to not want to be a mum?

[Purplerain101]

I’m early 30s and have no children. My OH and I were discussing the possibility of it last night and we were both brutally honest that it’s just not something that interests either of us. I’ve mentioned this before to people like my sister and female friends and they all look at me as if I’m completely insane and will 100% regret it when I’m older.
Have any of you not had children and not lived to regret it? I just don’t think it should be something I do unless I really, really want to be a mother (which I don’t). But what if I feel very sad about it in 20 years time and wish i’d done it? Any advice would be much appreciated

Sporty that should say how my feelings

With my illness bad sleep flares my symptoms up so I think even if I did really want a baby i’d end up having a very hard time of it with the broken sleep. My OH doesn’t want one as he’s had such a stressful life to date and he just wants some peace and quiet for the rest of it. He’s also very into environmental issues etc and he doesn’t want to add to the population.
I do think it’s great for those who do want children who go on to have them and get to experience being a parent though. I’m sure there are many, many pros to being a mother (or father), but the cons outweigh them for me personally. I just wish people close to me wouldn’t be so judgy and try and make me feel like I’m weird for not wanting it

I don't recognise this sentiment at all- maybe it's where I live, the kind of people I work with and my husband works with but I don't think people are surprised when millenials say, 'children are not for me', so these women aren't constantly being made to justify their decisions. Most of them I know on good incomes live in circumstances that prohibit them from having a family anyway - shared housing, living with parents in their late twenties so it makes perfect sense not to have children.

I get that OldB but surely if someone you don't know believes something that doesn't chime with your life you just shrug and move on? Plenty of people have said pretty negative things about parenthood on this thread but they don't apply to my life so I just ignore them.

My sister never wanted children, her husband and her saved / planned enough money to retired before 40.

To say again, if a friend says they don't want children I say nothing negative - it's only when directly asked would I say howI feel.

We could be mortgage and debt free in our early 40s if we remain child free as we’re able to overpay the mortgage with both of us working full time

Spaghetti, but you're projecting your feelings and saying that there must be something missing from the lives of people who choose not to have children or even just don't bloody want them! That somehow their existence is futile and joyless. I think that is totally wrong. The fact you feel like that about your children is great, but it's not the same for everybody. It doesn't make their lives joyless or less purposeful at all.

I’m not really sure that’s true at all repeal and certainly not to the same extent. I’ve seen both sides of this coin because I was infertile and went through treatment and ultimately it took 15 years from suspecting I was infertile to having DC1 so I was childless not by choice for that period. I’m very fortunate to have had 3 children (hopefully soon to be 4) so I’ve seen it from this side too.

By the time we reach our 40s most women are mothers. Mothers are hugely the majority. When you’re childless you are bombarded with images of motherhood and motherhood is the ideal. In the media, in advertising, childless women are having fun in their 20s. Get into your 30s and representations of women almost exclusively are of mothers and childless women are massively underrepresented. On a personal level not having children can be incredibly excluding from your local community where much centres around schools and children, events, holidays.

Women with children don’t face a constant relentless barrage of imagery, opinions and information telling them that they’re not ‘normal’ and they’re not fulfilling the ideal or doing what is expected and that they are not fully complete as a person.

I don’t think messages that you shouldn’t be a mother or are a bad or incomplete or unfulfilled person because you’re a mother go in the other direction at anything like the same level.

And it does seem to be socially acceptable to tell women without children there must be something wrong with them and that they are somehow incomplete or unfulfilled. But for a childless woman to tell a mother that would be considered outrageous and sometimes depending on the context (ie work) illegal.

It’s really not a level playing field. I find it quite sad women who never had a period when they wanted children but couldn’t have them (for whatever reason) can’t understand that. Because it’s very obvious.

My husband is 37 and younger people in his profession are always surprised and some mock him for having a 10 year old child, some have suggested he was a teenage Dad. He's an associate director Architect so they can't understand how this all happened when we had children 'so young', it's ridiculous, he was 27!!

I know that Formidable.

I am 55, separated with 2dd teenagers. They are blessed with lovely lives and a healthy and encouraged sense of independence.

However, if I had the choice again, knowing what I know now, hand on heart, I wished I'd had the courage to make peace with the fact I am a loner. I see myself going into old age very independent and autonomous and frighteningly poor. I worked through their childhood but part-time and so have not built up a realistic pension pot.

Their teenage years have been really turbulent and I swing between blaming myself and alternatively thinking this is the brutal reality of raising children. All three of us, husband included, are blessed with good health and I have a lovely home, brilliant friends and I still have career ambitions. But I do not see that having children has enriched my life. The reality for me is that child rearing has been a drudge. They are lovely people but joyful motherhood was a myth for me. I do know I would have regretted not having children but that is more about my needs than those of another human being.

Suspect I don't come across as a particularly nice person but again I think that is part of the social pressure of motherhood; the shame of admitting it's not been the glorious experience.

Well my son is friends with people who has a father 17 years older than my husband. There's always a bit of smugness about how it was the right time as they're established and glad that he has so much time for them that they wouldn't have had at our age.

If someone says to me that mother's are boring, always talk about babies, live a life of drudgery etc, it doesn't bother me, because in my life that's not true. Equally of I think that a person without children is missing out, put that person doesn't feel that way, surely they just say 'not true for me' and ignore? Why the annoyance and anger?

Let it go, Spaghetti.

Goldenbear are you daft?

You quoted 'joyless their lives were/are because they’re not changing shitty nappies or wiping up sick at soft play on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.' (Although you have cut off the bit where I was referring to childless women whose life’s were joyful despite not doing those things)

How does that translate to saying mothers lives are joyless? It doesn’t? Perhaps go back and read the post again?

Yes sir Bimbaloo sir.

Jenna43 so what if I'm being judgemental? Everyone judges someone on something FGS. I'm sure she judges me too.

They are your words that I am quoting. You said them. You wrote joyless.

Definitely not daft.

YANBU. Like many other posters, I think unless you deeply want to have kids, it's probably better not to. There are plenty of other ways to connect with others and to the world than having kids. I mean, I have 4 kids and I'd still say that while for me they're worth the effort, there are plenty of other people and activities I put effort into that bring just as much if not more joy.

I grew up in a community that both had lots of people saying "oh you won't regret it/it's different when it's yours/you don't know real...' type blah blah as well as had plenty of parents discuss unwanted kids, being disappointed at births, and a lot of regret. Maybe because it's a place where abortions aren't acceptable or accessible but forced and child marriages still happen, particularly because of pregnancy, so when everything's gone to shit, might as well be blunt about it. I knew from a very early age that neither of my parents wanted me. I knew people kept trying to tell them that something would happen and they would love parenting...that didn't happen. They now both have successful careers and are better respected now with us all gone than ever before. So yeah, they have the time to do what they wanted now, but...not everyone gets that time and I question if it was worth twenty+ years of their lives or the pain and damage to my siblings and I to have our entire childhoods in that environment. I think my mother would have been a hell of a lot happier finishing school and not having kids - just like one of her brothers did - and had that time for other things. At the very least, she likely wouldn't have ended up addicted to "mother's little helpers" among other things as a rather poor coping mechanism (or stay so long with a man who encouraged that in her...).

Also, I think it's a bit weird to have kids to avoid being lonely in old age. Surely there are better ways to have community and social life than literally making them. I hope my kids are well and want to spend time with me then but I think I would be setting myself up for hurt if I expect any of that. Having supported others while they cared for a dying parent...that's a very painful, stressful, draining experience and I would like to put as little of that on my kids as possible though such things rarely work out wished.

I think you’re conflating two things which aren’t really linked goldenbear. People who may have their own children or have them in the future passing judgement on when you had your children is not really the same as people who are always going to be childless telling you that you should never have children at all and they’re better than you because they don’t have children. And that nearly never happens. And that is the equivalent to childless people being told by those with children that they are inferior because they are childless. And that happens all the time.

Why the annoyance and anger

Noone is angry, again don't flatter yourself. The annoyance is because you are really annoying.

OP YANBU. Isn't it a great thing that we (generally)have the choice, unlike our grandmothers.
I knew I wanted children, but didn't meet DP till I was 39. have 2 DC now.
My DM was determined to not have children, then suddenly thought "I don't want to wonder at 50 what my children would have been like"

When do people really say they're superior to you for having children? Do they actually say, 'I am superior'? Maybe 20 years ago but I think things have changed in certain contexts anyway.

Like I said already Repeal, someone said they were angry (can't remember who) so I'm not 'flattering myself'