Parents hate the Childfree

[Youstolemygoddamnhouse]

Over the past few days there have been several post regarding children for example Our new Neighbours and my loud children and To think it's unacceptable to say you don't like children. in both posts there are hateful comments about Childfree people. The second post in particular never mentioned anything about childfree people but then people started making comments about them. Plenty of parents hate other children despite having them. Why do parents care so much about Childfree people and their choices? Are you jealous? Need validation? Why all the hate? Most importantly will you own up to it?

YABU - I don’t hate the childfree
YANBU - yes I hate the childfree

Because that one comment speaks for everyone, doesn’t it??

Not!!

I’m child free by choice, and no parent has ever said anything negative about it to me? But I also don’t dislike children and actively engage in conversations with my parent colleagues and friends about their kids so maybe I “fly under the radar” as such.

IMO, I’m just happy for anyone who’s making the choice that makes them happiest.

I’m genuinely happy people are child free. I would hate for people who don’t want children to have to have children (eg pressure in history for most people to have children)
While mine bring me a great deal of joy, they are incredibly hard work and without the patience needed you can seriously fck your children up. So I don’t want other people that aren’t fully two feet in to having children to have a baby!! It’s great that unwanted children aren’t being born

What I notice as a childfree person is how the invitations dried up from longstanding friends as I approached my 40s. Events that were held every year (an annual bbq for example) last year I wasn’t invited too, and when I ask my friend said “well it’s all parents now, so i didn’t think you’d want to come” or the group trip to the village fete.

There seems to be a pivot amongst a lot of people to family occasions (which is fine), but then the unwritten rule you don’t invite the childfree anymore.

I think society lacks a plan for childfree women of a certain age. Even the first couple of posts here-ask why are women here! When that conversation, that Mumsnet is actually a site where a huge range of topics from politics to property to dogs to tv are discussed and from a predominantly female perspective so lots of women choose to come here. Again the price of entry isn’t having a kid

Of course not. Just an example of the hate Childfree get

Couldn’t give a flying fuck if someone is child free. But I also think that sometimes kids are too loud because their parents think their little darlings are just being cute and sometimes I don’t like kids (if they’re being annoying little toads).

Let me get this straight... you think all parents hate all people who are child free? And this is based on a few posts on mumsnet? 🤔

Nope. I have quite a few friends who are childfree by choice - I'm one of the only parents in my friend group and had DD at 19, so quite a big contrast.

They can't imagine and wouldn't want my life, I can't imagine and wouldn't want theirs. No hate there, just people with different lives being friends.

People who are genuinely happy about their own choices don’t feel threatened by other people making different choices. People who aren’t genuinely happy about their choices need to have them validated by others making the same choices.

I have a large family and loved parenting and still do. If I were the same age I was when I started my family now though, I'd seriously consider whether this is a world I want to bring any children into. So no regrets that I had children but no hate for the childfree. If I were born in another time, I might have made that choice myself.

Which post? I think I’m missing something

I honestly couldn’t care less.

To be very frank, before I had children I thought that people who didn’t want them, it had to be some kind of trauma base to it, like it was unhealthy. Now I’ve had them, I think those people understood things dispassionately that I did not. I don’t regret having kids at all, but it was not what I expected and I feel the childfree people I knew could see what I couldn’t because I was so attached to my wish to have them, and I think it’s a perfectly valid, if not very impressive, life choice.

I do wonder if people who do judge people for being childfree, could be those who expected it to be awful and found it much better, and maybe they think that childfree people would be the same if they just did it?

Why do you care? Do you actually spend that much time thinking about what people with children think about you? Does it even matter?

A few posts doesn’t equal all parents hating the childfree. Just like I wouldn’t assume that all childfree people hate parents just because you’ve said we’re all jealous people who need validation.

I have literally no interest in whether someone else has a baby. I’m happy for people who have the number of children they want to have (whether that’s 0 or 5) and I have a lot of sympathy for people who want a child but can’t have one.

We’ll say it then? Don’t be shy. What is it?

What? That wasn't hate, just misplaced smugness.

Oh don’t be so silly and hyperbolic OP 😂

Most people don't care what others do.

To add - now that my children are pretty much grown, I'd rather be friends with someone childfree than someone with younger children. I want someone with the same freedom and not to have to deal with someone else's kids. However, I do sometimes find that childfree people still have a lot more freedom than I do even now, and they don't always seems to understand that I'm not quite that free (actually, that applies to the single ones, not the partnered ones).

Can you give some examples where you have felt people have hated you OP because you are childfree.

In RL

Some of my favourite people in the world are child free, in my life they are either friends who wanted kids but it never happened who love spending time with my children and doing things considered typically family activities with us. They also are people who never had any intention of having children so are the people I see for non kid friendly socializing, coffee in a nicer coffee shop, cocktails at night sports activities, I've never thought to categories as parents or not really.

There have been friendships that fell away when my kids were tiny and I just genuinely had no time or space for for certain things aside from work and family but even then these things were just friendship drifts. I often see people say 'im so sad friend x has dropped me since I had kids or I'm so sad friend y isn't as available since having babies ' and I think it's unnecessarily dramatic rather than accepting some friendships are for a reason or a season rather than a lifetime

I would go so far as no one really cares what the Op does or doesn’t do

Good lord! You think that anyone who says they don't like children is just pretending, because they secretly wanted children and is just bitter because they couldn't have them?!?!?!?
Get a grip.

comment from second post. To balance it out

I don't hate people who don't want to have children. I literally don't care what other people choose to do, beyond wanting everyone to feel empowered to make the choices that are right for them.

I do have a problem with people who talk or post online about how they hate children / children are annoying / children shouldn't be allowed in certain spaces etc., because it's discriminatory, disrespectful and exclusionary. Most child free people don't do this. The ones who do are arseholes and I think it's ok to tell them that.

Some child free people think that having others be respectful of their choice not to have kids means that people also have to be respectful of their discriminatory rhetoric about kids. That is not the case; I can respect someone's choice not to have children and still be critical of the way they talk about them.