It’s becoming unfashionable to have kids

[Housebuyingfamily]

Birth rates are on the floor which people frame as, people would have more kids were it not for the cost of them or climate change, etc etc. But I feel like it’s now more than this. As if we have a global child-free culture that’s growing every day and it’s becoming increasingly “unfashionable” to have kids, even looked down upon.

Yet it's fine for you to say that people without children can't love wholeheartedly. Sometimes we need to band together because of awful comments like this.

What’s there to disagree with? For some people it is a miserable empty slog, but so what? If it isn’t for you then who cares what anyone else thinks? What does someone else’s opinion take away from your experience and enjoyment of your life, exactly?

No matter what your life looks like and how happy you may be living it, there will be those that would find it miserable for themselves. Same is true for my life and indeed every life. Big fucking deal 🤷🏻‍♀️ that’s just, well, life.

No point asking why people don’t want children and getting offended when they tell you. Unless of course you enjoy getting butthurt.

Parenting can be a miserable slog for many! Have you not noticed?? It's not all sunshine and rainbows!

Well you obviously get something out of it (or thought you would) or else you wouldn't have done it. I don't count people "sacrificing" themselves for their own mini-mes as selfless.

Bullshit. You started this thread with your "unfashionable" claim. Every childfree person has said having children would be miserable for them, that there would be nothing positive about it for them, and in plenty of cases that they would not consider themselves suitable to be parents, another reason they didn't do it. You're the one pretending their choices are about you.

Why did you do that? Do you have no identity other than being a parent? How will you ever cope without them?

It is a mentality I won’t really ever understand.

Again, it's not unfashionable. It's simply a frightening and unstable relationship world that men have created and most women are now aware of the reality that there's a strong chance they'll be in a relationship with a man who is extremely messed up, make them miserable and then dump them and leave them with the kid/s.

Amem to your posts. I've been out saying but just won't put up with the shit men I meet. Must to my mums disdain she wishes I would marry but as I told her why would I deliberately saddle myself with someone who will make unhappy and streases just because u are from the generation where your life is not complete unless u marry and have kids.

Men need to step up their game because women are no longing putting up with it

I feel so sorry for my daughter. She's a genuine catch, intelligent, decent, hard working, attractive. She was in a relationship with a lazy, emotionally fucked up man boy for three years and finally escaped his clutches and now she's absolutely adamant that she's happy being single. And I absolutely CANNOT blame her. I do encourage her sometimes to date again, but she has actual standards now that she's been through hell with the one of the usual suspects and is extremely wary of being tricked again.

My husband, my second husband, is a genuinely decent man, but again I feel like I caught the last chopper out of Saigon.

Absolutely. It's the dumbest justification I've ever heard as a reason for having kids, not to mention those kids may not even be productive members of society.

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I think people put more thought into not having children, than having them unfortunately

I was a bit horrified last night when I saw a trailer for a programme called Bad Boyfriends I think it is where young women were attempting to reform their shitty boyfriends. They should be kicking them into touch. Why do young women value themselves so little?

Do you think your children have benefitted/are benefitting from being your whole life and identity? I think it does children good to know their parents are people in their own right and had a life before they were born, and are not just there to service their needs.

I kind of look at it like this - women (as a collective) are raised in a misogynistic and very patriarchal society. Their wants and beliefs are warped from birth onwards. Every outside source attempts to shape them to fit a standard pornbot/housewife model.

They are taught from day one both on and offline that they should seek a man and male approval and without it they are less important, less loved, less safe, less wanted, that they should stay silent or be a murmur of support. They are Karened, whored and bitched into submission from all angles their whole lives, by which I mean they are verbally abused and subjected to shunning and shaming behaviour if they don't follow the script - be pretty as you can, be nice, be kind, find a man, get a mate and tolerate.

Women are also more empathetic and compassionate than men - and I think that's inherent, not a learned response - and they want to give second and third chances, they want to believe that the person they love is capable of loving them back, and they project their own thoughts, beliefs and feelings onto their mates and the objects of their desire.

It takes a while for burn out and reality to set in, considering that we basically live in a societal matrix where we're groomed from birth to be a certain way.

So it's not really a surprise that so many of them fall for it and tolerate so much - and especially if they are given more (temporary and ultimately worthless) male cookies for doing so.

What I think is amazing that so many women and girls actually see it for what it is, and try to escape bad relationships and support one another in doing so.

I also think if you are someone who has that urge to have kids then you end up settling for someone otherwise time passes by and clock runs out.

Also looking at some of my work friends one just stays with him cos he looks after the cats and has some good qualities but she has low self esteem and thinks she cant do better

A combination of factors

I always wonder about the people who have spent their whole lives revolving around kids.

At a certain point, how much help can you actually give? If you've never had a career or an education how are you supposed to raise people who will see the point - especially daughters? How much life advice in general can you give if you've barely had one?

Never mind if you can't afford to help them study or get on the property ladder.

I don't know. Really acknowledging my privilege here to have had parents that are worldly enough to have provided useful guidance beyond getting pregnant.

I wanted to add that. People always assume every human is a “productive member” of society. Many are not!

Did I say you said people should be forced to have children?

But the comment I responded to mentioned in-person support.

So that was the specific context of my post.

But in your desire to lash out you ended up with a rather disgusting diatribe that insults the childfree and childless at the same time. You just insisted that those already struggling with the pain of infertility will never experience the full range of human emotion and you pity them for that. That may not have been your intent but it was your impact. (And as for CF people, pitying people for not doing something they don’t want to do is really weird to be frank)

I did not see what the CF person said (the only comments I have seen were CF people saying child rearing does not interest them) but your response was bizarre. Akin to confronting racism with racism.

I saw that program and was horrified at how low TV is sinking. Women are not rehabilitation centres for broken men! The only adequate response to dealing with a “bad boyfriend” is to dump him.

I have seen this now and it’s sad but true. A number of single friends got to 30s and those with a burning desire to have children and an unwillingness or inability to go the solo mother route - just grabbed whatever man was available and wanted them and had kids with him.

With mixed results. Most are happy even if the accept the guy is terrible / they have no interest in him and he is basically just a sperm donor and co-parent.

I actually saw an article about a woman who bought sperm on Facebook for £50 (from a guy who’s a father to about 1000 now) and got pregnant from that. Surely when you get to that stage you need to have a long, hard look at yourself!

As well as people who stay in bad relationships because they're desperate for DC, there are also people who have children because it's the "next stage" without really thinking about the long term consequences of being tied to said person for the rest of their lives.

I do agree that, in general, childless people put much more thought into their decision.

One of the saddest women I ever met was a friend of a friend - very smart, very sweet, kick ass job in professional sport , 2 adorable little girls. And married to the biggest knob head anyone in our group had ever met. Could be relied on to be drunk and obnoxious whenever in company. She had got to 30, been desperate for kids and 'settled' for him. 10 years later, he was making her life a living hell. She would not divorce him because she felt she could not manage to kids by herself. But you could see the situation sucking the life out of her.