I know. Could it change? Sure. Or not. Nor can any of us know how he’ll feel then, or after some hypothetical one child.

Your own kid is very different than a kid you babysit for BTW. Scarier if nothing else.

Out of curiosity is he wanting to be a stay at home Dad? If he did would that impact your thoughts at all?

8

You don’t want kids. He wants four. The relationship’s not going to work out. :confused:

9

I think you have your answer. Especially since he seems to want a huge amount of kids and you are like maybe one or two. Have you told him everything you’ve told us?

As for the biological clock ticking…it never did for me, which was a surprise because I actually did want a couple of kids. I had my one son when I was 29. He was planned…perfectly planned. We had agreed to wait 5 years before having a baby. He was born 3 months after our 5th anniversary. But there had been no maternal yearning, no biological whatever. There was just the plan.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love the Kiddo with every fiber of my being and I wouldn’t change having him for anything. But…when it came time in “the plan” for us to have a second child, I was like, “Um, nope! Screw the plan, I’m not having another kid just because it’s expected.” Thankfully, my husband agreed with me. Of course, everyone told me, “Oh, just wait! Your biological clock will start ticking” or “Just wait until your friends start having babies, you will want another one for sure. It can’t be helped…it’s nature” and all kinds of bullshit like that. It never happened and I have never ever, not even once regretted my decision to stop at one…and it’s been nearly 18 years.

I don’t know if hearing my story is helpful at all, but there it is. Oh, and I did go back to work about 12 weeks after having him. I was happy to go back, but also missed him. I had mixed feeling about that for like 2 weeks. Then I knew I had made the right decision.

10

She did not say that she knows she does not want kids. She says she is not sure but thinks one, or maybe two. That is a bit different than someone who states “I know I do not want to have any kids.”

11

To those who say she should break it off -

Most menapparently want to be fathers some day. Should a woman who is unsure if she will want children in the future, or even leans against it, restrict her relationship possibilities ahead of time to the relatively few men who do not think they will ever want to become fathers?

12

FWIW - I’m 38, no kids, and my biological clock really isn’t ticking. I keep waiting for it, but nothing yet.

I have many of the same personality traits as you: introverted, needs a lot of time alone, etc. Those things haven’t changed as I’ve gotten older; in fact, they’ve grown more pronounced. That doesn’t mean you can’t adjust to parenthood, but there’s a big difference between one and four kids.

13

There’s rarely a perfect time to have kids and having kids is rarely a perfectly controlled experience. There’s sacrifices, joys, heartache, pride and disappointment etc., but I think most people (not all) are generally happier overall they made the choice to have kids. I dated a childless professional woman in her 40’s who regretted the decision she made in college to have an abortion. She was not anti-choice she just seriously regretted not having a child now that she was older, single and childless.

There’s no perfect answer. Even if you want kids it’s a dice roll how it will turn out. Unlike everyone else I would not freak out about the “I want 4 kids” thing from your BF. For most men that notion lasts about one week into the first kid and after a few weeks of lack of sleep and calculating of the future support costs of a child they rapidly come to their senses and gratefully settle for one or two.

Overall you are putting up a blizzard of reasons not to have kids most of which are convenience arguments. If you are really (and you have to be brutally honest with yourself here) mostly about you, there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s probably not the best context to have a kid.

There’s also the odd thing I’ve noticed that some women will have a similar minefield of reasons not to have kids, and then they will meet Mr. Right all that reasoning vanishes like fog burned off in the morning and they are on the baby train overnight. It’s not a comfortable question but I think you might want to ask yourself if part of your reluctance to have a child is based on uncertainty about how invested in your boyfriend you really are.

14

Despite illusions to the contrary, the real point of marriage is to have kids and provide a stable environment for them. There are a few other legal reasons people do it but all of them are pragmatic or, at least they should be if people look at it objectively.

I am the last person that would advise people to have kids if they are not completely sure about it and it sounds like you aren’t. I love mine dearly and cannot imagine a life without them but they are an incredible amount of work, expense and both a source of joy and heartache. I hated the infant years but, like you, I love toddlers and even beyond. Being the father of two girls means that I have to be the primary source of emotional support for my girls during their teenage years because mothers and teenage daughters do not usually get along and the reverse is often true in a lesser sense for teenage boys and fathers.

I wouldn’t advocate anyone that wants to maintain middle-class status or above have 4 children. That is more expensive than you can ever start to imagine and I don’t see the point. If you want to have them, just have a couple at most that are well taken care of rather than try to raise a whole litter in a family that is always struggling to make ends meet. I can tell you from personal experience that even upper-middle class families have trouble affording even two kids that are spaced reasonably apart. I can’t even imagine four.

Quality of life, including your own, is much more important than quantity. I do think that having kids is worth it in terms of overall happiness despite the expense, puke and everything else but you have to go into it with a realistic eye. I would rank parenthood well above most anything else including marriage but you have to be realistic about it.

15

Who knows? No one knows. Lots of people do change their minds, but not everyone. We’re none of us psychic.

I was on the fence about having kids. Like you, I felt that I shouldn’t have kids unless I was actually wanted a kid. I never really did. I never really felt an urge to have one, and when my biological clock didn’t kick in - I found that I was ok with that. It’s worked out for the best for everyone.

I don’t think you have to dump your boyfriend. But I do think he should have all the information before he decides to stay. He can decide for himself to stay or go.

You’re sure that you don’t want children in the next five years, say, and you’re not sure that you ever will. You might want one, but you certainly don’t want a bunch. Or you might not want any, you don’t know yet.

That’s the state of things, at the moment. Be honest with yourself and with him, both. What he does with that information is up to him.

16

And here’s the opposite view point. Also an introvert, who needs a lot of alone time. Plus I hated children, never worked with them, never wanted them. Then to my surprise/horror, my biological clock really started ticking, and I really want kids now. The truth is no one will know how you’ll feel in a few years. I didn’t know even know what I would want.

17

Your reasoning seems to lean more heavily towards a childfree/small family life. It seems to me that you’d have to have a pretty enormous shift in perspective to get from where you are now to a place where you want four kids.

Maybe Boyfriend is adaptable, and maybe once kids start arriving, he’ll be content with a smaller family. It seems pretty certain, though, that it’s important to him to have at least one child. From what you’ve written, it doesn’t seem like you’re necessarily really on board to have even that many. This is probably a good point in your life to reflect on your future, and ask yourself if you can honestly see yourself living happily childfree, or if it is a priority to have a child in the future at some point. It’s really only after that that you can sit down with Boyfriend and see if your ideal future and his ideal future have enough overlap to work.

I love being a parent, but you’ve hit the nail on the head here. The hardest part is the unrelentingness of it. It’s not just when they get sick at 2am, it’s when they get sick at 2am and you’re sick too, or when you’ve got a healthy, happy 18 month old running around needing food and nappy changes and entertainment but you’re as crook as a dog… No matter what else is happening, you still have to be Mum. If you’re lucky you’ll have a support network that can get you through, but that’s not reality for everyone.

I wouldn’t trade being a mother for anything. It’s the most personally fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. But not everyone feels the same way. It must be infinitely harder if you don’t feel fulfilled by it.

18

Nobody can answer these questions for you. One one hand, you describe lots of reasons not to. Are you trying to justify your feelings by providing arguments to yourself to back them up? Or are you just not ready yet? You start out saying you don’t want kids, but then say maybe one or two. These are two very different positions, that don’t reconcile.

You don’t need to have every answer for the rest of your life mapped out already. Life can change things up in ways you’d never expect. Maybe your biological clock will kick in and you’ll love having 4 kids. Maybe you’ll have one and your husband will be happy to stop there. Maybe one of you will be infertile. Maybe you’ll compromise and have kids, but end up a single parent. Maybe you’ll part ways and never find the perfect mate. Maybe he’ll agree to no kids but leave you when you’re 35 and he suddenly realises he can’t compromise on this issue. Maybe it will always be a point of quiet resentment in your relationship. Maybe you’ll talk it out, reach a decision and live happily ever after. Nobody knows!

All you can do is be honest with yourself. And with him. Communicate. And then go from there. You only get one life and you have to live with the consequences of your choices either way.

I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I didn’t want kids. My husband wanted 5 when he was younger. We were honest and we kept communicating. We’re still together, but it could just as easily have gone the other way.

One thing I will say I’ve noticed over the years. People who proactively choose what they want generally seem happier with their lives than those who had no choice, or who let others influence their choices. So, try to freely make your own decision and let your boyfriend do the same

19

Yeah well that was my status at her age, and as life has gone by I’ve just become more sure that I already did all my childrearing when I was coparenting my brothers.

I would have been open to children if I’d gotten married, because to me being open to children is part and parcel of marriage, but I’ve never actually wanted kids. At 48 I don’t think I’m going to get a sudden urge to change diapers any time soon. Sometimes I wonder what would any children of mine and The Bestest Boyfriend have been like, but that’s about it, and I wonder the same about those extra siblings people think there are between me and the Bros. It’s idle curiosity, not a yearning.

Will your clock start ticking at some point? No idea. It may. It also may not. Tell your man, make a decision together.

20

Based on her scenario if she’s 100% honest with him about her extreme ambivalence to be a mom and it’s important to him to be a dad he’s probably going to walk. Baby/no baby are level one deal breakers in terms of maintaining relationships.