Scared to have children in case they have additional needs

I know of a family who has five children who are all adults now. One of the kids in the family has no special needs and has created endless hassle for the family and has been in and out of prison several times.
The rest of the family are all very settled and have jobs (one of them is a policeman) and have had no issues at all and this includes a child with Down syndrome who the siblings are mad about. I guess the point is you don’t know what is ahead of you regardless.

Offering a different perspective. I'm disabled. My disability statistically increases my chance of having a disabled child. I don't want that - not for me, I could cope - but for a child. As I've lived it and it is a really hard life. Sometimes the most selfless thing is denying yourself what you want the most.

With regard to adoption, bear in mind that these days many, perhaps most, children put up for adoption have difficulties of various kinds, often emotional problems that can make their behaviour difficult now or later. They are likely to have had negative early experiences that will have left a mark. This isn’t always the case, of course, but the days when couples could always adopt a perfect newborn baby (usually because it was illegitimate) are long over.

I have one set of friends who adopted a child who has been no trouble at all and brought them huge joy, and another friend who, with her DH, adopted a young child who turned out to have such severe emotional and behavioural difficulties, including violence against her, that her marriage suffered and eventually broke up.

Being human carries risks.

I get this and have a child with a chronic life limiting condition.
I am sorry when friends and family have children with additional needs because I know how hard life is as a parent of a child with additional needs.
I don't regret or resent my own situation it is my life and I love my family.
The reality is there is no way to know what you are going to get. You can screen for known things but there are no guarantees. I don't think being concerned about it because of your experience of seeing the challenges your cousin and her children face is a bad thing.
You either make peace with taking the risk or don't.
There is also no guarantee with adoption somethings don't come to light until children grow, develop.

I don't think it's an unreasonable worry but the only way to avoid it is to adopt a child without additional needs (not easy as adoption in itself causes trauma which leads to additional needs) or not have children.

I don't think it's insensitive. My friend has two children and the second has severe complex needs. She openly admits that whilst she loves them both she would have stopped at one of she'd known the problems the younger was going to have, not least because the older child has suffered so much because of it.

I wonder whether this is why I am relaxed about my children having AuDHD, even though my eldest has significant MH challenges arising from it and life has been hard. I had 5 miscarriages between my children and was just so grateful to have two live, healthy babies after all the trying. Plus, whilst one of my half siblings has a presentation of ASD that means he won’t be able to hold down a job and live independently, every other ASD member of our extended family (there are lots of us) all muddle along fine - degrees, good jobs and life partners who love us regardless of our sometimes challenging behaviours/quirks. Our lives aren’t easy, but neither are the lives of many other people I know who are NT - work, family, children, money all present issues that impact everyone.

I agree with this…..you’re not wrong in saying what you can and can’t cope with..x

To me it’s false reassurance because there’s so much you can’t test or prepare for.
I’ll take the star anyway though. I like shiny stuff

Exactly. Not unreasonable at all.

I don’t think it is rude. I think it’s wise to question your own limitations before you start. Let’s be fair we all love our children and wouldn’t be without them but if someone could have waved a magic wand and made my incredibly difficult son into a NT version of himself I’d have accepted in a heartbeat.

You can have a perfectly healthy baby and something can go wrong during birth causing brain injury, or cords. Life is unpredictable, any number of illnesses accidents could happen.

When you choose to have a child, you need to accept that level of responsibility, whether they’re born healthy or not.

Is it? I think most people would be anxious about having an autistic or disabled child. As PP have said, no one actively sorts out or wants this kind of life for themselves or a child, do they?

I completely understand how you feel. YANBU to worry. A profoundly disabled child changes everything. I’m afraid there are no easy answers.

Nope. Just putting forth a different view as so many people seemed to be advising having lots of screening whereas to me that doesn’t reduce risk.

You could have an entirely perfect pregnancy and a baby who is perfect until it goes through the birth process and dies or is massively damaged due to poor care. You could be like Jesy Nelson or Samantha Cameron ( wife of PM David and from a hugely privileged background) who gave birth to 3 ' perfect' babies between them who all started to show signs of serious conditions a few days after they were born.The Camerons son was hugely disabled and died aged 6. It doesn't matter who you are ,how much money you have , how well you eat, how much yoga you do. As soon as you become pregnant you are a hostage to fortune. Neither of my brothers had children because they couldn't cope with the chance that their children would have problems. My mother always said ' well you get what you're given and you just have to get on with it' which is harsh but absolutely true.

Yeah I wouldn't be able to cope with that at all. Your poor friend. This sounds like a living nightmare.

Given the choice, would you actively choose for your child to be severely disabled? I can't imagine you would.

Sounds like a bit of anxiety/OCD possibly. You could speak to a genetic counsellor about it if you are worried, or to a therapist if you feel it is more of an anxiety issue. I would *not jump to the conclusion of never having children if you want them.

I’d say don’t have children then, it’s probably for the best. Of all the problems a child can go through (severe physical disabilities, cancer, learning difficulties such as Down’s syndrome etc), autism is probably the least concern for me. Also, when you lose babies through miscarriage, you actually just don’t care that your child has autism because at least they’re alive.

I mean it in the kindest way, I’m not being flippant. Autism is a massive spectrum, many children have it and totally thrive, it isn’t the end of the world. If this is something you seriously can’t see yourself dealing with, you’re probably best remaining childless.

This is why we have stopped at two kids. If we had a third with additional needs it would be too much of a stretch for us to be the quality of parent we would want to be and would negatively impact the children we already have. The risk increases as you get older which was another big consideration for us.

I admire you for your honesty, but not many children have difficulties as severe as your cousin's children. Yes, having a baby is a risk - but so is crossing the road etc. It's life. You could have genetic testing to quantify the risk, but I suspect that even if it told your your risk was, say, one in five thousand, you would catastrophise that you would be that one.

When I was pregnant of course I worried a bit about whether everything would be OK, but only a bit. Your worries seem so much more overwhelming that perhaps you are right not to have children, though I would never have made that choice,

But does your DH feel the same? If he got married to you in the expectation that you would at least try to have children together, he might well be very upset if you have changed your mind. It changes the expected course of his life too.

And I DID have the screening tests so that if it did show anything I could be mentally prepared for a child with a disability. Not having the tests doesn’t make you better than anyone who did, did you want a gold star?⭐️

My dd has autism, adhd and a collection of auto immune disorders.

nd runs in my husbands family. Various cousins etc are diagnosed.

my dd has said she will never have biological children because she doesn’t want them to have her shit genes.

You're not unreasonable for thinking this regarding your personal situation.

It is unreasonable to post this thread here where so many parents with disabled children are present.

@Avelin totally agree with you, my friends daughter is non verbal, level 3 autistic and has golbal development delay. She is essentially a carer for the rest of her life.

Yes she loves her daughter of course but it hard and I know she has dark days and it has caused the break down of her marriage so now manages alone (she is utterly amazing)

We are child free not by choice but multiple reasons meant it was never going to be easy for us, I sometimes wish we had a child but I would rather be child free than be in my friends situation. No doubt I will be pulled apart for saying that but no would choose that life or wish for their child.