I feel the same way, at 38. I know this sounds dumb, coming from a guy, as technically it can never be too late… but I don’t want to get to the point where I’ll be well into my 60s when my kids are graduating from high school.
In our youth, little girls are enchanted by the prospect of happily ever after and allured by the prospect of becoming a Wife and Mother. Being raised with Christian values and morals mixed with our god given instincts as a female, this dream and vision is as natural and alluring as breathing for many.
But one of the many things that we are not prepared for is how deep our love is and how powerful that our god given protection instincts are once we give birth to a beautiful Baby. It is hands down the most “pure” time in any Relationship that brings an incredibly powerful sense of bond and eternal bliss.
What we are not prepared for is the results of such a “pure” love. I said, “pure” love not a perfect love. Like the old adage, they don’t come with instructions, but none-the-less, my Husband and I took our responsibility very serious and WHOLE HEARTEDLY (profoundly love him).
Our oldest was very easy and we were a very close family unit and very close external family unit until around the age of 13 when we could clearly see that the “dark side” was trying to steal our Son’s heart and soul. Like any Parents that are trying to do the right thing, we were very involved (in protective mode) and held our Son “accountable” after each call from Retailers and his Employer for stealing, to getting his high school girlfriend Pregnant his Senior year (after hundreds of talks on the subject. i.e. protection) it was one problem after another. Every time the phone rang from the age of 13-18, we would just cringe and look at each other with, what now? It was exhausting. It was perpetual groundings, perpetual talks of coaching, mentoring and guidance all in hopes of trying to make a difference in his life and to our fault, “we always bailed him out”. But our deep love for him never wavered.
A now 24 year old married and grown young Man that can “function” on his own (with help from his wife) only to grow up to label our Parenting and the accountability for his actions and choices as a complete depletion of his self- worth, self- esteem and self- value and social dysfunction as null thanks to us. Oh he and his Wife come over for their obligatory Holiday and Birthday visits watching their Watches the entire time and we are grateful for the bread crumbs of time that we get to spend with them and our adored Grandchild.
Meanwhile, I have been trapped in this perpetual state of assuming all of the blame and responsibility. It has to be our fault. What did we do wrong? Were we to strict? Not strict enough through spoiling (yes, we did over indulge his desires for material things growing up)? Yes, I was very involved during all of this, but with all of the perpetual red flags, I thought that I was supposed to. All I wanted was to make a difference and save him from the dark side. I would glad assume all of the fault and responsibility to fix this, but his anger and hate runs too deep and he is trapped in a narcissistic state of it is always someone else’s fault in his life which has rendered him borderline socially in-ept.
This once bubbly, type-a very social, strong and friendly gal is broken. Raising him and trying to settle and digest the results has broken me and I have become a former shell of myself. Day-in and day-out just trying to get through each day like a Robot, go to work, prepare meals, clean our home and force a smile when someone does visit us is as good as it gets.
Fortunately we have normal and healthy relationships with our other grown Son or so I think…LOL
If I had known how great it is to be a mom I would have done it sooner and had more than one.
Fuck, yeah!
Being a dad is challenging, exhausting, and eats up all of your free time. And it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. I’d do it again, in a heartbeat.
Maybe.
I’m sure I said something like that more than once, but life threw curveballs.
But as you can see from what I said here a few minutes ago, late is a hell of a lot better than never. Though my situation is somewhat different from your hypothetical, because I won’t be in my 60s when my son graduates from high school. I’m 60 now, and the Firebug is just finishing first grade. You can do the arithmetic! 
No, probably not. I don’t think I’ve been a particularly good parent, certainly not a particularly involved or interested one. My kids turned out way better than I deserved.
One more on the special needs makes it so damn hard.
I suppose if I “knew” ahead of time what my son’s life would be like, I might have stopped at one. I love him wholeheartedly though. As much as I might daydream about that easier life, I would never trade him now.
Yes, if I could somehow arrange for my apparently healthy son to have an MRI when he was 16 that would discover and lead to the repair of the arterio-venous malfunction in his brain that ruptured with catastrophic results on December 11, 2010.
Arrendajo, I’m so sorry. 
These are fascinating answers. I don’t have kids. Not a deliberate choice, but the circumstances were never right. When I was finally with the right guy, his medical issues quickly took over our lives.
I don’t know what to make of comments like, "I love my child/ren with all of my heart, BUT…
Is there something utterly taboo about admitting you don’t love your children? It’s like when people say, “I KNOW my parents loved me…of course my dad beat me, and they weren’t particularly interested in my life, and neither parent ever said ILY, but I know they did.” How do you know they did? Sometimes parents and children don’t love each other.
When I was 18 I decided I wanted no children and have never regretted the decision. This provided me with financial and lifestyle freedoms that would have been completely different from the one I enjoyed and continue to enjoy. To me, children simply represented a burden I had no desire to carry through much of my life.
Years ago, I conducted a completely unofficial/unscientific survey at work on this same question. However, before I posed the OP’s actual question, I prefeced it with, “I know you love your kids but . . .”
The replies were roughly 70% in favor of foregoing children.
Another ‘old’ parent here. I have absolutely no regrets about having kids – we have two girls, 4 years and 15 months. I was 39 when the first was born, and my wife was 36. I love the girls, and am so happy that we had them. In fact I feel truly blessed that it did happen at all, given how ambivalent my wife and I were about the idea. We were married relatively early, and spent 13 years of going back and forth about the idea. In hindsight I still don’t know what finally got us to take the leap, but I am glad that we did. When I think about how close we came to not having kids at all, it makes me sad.
But if I could have done it over again, I would have definitely done it at least 5 years earlier. I echo what a few other posters have said about having kids late. It is physically exhausting. I am relatively fit (and male), but it is amazing how physically tiring all this childraising is. Even though the girls sleep ‘relatively’ well, there is still hardly a night when we don’t have to get up for something, and I am still averaging closer to 6 hours a night. It’s not a disaster, but the loss of sleep does take a toll, and I feel mentally less ‘sharp’, and my work productivity has suffered. And all the picking up the kids, running around, etc has taken its toll on my knees and hips.
Yep, I am beginning to feel like an old man 
Speaking of old men, the other thing to consider when thinking about when to have a kid is the age of the grandparents. My parents are in their late 60s, and my wife’s parents are in their mid-70s. I am glad that we were able to give them grandkids, but I feel sad to know that they mad not be around to see our girls as adults. And the same will go for us and our future grandkids…
This question came up IRL a while back, and I gave two answers:
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Supposing a multiverse type scenario where my kids continue happy, healthy and whole in this universe, while I am moved to an alternate one facing the choices again… I think I might choose to be both single and childless simply to have the selfish opportunity to see and experience other paths.
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Resetting in this universe where my choice precludes the existence of the amazing kids we’ve had? Not a chance. Being around them has simply been too interesting and fun, and I want them to be here (if this makes any sense).
The longer version (and the whys):
My wife and I did childrearing the “right” way (assuming there is one). Meaning we planned, delayed and made sure all the major stressors were taken care of before starting a family. Things like the maturity of our relationship, stable career(s), home in a “good” area, sufficient savings, health insurance, plenty of disposable income for fun stuff, yadda yadda. To give an example, youngest is in college now having started at age 18; and tuition is (partially) funded by maturing 20 year muni bonds. Yep, we started college funds years prior to conception.
And our trip through parenthood has been the lest stressful of anyone we know. Kids have been trouble-free, absolutely no money worries, no discipline problems, no health problems, and (so far) easy launches into adulthood and self-sufficient careers. But even with these advantages, child-rearing is still by far the most difficult and time-consuming task I’ve ever attempted. Nothing even comes close.
Sorry for the stream-of-consciousness stuff. I hope some of this makes sense.
Years ago I visited my cousin when her two boys were 3 and 5. I remember being shocked when she made the comment to me, “Not everyone is cut out to be a mother.” She and her husband divorced a few months later, and they each took custody of one of the boys (she took the younger one). At that time, it was practically unheard of for children that young not to stay with their mother, and she got a lot of criticism from her family for not raising both boys.
She was not the type of person you’d meet and think, “That woman shouldn’t have children”. She was (and is) a warm, cheerful, outgoing person, but sadly she found out after the fact that she just wasn’t cut out to be a parent.
I had two sons. One died when he was 32 of a drug overdose. One was born with all kind of health issues ( Major). He works right now, but time will catch up with him, and his hips will have to be replaced and the arthritis will be much more of an issue than he thinks. BOTH were/are the sunshine of my life.
I can’t look at baby pics and childhood pics without crying… Not just for me , but for THEM.
Knowing what I knowl… No , no freaking way would I have subjected them to the torment life would bring them. If I had not known them, I would not have loved them so much. I would not have lost one to stupid drugs, and the other one would not have had to suffer his whole childhood, or now, or later. It almost seems selfish what I did.
Children can bring you more heartbreak than any other person. And it’s not always intentional… So call me selfish… I don’t care.
ISTM that there are different questions being conflated.
[ol]
Would you want to have children if you could do it again?
Would you want to have these children if you could do it again?[/ol]
Point being that a lot of the responses have come from people who had special needs children or other particularly challenging circumstances. But I think the question for these people is “suppose you could start from scratch and roll the dice again, with the same chance as the next person at having a child with no special needs, would you still take a shot at it?”
I had two sons. One died when he was 32 of a drug overdose. One was born with all kind of health issues ( Major). He works right now, but time will catch up with him, and his hips will have to be replaced and the arthritis will be much more of an issue than he thinks. BOTH were/are the sunshine of my life.
I can’t look at baby pics and childhood pics without crying… Not just for me , but for THEM.
Knowing what I knowl… No , no freaking way would I have subjected them to the torment life would bring them. If I had not known them, I would not have loved them so much. I would not have lost one to stupid drugs, and the other one would not have had to suffer his whole childhood, or now, or later. It almost seems selfish what I did.
Children can bring you more heartbreak than any other person. And it’s not always intentional… So call me selfish… I don’t care.
Yes. We have three boys whom we love dearly. The good has far outweighed the bad. I will admit that there are times I regret lost opportunities to do other stuff, but parenting comes first.
Abso - frickin’ - lutely.
For all the hard work and frustration and headache, there is no greater joy I’ve ever experienced than seeing my kids smile and watching them mature, and knowing that in some small (or not so small) way, I caused that to happen.
I’m glad I didn’t have kids while my life was so pathetic but I’ve always wanted them. So yes, if I had to do it all over again, I would have had kids, but currently, it’s still not too late for me.
Another vote for “please god, let the kid be normal.” I’ve worked with young people for a long, long time, and even those with ADHD or minor depression are just too much to handle. The normal kids who are a little slow, have self-image issues, or are just jerks are hard enough as it is.