Why is a life without kids still not promoted as a route to happiness?

[OptimismvsRealism]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/15/parents-are-anxious-lonely-overwhelmingly-stressed-and-their-crisis-affects-everyone

Parenthood looks awful. Certainly worse than it needs to be in modern times but fundamentally wretched in many ways. An abandonment of the self.

Shouldn't we be telling young people not to have kids unless they really want to? Like we'd advise with anything so hard.

Most people want children. Those who don’t generally know it and don’t need anything promoted. Of the people I know who don’t have children, it’s mainly because it didn’t happen for them.

I agree, and I think that will still take much longer to change...

Because from the (cynical) perspective of society, all society's want children to carry on their ideology/religion etc. Its not about the life itself. That's why when someone steps out of line or wavers from the ideology they can be excommunicated or killed (consider honour killings for example.)

Not true. I wanted children and spent a lot of time and money trying to have them to no avail. The urge wore off eventually after I had done my grief work and passed menopause. And I've read dozens of times here of posters going through a phase of wanting another child but it passed and they are glad they never acted on it

I think we overdo the uncontrollable biological urge thing. It's just as much down to social conditioning.

I wouldn't advise anyone to have kids unless they actually want them. But for me, despite having lived/travelled abroad, had a successful, interesting and rewarding career, enjoyed lots of very privileged opportunities etc, being a mum to my amazing dd is by far and away the biggest source of joy in my life and I wouldn't swap it for anything.

I don't think there is that much pressure on people to have kids these days if they don't want them, and nor should there be. It's a choice that people must be free to make for themselves. And yes, some people may find it lonely and stressful at times, but others will find it the most wonderful and meaningful thing that they will ever have the opportunity to do. We don't have to paint it as one or the other in my view, we just have to be clear that it's a different experience for everyone.

I never had a single maternal urge at all, but wanted kids as I have personally seen elderly without children and how lonely they were with not one person in their life to call family, I don’t have family myself so wanted children because of that, however many of my friends are childless and they are very much happy and it’s not for everyone! I love my kids, but can completely understand why people choose not to have them.

I do think that women with children have more social status than women without children. I don't really understand why. Maybe a patriarchal feeling of the woman with children is performing as she should and fulfilling her purpose.

People especially girls are indoctrinated from a young age into thinking that a fulfilled life involves children. Many just follow this, because it's been instilled rather than actually consider their options.

I've met women who think that you're not actually living until you're married with a family.

We're no longer governed by religion which pushed marriage and family and have more choice available. Life has opened up to many younger women beyond having children and a few years ago, that would have been inconceivable.

In many cultures it's simply expected that you'll get married and have children and there's no choice. The reality is often different to the dream and they were sold a lemon.

Motherhood is hard, relentless drudge work and the seismic difference between the sexes is unmasked. Fathers often abandon their partners who then are forced to work and carry the load while their lives barely change.

Well, how older is ‘older’? I’m in my 50s, and don’t see it in my circles. Even my parents, aged 79 and 82, with four children who are childfree by choice and a single grandchild, don’t assume he’ll have children. I don’t assume he will, either.

My urge was so strong I'm now pregnant with my third.

It's not something you can just ignore and deal with so easy.

Shouldn't we be telling young people not to have kids unless they really want to? Like we'd advise with anything so hard.

In fact we do the opposite. We deny vasectomies and sterilizations to adults in their twenties because we are convinced they'll see the error of their ways one day.

We don't need men and sex! DOH,there's me thinking it was for pleasure as well as promised creating. Having children so you don't get lonely in later life. They aren't there to entertain the elderly. I always wonder why the child free post on a site called "MUMSNET". I have unmarried friends with no children. I have 4 DKs, 2 of them have one, one has 3, one has none..I was an only child hated it,was obsessed with having children from about 13. My dgks,boy 13, girl 14, absolutely adore their baby sister and say they definitely want them.

Don't you think it's a bit horrible for your kids to just exist to keep you company in old age? What will you do if they want to move to Australia?

But there's definitely still a hangover social idea that having kids is good and not having kids is bad.

I'm not sure there is. You're probably right that parents of current teenagers are expecting their daughters to have children, because they did, and they probably still see it as the "normal" way, but I don't think those teenagers feel under any pressure to have children - so it's going to be on those parents to temper their expectations and manage their disappointment, when the time comes. I'm not sure that's hugely different to the last few generations - anecdotally, I married DH when I was 30 and he was 33, and his parents went MAD for children after that. He held a baby at the wedding, it's ALL they talked to us about for the rest of the day, and breakfast together a few days later. They used to call and text and write him letters about how they were in their 60s, and he was running out of time, and they felt let down and worried that they wouldn't have grandchildren. Ironically we had one a few years later and they've had little to do with him.

There are whole communities and very mainstream elements of platforms like TikTok where young people discuss children, and lots of them are making the choice that it's not for them, either because they don't want them, or for financial or environmental reasons. They feel well supported and empowered to make those decisions, and "knowing" other people making the same ones will help them to resist pressure from parents or anyone else...

I think this is the best generation in terms of getting to make a choice.

I do think that article is quite sensationalist; those stats are a bit odd. I'd feel stressed as a US mother because of the shootings and the political landscape my children were growing up with. We have no support with our toddler DS, so it can often be overwhelming trying to get everything done, and we're definitely unsupported, but of the 8 toddler mums that I'm very close to, I'm the only one in that situation. One has her parents or her in-laws move in from Wed - Fri each week, on alternating weeks, to help her with her toddler - and she's still on mat leave from her second. She's rarely by herself. She wouldn't say she's unsupported. The rest all get a day or two's childcare each week. Most have chosen to have second kids.

A lot of the stuff listed is expected. There was always going to be worries about the future. You know your time won't be your own. I haven't argued with DH more, we rarely argued before kids and haven't started since. Sleep has been rubbish but you learn to cope and it's not forever. And there's the lovely moments and the overall love which means people do it again - not many stop at one for reasons other than financial.

I think the current youth, and the next generations, are in the best position possible to consider being childfree as a decent, normal alternative to having kids.

It's a weird duality because there's absolutely more status to having kids (those without are often performatively pitied) but having kids also tends to lower your status against other measures because you don't have the time, energy and money to deal with those.

In my experience, kids tend to turn up anyway.

Me and DP were planning on being child free. DD turned up despite two forms of contraception.

I was an accident, I'm pretty sure both of my eldest cousins were accidents (One of them was the product of an affair)

Of my group of friends growing up, 4 out of 8 of us knew we weren't planned. 2 of the other 4 were younger siblings.

Based on my completely anecdotal evidence, I'm going with that most elder siblings or single children weren't planned for, or were planned for but later in life. Contraception is good, but not perfect, and childless people have a lot of sex.

Younger siblings I reckon are less likely to be accidents. People think "Well, I've got one, and I want them to have a sibling." And it's not like sex is top of the priority list for most parents of toddlers, so they're less likely to be accidents.

I always wonder why the child free post on a site called "MUMSNET"

Bingo. It seems every single thread started on the CHILD FREE BOARD has this posted sooner or later.

Happily even when contraception fails there's no need for children to turn up. Another face of this phenomenon is the idea that married women don't have abortions.

Because the vast majority of the site, which incorporates subboards dedicated to subjects as diverse as keeping chickens, travel, and grammatical pedantry, has nothing to do with having or not having children? And this thread is in the Mumsnetters Without Children sub board, so, if anything, the childfree might well wonder what you’re doing here?

"Me and DP were planning on being child free. DD turned up despite two forms of contraception.*

What about a vasectomy/sterilisation if you were both sure you didn't want children?

I don't agree with this. I think it is because your desires, and needs can be very different in your 30's to how they are in your 20's. The rates can vary but, "researchers at the Mayo Clinic demonstrate that brain development continues beyond the teenage years and doesn't stop until around age 30.

They just have to be sure. I didn't want dcs in my 20's, I did in my 30's.

Usually sooner. On the other hand, it’s often a useful signal that the poster is spectacularly tin-eared.

True, we didn't have that option as we found out DP was pregnant way to late. But even if that isn't the case, then a lot of women don't want to go down that route for assorted reasons.

I've always wanted children, loved children, loved the role of caring for / playing with children. I have 3 and I think if I had the resources I'd have 4. I also work with children as my career.

I think because I've always wanted children / to care for children so much, that's always made it kind of obvious to me, that if you don't have that motivation to at least some degree, then of course you wouldn't choose to have children. Because yes, very often it is enormously consuming and stressful and there is little left for much else (at least whilst they are very small).

I find it strange in a way how we even phrase this decision as "having" or "not having" children, when really I think it's about being or not being a parent. I think the question "do you want to perform the role of a parent?" is a much better way of putting it. Because it's more like taking on a lifelong vocation than it is like acquiring a thing. We don't really have our children, they don't belong to us. We fulfil a role toward them.

I think another thing to remember about this discussion is that whilst many people don't become parents, almost everyone is the child of parents. Our parents and grandparents are probably our most influential connection to older generations and most of us are likely to get a pro-natal impression from them because they chose to become parents themselves.

Much like kids of firefighters may feel more encouraged to become firefighters than screenplay writers, as a general trend. Parents tend to, sometimes on purpose, but often inadvertently and unconsciously, lay down a path for children to follow in their footsteps.

It's certainly a lot easier than having a kid.