Anyone struggle with a purpose if childfree?

[butterfly172]

Hi,
I'm 42 and childfree by choice. I'm about to get married to a wonderful man and I'm a step-parent to his 3 adult children, whom all accept me and me them.

However, since my SD had her baby, I'm wondering what purpose I have in this life if I chose not to be a mum?

Does anyone have any advice? Feeling like I'm stuck in a rut of life and don't know what my purpose is if not a parent.

@PickledElectricity
I wouldn't say having a baby gave my life purpose per se, but it did bring a lot of clarity about what's important in life....

People don't need to have kids to gain clarity of what's important in life 🙄.

Your kids are important to you but that doesn't mean those with no kids don't have important things/people in their lives.

Children can go NC/LC, then where will your purpose be.
How about those who've lost kids, do they not have purpose?

I think you're misunderstanding my post or maybe just trying to pick a fight?

Not picking a fight, qouted what you posted.
Great if it's a misunderstanding.

I couldn’t have children. We had loads of IVF to no avail. After quite a dark period of grieving I’m now enjoying a very happy childfree life. On holiday with DH in Singapore as I type. I certainly don’t think I lack clarity about what’s important in life. I found my work rewarding and that it made a difference while I was doing it. In fact I now feel I have much more clarity about why I actually wanted a baby - it was FOMO more than anything, and a feeling that friends and relatives having g babies were leaving me behind. I think we are socially conditioned to feel this, and to fear regret if we don’t have children. I have no regrets, though I do get triggered by other people’s thoughtless comments from time to time, as many threads here will attest.

I have clarity enough to have always known that I never wanted children. That's important in my life.

That's a new one, though.

Well this is the thing isn’t it. Either the people who say “oh I never knew love before” or “I found the real purpose in life” or “it gave me clarity” or “it made me a more selfless person” think that they themselves were lacking a lot in life before, which surely really just says a lot about them. Or they think those without children do lack love, purpose and clarity because without children they didn’t know it so how could anyone else?

A few years ago when I was struggling being infertile a friend said to me well at least you have your house. I’d give anything to own my own house. I said what even your children? Her reply was well obviously not because children are much more important than possessions but I should still be thankful for my house.

I would go and do life coaching and explore your values

'I have much more clarity about why I actually wanted a baby - it was FOMO more than anything, and a feeling that friends and relatives having g babies were leaving me behind. I think we are socially conditioned to feel this'

Couldn't agree more about the social conditioning. There may be some biological impulse in there too, but the social conditioning is so relentless that it's hard to separate the two. I've heard so many similar stories from women who threw absolutely everything at getting pregnant, but were never able to become parents, went through a period of deep grief but came out the other side feeling relief and wondering why they were so desperate for a baby in the first place

I absolutely agree. I know that a lot of people on MN disagree with this but if you don't have children, you really see how society is constructed around the expectation that you'll have them. Not having them can make you feel extremely isolated, regardless of the personal relief that you didn't go through with it.

I planned to remain childfree until just before turning 40, when we decided to ttc and conceived, to our shock, the first time we had unprotected sex — I remember genuinely thinking I was going to feel part of the ‘mainstream’ in a way I hadn’t before, but instead the baby and young child stage was one of the most isolated and lonely periods of my life. I felt as though I’d engaged in an unpopular minority sport other people chiefly regarded as a noisy, obstructive nuisance on public transport or in cafes.

And all the twit acquaintances who’d said the usual nonsense about it being ‘selfish’ not to have a child, and wasn’t I afraid of dying alone surrounded by my cats, just changed mode to it ‘being selfish’ not to have a second child, and wasn’t I afraid of an ‘only being a lonely’.

I adore DS (now almost 13) and parenthood has generally been enjoyable and interesting for me (though I think I’d have been equally happy had I continued childfree), but frankly it certainly didn’t feel like joining the mainstream. Or discovering my life’s purpose.

I think there’s also possibly a situational element for some women, too. In my early-mid twenties I was dating a man who really wanted children, and had we stayed together there’s a possibility I may have ended up a mother simply because building a family together would have been a natural progression of our relationship. We broke up (nothing to do with children), and after that I was in relationships with men and women who weren’t fussed at the time, and nor was I, and being parents was just never spoken about. So the idea of having children at all sort of vanished from my life. By the time I met now DH in my early thirties so much of my life and personality and ambitions had developed in ways which wouldn’t have fitted parenting, and I hadn’t thought about it in so long, and hadn’t had any kind of urge or even vague sense of broodiness, that that was that really. Not even an active choice so much as just… never an option that enters my head. Like believing in God, in a way: I can’t make myself feel feelings I just don’t have.

I think I was very fortunate that by my early thirties my life had led me to “my people”: a large friendship group of men and women who either already knew that children weren’t for them, weren’t really bothered, or who were approaching the possibility with a lot of thought about whether they wanted to be parents, whether they’d be good parents, whether they felt comfortable having children due to concerns about passing on a health condition or neurodiversity, or for environmental and sustainability reasons. As a result, there’s never been any sense for me that children were just “what you do” or any pressure or social conditioning from those closest to me, or construction that motherhood is the goal, and no reason to question my own decisions.

I think that’s a good point, too. I was certainly brought up by parents who’d had (far too many) children because that’s just ’what you did’, and who thought girls left school early, worked in a shop for a few years, and then ‘settled down’ and became SAHMs. However, by the time I turned 18, I’d already rejected all of my parents’ worldview, insisting on staying on at school, rejecting religion, winning a scholarship to university despite them earnestly trying to persuade me it ‘wasn’t fir the likes of us’ etc, and would spend much of my life between 21 and 48 moving around internationally, so I didn’t have any particular blueprint for how I imagined my life would progress. Those of my friends who have children had them at vastly different times and in different countries, so there was no sense of it as some kind of natural life stage.

I'm sorry to hear you experienced that. It's interesting how different people's experiences can be. My sisters all describe the same feeling of finally being treated by others like they were part of something, that they were special. One of my sisters said that she found it almost addictive, this newly-opened world of people being so friendly and kind, which she'd never experienced before. They all say they'd hate to have continued being single and childless and never having "joined the herd".

They do tend towards smugness so I take it with a bit of a pinch of salt but I think there's something in what they're saying.

And I find it fascinating that people desperately want kids. Or have one and objectively find it very hard, but then go on to have a second. Or feel they need a baby with every man they are in a long term relationship with.
I have friends who spent their life savings on ivf to have their son, and it genuinely blows my mind!
But it's cool that we're all different.

Not at all! I thank the lord everyday for my extra disposable income, lie ins and off peak cheap holidays 😂 maybe try getting a dog?

I have friends who went through years of IVF for their kids and the husband is uninterested in the family and she is constantly complaining about how hard it is to be a mum to two. Never any joy comes out in our conversations about parenting.

I wasn't fussed either way, we didn't think we could and DD was a surprise. Love it more than I thought, but equally I know I'd have been happy on the other path if that's what happened.

Blows my mind too that people want it so badly that they'll put themselves through that and then not be happy when they get it. Because it's not the rose tinted vision people have.

I have DC and one struggles hugely. Needs lots of care and support. One very bright. It is a mixed bag really. I think your SD having a newborn is bringing on feeling like this.try to think of sleepless nights ,tantrums as they reach toddler age.things may seem different then!

'I have friends who spent their life savings on ivf to have their son, and it genuinely blows my mind!'

I find that mind-blowing too. I couldn't imagine starting parenthood with no money behind me

children?

a small part? Really? Your relationship with your DC doesn't sound ideal, sorry... I doubt i am an outlier in this regard, but happy to be corrected if i am an outlier...

It is part of every wife and mother but every woman is made up of much more than being a wife and/or mother. Women are their personality, their interests, they are daughters, sisters, nieces, aunts. They are their careers, their friends. They are their past, their mistakes, their successes. And yes, some are also wives and mothers.

I really hope I do a good enough job with my daughter that she knows being a wife and/or a mother is not the biggest part of who she is.

I think childless women fill their lives with hobbies, holidays, leisure time etc but eventually hit a wall.

Don’t be silly, @HamptonPlace. I agree with @DivergentTris, and so would many women who are perfectly good mothers. DS is great, I adore him, and I’ve enjoyed parenthood and take my job of raising him to independence seriously, but I wouldn’t characterise it as a sizeable part of my identity. And ‘wife’, while I adore DH after 30 years, is an even smaller part of my identity. They’re not aspects of me.

I was happily childfree till 40, and tbh, after the baby and small child stage, I don’t notice a great deal of difference between my life before DS and after him. I’m as engaged with hobbies, friends, work, travel as I ever was. DS is a delightful addition.

@Fountainshaving just the one child is a doddle. You only really experience the trials and tribulations of parenthood when you have at least 2/3 of them.