To feel like my child free friends want me to dislike having a child?

[doggydoggle]

Growing up, I observed that amongst my parents generation, there was a lot of jokes about husbands and wives disliking each other. This is often referred to as "boomer humour".

"The old ball and chain."

Jokes about his bald head and her fat bum.

It was all over birthday cards. It was all over tv and was generally part of every day conversation. Not to say that everyone actually felt that way but it felt like it was expected that they'd talk about each other that way.

I feel like my generation's (I'm in my 30s) equivalent to that is people joking about not liking their children. Parents often "jokingly" warn you "don't have kids". They do a sort of (either faux or real) jealousy when they hear about child free people going out to drinks as they have to be at home with a child. They constantly talk about needing wine to cope.

People without children often refer to children as smelly or gross or openly talk about how they could never cope with not having freedom.

I was child free for many years and I think it's great for people to be able to choose not to have children. I definitely don't think everyone should and it's obviously not the right thing for everyone. I believe people can be perfectly happy without children.

However I feel like a lot of people now seem to pity me for having a child and not being able to stay out late or make impromptu plans or "do whatever I want". Generally they talk about parenthood as being completely negative.

I confess that I felt this way before I had children. I definitely felt sorry for parents - thought they always looked stressed. Their lives didn't sound as fun. I thought mine seemed more fun - getting up when I want, not having responsibilities, being able to just think of myself.

The difference is that I didn't actually say this out loud to people with children!! As I knew it would be offensive to speak about their actual child who they loved as this horrible negative thing.

I've completely changed since having a child. I know that a lot of people will think it's for the worst but to me it feels like life is so much better now. Having a child is obviously hard sometimes but I love having him and I feel this complete and utter contentment and inner peace that I've craved my whole life. I have never been so at peace and happy ever before. I absolutely love being a mum and if I could go back in time I'd do it sooner and start sorting my life and finances out sooner so I could have had more.

I don't expect people to love or care about my child but I feel increasingly like having a child has almost become "uncool" amongst my (mostly childfree) peers. I'm constantly inundated with picture of peoples dogs. Everyone wants to meet these new dogs or see pictures or talk about and fuss over them. Sometimes they insist they love them as much as a parent loves their child (not in a joking 'fur baby' way either)

Any even mention of my child is at best smiled politely at before immediately changing the subject or worst I am told how they don't like children and sometimes they're called things like "crotch goblins". This is not in a loving jokey way.

Again I know nobody else owes me anything and has no reason to be interested in my child. I just feel it's weird that I'm expected to constantly talk about and look at pictures of dogs but if when giving an update about what's been happening with me I mention that my child learned to walk or talk or cartwheel, its boring and not an acceptable conversation.

When people find out I have a child they seem to feel sorry for me and want to brag about how they don't have one and their life is so easy.

I've tried making friends with mums at groups but I don't seem to have a lot in common with ones I've met and now I am back to working full time it is harder. A lot of people I meet through work, my interests etc tend to be childfree for whatever reason.

The birth gap is an opinion, not a fact. It is inevitable that the human population will decline and this is a really good thing! Fewer unemployed young people struggling to get by will mean a more peaceful society.

And so what if primary schools are closing!

Practically every decision you can make in life is reversible apart from having a child. And people do sometimes regret that decision but there is nothing they can do.

People choosing not to have children because it's not right for them and being supported in that decision is great - a net gain for everyone and a healthy, positive situation.

That is entirely separate to the tedious 'childfree' movement which seeped out of places like Reddit and have leaked over most social media forums and then, as these things often do, into real life. It is regressive and cringe and usually horribly misogynistic as well (I spent some regrettable time in childfree communities back in the day, and yes they are awful and unhappy places and being nasty about mothers in particular including their bodies was ubiquitous). Since a misogynistic backlash to the feminist gains of the last 15/20 years is currently growing the 'childfree' movement is finding fertile ground. You can spot people influenced by this by their copious use of terms such as 'entitled' 'crotch goblins' 'brats' 'pet sperm' etc and being as unpleasant to and about mothers as they can get away with. As 'woke' ideology placed some social limits on who you could mock and bully, children and mothers became a much socially safer outlet for nastiness - extremely vulnerable groups in society that its ok to be a dick to.

I have friends who have chosen not to have children and are happy with their decision and are absolutely lovely about and to my child. I don't believe for a second those who are unpleasant to parents and children are actually happy with their lives. But why they feel entitled to make it everyone else's problem I don't know. They really desperately need mothers to be unhappy to validate themselves.

Practically every decision you can make in life is reversible apart from having a child. And people do sometimes regret that decision but there is nothing they can do. Amazing that this needs pointing out really.

It’s a backlash against a relentlessly pronatalist society that portrays non parents as selfish,hedonistic and shallow.

Have you watched it ? If you think this isn't a problem you haven't understood the implications.....I am not sure how a precipitously falling birth rate and it's consequences can be considered an opinion. You may well be right that the human population settles to a new lower steady state, but that won't happen in any of our lifetimes. However what we may live to see are "dying towns" like they have in Japan and old people with no one to care or pay for them.

Parents are actually the ones who make parenthood sound so unappealing. Constantly complaining about how tired they are, how expensive it is and that it’s a ‘full time job’ etc.

I’m only interested in very very close friends and families children. I do have other friends with children, I just see them less because they don’t have time anymore and have given up on the interests that led us to ge friends in the first place.

I see it like anything else in life tbh. Of someone doesn’t share the same interests it’s difficult to have genuine conversations about the topic. If I started discussing my hobbies with you I’m sure you’d have no interest whatsoever.

So what do you think will happen with all the people we don't need and can't accommodate and what do you think will happen to the planet with an endlessly growing (or even constant at this level) human population?

It's time to reduce and we have the technology to flourish with far fewer kids.

It is a fabulous time for the child free to be alive.

Any idiot knows that people who choose to stay childfree should absolutely be supported to make that choice. Not everyone wants kids. It's a good thing that people don't feel pressured into having kids when that isn't right for them.

But people who actively dislike small children and make unpleasant comments about them are massive twats imo. Just don't be friends with them.

I had a friend who used to make those comments and I just cut her off completely after a certain point. You don't have to engage with them.

If they really hate children as my former friend stated she did, then it won't be a big loss for them to miss out on a friendship with someone who has a family and actually likes spending time with them and maybe even talking about them occasionally 🤷‍♀️. So ending it sounds like a win win

I’ve noticed the kids bashing from parents more than child free people, which I think is worse!

Me and DP are expecting our first child and really looking forward to it. But his male friends with kids keep telling him how awful it is!!!

I don’t know if they’re just miserable, if it’s crap male “banter”, or if it’s considered cool to make your life as a parent sound really really hard.

Same! So many parents say they don’t like ‘other peoples children’.

The attitude described by OP isn’t limited to child free adults

True! I always think "if you dislike children, why on earth did you have any?"

At least child free folk who don't like kids are silly enough to make any!!

I never said it was 🙄

Have you watched birthgap ? You didn't answer. The birthrate globally fell below replacement level sometime ( like 20 years) ago the world population will peak around 2050. What we wll have is 40% of the population over 65 and not working, that almost certainly means a poorer standard of living and a longer working life for everyone. Unless I had immense personal wealth I wouldn't fancy being childfree in those circs. Not sure how old you are if you are over 40 you might "get away" with it.

Why do you think your kids will care for you? You need to make plans for yourself.

Well mainly because they tell me, but also they have had it modelled to them by seeing their grandparents care for their great grandparents and now us start to care for our aging parents. But it's more about having a big enough tax payer base to maintain the pension bill and NHS. Can you answer my questions please ? I have answered all of yours.

Your question seems to be "are you worried by what a pronatalist TV show claims is a problem?"

No. I think that human society needs to reduce. I think children are awful and it's weird to have them as slaves for your old self.

Unemployed young people who have been replaced by tech won't help with pensions - they'll be a drain in the form of the support they need to compensate for their obsolescence as workers.

Also please don't worry about my future financial security. I have firm plans to draw my 1995 section NHS final salary pension @ 56 (so 8 years time) I was very lucky with both the year of my birth, the property market and to have completed my family by aged 30, will have paid off the mortgage and finished supporting both DCs through University by then. I worry for those coming behind.

I absolutely agree with this. I never wanted kids and it wasn’t until a late hormonal surge that gave me an overwhelming desire to have kids, that I had them in my early 40s.

But in my happily childless days I never disliked kids or put down those who had them. People who pissed me off by challenging my lack of wish to have children did, but never people simply by being children or being parents.

I think this poster had hit the nail on the head that the extraordinary vitriol of some is based in cultural misogyny.

Pronatalism is in itself misogynistic- it reduces women’s value to their reproductive capacity.

So who is paying for your pension if working age adults are not needed in your vision of the future ? Is the massively elderly population cared for by robots ? You still haven't told me if you have actually watched it, or why if the falling birthrate is a non problem why governments across the world are trying to reverse it ? Your narrative is 20 years out of date.

for them to be uninterested in your DC seems unreasonable to me, even if they don’t like children generally, which is fair enough, they could make an effort to take an interest in yours as they are your friends, your not a random person.

Nope it's really not unreasonable for a group of friends who have all, but one, decided not to have children (or maybe not to have been able to) to not be interested in children.

The OP, bluntly, either accepts her friends as they are or gets herself a new group.

I hate most kids. Most I know are whiney nasty spoiled. Mine aren't like this. Mine don't lie which is something I can't stand.