To think having kids relieves you of self responsibility

[GlitterUnicornsAndAllThatJazz]

Dont lambast me, I was discussing this with a childfree friend and I'm interested to hear what you think.

Dont you think that to a certain extent having kids gives you a kind of "get out of free" card? The rhythms of your life, your finances, your lifestyle are dictated by the kids to a certain extent. You dont have as much pressure to face as many existential questions because you've already fulfilled qhat we're biologically programmed to do. You don't have the scary directionless of choice, because your life is somewhat funneled by what the kids need.

My friend is childfree and I have yet to decide, but it also seems like if you're childfree you alao have to be "living the dream": you have to be a hardcore career woman or jetting off left right and centre "making the most" of your "freedom". If you're just living a "pedestrian" life on low income, its like you havent met society's ideal of what they would want you to be living as someone without kids.

It just seems like subconsciously (because obviously most parents love their kids and their kids bring them joy) having children is a kind of solution to the meaning of life. Once you've had them, your purpose and meaning is justified and anything else you might do is a nice extra raison d'etre.

Meanwhile without children, you need to answer those questions for yourself: who am I? What do I live for? What meaning does my life have?

What do you think?

Child free by choice here. I hate that I'm meant to be some kind of go getting glamorous career women. I just want to be.

I do think some people lose themselves when they have kids which isn't healthy. I've got other friends who seem to strike a healthy balance between being a Mum and being their own person too.

I hate how women are measured on their childbearing in a way that men aren't.

I think I agree with the op. As a parent my life has an inbuilt purpose, I don't need to try and impose meaning upon it. I don't think that makes me a better person or anything. It just provides an answer to that question of 'why are we here?'

I know what you mean OP. I am still quite ambitious and interested in culture, travel, education etc but right now quite happy to come home, make dinner, curl up and just be - weekends and free time dictated by family stuff, money prioritised towards dc and stability. It gives me a focus and sense of purpose.

I don’t think you have to conform to societal norms whether as a parent or non parent. Probably that’s because I’ve had a lot of therapy and care far less than the average person about what my family and the outside world thinks of me.

Chicken Vindaloo
I read the parts of that book “Better never to have been born”. Even the premise this book was written on is false for some beliefs. What about those, who believe in reincarnation? For many, the soul chooses to be born, for some even chooses to play a certain role to learn for this life and the next. So many sweeping statements and myopic views. I don’t know where to start. If this book makes you feel good about not procreating, great. But to have bought into the premise that you love your children too much to bring them into existence is the epitomy of pessimism and the opposite of being open to the possibility that maybe just maybe we humans all chose to be here before we were made.

It's probably just where you live and your set of friends, OP. I don't feel like I "need" to be anything at all. Where is this pressure coming from? Are you reading beauty magazines?

FWIW, having kids has given me a greater sense of self-responsibility as I am the no 1 role model to my DDs.

I completely agree, as a child free person that is. Having children didn't work out for me. I kept thinking that for those who have children effortlessly, in some ways their life becomes mapped out for them. Tick follows tock. I am not in any way suggesting being a parent is easy. It just seems a role is given to the parent and life (no matter how difficult) then follows a certain path.

When you don't have that, unless you were always set on not having children - it feels like you now have to find out what your role and purpose is. It can feel very rudderless. Like, what next. Friends with children often seem to have chaotic and very busy lives - but the road is mapped out.

A very thought provoking thread! I especially liked "there is no meaning of life". I'm 36 with 2 young kids and in constant angst that I'm not doing enough with my life. Then I think well I have kids so that's enough for now. So i can see the OP's point.

I feel I should be doing something bigger, better and with meaning all the time but that's my own issues. Wish I could just be and enjoy what I have.

It's a really interesting question and as the Mum of a severely disabled DS, (only child) one that I find really difficult to answer. I feel like I am in kind of a "Twilight Zone" between the two.

Yes, I have passed on my genes, however coming to terms with knowing that they will end with my DS is not easy. I wish I could articulate it better but it feels like being neither one or the other, stuck in limbo between being a Mum of a DS who is the light of my life but also child free because my experience of being a parent is so different to many, but horribly familiar to many others.

I feel like I am living half a life and knowing that the situation will never change regards my wonderful Son's future is soul destroying. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

I don't have these thoughts much now though. Through the passage of time, I have acceptance and actually now wouldn't have it any other way. I don't worry at all now what others think. I think that is one of the benefits of age.

I can understand that, leelu

I agree with you op. I have two kids, my best friend has none though would have liked some-hasn't met the right person and is single. I am divorced.
In lots of ways she is in a far better position than me, financially, career wise, freedom to make choices.But she would still say I was the lucky one because I have the girls...
She is Very set in her routines, cleaning on a certain day, batch cooking every other weekend for herself-it annoyed me for years-why was she limiting herself like that? Doing the things I had to do (but found boring) by choice when she didn't need to? And I admit I did judge her for not using her freedom to some extent...but I now realise that's what makes her happy-it's how she's comfortable kids or no kids...it doesn't have to be that if you don't have kids you have to be CEO of the company or out hiking the Hindu Kush... there is a lot of judgement of women's choices in general and I do think you are given an 'out' when you have kids to a certain extent.

I don't think it is true that once you're a parent your life has sufficient meaning and before it doesn't, but I definitely agree that's how society sees it (FWIW, I don't have children, am currently pregnant). I agree that society's 'script' is that you're sort of forgiven for not having children, especially as a woman, if you're doing something extraordinary, either career wise or travelling the world, etc.

I think a major contributor to this is a lot of parents' dogged, impossible to prove belief that if they hadn't had their children they'd be a CEO/constantly be on a beach sipping cocktails/etc. (I've read a bit of her stuff and the Unmumsy Mum is a great example of this - she is convinced off the back of the about three/four years she spent working on a grad scheme pre-kids that she would be a super high flier, if it weren't for those pesky kids!). It's a great excuse, but the reality is that most people never achieve their full ambitions and potential, and the idea that having children is all that's stopping you is a self-comforting myth.

Completely disagree. My son is the most wonderful thing in my life but he isn't the meaning of it. I've had a perfectly meaningful life in the nearly 40 years before he was born.

I also don't feel passing my genes on has meant anything. We had fertility problems as seriously considered using a donor embryo- genes would have had nothing to do with it if we had.

Honestly, I find it a little sad that so many feel this .. like you've given up on your own identity because you've become a parent?

“all my goals are child goals... I want THEM to be happy/healthy/successful af whatever they want to be successful in.“

I don’t think that’s healthy, in my experience with my parents who were like that. Decent parents want those things for the DC, but it’s not great for either the parents or DC for parents to put absolutely everything into parenting and have v few desires as individuals or a couple.

For me it has nothing to do with society's expectations, but everything to do with my own disappointment in myself. The relief from responsibility for my own life only (kind of) worked when my kids were little.

My children are grown up now, and I do feel like it is hard to find a sense of purpose and to feel useful and fully alive, but that is because of choices I made with my eyes open when my children were younger.

So interesting reading all the various responses. Seems to be very common whether we have children or not to continually question whether we are on the right path, making the most of our lives, doing enough... I certainly felt that but as I have got older less so, definitely more content.

Oh bloody hell glitterunicorns you’ve given me a complex now

I’m a SM with an older OH (in excess of 10yrs).

DCs are with us part of the week, EOW, shared school hols, etc.

And yeah. My mindset swings massively when I’m with them or without them! Which I hadn’t realised until just now!!!

I think it’s possibly a happier, simpler one when I’m with them

When I’m without them there’s the “what am I achieving!?” pressure, which I think is made worse being with an OH who has already achieved a lot, lot more than me and who will probably bring my own career to a premature end though his own retirement (I don’t envisage myself working FT while he learns golf!). And (I’d never say this out loud to a RL person) outside of work, having the DCs part time (due to time and finance) means I don’t get to do the things i thought I would as half of a child-free, little-bit-of-disposable-income couple. Some friends of his were reminiscing about the places they went travelling before their DCs came along and I nearly burst into tears.

Yep, I know IABU.

There is definitely something in this for me. I think I would have had a very good and enjoyable life without a child but being quite lazy by nature, I was very unlikely to have done anything out of the ordinary.

Having a child leaves something of yourself behind after you die (barring tragedies of course where a child dies before a parent) and for me that does give some sort of answer as to what my life will have meant after I am gone- i.e not much but a sliver of me will be around in DS's genes and assuming he has children it will carry on for a while.

Otherwise I think I would have felt I had to do something more meaningful with my life to have left something of myself after I died and being quite lazy I don't think I would have done anything so might have struggled with that in my old age.

Having something of me left in DS and (hopefully) grandchildren is is enough of an answer for me as to what my life will have meant, mundane as it is. I appreciate that may not be true for everyone though .

I do wish I had had more children though as DS may not have children, but in the end that is the choice I m,ade with my life and I have made quite a lot of peace with that now.

When looked at like that, I suppose having a child was pretty ego filled thing for me.

having the DCs part time (due to time and finance) means I don’t get to do the things i thought I would as half of a child-free, little-bit-of-disposable-income couple

This makes complete sense.

As a step-parent you have the tying-you-down part of children but not necessarily the look-what-I-have-made side of things. Nobody will say what a good job you have done of raising fine young humans.
(all this dependent on your relationship with the children, relationship with the other parent, their age when you came into their lives, etc)

Mummy of Dragons - interesting idea about the soul and reincarnation.

I can honestly say, though, that there are many, many times I have wished I had not been born - I've had eating issues, alcoholism, redundancy, an abusive relationship to deal with. And yet overall I've had a much nicer life than most people - I had a good education, a family who loved me, good health, enough money. And obviously I live in a developed country, not in a war zone or something.

I certainly don't feel that I was a soul who needed to be born if you see what I mean. If anything, I believe that God brought me into existence for reasons beyond my understanding. And against my will, to be honest.

But thank you for the points you raise, food for thought.

I have to say, I'm impressed by the intelligent ideas and debate on this thread, and glad it hasn't descended into a bunfight or anything.

What Lastonedancing said ^^

It does get people off my back about my not having a real career.

YABU and simplistic. I still have regular existential crises - they're just different ones now I'm a mother.

I was never going to have a real career, though- I have no interest or aptitude for managing people, so I’m not looking for a promotion at work. I had come to terms with that years ago, but I don’t tell people about it in real life. Now I have a ready-made socially acceptable excuse.
It’s kind of like how my house is a mess. When I’m working, I can say this is because of work. The truth is, my tidying/organizational skills are basically nonexistent. But when I’m working I can let people think it’s because of work.