I am of the age to have kids, some of my friends have them, but I have mixed feelings about it, just wondering about other people’s experiences.
I have them, they are great. Here are a few obvious things I’ve learned that I didn’t appreciate beforehand:
The complexity of the endeavor rises exponentially with the number of kids. That is to say, 3 is a much bigger leap from 2 than 2 was from 1.
They get dramatically more expensive and complicated as they get older. All that exhausting baby activity is the easy part. As you start to figure out how to do it, the rules shift and you have to get learning again.
I never imagined how much of adult life as a parent revolves around the literal management of shit. Between kids, pets, and aging parents, I just never expected to be so preoccupied with the logistics of excrement. I guess I was living in some kind of Disneyland in the before times. You sort of get used to it though. Sort of.
Such a wise and thoughtful answer 😊👍
Mid 30s here. When i was younger i never wanted kids. I would always tell my parents i never wanted any as well. Fast forward about 15-20 years, people would tell me im great with kids and i should have some. The problem with this is that i am great with kids for about 2-3 hours and then im like…get this thing away from me. People have also told me that its different when they are your own.
Well one day i booked an appointment to get a vasectomy and havent looked back yet. I also got married to someone who shares the same feelings as me towards having no kids. Life is great and havent thought of any regrets.
People have told me that I’m good with kids too. But here’s the thing…it’s actually super easy to give a child attention and follow them around for several hours. I’m not sure why people praise me for it. I guess because some people don’t care enough to give the kids the time of day or something?
But the not easy part is the taking care of them eternally thing. Parenting through meltdowns…always being there 24/7/365 with no breaks…having to always feed and clean them…etc. The list goes on.
I know it’s dark to say, but one of the things I fear I’d do is end up with one of those parents who is driven crazy and inadvertently kills their child from shaken baby syndrome.
My husband once said to me, “this is a terrible thing to say, and I don’t want you to feel bad, but you do seem like the type who might shake a baby” - I was sterilized by then so it was funny vs insulting.
Broo I feel that lol I am probably too mentally unstable for that shit. Who knows, tho.
At least when people only have one child, it almost seems maybe manageable. But people for some reason never seem to stop at one!
No to all. I get to spend all my time and money with my wife. We can travel, watch concerts, and do any activity without having to worry about babysitting, getting home early, etc.
Has anyone close to you told you that you should have kids?
There’s definitely some talk on my wife’s side of the family, since her extended family has tons of kids, so they just expect anyone who gets married to have kids. We just tune it out. It also helps that we moved away so they can’t really bother much. My side doesn’t really care, or at least doesn’t care enough to ask or talk about it.
So my wife and I are child-free by choice. I’m in a rare position that I wind up speaking to many people in-depth about their lives, and the folks who have children talk about raising their kids all the time.
If I’m honest, many, many days I think “the moral of the story here is do not have kids, foks”.
That’s not to say that it’s all bad for everyone, but it is very bad for a lot of people. Essentially, their lives become exclusively about managing their children’s problems. Everyone thinks their children will be well mannered, sweet and thoughtful little guys who will fill their hearts with joy and purpose. The reality is many children are little nightmares with behavior problems that don’t seem to improve no matter how much work they put into seeing child psychologists and play therapists- every single day they spend 3-4 hours trying to calm their kid down as they fly into an uncontrollable rage, overturning tables and swinging their arms as hard as they can at the care givers and their parents. They want to help their kids learn how to control their feelings but they can’t. It’s really sad. The parents live in hell a little, every hour of the day is spent trying to manage their screaming, raging child.
I will also tell you that many people have tried to convince me over the years that we should have children. Family members, neighbors, co-workers… I also once had a neighbor (who’s kids were little terrors, I once saw one take a swing at his face because he was being punished, and they also once threw BIG rocks over the wall separating our properties without seeing where they’d land) say to me: “You just get to do whatever you want, don’t you?” when I was getting in the car to leave to go work remotely out in the countryside for a week.
My point is people don’t often tell you how hard it can be, most people lie and say that it’s great. At least half a dozen times I’ve had parents say “now I don’t wish that my child was gone or would never have been born as such, but I do often long for a life where I didn’t have to take care of them all the time”. Like they DO wish they never had kids, but they have to be careful to say they don’t want their child to disappear because its too dark of a thing to say.
Yeah, whenever people describe what it’s like to have children or whenever I happen to observe it for myself, it looks like literal hell on earth. People try to choose their words carefully to not say how miserable they are, but I can see it. You can’t even sleep anymore. Sleep deprivation is literally a torture technique.
And I mean…I get that some people have to have kids in order for the human race to continue to exist. And I’m glad my parents had me and that I got to experience life. But I just don’t know that I could do that myself. I don’t think that I could selflessly endure torture every day for years and years just to try to help another human being survive. I would like to think that I am a giving person, but not to that degree.
Eh, I’ve got five kids and they run the gamut from incredibly cool to assholes. One is pretty accomplished professionally and made sure to find ways for both her dad and me (step-dad) in her wedding. Another went no contact over the divorce/remarriage of her mom. Another has struggled with addiction and mental health, but has overcome the former at least and recently graduated and is working as a nurse. The last two are still at home and one has emotional issues and some autism and weaponized incompetence, the other is hard working and responsible and has drive balanced with emotional maturity (though hormones are kicking in so…)
In my opinion, there is too much emphasis on being perfect parents and having perfect kids leading perfect lives. We love them all and make sure they know it. We try to set healthy boundaries and allow them the same. But at the end of the day, they are people and they are going to struggle and much of that is out of our control beyond being here with advice and help in times of crisis.
And even the assholes are pretty cool in their own right. Not fun to parent, but still people who I think are great to have in your life.
I do occasionally lament the path not taken, but if I didn’t have kids this would be the path I lament. (Probably just a smaller house and nicer vacations.)
I’m not trying to convince you, but I want to put in a word as a parent of assholes who sometimes daydreams about where my life might be without kids. It was a good decision for me. And if I didn’t have them to be accountable to, my depression might well have gotten hold of me in a moment of weakness and I wouldn’t be here to write this. My kids don’t make me happy (well, sometimes) and it’s not their job to, but I’m very glad I had them.
Thats all fair. I wrote what I wrote for OP, though, and I’m truly confident my wife and I made the right choice for us. I’ve also never felt babies or toddlers were cute. Yesterday, I went shopping for dress shoes, and there was a family there with a kid who was maybe 7, and he flopped down on a bench and shouted “PHONE” and his father handed him his iphone so the kid could watch youtube videos.
We’re going to Tenerife for 10 days in a week or so, and we’re looking at a 2 berth campervan to shoot off around Ireland in as well. l also just booked 5 days going to Valencia, Spain and then up to Barcelona by train to see my favorite band, Bad Religion play a show in both of those cities. I have a full time(ish) job that I actually like and also have time to try to make money doing my creative things, which is actually growing year on year.
I am also very aware of overpopulation. The planet has twice as many people now as it did in the 70s. It cannot endure continued human expansion when everyone wants their own house and car and swimming pools.
That’s all fair. We still vacation, although they are sanitized “family” vacations for the most part. Plus we aren’t the kind of people who want to be tooling about foreign countries without a curated experience. Take us to your beaches, cuisine, alcohol, and cultural artifacts.
You have a lot of work flexibility for those vacations. I can work remotely, but usually I’m not allowed to take my equipment out of the country to do so. My wife has a lot less flexibility. So we are limited by time more than anything else. We live modestly and I make a good living for the cost of living here. Kids would certainly put a damper on that lifestyle, but in our case, they aren’t holding us back.
Overpopulation is a whole other thing, of course. Looks to me like we’re headed toward another global conflict or pandemic that might resolve that in part. Not saying that’s a good thing, but I think life has a way of correcting imbalance whether you do it voluntarily or not. I certainly don’t want my kids to have to live through that, but like most other things, that’s out of my control and I can only help where I can and hope for the best.
thats all fair. just to say, my wife doesnt enjoy the flexibility that I do, I just shoot off for 5 days at a time. not having kids to co-parent makes it not be a big deal
Not to argue your decisions, but you might want to take another look at your over-population if that’s a concern.
Yes, we seem to be passing a sustainable level of population and too many people are still held in poverty partly by over-population. However the long term trend is the opposite. By all studies, population will plateau in the next few decades, then start to decrease. While that also sounds good, it looks like it is likely to drop fast. We are more likely to have instability and disruption caused by population falling too rapidly.
If replacement value for a stable population is about 2.1 children per women, most developed countries are already well below that and their populations will drop significantly as older larger generations pass. Was it Korea that hit 1.1? That means cutting their population in half over the space of one generation While I have no idea how to fix the chronic war state between the Koreas, a sudden (in one generation) loss of both population and economy is all too likely to be seen as an opportunity for the war state to turn hot.
Even in the US, we’re a bit protected but our birth rate is well below replacement value. We’re still growing in both population and economy on the strength of immigration. Most countries don’t benefit from that and current politics may impact this and cause us to start shrinking as well. While some is a good thing, a lot of shrinking too quickly can be equally bad as overpopulation. We need to figure out how to stabilize at a reasonable birth rate more like 2.0, to steadily reduce population without disruption
When you say that’s “not good” do you mean economically or environmentally? I am concerned about biodiversity die-off, deforestation, ocean acidification etc etc… I am not concerned about economics. I know the latter can effect the former, but nothing will effect it like levelling the amazonian rainforest so every person gets to eat the beef they believe they’re entitled to
That’s at least as much a lifestyle question. As more people develop higher living standards, they tend to copy those before them. Ecologically we can’t afford for all the developing countries to live like the US, even with a much smaller population
But yeah, I’m more concerned about economies. Unstable economies tend to lead to wars and oppression. The only thing worse than our current environmental exploitation is human suffering, and we need to develop a more sustainable lifestyle that avoids that.
If you look at history of environmental protection, you’ll see that generally wealthier countries can afford more of it. If we want people to be able to afford taking care of our environment, they need to have a stable economy and be relatively well off.
I mean I dont disagree with anything youre saying. Wait, I actually disagree that human suffering is worse than a global extinction event. I often play druids when I play d&d though, so there you go
I did some research on the population today. Every page I’ve looked at says it’s going to peak around the 2080’s at around 10.4 billion and then start declining.
Granted there’s a wide range, depending on too many variables. The UN official prediction is as you said but many recent studies with updated birth rates have made much earlier predictions.
Reading some of these studies, the earlier predictions seems much more plausible, and they’re connected with a steeper dropoff. While “UN Medium” is too high, I’m more afraid of “UN Low”, and how that will disrupt the world my kids and grandkids live in
I have to daughters, and my personal experience has been overwhelmingly positive.
By that I do NOT mean that it’s convenient - it absolutely is not. It’s stressful, and all hedonistic pleasures go down the drain for a period of time. But they give my life meaning in a way few other things can.
I have kids, I love them but I regret having kids with my toxic wife
In this economy???!
Only have children if you are ready to give up your own comfort and freedom to provide an environment for them that they deserve and will thrive in. I have 3 kids and knew that it was a huge commitment, but that still won’t prepare you for exactly what that means. You wake up when your child wakes up, regardless of how much sleep you’ve had or if you stayed up late to have some hard-to-find personal time with your significant other or alone. Children crave attention and deserve to have a locked-in parent so when they are awake, scrolling on social media or watching your TV show instead of interacting with your kid playing on the floor is a disservice to them. Some of your closest friends before children are often not compatible with the vision you have for your family and it requires you to cut some people out of your life that you honestly valued before you were responsible for the development of another human. There are many sacrifices that really shocked my system to get accustomed to, but it has been worth the trouble. Just remember that they come first above your comfort and wishes because they didn’t ask to be here and your choice to bring them into this world means that your are responsible for creating an environment for them to feel safe and loved.
Early 30s and no.
- the world has enough people
- I have no interest in giving up my comforts for another being right now
- I never asked to be here and I hate that I am most of the time so why would I force that on another being
- if I ever change my mind and am in a good enough spot economically I will just adopt. imo if I can’t afford to adopt then I can’t afford a child and I’m fine with that.
- I’m stoked about being the weird/cool auntie, parenthood would take that away from me
I have a kid. My wife wanted one but I didn’t, and I agreed because I didn’t want to lose her.
I love my kid, but to call it a huge lifestyle change is a monumental understatement. I’m happy with my life, but it could have gone the other way, and that wouldn’t have been fair to anyone. There are certainly a lot of things I miss from before, but I couldn’t go back now.
Don’t let anyone else convince you to have a kid, and don’t let anyone, including yourself, convince your spouse. This really needs to be something you want for yourself, or there is a good chance you’ll end up miserable and your child will grow up in a broken home.
If you can’t make to your mind before your age make it too risky for your comfort, then just understand that you have made a decision, and you’ll need to come to terms with that, should it come to pass.
My wife and I have two sons, and it’s an obscene amount of work, but there’s nothing better than the simple joy of seeing them excel at something they love, or seeing their pride at a success.
You’re giving up proper sleep for a decade, and you’re forever ceding your ability to not worry about another person’s wellbeing, but on the whole it’s worth it.
The early years are punishing, there’s no way around it, but it gets easier as they get older.
Have kids. The only regret is the world we brought them into. Wouldn’t trade them for anything. But we have many fears about their future. We still thought the world could be saved with recycling and buying efficient cars. Dubya was an anomaly. Things would return to their boring 1990’s progression. Not anymore.
Climate change is essentially unstoppable at this point, the only choices are how bad it will be. Politics globally seem to be shifting to right wing populism, nationalism, fascism. Good luck if your kids aren’t straight, white males. Economically the system stopped making sense. Worthless companies worth billions. Billionaires with private space programs. A new gilded age with widening disparity. Companies literally paying homage to the new “king” hoping for some kind of investiture or favor.
E: point being the world is pointed in an objectively worse direction.
I wake up to a quiet, clean house every day. Not having kids is the best.
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I didn’t want kids for the longest time. Then I met my husband and wanted to make a family. We were fortunate to have two lovely girls (after three unfortunate miscarriages). Actually, I think it was after the first miscarriage that my desire for a baby was truly solidified.
Life is chaotic and busy and expensive but I wouldn’t trade it for life before kids.
