To have a very healthy respect for the 4 women I work with who have decided not to have children?

[Perriwinkle]

Just because I think that in a world where it is almost expected that women who are who either married or in settled relationships should have children, and that it's the logical next step to absolute fulfillment in life, they are not bowing to the pressure from either society or their families and are just pleasing themselves.

They are not focussed and driven career women either who are relentlessly climbing the ladder and have put family plans on the backburner, they just don't want children.

I don't know why but I just find it rather refreshing.

Children do limit your life. And I don't know about you, but I am definitely much, much more boring now I have children. I do rather envy my friends who have actively decided not to be so boring.

Christ, I've never known four women at work well enough to have known what their key and definitive life choices were going to be, or how they would remain through the years.

I wouldn't want a workmate to 'know' me like that, either.

I didn't even know myself in my 20s and for much of my 30s.

I think it's just refreshing to see women not conforming to the norm that's all. it's unusual and I do think it's refreshing.

I don't wish I didn't have children, it was my choice to do it but I think it's refreshing to see people not bowing to the pressure to conform to social expectations like getting married, having children etc.

Do stop assume these Silly Girls Will Change Their Minds. I can think of several rather wonderful women of my acquaintance who've never wanted children, taken active measures to ensure they don't have children (including sterilisation) and whose lives have been massively enhanced as a result.

OMG please tell me you didn't really congratulate them all?

Yes, I'm a big fan of lots of women who didn't have children but the OP's proposition is flawed.

I doubt many people know 100% certain they want children, though - surely it's normal to be doubtful? I really, really want children and am dead broody, but of course from time to time I wonder if that's the right thing and if I will be a good mum. Equally, I've never met a childless woman who can honestly say she never once thought about having children. I'm sure such women exist, but I bet it's far more common to be 90/10 sure you don't want them and to go with that.

From that perspective, I think motherinferior has a point about freedom - in our society we're encouraged, sometimes quite strongly depending on the friends and family we have around us, to assume that it is natural and normal to want children.

I've just had visions of OP presenting each woman with a bouquet of flowers and a medal!!

I congratulated them for having the guts to not "go with the social flow". All have said that thier parents/in laws are disappointed. I congratulated them because I think they're brave not to cave in to pressure from outside.

I have known these women for years through work. We have become friends.

Does it matter where you meet your friends any more than it matters where you meet your partner? In fact many people I work with are married and met at work.

Perhaps I just work in a friendly place!

I have to agree that you're not as "free" once you've had children. It's not a bad thing - it's just because as mothers you suddenly are responsible for a whole other being, from the moment you get pregnant really. And that it going to hamper your freedom a bit. In my experience men can carry on doing what they want to more or less as before whereas for women it is definitely more difficult.

No, rest assured there were no boquets or medals.

I wish a few more people I knew had decided this.

MrBloom I had them all in a mental line while the OP shook hands with them all

I never wanted children, and if I had not fallen pregnant I'd have never had any.

I wouldn't be without them now though.

I don't want to do zoos or knights in castles, though! I liked the days when I went to the cinema to see proper adult films and could meet up to see friends at the drop of a hat and not think about family bloody friendliness! I liked being able to put energy into my job without one eye on the clock after 5.30, and/or organising the childcare juggle. I yearn, madly, for a holiday that is not constrained by the demands of three other people with a limited enjoyment of many of the things I enjoy.

I love my children. These days - now they are past those first exhausting years - I think that I do prefer having children to not having them. But taken objectively,I have to admit the limitations.

And I know about so many damn things - like secondary school criteria, or nappies, or BLW, or suchlike - that I was quite happy not knowing about and now take up huge areas of my brain and are really quite frightfully boring.

You know if you don't have children, the chances are your kids won't have any either.

Oh man...I have tears in my eyes from laughing so hard worra

I didn't want children and felt no pressure too (although was in long standing relationship). Then one day I did. I was 37. But it was my choice. I hadn't put plans for a family on the back burner, I was not bowing to pressure, I didn't want to please my mum/DH, i didn't feel judged by society, I wasn't that dedicated to my career and I didn't have any known fertility problems, I wasn't scared that I was getting old. I just one day realised that this is what I wanted (DH was a step ahead of me and easily swayed). DS is 3, DD is 11 days, I have no regrets (and career is just fine).

I agree with you OP about respecting their choice and also their privacy. It's just as ridiculous to ask someone why they don't want children as why they do. I can't see any huge logic in such a basic choice; it's just personal gut feeling.

I have many female friends (in their 30s, 40s and beyond) who fit that description and I respect their choice. It wouldn't occur to me not to, TBH, because I wouldn't judge someone for having children, either. I think they genuinely can't understand why people want children, so it leads to some interesting discussions. I don't think either of us is right or wrong.

Why would anyone assume everyone wants children? I would never assume that. I find it more surprising that so many people continue to have children in spite of financial / relationship problems and all the options that are available to women now.

In afew years time I suspect that at least one of them will have children. How big is your workplace? I find it hard to get my head around four women in one work place all strongly saying that they never, ever want children. It doesnt matter how close you are, I suspect that you dont really know the full story.

I'd say I knew those sort of details about a handful of female colleagues over the years, including one who publically said she didn't want children but "admitted" after a glass or two that she was actually infertile, one who said she didn't want children because they'd mess up her house (knowing her, it was plausible), one who admitted she'd been lying about not wanting them to improve her promotion prospects, and a male colleague who explained the medical reasons why he and his wife had decided that children were too risky. And I'm not exactly the Oprah Winfrey mother-confessor type. (I do not currently work with any of those people, I've moved jobs a lot)

So I can perfectly well believe that the OP would know this about her colleagues/ friends.

Perriwinkle - I wouldn't have congratulated them, but I would have accepted that that's how they want to live their life.

Were you "forced" by society to have children? Or was it something you wanted?