Do you judge women who don’t want kids?

[Ellabella989]

I’m in my early 30s and have decided I never want kids. Literally every single female who I’ve confided in about this, from family members to friends to work colleagues, have been incredibly judgemental and told me i’ll be missing out and will eventually regret it and could potentially spend my later years very lonely if my partner dies before me.
AIBU to find these opinions very irritating? I don’t list all the reasons to them why I think their way of life is less appealing to mine so I don’t see why I have to sit back and basically be told I’m a freak for not wanting kids. Maybe I just know some very judgemental people :-(

The woman who is alone is 100% alone. No siblings. No children and her dh died 4 years ago. NO RELATIVES.

And having children is a guarantee you won't end up in such a situation how? I have two friends who only had one child (one who experienced secondary infertility and one whose child's father fled and by the time she found someone else and got married she was nearly 50) and that child died. They have siblings that live in the Antipodes. And are now widows.

They have these people in their lives called friends.

You can have children and they can die, hate you and go NC, move to the other side of the world, all sorts.

Goodness, yes, the man has issues (as he's the first to admit). However, this seems to make sense to me in response to the "leaving something behind when you die" argument:

Our genetic material gets diluted with time. While it constitutes 50% of the first generation - it amounts to a measly 6% three generations later. If the everlastingness of one's unadulterated DNA was the paramount concern - incest would have been the norm

As for one's enduring memory - well, do you recall or can you name your maternal or paternal great great grandfather? Of course you can't. So much for that. Intellectual feats or architectural monuments are far more potent mementos

And having children is a guarantee you won't end up in such a situation how?

Exactly. As an insurance policy, it's a very weak one that doesn't always pay out.

My favourite quote on this:

Why don't you want to be a mother?
The same reason you don't want to be an accountant

You just don't.
I don't have kids and I have loads of young people in my life and I'm very glad not to be responsible for them!

@Dohangoversgetworseasyougetold totally agree!

I dint care what people do and not having children is fine.

We all have different priorities.

I admire women who say it and mean it too and don't bow to pressure.

@cleanhousewastedlife

Being an accountant is ok when you get used to it 🤣

Being an accountant is ok when you get used to it 🤣

But you can try being an accountant & change your mind if you don’t like it!

Been reading more about Sam. Interesting stuff. Sorry I've got off topic!

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110615170145/women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article2439812.ece" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20110615170145/women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article2439812.ece

Vaknin lives in Skopje, Macedonia. He is one of five siblings, but he hasn’t seen his family for over a decade. His father was a construction worker from Morocco, who suffered from clinical depression. “Violence was the main channel of communication,” Vaknin says. His mother was from Turkey. She believed she was a prodigy, but had to leave school and sell shoes to rich people at the age of 14. “I have an IQ of 180 and it was her enormous misfortune to have me as her first-born,” Vaknin says. “My parents were ill-equipped to deal with normal children, let alone the gifted. I was her ambassador to the world, but I also constituted a threat.” Vaknin says his mother is a narcissist. In a short story – Nothing’s Happening at Home – fiction based on his own childhood, he describes the life of a six-year-old with a violent, resentful and unpredictable mother. “ …mother takes a broom to me and beats me forcefully on the back and all the neighbors [sic] watch… on the floor is this large yellow puddle in which I stand. Mummy’s broom gets all wet and the neighbors [sic] laugh… She takes down my trousers and I am exposed to the jeering crowd, drenched and naked. It isn’t a good day, this one”.

Kudos to you OP. I have kids but I sincerely admire people who decide not to have them - it shows responsibility and in our relationship- and family-centred society, a lot of courage. Parenthood changes your entire life, and having kids is a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly but it much too often is. Nobody should be expected to be a parent just because it’s considered the norm. Also, as people are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers of overpopulation on the planet, child-free people should be thanked, not criticised.

Sorry* Aria999,* no slur intended!

Kids can be an absolute nightmare and cause endless grief. You would not be un-tired for a decade if you had them. You will be immeasurably richer if you refrain. My DH and I calculate we'd have been living in the Georgian rectory of our dreams if we had not had two children.

However, now I am in my sixties friends who are a little older who couldn't or didn't have children and never regretted it up to now are feeling the loss and mention it continually. It is not just the 'who is going to look after me?' argument either. We also notice that they are different from our friends with children. It is as if having children allows you to mature and move on and there is a deep happiness and satisfaction with life when there is another generation (or perhaps too) to carry on.

I am not being judgemental as I think it is a morally neutral choice whether or not to have children. Child free citizens also cancel out those who are endangering the planet by having too many for the earth to sustain the population explosion.

In any case, you won't miss what you didn't have because you will not know what it would have been like.

However, now I am in my sixties friends who are a little older who couldn't or didn't have children and never regretted it up to now are feeling the loss and mention it continually. It is not just the 'who is going to look after me?' argument either. We also notice that they are different from our friends with children. It is as if having children allows you to mature and move on and there is a deep happiness and satisfaction with life when there is another generation (or perhaps too) to carry on.

You say you are 'not being judgemental', but you claim that the difference between your friends with children and your friends without is that the former have 'matured and moved on' and are more deeply happy and satisfied with life -- and the friends without children are thus, by your reckoning, comparatively immature, have not 'moved on' (whatever that means), and are less happy?

If that's you being 'non-judgemental', I'd really hate to see you when you're being judgemental.

Depressingly, you are just reinstating a load of tired old stereotypes about how not having children means you haven't fully engaged with life.

I was almost 40 when I had my son, and I'm pretty much exactly the same person I was before I had him. He's a new person to love, as well as a new responsibility, but I don't buy the stuff about motherhood fundamentally changing you. I certainly haven't. Maybe it's different if you have a child very young, when your adult character is still emerging, or if, for some reason, having a child takes your life off on a very different trajectory to how it would have proceeded if you didn't.

My childless friends in their sixties all have very full lives. Sixties is not old, they are working, travelling, socialising and having fun.
Yes those with adult kids do in general spend a lot more time doing family stuff.
But it sounds like the adults you know regret not having kids, of the childless adults I know only one regrets not having kids and she had infertility problems.

Filibustering I think some people with kids do not realise that everyone changes in their twenties and thirties, and beyond on, whether you have kids or not. Nobody is the same at 20 as at 40.

There are some strange attitudes to older people on this thread.

At what age exactly does "has an active social life" turn into "has to go to clubs to prevent loneliness"?

At what age exactly does "has an active social life" turn into "has to go to clubs to prevent loneliness"?

For me, 25!

Gone from drinking in London every weekend to local MeetUp groups for board games and walking....

Yes exactly! I have been going to a sports club for 25 years, so obviously just to prevent loneliness!
I strongly suspect that whether you are lonely or not as an active retired person, has more to do with the kind of person you are and whether you valued a social life and friendships.
If you are the kind of person who made no effort at all to make and keep friends, then yes retirement is going to be tough if you have no close family living nearby.

Filibustering Thanks for that it is really interesting. I have often felt really sorry for Sam Vaknin but of course he would hate me for that! Just wanted to say thanks for very interesting quote you put here.

As I said earlier, I strongly support Ellabella989. It does not mean she is like Sam Vaknin either! A trillion miles apart I would think! I knew a woman who worked in Child Services with very difficult children. She chose not to have her own children. Her partner and she wanted to adopt because there were so many children without parents. People who actively choose not to become a parent do not do so lightly. They put a lot of deep and caring thought into the matter. The OP is certainly one of these and it is reprehensible that people are trying to dissuade her or telling her she is wrong. She deserves respect.

Actually I'm an older mums netter and qualify for gransnet but often prefer it here. I'm home alone at the mo. It's ok! There's a lot to be said for it actually! I never feel lonely. I do have dogs so they welcome me when I come home.

This is one of those things that people do get judged on that is so insane it's hard to believe they're not imagining it/a bit sensitive. But, lo, no they are not. There are true a-holes out there who do judge, who think that they are in some position to form a view on the appropriateness of such a personal life decision.

I would never judge someone for not having kids and have a number of friends and family members who haven't.

However, I have experienced what I guess I would describe as someone who has decided not to have kids 'getting the judging in first.'

I have been asked how I could possibly consider having kids when I've not been through enough therapy/am suitably self-actualised before considering myself emotionally advanced enough to bring a child into the world (I haven't had a traumatic life and am in no way any more unusual than any of the other women I've met on a labour ward/at the school gates/etc who decided to have kids.) I've also been told things like "you can kiss the skiing holidays good bye " once you've had kids. Well, that's then! Skiing or kids...tough one...I burst out laughing when the person said this to me (and I was already pregnant at the time.)

have never been called a 'breeder' to my face though.

No

I admire women who openly admit they don’t want children and don’t feel the need to justify themselves but I absolutely understand why they do

I think as women we are extremely privileged to be able to choose to have children or not, we have free birth control, free abortions, we have choices and shouldn’t be judged for those choices. In America they do not have free birth, in Afghanistan they believe it’s the man that decides how many children a woman should have so thank your lucky stars as women we can choose 😊

Yes we are privileged compared to many women but these things should be automatic and unquestionable rights for all women, we should not have to be thankful for these things we should expect them as a matter of course
Men aren't expected to be thankful that they have control over their bodies, why should we be?