I’ll start. I’m a 37-year-old woman, and I’ve always been indifferent about having children. I love peace and quiet, but at the same time, I wouldn’t mind having kids if my partner really wanted them.
I’ve been with my husband for 13 years now and married for 11. I’m his second (and final) wife. He has three kids with his first wife. She was supportive of him taking a second wife, with just one request: no more children. That solidified my decision not to have kids.
45m I knew from a very early age that i never wanted to be a father. I have always been very upfront about it with my partners and it has ended one relationship. She found out that she did grew, after two years of being in a relationship, to have a child wish. And I could have at that time become a dad, and im sure i would be great at it, but im very happy that never happened. I got my vasectomy soon after that, i was around 30. Just to make sure there were never any accidents.
For the question of why… I don’t know. I’ve tried to analyse it but i can’t give a deeper reason than feeling a deep aversion. I have a good relation with my parents, had a decent childhood and i love my nephews dearly. I like children and i don’t mind being around them. I don’t particularly care for anti child propaganda either.
My partner and i are living a child free life. She also has zero interest in having children of our own.
Wait - is she his ex, or are you married to both of them? If you are all one family, I do understand, that sort of makes sense not to make 3 more and end up with a family of 9 people.
If she is his ex, what the actual fuck?
43 male, have 3 kids. They’re a ton of work but they’re also incredibly rewarding. The house is full of love and joy constantly. I can’t imagine life without them (and my wife) and I wouldn’t want to live in it if they were no longer here. That’s how much of an impact they have on you.
That’s said, totally respect you not wanting them. They’re one of the biggest sacrifices and commitments.
No but mine is 23 and I feel it’s too late to tell her.
Why should his ex have a say?
It is abusive to bring children into the world as it is now.
Either we make a better place for them, or give them the peace of never having being born.
I grew up in a cult where the expectation was that I’d get married and have multiple children. Luckily my own parents somehow managed to raise me right in spite of the indoctrination, and when I went to college I realized both that I could choose and that I didn’t want kids.
After my partner and I had been together for 15 years or so, we started seriously rethinking being child free. It was something we decided to do together. My kid is now about to turn 9. I adore him and love spending time with him. I still don’t much like other children and I never considered going through pregnancy again. My partner and I have talked about potentially fostering or adopting if we manage to retire early, but I’m content either way.
No. Not even close to financially stable as a college student in his mid-20s.
Also, if I did want kids, I think I’d rather adopt than bring a child into a world that is dying and end up not being able to ensure they have a future that doesn’t end in apocalypse.
My first kid is almost 3 and we have another on the way. It is so fucking draining and so fucking awesome. My wife and I joke about what the hell we did in our free time before our daughter. We both have careers and hobbies so it’s not like we were bored, but it is so much fucking fun having a kid. We would definitely kill for some more free time, but highly recommend it. Also, if you decide to have kids, it’s not very difficult, it’s just a lot of work.
Kids fill you to the brim with love, and drain you of everything else.
I’m probably the only person i know irl that wants to have kids. Every one of my colleagues is rather against it, and i totally understand them. Economic difficulties, environmental protection, …
Yet i do feel like having kids would be nice. I’d definitely love them. That’s all i need to know.
As fucked up as his ex wife’s request may be, if you’re indifferent that’s reason enough not to.
I don’t want kids. I can’t even take good enough care of myself and basic household upkeep. Adding the stress and cost and limitations that come with having a kid are just non-starters. That and I just don’t feel any need or want in the first place.
That said, if I could actually have a real biological child with my same-sex husband and the question wasn’t purely hypothetical, I’d have to think about it some more.
Or maybe if the universe threw a homeless queer teen at us who had nowhere else to go, maybe I’d consider adopting, maybe. But adopting an actual child or infant is a real tough sell, even if I would ideologically prefer that to having an actual biologically hacked together two-dads kid
Not really, but I guess I’m stuck with them. ;)
No, I don’t think I can be on-call 24/7 for years
I didn’t want kids for the entirety of my twenties. I’ve been with my partner since we were 21 and she wasn’t keen on kids for that whole period either. We got married at 30 and it wasn’t long before we both felt like kids was something we wanted.
She is currently 35 weeks pregnant and we are both super excited about the impending birth of our daughter.
We have the occasional “Oh shit! What have we done.” But mostly we can’t wait to watch her grow and teach her about the world and do exciting things with her.
We know it’s going to be a huge change but we are very stable in our lives and the time is right for it. We are both really good at supporting each other by now so we know we can cope with change together.
No
I think if you truly understand the current situation in the world we live in, economicly, socially, and environmentally, it is an extremely selfish act to create more human life.
That being said if I can ever escape poverty and have the extra money i would love to adopt
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Not fast enough lol
The single most defiant act an individual can do twoars society is refuse to reproduce, after that is refusing to contribute to the society.
I respect your opinion obviously but I disagree. If the only people who can afford children are the rich then they will be the only people left. I get the sense from your comment that society will miss your offspring, and while I think it should as genetic diversity is a good thing, automation is likely to hurt the value of labor given our current direction. While genetic determinism is overused, I would put forward that those who succeed at capitalism have more sociopathic tendencies and desire for power. If only those people breed will not those traits become more prevalent? If that is the case then for the sake of humanity I think you should breed. Or maybe all of this will be made mute by genetic engineering, who knows.
Lmao this is the issue
Selfish people only think about who spawns more soldiers for a fantasy ideological war. Or for some sick fetish with spawning to perpetuate your oh so special genes and family name.
People don’t fucking consider anything about the life their children will have to live, and then have the audacity to say “i love my child”
Birthing children into poverty is abuse. At least just as abusive as a parent who can supply everything for their child but refuses to, because the effects of neglect are the same.
I think people misunderstand how genetics work. What you say about a fantasy war is something that has been bothering me for a while, as this idea of “which genes get passed and which not” seems to stem from real phenomena, but are very poorly understood in its workings. Very few genes have high heritability, many are pleiotropic, many we have yet to understand what they do, and between humans we are absurdly similar to each other, yet as a population we have immense genetic diversity. The last two statements might seem opposing, but it is about the scope we look through. But once you understand this, any child is just like yours, and adopting becomes a better option ethically. This rhetoric of passing genes for selfishness and such are based on the ideas about genetics people tend to have but have little base in how it really works. The reality is much more complex, and nurture plays an absurdly large role in shaping us.
I think it also bothers you as much as it does to me because the argument is used in a way to get people anxious about societal implications for their immediate choices based on things that nobody knows how they would play out. It is guilt tripping, and so it feels like a bad faith argument to convince people of making big decisions.
That being said, I’m not against people having kids. People do what they want, but don’t do it for any population genetics duty notion that you think you should fulfill. There are plenty better reasons to do so imo.
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Fuck off troll.
Your desires aren’t more important than your children’s lives
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