Life feels unimportant

[LouLo72]

Does anyone else feel that a life without children is unimportant?

Been told before that “you’ll never know love until you’ve had a child”.

Well, I don’t have children (through choice) but it’s becoming more apparent that it’s the most important and amazing thing to do, which leads me to believe my life isn’t worth much.

@Threesmycrowd I don’t have children just by circumstance (it has never been a longing and just didn’t happen) Your kind of post really hits home though. Nice to hear I should lay down my life before any parent. It makes me feel pretty shit tbh, but that will be my depression talking

Please steer well clear of this board with those. A lot of the posters on it long/longed to have children, experienced miscarriages and failed ivf. I can only imagine how your words make them feel.

double post

All my life it has been important to me to not have children.

Life is unimportant, whether you have kids or not!

That's what makes it so fun! In the grand scheme of things, nothing anyone does is going to make the slightest bit of difference to the universe.

So the only thing that really matters is making sure you and the people you love are happy. For some people that means having kids, for others not. Neither have more important lives than the other.

I have 4 children (youngest 16) and feel the same at the moment. Lost myself along the way and am figuring out my life with free time and without dependents. I definitely don’t think children make me more important or interesting!! Probably the opposite actually.

Think life has seasons for everyone and it’s tricky pivoting, good luck OP.

I am 45 and have an adult DD. I have felt the weight of the finality of my decision to only have one DC, and I wonder if I did the right thing. Perhaps it is this same feeling you are having? That realisation of the option of being able to decide differently being taken away.

Even I'm the light of all that, I don't actually want (and probably can't have!) a baby. But I muse on it.

I don't think children make life important. They are just one of the options in building the life you want. The whole, you will never feel love like it, thing is just romanticism. Because they also piss you off, cost a lot of money and eat all the food.

I hope you don't mind me posting, I do have a child, but I can tell you that my capacity to love now, is no greater or less than when I did not have a child. We can all feel the deepest love whether or not we have children. I lost my Dad last week and I certainly love him as much as my own child. 💔

I’m so sorry, @Rainbowchicken.

Really sorry for your loss.

Hey @LouLo72
I was childfree and on the fence for a very long time before I had my DC. I felt similarly to you before I had my baby. I’ve actually taken to motherhood far better than I expected, and yes, it does give my life a strong sense of purpose. But my life was equally purposeful before and I can now see that in hindsight.

Purpose, for me, came from being truly present with other people. I am a people person. My DC is very young and takes up a lot of my mental space now, and I really miss deep, meandering conversations. I miss having the bandwidth to properly watch a good film and then dissect it, or to get completely absorbed in a book. These days I’m continuously multitasking in my head and it is stressful.

I also miss being creative. Both the time and the inclination seem to have evaporated, which surprised me. Creativity used to be a huge source of meaning for me. I hope in time I can come back to it but I suspect I never will in quite the same way and that makes me quite sad.

I’m quite a slow-paced person. I miss taking life at my own rhythm. Having a baby makes me feel constantly tense and my shoulders are always up. If you’re living with relaxed shoulders right now, honestly, enjoy them!

I even miss having time for small rituals. A proper beauty routine, little habits like tanning Thursday. I don’t care if people think that kind of thing is vacuous it brought me real joy and a sense of self.

And the big thing. I miss my body as it was before pregnancy. Not because it was anything special, but because it was mine and hadn’t been through something so intense and, for me, quite traumatic. I know that’s not a very common way to feel, but it matters to me. For me, time will never soften this part of motherhood.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is this: motherhood can be beautifully meaningful, but it isn’t the only container for meaning. Your life can be full of purpose through things like connection with others, personal passions, creativity, how you cultivate your interests and care for yourself. Those things aren’t “lesser.” They are real, and they count whether you are a mother or not. You are enough.
All the best.

Life IS unimportant. Isn't that freeing? You can do what you like with your own life. What you've described sounds more like depression than lack of importance.

Having a child gives you more responsibility and a huge amount of hard work. To me the payoff doesn't seem worth it. Your children will remember you and so will your grandchildren most likely. Your great grand children won't so in the end what's the difference in terms of "importance"?

We're each about as important as individual ants in my opinion, as are our children. And without their beneficial effects on the environment.

It might be worth exploring this further. I saw two separate counsellors for two separate issues unrelated to my family life (I'm child free by choice). They knew I was perimenopausal and asked whether any of my sadness might be related to knowing I could never have children e.g. the choice was now totally being taken out of my hands and there might have been a grief that came with it.

In my case, I definitely felt happy in my choice to be child free but it sounds like for some people reaching the end of their fertility, it can bring up all sorts of other feelings.

Nah it’s bollocks. In the great scheme if things no one’s life is important and in a couple of generations even the best parent is forgotten.
I know what love is. I also know that not all children experience that love from their parents. It’s always subjective and who can say who loves the most.

If you’re a good person, you help people and are there for your friends and family, then your life is in no way unimportant.

Humans have very high opinions of themselves. The reality is that we’re just mammals. Our existence really doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. In a hundred years time, the majority of us will be completely forgotten about, like millions who have gone before us.

may be you never would meet a man, may be you never could conceive....these are all valid reasons not to have children and accept your life as it comes

And some people simply don’t want them, which is just as valid.

I do sometimes feel that way, but I think a lot of it comes from social media. There are so many posts that imply life only becomes meaningful once you have children — things like “Christmas is only magical through a child’s eyes,” or “nothing compares to this,” or the constant “you’ll understand when you’re a parent,” even when no comparison was asked for.

It can start to feel like a message being pushed over and over: that having kids is the best, hardest, most important thing, and everything else matters less.

But the truth is, whatever you do with your life and whatever you find happiness in is important. Social media just amplifies one version of life very loudly.

I feel very sorry for the person who told you 'you never know love until you have a child'.
Who did she make this child with? Was there no love there? Very sad indeed.

I hadn’t even thought of that.

I have love in my life from my kids but I have also love and meaning from my siblings, my friends, my husband, my dogs, my parents. These are important

I do a job that improves the world and makes it a more joyful place. That is important.

I volunteer for a charity that is improving where we love, I play sports in a team, a sing in a choir these things, though small, are important.

I feed the birds, I am nice to my elderly neighbour and help them out, I support my parents, I help look after my friends children I tip well when I can afford to, I call.out racism and bigotry. That is important.

These are all important.

I mean you could have given birth to the next Farage or Boris Johnson or Trump or Epstein and made the world worse!

No, I disagree, and I'm talking as a parent. I had my son at 35 despite being with my husband since we were 23, we were happy as a pair in our lives and interests, living our literal dream bashing about London enjoying ourselves and travelling, took a year off together and went round the world. My job came with a huge amount of friends and a sense of fulfilment and community, and my husband had lots of time to pursue his creativity outside of work. We made a beautiful life for ourselves without being parents.

Having our son changed our whole world, and we absolutey 100% miss that time of our life. Would we change it, no. Never. He is so wanted and so wonderful. Its magic watching him grow. Do we love him? Hugely so. But the love you feel for a child is so different to live than it when you think about it before having one. It's not just joyous love, it's anxious love (will they have friends, will be be okay as an only child, will anyone hurt him, will there be a future for him etc. It's a love that once you have in your life, you sort of let the world in far more than you do without children because it can effect you way more via your child and their experience of the world. You want to make the right decisions not just for you anymore. You want them to be protected and know they won't always be. It's a wierd sort of mix of a love that sets you free and simultaneously burdens you beyond belief.

All this to say, please don't think loving a child or having a child love you is the only way to fulfil your life, if you didn't want children that's absolutely fine and life is more than parenthood.

I'm childless as I was told a physical illness was all in my head until it nearly killed. The treatment left me infertile.

It was hard hearing people say how lucky I was blah blah.

I'm older now and whilst it still hurts a tad I'm happy to have not inflicted my hereditary conditions on children.

I personally think you've just got to make the best of the life in front of you.

Believing that your child will never love you must also be very sad.

No, I’ve never felt my life is less important for not having kids. My dad, however, used to endlessly go on about how miserable and pointless life is, and he had kids.