What is it like not having children?

[Jesrob]

I had my DS fairly young and I don’t have any regrets. I like my life but sometimes I look at my friends in their 20’s child free and see them being a career woman who hits the gym each night, goes for cocktails with the girls on a weekend and multiple trips away with the fiancée. Can’t imagine how it feels just to go and do what you want without arranging childcare or having so much headspace taken up by kids schedules and needs. What’s it like?

Love this!

I usually find posters who use phrases like ‘Just my view!’ or worse ‘Just my two cents’ really irritating, especially if they add a perky exclamation mark, but I think that’s a very important point for this thread.

I’ve got a friend who adopted 2 girls with SEN & her life is extremely hard work. But I know for her & her DH it’s all worth it because they love them so much.

None of the people I know who don’t have kids did it for cocktails out and going to the gym reasons. It is like some of the other people on this thread said, they always knew they didn’t want them so there was no choice to be made or they struggled to have children for fertility or relationship reasons.

I didn't have children until my late 30s, so I have experienced adult life with and without children.
I enjoyed my pre-children years. I remember long lie ins at the weekends, lazy weekends, lots of free time to fill, spontaneous trips away, lots of fun and silliness. I feel like, in a way, I extended my youth beyond was is normal/appropriate (still living a party/drunken lifestyle in my 30s).
However, I've always had a strong maternal instinct, so I felt like something was missing. I also felt a little aimless, like I was missing a sense of purpose. Once I had children, I felt fulfilled , and I had a focus in life.
I know it's not like this fir everyone. I know lots of childfree people who are very fulfilled. For me though, I needed to be a mum and it would have been good to have them earlier.

I also had kids in my 30s, it was never in my plans as a woman, I had a busy and fulfilling professional and social life by that time. Having my child though helped me develop as a person so much more, it opened a new world in terms of emotions and experiences that wouldn't be possible otherwise. My career took off even more and I still have a perfectly balanced social life that now also includes experiencing all these things, e.g. going to the theatre/ concerts, travelling around the world, through the eyes of my child. It has been an extremely rewarding experience to be able to go through this and develop in new ways and I wouldn't have it otherwise.

Isn’t it interesting that despite a very clear thread title, ‘what is it like not having children?’, lots of parents have come on and posted about having children? Why would you do that? If the title was ‘what’s it like not having pets?’ would pet owners respond? Or ‘what’s it like being long-term single?’, would married people respond?

I just know that people are going to respond to this and justify their posting here by saying they ‘know what it’s like not to have kids’ because they didn’t have theirs til whatever age, but being childfree in your 20s/30s and early 40s, with either vague or definite plans and hopes to have kids at some stage is vastly different to planning for an entirely childfree life. They’re totally different experiences and life trajectories.

(and yes, I know the op muddied the waters by having a different scenario in her post to her thread title, but still, presumably the title attracted posters in the first place)

Yes, you are right.
I wont post again
I just find MN deeply binary in many ways. Like
I wanted love and legacy and hated the long winter evenings so I had kids!
Or
I wanted to travel and go out and read a book in peace so I didn't have kids!

When actually it is possible to have all these things with or without kids; depending on some circumstances.

I'm (40) childfree by choice and have been with DH (43) for 20 years.

Apart from a couple of blips, lasting a few weeks here and there in our early 30s, we've never wanted kids.

I love the small freedoms of not having children. Going to the gym or for a run multiple times a week, eating really well, having a lie in at the weekend, deciding on a Sunday at 12.50pm that we want to go out for lunch and leaving the house 10 minutes later, taking the dog for a long slow stroll in the sunshine after work.

I also love that DH and I can invest in our relationship. A lot of friends with kids seem like ships that pass in the night, although they do make it work.

I never miss having kids or wish I could trade with anyone. Even times like Christmas, which for most people are all about kids, I love our quiet childfree Christmases.

Unfortunately, we both work full time, so it's not a life totally free from ties and responsibility!

I'm someone who can keep myself busy endlessly with the gym, dog walks, social clubs and so on, so I'm not concerned about potentially being on my own one day. We live centrally in a market town with loads of amenities on our doorstep. Meanwhile, my PIL live out in the sticks several hours from DH and his sister and are in chronic health, and see their kids (who both work full time) for a few hours a few times a year, so being parents doesn't mean they are regularly in the company of their children.

I just know that people are going to respond to this and justify their posting here by saying they ‘know what it’s like not to have kids’ because they didn’t have theirs til whatever age, but being childfree in your 20s/30s and early 40s, with either vague or definite plans and hopes to have kids at some stage is vastly different to planning for an entirely childfree life. They’re totally different experiences and life trajectories.

Yes, definitely - & if these people spent their childfree years partying, travelling, buying expensive stuff etc, they assume we’re all spending our whole lives doing that.

Re your comment about long-term single threads - married people absolutely post on those. Either we’re discussing the best things about living alone & they say ‘But I can do all that too with DH’ or they talk about how much they’d hate it. Irrelevant & unhelpful either way.

I planned for an entirely childfree life. I then decided to have a child just before I turned 40 and conceived the first month. It’s ridiculous to pretend I wasn’t somehow really childfree for twenty years of my adult life.

Yes it cracks me up when people think us 40+ year olds are still going clubbing at the weekend and then lolling about with a hangover!

@PoppyBaxterI tried it recently. I will never, ever forget that hangover 😅

I’m child free by choice and love it. I also don’t work (passive income) and so my friendships with those who are SAHMs are easier to maintain. I have quite a few godchildren and though I love them because they’re the children of my closest and oldest friends, the sheer tedium and chaos and mess and dirt and NOISE of any visits I make (up to an age point) has me so relieved I don’t have children. It would be a prison sentence to me.

DH and I literally hug everyone goodbye after a Sunday lunch visiting friends and their children, get out of their house, get out of view and say how glad we are we didn’t make those life choices. I couldn’t stand it. I love how it makes my friends happy but I could NOT be a mother.

I couldn't agree more with this! The types of experiences described here by those that are childfree are the same for those that had children later in life or even for those whose children are older. I can think of very few things that most childfree posters have described here that I wasn't able to do when my child was slightly older. It's fine to justify this on the basis that someone doesn't feel like being a parent but this doesn't mean that parents can't do what other people do to have a fulfilling life.

But then you’re not one of the people I referred to in my post but being childfree in your 20s/30s and early 40s, with either vague or definite plans and hopes to have kids at some stage, given that you did plan to be ‘entirely childfree’, so my post isn’t relevant to you and I’m not ‘pretending’ anything about you. But it’s another nice example of someone posting about themselves on a thread/in reply to a post that’s actually not about people in their situation.

Exactly this.

It's fabulous. I wake up when I want, watch what I want, go out when I want, don't have to cook for anyone else, have my entire income to spend on myself, go on holiday with big term-time discounts to calm adult-only hotels, and can sit in blissful silence if I feel like it.

As far as I know I'm fertile and could have children but I can't think of one good reason to do it.

With the doubts you've expressed, and being only 28, I'd say you should and probably will have children.

I'm 40 and have never had those same (or any) doubts. I think if you're curious about parenthood or have any concerns about regret down the line, you should just have one (as long as your circumstances are suitable for it).

OP I've known many like you and by their late 30s and forties they have older teens and they are now "free", which can be the best years to be. Better confidence etc
There's pros and cons to whatever age we have them

No, I’m responding to a general tendency in posts about being childfree, where people who did eventually have a child are somehow ruled as having never been ‘really childfree’. As though twenty years of contentedly childfree existence don’t count because I didn’t hold out till beyond the point where I couldn’t have had a child biologically.

Though I suspect I also buck a trend on here in thinking that, once you’re beyond the small baby/young child stage, life with a child is not in fact wildly different to life without one. That’s certainly my experience. You don’t have to live some kind of existence where your life centres around taking your children to their activities.

The only childfree people I know who are leading lives that would not be tenable with children are also those who are longterm single/in fairly loose and/or temporary relationships for the same reason. One friend has arranged his life around training for extreme events, like ultramarathons in extreme conditions, and is away competing or doing altitude training probably six months a year. Another spends winters living as a volunteer and student at a Buddhist centre and the summers earning income as a peripatetic mountain guide. I think he has a houseboat in the Netherlands but mostly uses it to store equipment.

Which is not to say that the childfree should be leading lives centred around extreme sports and Buddhist solitude, obviously. Only to say that life with a child and life without a child, in my experience, are not usually so diametrically opposed. My two closest childfree friends’ daily lives and ability to travel are far more restricted by their dogs than mine is by my 13 year old.

Only to say that life with a child and life without a child, in my experience, are not usually so diametrically opposed. My two closest childfree friends’ daily lives and ability to travel are far more restricted by their dogs than mine is by my 13 year old.

But the child lives in your home. You can’t close the door at night & know that it’s just you. And that’s the biggest part that I couldn’t stand because much as I love hosting & socialising, I only relax completely when I’m by myself.

I think if you're curious about parenthood or have any concerns about regret down the line, you should just have one (as long as your circumstances are suitable for it)

But what if she finds out she hates parenting, or the just one turns out to be multiples?

I’d have thought parenting would be the ultimate ‘when in doubt, don’t’, given that it’s a mammoth responsibility and there’s no way to change your mind.

I think if you're curious about parenthood or have any concerns about regret down the line, you should just have one

What an appalling piece of advice!

I think if you're curious about parenthood or have any concerns about regret down the line, you should just have one

it's a child. What if she really hates being a parent? You can't return children, and they've not asked to be here. It's interesting to me how more thought seems to be going into deciding not to have children than to have them.

But the main difference is simply that you do have a child and child free women don't! A lot of people have shared examples of fun ways it improves their lives not having them, but overwhelmingly we've said the best thing about not having them is just not having them.