To ask why you didn't/don't want children?

[alfie22]

I'm in no way judging anybody who have decided not to have DCs.

But I am genuinely intrigued for the reasons why after reading a thread about somebody's DD not wanting children.

What are your reasons for not having children? Would there any be "what ifs" further down the line?

I did want children but i was diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis when i tried to have children at 29 and ended up with a full hysterectomy at 31 so no chance of that now.

I am now 34 with a new partner (marriage fell apart due to husband not being able to cope) and pretty happy without children now. I have accepted and moved on now.

Peachsummer, I'm so sorry.

I've always made it very clear, to any man with whom a relationship starts to get serious, that I do not want children and that this is non-negotiable.

Reading your post has made me thankful that I did this. None of my long-term partners have ever tried to persuade me to change my mind, even when they would have liked to have a child with me.

Knew from a young age I didn't want children. Luckily for me DH was ambivalent!

I think people who don't have children by choice generally put a lot more thought into the decision than many people who do have children.

I've seen what having children does to the strongest and most loving relationships - it broke my DSis's marriage, and my lovely SIL has zero respect for her husband following his behaviour after their daughter was born (she's now 17, and I wonder if their marriage will survive her leaving home next year).

I don't find small children and their antics cute. To me, they're just incessant, noisy, unutterably boring.

I hated the thought of years of spending evenings and weekends ferrying children to activities, parties and the like, attending concerts, plays, parent's evenings etc.

You only have to read the threads on here to know how often a vision of having a family rarely matches the reality.

The unremitting struggle of caring and advocating for a child with disabilities, the worry about what will happen to them when you're too old to care for them (have a friend in these circumstances and the anguish she is going through is heartbreaking).

The utter codswallop of the statement 'Children give your life purpose and meaning'. Well, maybe they do for 18 years, but what then - does your life become meaningless when they leave home?

I really like our little life - yes, we do have great holidays, go out for dinner, theatre etc., but it's more the small stuff - cooking dinner together, going to my book group and painting classes. Going for walks without having a small person in tow whinging that they're bored/tired etc.

If we had, for some reason, found ourselves with a child, I'm sure we would have loved it, nurtured it, cared for it etc., but our lives would be very different, and to me, not better.

Very honest posting by Peach

I bet for those three people there are three thousand that will tell you it's great.

Pretty sure I know all of them personally, amount of times I have had people bore on at me for my personal life choices - which have absolutely zero impact on their life.

I take issue with non-parents who assume what being a parent is like. They haven't done it, yet believe it's all shit. Which is just uneducated opinion.

I think you are mistaking “educated” for “uneducated”.

An “uneducated” opinion would be to go into parenthood without imagining any examples of the downsides of such a life that might make you regret it.

An “educated” opinion is having the foresight to know that this is not a life that will bring you your most fulfilled life. And therefore choose not to be a parent.

You have to be a person greatly lacking in imagination if you really believe that being a parent is better than not being one. It’s not a competition nor is there a right or wrong/better or worse. It’s just two different life choices.

I was adamant I didn’t want any. Got to 36 and then changed my mind 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

I can honestly say that life as a person who didn’t give a crap about biological clocks and ovulation was much more fun than trying to make them and failing. I did manage to have two in the end but feel very much like I have a foot in each camp. I am now totally over-emotional, anxious, cry at anything and I miss the hard bitch I once was. If I could come round again I would definitely elect to be a woman who doesn’t want children and remained that way. Life feels a lot less scary, when environmental arguments get thrown up you can just say, ‘yeah, we’re all going to die, so what!’ Now of course I get myself very worked up about that shit as my kids are going to ha e to deal with it as they age.

Never, ever had any 'maternal feelings' or desire to have a small person of my own to look after, care for, have fun with, get annoyed by...and all the other stuff that comes with parenting.
Am perfectly aware it's a mixture of positive and negatives, and people say that having kids is amazing but not even the positives have ever been enough to make me feel as if I want my own.
Am 43, and it's never been any different. I can remember being about 8 or 9 and saying I didn't want children, and I never have.

I did play with dolls when I was younger, but that didn't translate into then wanting my own kids. The thought of being pregnant and having this thing take over your body for nine months...... ugh....

I'v done a lot of kids/youth work over the years, and quite like kids; just never wanted my own.
I don't need to go hang gliding or skydiving to know I won't like it (hate heights) and I don't feel the need to have a kid to see if it magically awakens any maternal feeling I might have.

I don't particularly like children, have never had a maternal bone in my body. I have always known I didn't want children & it would frustrate the hell out of me when people would say I'll change my mind when I get older. I'm now 47 & can honestly say I don't regret my decision at all.

And BTW just because many of us chose not to have children it does not follow that we are ghastly, selfish individuals who have no finer feelings. We are still kindly people who can and do empathise with others and are willing to lend a hand, etc. Not having children does not define us. We are neither superior nor inferior, It simply means that we made a considered choice.

Why can’t people just accept that individuals make their own choices and respect that choice? It’s ridiculous to read someone’s response to a thread, listing personal reasons for not having children and then do the Mumsplaining ‘Well, Actually, I think you’ll find...’ or just squark with indignation that the sanctity of Motherhood is being challenged.
As for the pregnant poster who got upset, the clue was in the thread title. Don’t click on it.
I avoid Style and Beauty. I don’t see the point in the waxing, polishing, dyeing, dieting and godsknowwhattery that goes into creating the modern Frankenstein. But I don’t post there in a flurry of outrage that their life choices are different to mine.
I have children, they were a fantastic decision for us.

I don't think our family was meant to breed - there's me and my 2 sisters who didn't procreate. I think it could be because we had a terrible narcissistic mother. I did not want to recreate any aspect of her, and one of those aspects was motherhood. She disowned all 3 of us about a year ago citing the fact we "were too selfish to give HER grandchildren" as one of the reasons. Twat.

I genuinely don’t get why Mothers on this thread are getting so offended at childfree people giving their reasons for not wanting children (and I say this as a mother who took 6 years and multiple rounds of ivf to conceive).

As a pp said, we’re all different. Just be happy with your choice and own it, don’t be coming on here doing the cliched thing of trying to convince women why their reasons for not having children are wrong.

What actual impact does it have on you if someone on the internet says it’s not for them because motherhood looks shit and tiring? If you know that statement’s not true for you, surely it doesn’t matter? At most you might think ‘ah that’s a shame, that wasn’t my experience I love being a mum blah blah blah’ but to actually take offence and hit back?

This thread has gone exactly the way I knew it would when I opened it 😑.

To ask why you didn't/don't want children?

This is the title of the thread. The OP asked the above question.

Why then do parents, to whom the question obviously doesn’t apply, feel the need to participate? If there was a thread asking ‘why did you have children’ (although unlikely as parents are rarely asked to justify their decision in the way the childfree are), it wouldn’t occur to me to post my reasons for choosing not to procreate.

Why are they so keen to tell us how we are missing out or will never understand this great love? Can they not appreciate that we just don’t care as we are perfectly happy in our childfree lives?

I genuinely don’t get why Mothers on this thread are getting so offended at childfree people giving their reasons for not wanting children

I suspect they are the same people who try to thought police those around them with or without children.

Some of the language is horrible whether you want kids or not do we have to you, loathe, hate, are repulsed by other humans how would you feel if people said they repulsed by your qualities despite never having met you it’s just horrible.

'This is the title of the thread. The OP asked the above question.

Why then do parents, to whom the question obviously doesn’t apply, feel the need to participate?'

This

'Loathe' and 'hate' and 'repulse'

Were all used up thread by Chanderl

....funny that

Hi LakieLady - me too, books, books, books and more books. I came to reading relatively late at the age of 11 (although my parents used to read to me a lot when I was very young) when I discovered the beauty of secondhand bookshops but from that point on I made up for lost time .

I think there must be a genetic component at play, too.

@DaphneBlake101
It’s perfectly within your to not have children but the decision to become a parent is not selfish it’s a strong biological urge for all animals it’s how life continues.
Of course some choose to ignore it or never have it but calling parents selfish is incredibly patronising.
If we all choose not have children who would keep the economy going when your retired or look after you when incapable or myriad other things that need young humans.
It’s your right to remain childfree but if all made the same choice what would happen.

I kind of wanted children. But only kind of.

Then I made the utterly stupid decision to marry a pretty horrible man and realised that having his child would tie me to him forever.

Then I somehow ended up being successful in a corporate career and realised that having children on my terms wasn't worth the price I'd be paying, i.e. giving up on this and on my chance of ever again being truly free of a man if I needed to be.

So I opted for what seems like the better choice.

My reasons are a combination of the following:

I didn't want any child of mine to inherit certain behaviours which, as a young teen, I thought they might. My maternal GF was a sexual predator who abused some of his children and my Great Grandmother died in a mental hospital.

I was teased/bullied in primary school about my ginger hair and I didn't want a potential red-headed child of mine to be teased over it.

I saw a film at school of a baby being born which made we want to vomit.

Thankfully, neither my DH nor I regret the choice at all. One sibling's child's behaviour from the age of 2 and lack of proper discipline by their parents has been such that I can honestly say I feel my choice is totally justified.

Plenty of people said I might regret it later but I'm so pleased that I've never had the slightest regret at all about not having children. I made the right choice for me. I do like other people's children and love my nieces and nephews.

If we all choose not have children who would keep the economy going when your retired or look after you when incapable or myriad other things that need young humans.
It’s your right to remain childfree but if all made the same choice what would happen.

The planet Earth would heave a sigh of relief and a new species would take over as top of the food chain.

Someone below said they didn't understand comments about perceived drudgery of having kids because they went to Legoland and parks in summer and on not so nice days would watch them run around in shopping malls or have a coffee in Ikea.

Sorry but this, THIS is drudgery to me. There are no redeeming features of any of the activities you have described above in my eyes and I'd feel bloody resentful at having to spend my days doing it.

It sounds like there's lots of people who think this is great fun. That's fine. We aren't all the same.