It’s becoming unfashionable to have kids

MEN

Aside from cost, climate change, AI, threats to my own body, impact on working etc etc men are a big issue - I would not want to be left a single mother. Look at this thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5146908-just-a-rant-about-how-blatantly-unfair-this-is-for-women

This in spades. I couldn’t have children, how dare anyone suggest I am emotionally stunted and unable to experience the world because of that. How patronising and how unbelievably superior and arrogant.

Totally. Didn't mean to come across as dismissive. Apologies to @Starfish89

I've worried about this too, but I used to work in a nursing home 30 odd years ago, when most of the elderly there had children. The majority might as well have had no family, for all they saw them, so it's not a guarantee the parents will be better off. Given how many posts I have seen in which adult children who have kids themselves see their parents as cash points and babysitters, with pensions they resent, I don't feel quite so bad.

No it’s not @WanOvaryKenobi , but I’m sure you understand that it can be scary to not have any close family at all? The poster is just being honest about how she feels.

Fertility is not a virtue, or a reward for any good behaviour, character, intelligence, or capacity to love. It is simply a card that is dealt.

I am childless by circumstance and I am also an only child. I worry so much about being on my own in old age and dying alone. Threads like this end up really upsetting me.

I look at my child free friends yes with envy on their freedoms but also pity because half of their heart, their human capacity to feel and experience the world will never be opened up.

I pity you for the kind of life you must have had before children if this is how you feel, honestly. It sounds very sad. My (childfree) life is incredibly rich with all-encompassing love and new experiences and joy, though, so don't worry about your pals! I'm sure they're fine. You smug cow.

Late to the party, but for me it's true. I've noticed in my group of friends so much so I considered starting a thread like this!
Lots of colleagues, friends, acquaintances of mine are childfree.
I think it's good.

‘I look at my child free friends yes with envy on their freedoms but also pity because half of their heart, their human capacity to feel and experience the world will never be opened up’

i have posted here trying to be positive, trying to be as non-judgemental as I can be because I don’t think it helps answer your actual questions - why don’t people want kids. And then I see something like this and I just get angry and sad because you’re always going to view my life as a half life.

I don’t need to see the colour red, plenty of people have described it to me - including my own mum, who has essentially said look the colour red is great, but if you don’t see it - honestly you have so many other colours to enjoy, it’s just one part of the rainbow.

You can’t see our side either - but I don’t pity you. Please don’t pity me and others who find plenty of fulfilment with what we have.

this is why I bail on MN. Even the CF forum didn’t work - we aren’t allowed any space here

@WanOvaryKenobi

It's an extremely defensive crabs in a bucket mentality shared by a few in this thread. Often people who have literally not achieved anything else in life other than their children so cannot fathom wanting anything else. And a defensiveness of "well I raised a family on nothing and scrimped and saved and I'm proud of that" who don't seem to understand that their lives look a bit shit to anyone that knows better

Completely agree.

This argument about money not being essential gets a lot of misuse. It’s true technically you don’t need a lot of money to raise children. And some people raise happy families on an absolute shoestring. So people take this to the conclusion of saying oh it’s fine, you don’t need money.

But from the outside it looks like a miserable and thankless grind.

I don’t think money automatically makes for better parenting or happier kids. But it sure as shit makes parenting easier. Why would anyone aspire to parenthood in the hardest possible circumstances?

'All I can try and say is having kids opens up an entire extra half of emotion and experience. I look at my child free friends yes with envy on their freedoms but also pity because half of their heart, their human capacity to feel and experience the world will never be opened up.'

What I really want to say to this would probably get me banned so I'll just say what a crock of utter shite.

What will you do if your children decide they don't want to procreate? Tell them you pity them and their human capacity to feel and experience the world will never be opened up?

OP are you a man? I have read some of your previous posts and suspect you might be. I wonder if that could explain why you only felt able to show your emotional side to society once you had kids?

All I can try and say is having kids opens up an entire extra half of emotion and experience.

Emotion and experience, but no insight or awareness, huh.

The number of general threads on this forum alone, which is only a portion of society as a whole, talking about fathers who disappear, never to be seen again, showing no interest, or children of parents who clearly never showed, not felt that, rather belies the notion that this is universally true of all who have children.
How much of this heartbreak could have been prevented by an acknowledgement in advance that this feeling just isn't present in some individuals?
As somebody else said, yours is a subjective view. Historically, we haven't heard much from those who have children but genuinely never feel as you have described, because who would admit it? With the anonymity of the internet, we are hearing more from these people. People with grown up children who admit they never wanted them, were pressured into having them, and honestly aren't interested in keeping in touch.
Because, despite evidence to the contrary, this narrative is still pushed (understandably, at base level it's about survival of the species), we will continue to see children in care, or worse.
We now have the best ability we have ever had prevent the arrival of children we do not want.
We no longer have to gamble with lives for the chance that we might magically change our minds once baby is born, or, as your quote indicates, somewhere further down the line.

So you're sad for us CF people because we'll never know true love? We've been hearing that one for a long, long time and it's not made us change our minds. I hear how much people love their DGC too and that's lovely for them- for me, I'm very happy that when I retire soon I won't be someone's De facto childcare. No amount of hearts and flowers would have changed my mind, I didn't want children at 20 and I still don't want them now. We're animals, and just like other animals we're supposed to breed, it's basic biology, but unlike other animals we have logic and reason and my hormones never got their own way and I'm so glad

Maybe you lived a shrivelled, closed, loveless existence before you had a child, but, as someone who was contentedly childfree till 40, and then had a child, I can assure you that I didn’t suddenly start seeing in Technicolour after 40 monochrome years. Life continued pretty much as it always had, with a delightful addition in the shape of DS.

And I’m going to assume you have a pronounced sense of irony in quoting a famously fucked-up fictional character brought up by prostitutes and an alcoholic, and who steals he identity of a dead body in the Korean War and embarks on a career of serial infidelity, as some kind of authority on parenthood?

Because she’s not happy. If she was, she wouldn’t be spending so much time trying to justify / convince herself that she’s made the right life choices. She’d just be getting on with it.

All I can try and say is having kids opens up an entire extra half of emotion and experience. I look at my child free friends yes with envy on their freedoms but also pity because half of their heart, their human capacity to feel and experience the world will never be opened up.

Oh, bore off.

Oh here we go, the usual patronising crap about how we don’t know how to feel properly. Get over yourself! Why do you care so much how other people live their lives? If you are so happy, why are you spending your time on a forum asking why everyone has not picked the same choice as you?

All I can try and say is having kids opens up an entire extra half of emotion and experience. I look at my child free friends yes with envy on their freedoms but also pity because half of their heart, their human capacity to feel and experience the world will never be opened up.

Has it not occurred to you that maybe it is you who lacked the capacity to feel and experience the world fully before you had children? I had been living and loving life fully before my children came along. Having children wasn't some mind-bending awakening for me. All that changed was I now knew what it was like to love a child. Had I never had them, I wouldn't have missed that feeling because how could I?

It sounds like as your world has opened your mind has got narrower.

This is total bollocks, and I say that as someone with a kid. I don’t actually believe you’ve posted it seriously; it’s got to be a wind up.

This doesn’t have to be us v them. Breaking news - everyone is different, and wants different, entirely legitimate, things.

You almost sound like you’re trying to convince yourself having kids was the right choice.

Chill out and live your life.

I am quite pleased to say that I was emotionally mature, capable of all kinds of feelings including love, and empathic and open-minded way before my children came along. Perhaps I should pity those who needed to have kids to mature emotionally.

All I can try and say is having kids opens up an entire extra half of emotion and experience. I look at my child free friends yes with envy on their freedoms but also pity because half of their heart, their human capacity to feel and experience the world will never be opened up.

Seriously?? People like you give us parents a bad name? You only know how you feel. Having kids made me feel pretty much like I guessed it would. I knew I would love them immensely. And I did. (I didn’t predict how much I would worry though). There was no earth-shattering realisation.

This comment is so patronising and sweeping. Many childfree people are just fine. They don’t need any more of the world ‘opening up’ and they are experiencing a different world you may never do. Many people have intense spiritual experiences that are not related to child-rearing. People can be fulfilled in many different ways.

And so what if someone doesn’t experience the exact set of emotions that you did when you had kids? Who cares?

They sure as hell don’t need your pity.

Why pity someone for not having what they don’t want? What you see value in, not everyone will. Certainly, that isn’t everyone’s experience of having a child, is it? It may be yours, but it isn’t universal and you’re being disingenuous to suggest that it is.

Similarly, you have no idea what anyone else feels or experiences, or whether their wealth of either is greater or lesser than yours regardless of whether they have children or not.

That does remind me though, of this study I read about a while ago:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0107205