Why are some women just not maternal?

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Just pondering really. I’ve always known I wouldn’t have kids just as I’ve known that I wouldn’t climb Mount Everest. It wasn’t really a decision and I’ve given it almost no thought.

Yet my sister has always wanted to be a mother and is a fantastic one. I absolutely adore my nieces and spending time with them, but it doesn’t make me remotely broody at all.

I know this is purely anecdotal, but she loved her dolls and prams when we were kids. I never played with dolls.

It is something evolutionary? Or something biological? Why is that feeling to reproduce just not turned on for some women?

Like many others here, I simply never wanted children. It was never a decision I had to make, in the same way as I never had to decide whether or not to run away and join the circus, or give any thought to whether I’d like to become a nightclub promoter. It just wasn’t on my radar as something i might even consider.

I spent my 20s and 30s being so careful about contraception. I never took risks, never had one hour of doubt or worry over a potentially late period, never had to do a pregnancy test. If I was late, it wasn’t gonna be because of pregnancy. Eventually at the age of 40 I had a sterilisation, after which the consultant told me that I had (heretofore undiagnosed) endometriosis and that coupled with my PCOS meant I probably would never have conceived naturally anyway. That was a bit of a wtf moment as I wondered why I’d just gone through a GA, but I have no regrets and am very happy with the sterilisation.

I do love babies and young toddlers, but struggle with older toddlers and kids. I don’t find them cute, endearing or fascinating. I suspect I’d have been a bad parent, I wouldn’t neglect a child or abuse them obviously, but I’d struggle to be interested and patient and supportive. It would destroy me.

Having said all that, there is a nurturing side to me. I work as a doctor and look after people with severe dementia. When both my parents were in their last years I cared for them and did so with love, compassion and pride. It left me burned out, as I was caring for them alongside a busy stressful day job and siblings who were unwilling to play their part, but I never let that frustration be seen and know that both my parents felt that nurturing and care from me until their last breath.

(And having typed that last paragraph, I’ve realised that I hate how us childfree women feel like we have to point out that we don’t hate kids, we’re not bitter misanthropes, we’re actually quite nice people… it feels like we have to prove that point as well as explaining why we are childfree).

A close friend of ours is a senior consultant psychiatrist & academic, and said that concerning motherhood and also marriage, these are factors which are affected by the early years at depth. This means that the child will develop their understanding of marriage, a good /bad partner and (probably) mothering in those pre-teen and formative years.

This is true. And women with children seem to be under pressure to explain that, despite them having children and loving them and raising them beautifully, they’re not maternal because they don’t like random children. When they clearly are maternal, because they have and love and adore their own children, and maternal is about your own children, not other people’s. It’s interesting.

Yes and I think this is why people are bringing up their uninterest in others' children - because it might seem like the closest you can get to predicting how you might feel about your own kids, before you have them.

I thought about having kids but never really had a strong desire. Did three rounds of failed IVF with ex. Now with someone new but it's extremely unlikely to happen because of our ages and health issues. I am suddenly thinking about it more and have had dreams of him holding a baby. It's a new relationship and he already has kids. When he talks about his ex being pregnant/the kids being babies i get this horrible little jealous knot.
I think to some extent I convinced myself I didn't want kids and suppressed it.

My sister has said since very young that she has no interest in kids. She's absolutely brilliant with kids, much more so than me, but has never had any desire to have any. My aunt was the same. Brilliant with kids but very firm in her decision that she had 0 interest in having her own kids.

You sound very similar to me,, from learning after sterilisation (hysterectomy in my case) that you likely wouldn’t have been able to have children anyway, to having a strong nurturing side despite not being a parent. I absolutely love taking care of other people, and animals. The world needs people like us x

I realised at the age of thirteen that I did not want to have children and have never changed my mind. Nothing about pregnancy, childbirth or child rearing has ever remotely appealed to me.

I wasn't at all maternal until I had my daughter. I changed a lot! Love my daughter dearly and even find myself love seeing cute babies and little kids when I'm out and about now.

I played schools with my dolls and teddies 😂 and dragged DB into it to the point of him being so bored he would just wander off. I liked to play being a teacher and also had aspirations of becoming one of the Famous Five I think. I only had an older DB and my Aunt didn't have children, so I don't think I had much exposure to younger siblings. In my early teens if you asked me I would have said I wanted 3 children, as being 1 of 2 was sometimes lonely.

When it came to dating, my first proper boyfriend was amazing, but I was having problems at home so I broke up with him.

To be honest I was peak broody at about age 17, but after that I was into A Levels, University, I travelled a lot, but never earned that high a salary. I had a relationship where we could have gone on to have a child, but at the time I had such massive imposter syndrome about my life. I felt really lost and like a complete fraud and that I didn't match up to anything. It took so much energy just to keep down those feelings of self hatred that I couldn't give any of my true self. I then met someone I really liked but they had a partner and although they liked me I couldn't bring myself to break them up. I then went down a series of progressively unsuitable relationships.

I started to get very anxious in my mid 30s around my body clock - I had never actually made a plan towards motherhood so I wasn't running toward that identity. Nor had I contemplated not being a mother so I had no alternative planned out. In the end I had a sudden illness then it was the pandemic.

I do sometimes wish I had planned for a life with children from a younger age, but I had a young mental age.

It wasn't meant to be, but I wouldn't rule out fostering.