Child free people-Why do *Some people who are parents get annoyed at them?

[Theycantallbecomspiracytheories]

I notice it quite a lot and recently saw it in a video Seth Rogen (?) forgot his name did where he talked about him and his wife/partner being happy to never have kids. So many in the comments were pissed off with him.
I have a young Dd after years of trying, but also as much as I love kids, I was always quite unsure about having kids as Dh and I had a fantastic life living abroad-lots of travel, time to relax, no real responsibilities-yes a job and mortgage but 🤷🏻‍♀️ money to ourselves, much less stressful & tiring, it was amazing! I can see why people want to keep it like that. I adore my Dd and life is great now, in a different way, but I can totally see how some would choose a child free life. Why do some parents get annoyed with these people and seem to sort of take it personally that they don’t want the same life?

In that interview with Seth Rogan did state that they are happy not having children. All good.

But, then he said it was a better choice for the environment. So, flying around the world in private jets, owning multiple water hungry homes cars and all the indulgences of a wealthy, extravagant life is a better choice because he put the environment before having children.

I think that is where it went wrong for him. 😁😁

People do say stuff that is completely clueless about having children and then say that is why they don’t want them. If I’m honest I find that slightly irritating.

The not having children bit is not annoying at all.

I don't know anybody who gets irritated by childfree people. The ones I see online who do are usually MAGA religious types.

Look - you eat because you want to.

You want to eat because you are hungry.

You are hungry because there is a biological imperative that drives the organisim to eat so that it can survive.

Most humans have sex, mate for pleasure, for connection and for fun. But they also do it for the continuation of the species. It is a biological imperative to do so.

There will always be some who won't. There always have been those who did not - being child free/less etc is not a modern invention.

By and large, the biological drive is there.

And some child free people pass judgement in return, I've heard far more of it the other way round, judging people for having children. Or they like to offer up their parenting advice. Give me strength.

Sorry, I haven't read through the thread but this is so bizarre but really does happen. Sorry to me-rail but I'm going to vent a bit here.
I'm currently having a bit of a break from a pal in my friendship group over something similar regarding her opinion on child free by choice couples.

I have 4 dc and our other friend has no dc but adored mine. She has a partner, fantastic life and is childfree completely by choice, she has bulletproof contraception. The friend who I've backed away from has children but isn't wild on parenting in all honesty. So I do wonder if its misery loves company 🤔
But she's constantly moaning to our friend and to me privately that we should encourage friend to just get pregnant. Its so utterly and truly odd. She's almost consumed by the idea of our friend having a baby purely because she "loves our kids". Friend does, but she doesn't want to be a parent. Other pal talks about how amazing she'd be as a mother.
I can't help but feel that choosing to not have a child you categorically do not want makes her an amazing human, too many kids born to women who were on the fence and didn't enjoy motherhood.
Child free friend has holidays, goes to festivals, works a job she adores, is very involved with hobbies and her life is top notch fun.
I think it's pure jealousy of her freedom, not really anything to do with her missing out on parenthood.

Sorry if that was difficult to follow 😅

But it's really not a fringe lifestyle, especially in the West.

Rubbish. You assume everyone who has children has trodden the same path. I had 20 years of adulthood before I had children. I didn’t spend all that time as a mother in waiting. I had 8 years with DH before we even decided we wanted to have kids. We were very happy just the two of us and we married because we wanted to be married, not as the first step towards kids.

I lived an extreme full and happy life before I decided to change my life and have children. I knew it would be a huge change and I chose it. I don’t regret it. But I understand the ways my life would be different now without children as that was the trajectory I was on.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Please tell me you were being sarcastic. You were, weren't you?

One of my oldest friends, made the conscious decision not to have children when she was young. She adores her nieces and nephews, but knew that she didn't want to be a mum.

Her husband, although wanted children, was made completely aware that this was a deal breaker.....if he desperately wanted kids, she wasn't the right woman for him.

They've been very happily married for 30 years now.

She has no regrets.

She's was amazing with my boys when they were younger and they still visit now, they love being around her

I respect her decision so much...she knew and she would be swayed.

Jealousy definitely. I think they see the child free women doing things they can't and miss doing so they try to justify their feelings - 'X has lovely holidays/career but they must be emotionally cold & don't know real love' to convince themselves they are better than X and definitely wouldn't want to be like X

Truth is no ones life is perfect & people make choices & make the best of the situations they find themselves in.

People have no idea that many people can’t conceive or if women get pregnant they may seriously risk their health and the baby’s.

But the fact is overpopulation IS a huge issue. How some humans in parts of the world have created their societies means we are reliant on creating more and more humans to doesn't change the fact that overpopulation IS a problem. In 1974, 50 years ago, the population was 4 billion. It's now over 8 billion. It's more than doubled in 50 years. The population of the world IS still increasing but at a slower rate. Do you think it should double again in the next 50 years? Making it 16 billion? With climate change etc where are all these people going to live?
The earth is not built to sustain that amount of people. Just because as a species we have invented medicines to increase life spans and pensions that need paying, doesn't mean the planet is coping with our "need" to create more and more humans to pay those pensions.

(I don't have children NOT by choice. So I'm not coming at this from a "smug" childfree stance)

My experience with people who are vocally child free is they are a bit stero typical vegans
Go on about it and compares others choices negatively.

That can get on the nerves of other people.

I think most don't care if you chose to be child free without judgement of others who chose to have children.

My sister wanted 1 only had 1. Even now ours are adults she will tell me about how much of a superior childhood my niece had as she had all this 1 on 1 attention... she made a different choice to me.but has no acceptance for my choice to have 4. I am expected to admire her choice (I don't admire it nor do I look down on it)

I accept.it is their choice I expect.them to accept I made a different choice and I am happy with that.

If you ever change your mind and decide to make being weirdly mean about dog owners online a major part of your personality, there’s a subreddit dedicated to being dog-free!

It doesn't annoy me as such but there seems a culture of child free by choice online which I can find grating. It reminds me of online atheists in the early 00's - again absolutely no issue with anyone being an atheist irl but some people make it a very one dimensional aspect of their online persona and it gets dull reading the same 3-4 talking points over and over.

I know people in my life who are probably going to remain child free, completely the right choice for them and I would never compare. It's the most fundamentally life altering choice you will ever make.

The ongoing population increase is baked in. The world's population will peak around 2080, those humans already exist. By then the majority will be older and not economically active.

Here are some references

https://ourworldindata.org/un-population-2024-revision#:~:text=In%20its%202022%20publication%2C%20the,at%20just%20under%2010.3%20billion.

I know that barring tragedy,people with children won’t know what it’s like to be without children in later life, or know what it’s like to have been in a marriage spanning decades, like I have, without children. That’s what I mean about life before children as opposed to without children. Something that lasts your whole life as opposed the first 20 years of your adulthood.

I agree with this.

I have two children with a reasonably big (nearly 8 years) age gap. I exclusively bf each for 18 months. I have 'one of each'.

I've been personally criticised for the age gap (it's worked out brilliantly for us); breastfeeding (accused of denying their dad chance to bond - not by him; and 'making a point'); and, whilst no one has said anything to me personally about having 'one of each', I've seen threads on here where parents with 'one of each' have been accused of being smug

I don't really care how many children other people choose to have. Or not have. Nor the sexes of their children. Nor how they organise their time or spend their money around children or an absence thereof. I am happy with my choices because they were (and still are) right for me so I have no need to feel regret or envy.

There are choices I personally don't understand because they wouldn't be right for me. I might even think that some are utter madness!

I still wouldn't pass comment on other people for making those decisions because I assume that that it was their choice and that it works for them. I sometimes also recognise that it wouldn't have worked for me and I made the right choice.

But so many people see other people's personal decisions/choices as an implicit criticism of their own.

Yeah, a lot of discourse online is about and between specific fringe groups.

The people hounding Taylor Swift online largely aren’t random parents, they are part of that whole trad-adjacent alt-right movement. They have a deeply “traditional” political worldview which draws on elements of fascist rhetoric.

People often use the term “childfree” as a shorthand for members of the subreddit, which - because of that site’s demographics (edit: and I fully admit I use Reddit lol) - is full of weirdos calling women “breeders” and “mombies”, and making pejorative comments about their bodies / calling for the rolling back of the USA’s already-scant labour rights re: parenthood.

I feel for people who are unlucky enough to have these attitudes leak into their real life - normally in a far more sedate form, but maybe not. However, for the rest of us I think it’s worth taking a step back sometimes and considering whether we’re basically just amplifying some internet gong show.

Truth is no ones life is perfect & people make choices & make the best of the situations they find themselves in.

Exactly this. I didn’t choose not to have children, I had fertility issues and IVF failed. But after a period of grieving I chose to make the most of the life I’ve been given and enjoy it. And now in my 60s I am very content. My DH of 34 years and I have a lovely life.

If I'm being generous, I think it's because for a lot of parents (especially mums!) their kids bring them so much joy, they genuinely think I'm missing out by not having any.

More broadly, as we all know, people can't help but ask about women's fertility (so you don't have kids? Oh you only have one? Oh two but same gender? Three/more, are you mad?!). When they ask if I have kids and I say no, the follow on tends to be either a "poorly you" response or a "why not" response and it's really hard to answer either remotely honestly without sounding like I'm slagging off their life! And trying to avoid answering just makes people push more... it's a vicious cycle where no-one comes out feeling good.

Oh god, yes the childfree Reddit sub is a cesspit, much worse then anything you'd find here. Misogyny dressed up in supposedly edgy and progressive opinions (isn't it always!)

I do think these negative online communities (of any type) just rely on users getting their little dopamine hit of positive feedback and being able to encroach further and further into extreme opinion. It becomes so detached from real life and so dull!

Can't see how having kids in your 40s means you haven't experienced life without kids. WTF was I doing for 25 child-free years if not experiencing life without children?

People don't all follow the same path. Child-less can become child-free, child-free can become child-less, child-less/child-free can become having children. Things change, for the better or the worse. Experiences aren't negated.

Social control messaging to ensure women have children as needed. All part of keeping us in our lane. Have and raise children lest we decide you have an undesirable character flaw.