Yes, of course. You forget that most women also want to become mothers some day, the number that don’t are probably much smaller than the number of men who don’t. She would not be shrinking her number of choices, she would be multiplying them.
I dunno, the trend in the postindustrial democracies over the last 50 years has been for many women to decide to not have children or limit themselves to only one or two.
I was responding to this post of yours:
First of all, Dangerosa never wished her kids never existed, she just realized that if she could do it all over again, she wouldn’t have kids. Since it is impossible to go back in time and change things, she’s not actually wishing they never existed, it just sounds like she thinks she might have been happier not being a mom. I don’t see anything wrong with that, especially in a thread where someone is asking on advice and for experiences with choosing to be a parent or not.
Also, you said that having kids and regretting it sounds like a symptom of mental illness, which sounds like to me that you are saying if she didn’t have depression, she’d have no reason to not want kids. Her later post clarified her situation a bit more, but this isn’t just specific to her. I think there are a lot of parents out there, moms especially, who love their kids and take great care of them, but at the same time wish that their lives had gone differently and that they didn’t have kids, but don’t speak up since having kids is the default and they don’t want to be seen as weird or terrible. I’m sure it’s the minority of the parents, but still more than zero.
You may want to actually click the link. According the that article, no.
According to that cite, currently about 30% of women compared to 20% of men do not express an interest in becoming a parent.
I have a friend whose wife left because she couldn’t deal with three kids. She never really wanted to be a mom, he wanted kids, one day she looked at her life and said “yeah, not for me” and left. Needless to say, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for those kids.
I have another friend who spent a year raising their nephew. His mother decided she was done. She doesn’t even talk to her own kids. Her son was 15. He’s in a group home now, they couldn’t handle him. You can’t correct 15 years of indifferent parenting overnight.
My grandmother got accidentally pregnant at 15 and had my dad. She blamed him her whole life for existing.
Don’t have kids because someone else tells you that “it will be different when they are yours” or “it will be so fulfilling.” Because if it doesn’t work out well (and mine have worked out fine, I just don’t know if I’d make the same choice), it is tragic. Its a minority of parents, but it sure isn’t zero. And I’m guessing that if they reflect honestly - every parent has had moments of “why did I do this!” when the kid is up at 2am and the walls are covered in vomit, or when they call because they’ve totaled the car, or when their first boyfriend looks like next years Darwin Award winner.
As to the relationship - be honest, but brutally so. Not “I’m not sure if I want children” - that gets read as “eventually, I’ll get her to change her mind” - but “if this continues, I may never want children - that is a very likely possibility and if you are hanging on because you think I’ll change my mind, that isn’t respectful of me. On the other hand, if you are ok with maybe never having kids, lets move forward.”
The OP sure sounds like she’s justifying not having kids. Don’t do that. Either you want kids or you don’t. Don’t let anyone talk you into having any if you aren’t sure you want them.
I guess as a woman staying with someone who wants kids while you maybe/probably don’t is a bit easier: if she ends up not having kids, the boyfriend will have an easier time still having them with someone else even if he’s a bit older. And in civilized parts of the world women are in control of whether they have kids, while non-celibate straight men can find themselves with that decision taken out of their hands.
That would be the right thing to do, but way too often people (men and women) who are not into having kids will waffle and lead on their SO who is of a very different mindset because they don’t want to lose the relationship. This would be a horrible and selfish thing to do to a person who wants kids.
Ever, or in the immediate future?
A quick Google search turned up some forum threads around the web where people talk about changing their minds in both directions (although often from assuming they’d have them to realizing they didn’t have to) but it seems that typically happens by about 30.
Way too often it works the other way as well - pressure from one spouse to have kids - or just one more. In some cases, she may get pregnant “accidentally on purpose.” I know someone who got her spouse from zero to five on the “just one…just one more” - he divorced her when she “accidentally” got pregnant with the fifth.
Either way, you need to respect what your partner says. Its too damn important.
Exactly. If partner X REALLY wants kids and partner Y does not, they are incompatible at a very basic level because their vision of a happy future is 100% different. Break up now.
I know several people who deeply regret having children. One, a man, did what men do- he walked out. He told me that being pressured by his wife to have the kid and giving in to her pressure was the worst thing he’d ever done. He told me the kid had totally ruined his life, and he left. He pays child support but never sees the kid.
Another, a woman, got married young and had two kids because “that was what you did.” She told me that if there was a pound for kids where she could dump them she would because she hates being a mother.
And there are large numbers of people who state that while they love their kids, if they could back and do their lives over, they wouldn’t have them.
Considering the large numbers of women who abuse and neglect their children and the large numbers of men who walk out on their children I’d have to say that the fantasy of “oh of course you’ll love any children you have” is just a fantasy.
Sorry about the double post, but frankly I don’t believe the “biological clock” is a real thing for women. Women used to get pregnant because they didn’t have access to contraception. In every society where women are allowed to control their reproduction, they have fewer and fewer children. As mentioned above, men nowadays seem more keen on children than women do.
So strange that someone so young is so manipulative! Does he take after someone in the family?
My brother always wanted kids, but it didn’t look like it was going to happen. Then, in his 40s, he and his girlfriend decided to keep an accidental pregnancy. She never wanted kids, but they made some compromises, including him doing most of the childcare.
Their child is five now, and every time I see them I can’t help but think they made a mistake. He’s exhausted from working full-time and then doing most of the childcare. She feels like an inadequate mother because she has never really warmed to her child. Unsurprisingly, their relationship seems quite strained.
All this to say - if you don’t 100% want kids, don’t have them to keep a relationship. This just really isn’t something that can be compromised successfully in a relationship, as far as I have ever seen. (Not saying you were considering this, but if you stay with your boyfriend, it is territory you might end up in.)
I think remaining open and honest for now and deciding later seems fair, but perhaps hard. Is it better to hope one of you will change your feelings about this, or to just move on now, before you are even more invested? It’s a hard choice.
The article is talking about aspiring to ever, not just in the immediate future.
Do people change their minds? I am sure they do. I’d also suspect that a woman who feels that she does not want to ever have any children in her later 20s is unlikely to change her mind as she gets older. And of course it is true that fertility begins to decrease from then on, and for some women faster than others.
Did they dig into how many of those men wanted to “have a kid” that someone else would actually care for vs how many intended to change diapers? The article doesn’t mention it, but based on the source I’ll guess the poll was taken in the US, a country where a large amount of men assume that a woman looking to partner up wants to be a SAHM.
Right. This isn’t an easy decision, as there are two good outcomes and two bad ones:
- they stay together, the guy changes his mind
- they stay together, the girl changes her mind
- they break up, the girl changes her mind and wants/has kids later anyway
- they break up, the guy changes his mind and doesn’t want/doesn’t have kids later anyway
As someone who’s proclaimed to not want kids since about the age of 12 I know how condescending it is to have people tell you you’ll change your mind. I can only imagine it’s much worse for women, whose natural role is to be mothers, right? But people changing their minds is also a real thing and the OP still seems on the fence.
So if she wants to stay with the guy while communicating her position clearly, I don’t think it’s on her to protect the guy from himself; he’s an adult, if he wants to break up given how she feels that’s his decision.
For those reading along at home: this is why you find out whether you both do/don’t want kids early on so you can get out without much heartbreak.
To the best of my knowledge, no they did not dig more than the simple question and I think that yes we have to assume a reasonable cross section of young adult American males and females with current biases.
And?
The question remains. Assume a woman who minimally leans to not having any children as her life choice, apparently about 30% of women. Should she decline to become involved with any man who does not currently share her choice (apparently roughly 80% of the men she is likely to meet right off the top)? Not talking marriage. Would a male expressing a wish to be the prime child care giver, perhaps be a stay at home Dad, influence that decision? Risking getting seriously involved, in love, with someone who does not share that belief, is, as noted above, risking future heartbreak. Limiting even being open to any relationship to the one fifth of males that pass that first filter risks loneliness as well. I don’t think there is any “right” or “wrong” answer here …
That those guys want kids like a 5yo wants a puppy: they’ve got a very vague idea of what’s involved and it doesn’t include poop, teething, fever… Most people don’t end up leaving their kids in the street, at least.
I’d say: if you’re under 30 and your prospective partner isn’t looking to have kids within the next few years, you have wiggle room. If you’re older and/or the other person wants to become a parent in the near future, steer clear.
The numbers I’ve seen are that about 20% of women end up not having any kids. (This number used to be 10% some decades ago.) So unless that has changed a lot recently, at least a third of your 30% will change their minds, probably more because the 20% also includes women who remain childless but not by choice.
Some may have changed their minds, and some may not have and may have kids without really wanting to have had them, a willingness to have at least one because the man they love and want to be partnered for life with wants children so much, or because they otherwise feel it is “expected” of them.
How many of those then regret that choice? How many are happy they did it?