I dont understand why anyone would want children

[Careerchangeplease]

I'll preface this by saying I can sort of semi understand why people with lots of money and time and support etc would have a more enjoyable time having kids but for the 90% of the population, I dont understand why anyone would want to have kids and give themselves

• less sleep and rest
• more work
• more stress
• less money
• more worry/anxiety
• less free time
• less relaxation/leisure time

All the stuff that comes with pregnancy and birth, pain, bleeding, prolapses etc etc Not to mention all the shit things that are happening in the world, the fact that the kids will probably never be able to buy a house, cost of living is just getting worse etc Obviously each to their own and live and let live but am I missing something?

Animals have a drive to mate/have sex, but not a conscious desire for offspring. They don’t associate mating with having offspring. Humans are unique in having a conscious desire for offspring, and that desire is heavily influenced by social conditions and circumstances. And most of the time when mating, humans don’t want offspring to happen at all. It’s just not as simple for humans as a biological urge.

Yes that's true: it is definitely more complicated for humans.

But I think we are sort of saying the same thing, ie; it's not true to make a blanket statement that people all have a biological urge to reproduce.

And when it’s someone who has dcs themselves but say they totally get the OP and their life would have been better wo children (which you can whilst ALSO loving your dcs to bits), what do you say??

Apart from ‘I don’t care’ whilst writing a long post showing you do care 😁😁

Well I felt that bond as a child but I never understood what that love felt like as a parent until
i had my children. I had absolutely no clue so I stand by what I say

Nobody knows what it feels like to become a parent before they become a parent. The question is about why people decide to do it in the first place.

What a load of bollocks. I’m a lesbian with a child, I had a strong biological urge to have a child from my late 20s onwards. Gay people are not missing the biological urge gene 🤣🤣 your sexuality makes no difference to how much you do or do not desire to have children! I have straight friends without kids where they just never had that urge and I know lesbians with 4 kids

@fetachocolate i don’t think you can compare what it feels like to love your parent (as a child or as an adult - both are quite different) to the kind of love you feel for your child. As a child I remember loving my mum more than anything but it was based on a need to feel secure & safe, which is biologically wired into all children. It’s a love driven out of need. As an adult I still love her but I don’t need her, and I’m happy to see her a couple times a month. With my child, I don’t NEED her, I just love her more than anything in the world, it’s unconditional and totally pure. Most people would do anything to protect their child, even die for them. I couldn’t only see her a couple times a month, my heart would ache. There’s nothing she could do to make me stop loving her, but there might be things my parents could do to make me stop loving them. It’s a totally unique kind of love that I’ve never experienced before and really can’t be compared to anything

To add, gay people are not less likely to have children because they “naturally” lack the biological urge, it’s because it’s more complicated and expensive to have kids than it is for straight people

Well obviously if you only list the negative points it’s going to seem like a no brainer but you’re not considering the positives. Also, the degree to which each negative on your list is relevant for any particular individual/couple will obviously vary and/or not always be true eg

Less sleep/rest- yeah this is true for maybe the first few years but my daughter is ten and for since she was 2/3 years old I’ve had a normal amount of sleep apart from early mornings and in the last couple of years those have approached normality too and now she even sleeps longer than me sometimes!

More work/stress- definitely, but different people will have differing levels of resilience, some will have more support than others

Less money- true but everyone’s circumstances and how much this matters is different for everyone

More worry- true but this goes hand in hand with loving someone that much, many will consider this a fair price to pay for what children bring to their lives

less free time /leisure- sure, but it doesn’t always have to be this way, especially if you have a support network and work as a team with your partner. Obviously more true for single parents or those who are isolated.

Anyone has the right to decide whether they want or don’t want children for whatever reasons are relevant to them. But none of the factors you list are universal or absolute barriers in themselves

I wasn't - I don't think you can have any idea what it's like before you do it. I was talking about why people make the decision in the first place, before they know.

Genuine question and with no malice intended - why are so many people on a forum called 'Mumsnet' when they have no interest in being a parent? I read the original post with some interest but I'm confused by many of the replies. I appreciate some people will be here because they would love to have children but can't, or they have lost children, or are trying to have children, but I've seen a number of posts from people who clearly do not want (or, in some cases, don't particularly like) children, so why are you here? Not disputing your life choices at all but surely this forum is not the place for you?

With a little bit of respect, maybe do a site search.

This “faux naive” question has been done to death on here.

Are those without children unable to participate on subjects such as property, diy, tv, feminism, gardening, cats, dogs, horses, politics, news, elderly relatives, etc? Or should all those topics (and plenty more) only be posted on by those with a query as to how, say, gardening impacts them in relation to having a child?

And Mumsnet fully welcomes those without children, but feel free to message them to confirm this (or click on the “see MNHQ comments” link on this thread).

Because mumsnet is the only place on the internet where you can get a balanced opinion on whether to eat 2-day old chicken out the fridge

I’m sure if you think hard, you’ll figure it out.

I first discovered MN when I was doing my A Levels and studying online forums for a media studies essay about 15 years ago or more! Always knew I didn't want kids but having a forum with primarily women around is still not an easy thing to find. Reddit is good but more for gaming / specific interests, very American and very male. I have my gripes with this place but I've been back in various guises since then. Also what @Spookygoose and @IJWMM said!

Just because some1 admits they either don’t want or don’t like, etc, etc, children, doesn’t stop the existence of their children?
I expect there’s been a clearer reply along the same lines, soz 😊

I can't really answer your question OP, but what I will say is that I have felt exactly the same for most of my life (late fifties now), childfree by choice all the way, never been a broody person and didn't understand why people put themselves through the hassle of kids. From the outside it used to seem like a triumph of biology over common sense, to be blunt.

Then my father died, I hit menopause and something kicked in - too late, of course, and there's a degree of regret there now that there never was before. Only a degree - I'm still not what you'd call a broody or maternal person, and I'm probably too selfish to be a parent - most of my regrets seem to centre on being the age I am now and how nice it would be to have grown offspring and grandkids, but that's selfish, I was never willing to put in the hard yards, so it is what it is. I never ever wanted the baby or toddler stages, they looked like hell from the outside, I know I personally couldn't have coped (various MH and physical health issues), so overall I think it's all worked out for the best. Who knows, maybe on some level my brain was acting in my best interests. But what I'm getting at is I understand why people do it now, somehow, on a level I never used to, and never expected to.

And I'm absolutely not trying to say it's inevitable a childfree-by-choice person will change their mind, it absolutely isn't and it makes me mad when people say that. Just making the observation that the ageing process can bring us to see the downsides, as well as the upsides of our choices, more clearly. It's just the life force at work, I guess.

Do you really want a list of all the reasons people want children?