I’m really interested in people’s motivations. Whatever they are, even if just financial.
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I’ll start,
I don’t have kids and I got my tubes tied when I was 27 so that wouldn’t happen.
I was raised like crap, and have zero maternal instinct. I chose not to reproduce because my mother should have made that choice but didn’t and I know how that turns out. I’m no more maternal than she was.
She tried to avoid kids, and managed until she was 32, which says a LOT about what she wanted (as a woman born in the 50s, raised catholic, and who went to catholic school for her whole education, including college), but my dad came home from a business trip and forced the situation (religion was involved, I feel for her) so she had my older sibling… and they chose to have me to be a companion… that didn’t work; my sibling and I have not spoken in almost 20 years…
My sibling doesn’t know, and I don’t plan to tell them (mother died shortly before we stopped talking and was the catalyst)… they and my mother never got along… probably for a reason on mother’s end…
I have kids. It always sounded fun and interesting to have kids. But I had non negotiable bucket list to complete before trying. I was able to accomplish what I wanted in my career, travel to a few places, be financially stable, and find a partner that I wanted to build a family with. It took a lot of work to do all those things. I didn’t do those things so I could have kids, I did them for me. But accomplishing it all lead me to feel stable enough to care for children.
I’m really glad you got to do all the things you wanted :)
What sorts of things were on your list, if you don’t mind me asking?
I mentioned the big things in my post, but to be more specific my list included the following: stable full time job for at least 5 years in my field of study (chemistry), emergency fund to cover at least 1 year, endometriosis surgery, at least one multi international trip with my partner, taking my parents on a trip to Europe to visit their family, beach trip in the Caribbean, experience a music festival, and a few local trips. I had also wanted to go to Japan with some friends but covid ruined those plans.
I had decided I didn’t want kids pretty early on. I am a pretty lazy person and I don’t want to have that kind of responsibility. I’d rather devote my time to my hobbies. But that combined with global warming, the political climate getting worse (even 10 years ago), and the financial climate getting worse - all those combined made me say No with certainty.
And then I got chronically sick and was told that getting pregnant would kill me. So that makes it much easier to give an answer to pushy middle age people who expect children from any mildly level headed women.
That all being said, I do wish I had a niece or nephew I could do fun science experiments with or go catch bugs or identify mushrooms. Y’know, druid aunty things. But neither of my siblings want/can have children either. The bloodline ends with us.
Do you have an environmental center near you? It doesn’t replace related offspring, but if you volunteer there you can often lead educational stuff for kids, either big groups, like school groups, if you like that, or smaller groups, like a couple families, on off-days.
I did my internship at my local environmental center and it was super rewarding, teaching kids I’d never have to interact with again about things they just randomly decided they want to know.
I made a considered choice at 16 to not have children. Entirely for selfish reasons at the time. I just never saw any reason, after watching my classmates and friends and such get married and/or have children, to procreate myself at any point thereafter.
I work better as “that crazy auntie” (even if the “auntie” in question is a family friend, not a blood aunt). People (family or otherwise) gladly hand off their children to me (because I genuinely like children) when they get frazzled, overworked, or need a vacation from the brats. And I just as gladly hand them back at the end (slightly twisted).
But if I had my own and had to deal with them 24×7, that joy I have when dealing with children would vanish.
I’m barely keeping myself alive, I can’t fathom being responsible for an entire other human.
Once I’ve got my shit more together? Sure, I’d love to be a mom, that’s why I got my swimmers frozen before starting hormones
children? in this economy?
All work would have fallen to me and I’m just not physically or mentally capable of that. My husband has cerebral palsy. This makes taking care of a baby very difficult. He’s also older than me by quite a bit. I’m already going to have to take care of him as he ages. I can’t deal with both ends of this at the same time, child and elderly care. I know what I signed up for when I met him, a child I do not know the problems it could have until its too late.
No children. So many reasons.
I have zero maternal instinct. I have no idea how to talk to children, it’s actually really funny. Give me an animal and I instinctively can care for it, intuit its needs, communicate with it, etc, but throw a baby or a small human at me and I’m like “what do I do with this thing and how do I talk to it?”
I also have ADHD that wasn’t diagnosed until my 30s and am so far behind my peers in life. I deal with the depression, anxiety, and shame that go along with that. I struggle to take care of myself, specifically when it comes to food and healthy eating habits. For some reason preparing food and eating itself just really annoys me and I’ve gone several days forgetting to eat before realizing the reason I feel like shit is because I haven’t eaten. The thought of having to plan and prepare meals for a child multiple times a day for years sounds like hell.
I also get sensory overload very easily. I absolutely love cuddling and being touched and honestly crave it, but there’s also a switch in my had that will just shut off and I need to be able to be like no that’s enough no more. I can do that with an adult, but if that was my child that would be incredibly hurtful to them in a lifelong way. I wouldn’t want my child to have lifelong scars remembering that their mother pushed them away and wouldn’t cuddle with them. I also hate loud noises, especially normal children noises.
I had an abusive childhood and I truly don’t know what being a good parent looks like or discipline that isn’t abuse. There’s also financial reasons and selfish reasons. I like being free to do whatever I want whenever I want. I’m an introvert and I work in healthcare, so I spend long hours being “on” and when I come home I like to just be able to crash and not have the responsibility of caring for another person.
I’ve never had the urge to have a child, and that’s good, because I would want to be a good mother but I truly wouldn’t be. As the child of a mother who never wanted me and did her best to pretend but was abusive, it would kill me to know that I fucked up and left lifelong scars on another child. I’m in my 30s and still have nightmares about my mother and I would rather die than inflict any of that on someone else. But I’m very single and don’t see that changing anytime soon and thankfully I also was able to get surgically sterilized so I don’t ever have to worry about it.
There was no motivation, there was an accident, the best accident in my life.
My family suffers from generations of inherited trauma and mental illness, I don’t want to pass it on. Basically I don’t believe I’ve healed enough, or that I’m immune from perpetuating that harm.
And I can’t reasonably afford it. If I had a child, I would want to be in a much better place financially so they will have the best possible future. This means I would want to have the money to guarantee them access to transportation, education, healthcare, healthy food, etc. - I have failed to ensure those things for myself, how can I provide them for another person?
Oh man that idea of passing on generational trauma and mental illness and then worrying that you’ll be just as bad. I resonate so hard with this. I know I’m my heart that I’m a good person but what if I’m capable of regressing and turning into my mother? 😱
I’ve had these same thoughts, my biggest fear. I did end up having one kid, unplanned. The first few years, I absolutely made mistakes. I still cannot believe how quick my temper could be in that time. I had to face that very thought, “am I turning into my mother?” Especially those first few years. So much was brought up from my own childhood, especially in the first 5 years of the kid’s life, but it still happens today occasionally. I had a panic attack when he entered middle school, I had to work out it’s because that’s the age I was when my home life went from bad to worse and I stopped being cared for. I had panic attack a full month until I figured out why.
I now, and have been, going to therapy nearly every week (for years) to support myself in being a mother so the same mistakes don’t happen. I heard often when I was new to being a parent, “the fact you’re asking if you’re good enough,or doing well enough as a mom, shows that you care, and are on the right path”. Basically framing the self doubt in this area as a positive trait. Caring enough to do the introspection into your parenting skill, is more than what I bet many of our (abusive) parents did. If you want to do better, you will. I’m not endorsing children one way or the other, but push to shove, you’d probably do the right thing if your able to ask yourself these types of questions.
To note, apologizing to your children for mistakes (and backing it up with changed behavior) goes a very long way, establishing trust is vital from my experience anyway. Seeing how easy it was to love my child proper, was absolutely the last staw before I cut my mother off completely. None of her choices made sense to me once I had a child of my own.
I don’t want to change my life to revolve around someone else.
Maternal instincts make me want to have kids I guess, but I want to be a positive influence and figure in others’ lives. If I could help a child grow up well, I would be very happy.
Since my girlfriend and I can’t have biological children, I’ve been looking into becoming foster parents. I think that’s still a few years away from doing it seriously since we would want to move to a more stable place (i.e. not renting)
I always knew I didn’t want to be a mother. I don’t want the responsibility and I don’t enjoy kids. I make an effort for my nephews & niece but it just doesn’t come naturally to me.
If I could do so physically: because I’d like to experience the ‘journey’ of carrying myself. But ignoring that incapability, it is also because I want to learn more about life and to foster a new generation. It’s a bit circular, but maybe that’s my mind.
Wife doesn’t want kids, and I didn’t want them enough to give up on an absolute catch and jump through all the hoops it would’ve taken to have them.
