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?

Haven't rtft. I'd never thought about it like that, OP, but it rings true for me. Having kids allowed me to step off the career ladder, in theory temporarily. I went back to work part-time, but in practice I have used motherhood as an excuse to continue half-heartedly and sporadically doing a job for which I no longer have any drive or enthusiasm. And it's not even that I'm a huge believer in not farming one's dc out to childcare. It's just that I kind of switched off. It's only now, age 47, with dc aged 9 and 12, that I'm beginning to realise what I've done.

I think the pressures you put on yourself, or that society puts on you, just morph into other pressures.

It's really common to have kids and feel pressure to BE so much bigger than you want to be: fulfilling work + great cook/nutritionist + ethical consumer + to mould beautifully-mannered join-in kind children as well. I haven't found that having kids removes the push to be the best person you can be, in fact it extends it beyond your self to children and family too.

Of course not everyone pays attention to it all the time, or any of the time, but it's there. It's exhausting to fight it off!

I haven't found having a child changed my life that much. I still do whatever I want, sometimes she comes with me, sometimes she can't come so I do what I want to do at a time she is looked after by someone else.

I stopped giving a fuck about what other people thought I should do with my life a long time before DD was born, though. She didn't come along until I was 39, and I had already reduced my working hours years before due to a chronic health condition. It was my health that made me reevaluate my idea of a normal life, not my child.

I suppose for some people having a child is the catalyst needed to develop the fuck it attitude. Good for them.

Thanks @Dozer

I'm eternally grateful for what I have achieved and optimistic for the future, the OP just really seemed to put into words the mental battle that's been going on in my head.