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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think not everyone should be a parent?

59 replies

ThisQuickLemonPoster · 08/04/2025 16:38

I know it sounds harsh but some people just aren’t cut out for parenting - emotionally, financially, or otherwise. Yet we treat having kids like a right rather than a responsibility. If you’re barely coping or constantly moaning, maybe you shouldn’t have had children. AIBU for thinking this way?

OP posts:
JHound · 10/04/2025 01:11

SomewhereinSuberbia · 08/04/2025 17:46

The European nations, Japan and East Asia are demographically declining at an alarmingly suicidal rate, it is strange to think that we live on the Earth at perhaps the time when the largest amount of humans will ever live.

It’s not suicidal.

JHound · 10/04/2025 01:12

ParsnipPuree · 08/04/2025 18:53

My ex husband should never have been a parent.. too selfish, isn’t able to look out for anyone bar himself. I thought he’d change as lots do when they have kids.. but no.

Why on earth have kids with somebody hoping they will change?!

KimberleyClark · 10/04/2025 07:46

JHound · 10/04/2025 01:12

Why on earth have kids with somebody hoping they will change?!

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Because it’s preferable to have kids with a shitty man than not have them at all, I suppose.

JHound · 10/04/2025 11:10

KimberleyClark · 10/04/2025 07:46

Because it’s preferable to have kids with a shitty man than not have them at all, I suppose.

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I wonder if the choice is a shitty man vs. no kids truly.

To me “a good man who I don’t fancy on the slightest” to get kids is better than the “shitty man who I fancy” if you are that desperate for kids you throw sense out of the window.

Eelqueen · 12/04/2025 06:14

Do you have children op? @ThisQuickLemonPoster

Scorcher79 · 15/06/2025 10:01

ThisQuickLemonPoster · 08/04/2025 16:38

I know it sounds harsh but some people just aren’t cut out for parenting - emotionally, financially, or otherwise. Yet we treat having kids like a right rather than a responsibility. If you’re barely coping or constantly moaning, maybe you shouldn’t have had children. AIBU for thinking this way?

I would take this one step further and say that there should be " permits" or "licenses" to have kids. You should be able to prove that you are financially and emotionally stable enough to provide for a child and raise them in a loving and stable home. So many people have kids without thinking about the implications and consequences and unintentionally (& sometimes intentionally!) cause untold psychological and physical damage to their children. What breaks my heart the most, aside from physical abuse or emotional abuse that parents subject their kids to is when you hear about kids being sexually abused by a parent. It makes me so angry and upset that an adult could violate a child in this way and break the sacred trust between a parent and child. Imagine how scarred that child is going to be for life! These people should never have been allowed to become parents in the first place, that is the fatal error and it's this patriarchal narrative that we've all bought into where people should just conform and have children. No we shouldn't. As a former teacher, you witness so much psychological damage and neglect and abuse and some people should never be allowed to mind a dog, let alone become parents, yet the state allows it and actively encourages it.

Scorcher79 · 15/06/2025 10:07

Elsvieta · 08/04/2025 21:20

Of course there's such a thing - different cultures / societies / countries / eras have treated parenthood very differently. For most of human history, before effective contraception, children were just something that usually followed marriage and there wasn't much choice. And "barren" women were often treated as cursed, and large families were usually seen as a good thing because the kids were going to work on the farm or whatever, and support you in your old age. Post industrialization (and the advent of social welfare programs etc) children were seen as more of a burden than an asset and smaller families were favoured, and contraceptive methods improved. But for a long time, having kids wasn't really treated as something that ought to be optional, and was generally presented as something that ought to be the main focus and goal of a woman's life. Then women started working more and prosperity increased and there was more of a focus on providing education and a high standard of living for kids - this, plus the fact that women were still doing most of the childcare as well as working, led to the general idea in the modern developed world that two kids is the right number.

Now we in the world's most developed countries are moving towards an entirely unprecedented way of treating parenthood - the idea that it's a perfectly valid option to be childfree by choice is really gaining ground. A good thing in my view, but a very new one. These days, people can fuck all they want and not have babies if they don't want, and reproduction is often treated as just another lifestyle choice.

Today we have societies that embrace the childfree and ones that ostracise infertile women and bar them from many aspects of adult social life (common in many traditional communities of Africa and Asia). Countries that give a year's paid mat leave and countries that give none. Countries where childcare swallows a salary and countries where it's virtually free. Countries where social policy encourages men to do their share of parenting and countries where the idea is laughable. Countries where fertility treatment is made available to single women and gay couples, and countries where it's almost impossible for anyone to access. A country (China) that has moved from barring people from having more than one child to desperately trying to raise the birth rate, in the space of a few years.

How the whole idea of parenthood is treated varies WILDLY, and long has done. It's bound up with all kinds of aspects of culture, economics, medicine, work, gender relations, politics, religion, ideology, education and everything else that governs how we live and the choices we make. At present in the UK it's mostly treated as a sort of hobby - an entirely personal choice that you'd better manage and finance entirely alone, and if the burden falls harder on women tough shit. But with a big dollop of "you're an unnatural unfeminine monster if you don't want it", for a lot of women, a lot of the time. The way we treat parenthood in the UK at present reflects our status as one of the most individualistic societies in the world, with very little sense of collective responsibility for the future; it also reflects the fact that we're still pretty sexist. Compared to the family-friendly policies of Scandinavia, we suck. Compared to the US (no mandatory paid mat leave), we're doing great.

Unless perhaps if we're billionaires who are also psychopaths, none of us can escape the influence of the social, political and economic forces we live under.

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By far the most intelligent and nuanced take on the subject I've read here.

Augustus40 · 10/09/2025 04:59

I know somebody who had one child and quite frankly she has been miserable ever since. She went from a very high flying high income job in London back to the provinces where she came from and a very low earning job. Her partner has always been a very low earner which has not helped matters The poverty has made her miserable.

PollyBell · 10/09/2025 05:28

KimberleyClark · 10/04/2025 07:46

Because it’s preferable to have kids with a shitty man than not have them at all, I suppose.

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So it is what is best for the mother not the poor children who are treated like an accessory? and are only useful when they serve a purpose?

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