Voluntary Childlessness

**Bluehound** · 04-17-2011, 11:29 AM

A long time ago I decided that I wasn’t going to have any children.
In fact it was so long ago that I have actually forgotten what prompted the initial idea. It’s even conceivable that I was born with the thought or developed it so early that it seems that way now.
As I grew up the idea grew with me, my Mum had a baby when I was twelve and I doted on my little sister, but was still in no doubt that I wouldn’t want one. Any chances of rose tinted visions about motherhood were shattered at that point, I knew what it was really like and it was hard and tiring and thankless.

When I started having boyfriends I took contraception very seriously, I knew that getting pregnant at a young age would tie me to that person and my run down town forever. Not getting pregnant was the only degree of control I had in a rather chaotic life.

I moved in with my first serious boyfriend at 16 and even though I was besotted with him a part of me knew that this was not the one, in fact as it turned out he was a complete a-hole and very much confirmed my belief that having no children meant that I could just walk away at any time with no regrets.

At 21 I got together with the most wonderful man I have ever met, three years later we married and suddenly everyone wanted to know when we were going to start producing. Even people who knew I had no desire for children thought I would change my mind now I was happy and settled. I didn’t.

11 years later we are just as crazy about each other and childless. I have noticed now that the people who know us have stopped asking, but worse than that new people who find out have started looking at me strangely. I see the thoughts like words scrolling across their face.
“A woman who doesn’t want kids (maybe she can’t, maybe something is wrong with her – poor thing) How strange.”

When I was younger it all seemed easier to explain - I want a life , I want to get up when I feel like it and go to bed late, I want to drop everything and go on holiday or do nothing all day but eat toast and watch Dr who. When I was young people accepted that, or waved it off with an “Oh you are only young - plenty of time yet.”

Now I find my self increasingly trying to justify it, despite the fact that a few people will tell me in stage whispers that they “sometimes wish they hadn’t had their little darlings.” I know they don’t mean it not really, no more than I meant it when I slammed the door and told my mum I hated her as a kid.
I don’t dislike kids, though I will admit I find babies rather boring. Toddlers however are endlessly fascinating and entertaining, and I spend loads of time with my niece and nephew. I have just never felt the desire to make one of my own.

Am I weird?
I even wonder that myself sometimes.
I have heard some women describe the need for children as a physical pain.
Logically we were built to breed - that’s how we got this far.
But is it possible that some people are born without that urge like worker ants or bees… could it be that I am part of a new phase for us overpopulated humans?

**The Atheist** · 04-17-2011, 04:10 PM

Originally Posted by Bluehound

11 years later we are just as crazy about each other and childless. I have noticed now that the people who know us have stopped asking, but worse than that new people who find out have started looking at me strangely. I see the thoughts like words scrolling across their face.
“A woman who doesn’t want kids (maybe she can’t, maybe something is wrong with her – poor thing) How strange.”

I find it strange that people think that way, and I know exactly what you're talking about, because breeders make it a topic of conversation. That's when I leap into the fray and explain that it's like every other irrational belief, people must feel they're right and try to convince everyone else that they are.

Unfortunately, they're completely wrong. As you rightly note, the world isn't going to go short because 2 or 3 fewer kids exist, so the decision not to have them becomes purely rational and reasonable. On the other hand, having kids is purely social convention grown from biological necessity. We manage to suppress other unnecessary biological urges - nobody thinks fidelity is "weird". If you aren't a believer in afterlife and think the life we have right now is the only crack we'll get, breeders feel that they may have wasted half or more of their lives bringing up children and spending vast sums of money in a largely thankless and fruitless exercise.

While there are some minor vicarious paybacks, raising children is pretty much looking after them until they decide to go their own way in the world - which is how it should be.

Even worse, many of the breeders will be lousy parents, because while they have the same perfectly reasonable selfish desires for a "good" life, they will often be parents who give in to their kids, avoid discipline and bring up worthless drones. Or worse.

Originally Posted by Bluehound

I don’t dislike kids, though I will admit I find babies rather boring. Toddlers however are endlessly fascinating and entertaining, and I spend loads of time with my niece and nephew**. I have just never felt the desire to make one of my own.

Am I weird?
I even wonder that myself sometimes.
I have heard some women describe the need for children as a physical pain.
Logically we were built to breed - that’s how we got this far.
But is it possible that some people are born without that urge like worker ants or bees… could it be that I am part of a new phase for us overpopulated humans?[/SIZE]

No, you're just a product of a society that allows women to make that choice.

Very, very few breeders will admit it, but having children is as irrational as having furniture arranged to feng shui.

Next time your friends go on the subject, you have two clear choices:

Either go on the attack and ask why, if childbirth and rearing are so bloody essential, do so many abortions happen every year? Why is contraception so popular? Then follow it up with the real sucker-punch; why do such an overwhelming percentage of children whose parents can best afford to give them parental childcare send their offspring to a child-minding factory? Or even worse, some unknown parent through a child-minding service like Porse*. You don't even need to get involved with rubbish like population (it's a red herring anyway) just point out the complete inconsistencies in the case for children.

Smile & wave.

I am a father of four children, aged 20, 11, 8 and 1.8.

* I know of one case where a woman is looking after three children, plus two of her own, while she is on medication for her bi-polarity. I have no problem with mentally ill people working with kids, but the stress of looking after five kids - all under five - is phenomenal and not really recommended.

**Delta40** · 04-17-2011, 06:43 PM

You're not seriously asking for reassurance here are you? If you don't want to bear children, then don't. Nobody should bow to social pressures to please the masses (which I'm sure many do...) if you can resist it, then good on you and have a great life.

**Bluehound** · 04-17-2011, 07:11 PM

No no Delta, as I say I made the decision so long ago and it has only ever really been confirmed for me as I have steered through life.
I think it's just been on my mind a bit lately as everyone around me seems to be having kids and I noticed that it is becoming a bit them and us plus one of my closest friends is single and I can hear her biological clock from 20 miles away…just wondered if anyone else had any thoughts on the matter really.

**OrphanPip** · 04-17-2011, 08:24 PM

It's perfectly normal for some women not to want to have children. And, really it's better to not have children you don't want than to be stuck with raising them.

I've long been resigned to never having children, for different reasons though.

**Delta40** · 04-17-2011, 08:27 PM

I think when our beliefs are consistently reinforced then we keep them. When we start to question them, challenge them, then it is possible to change them. having said that, it doesn't hurt to review our findings periodically and then satisfy ourselves we made the right choice.

I can remember deciding never to have kids for a whole host of reasons and then my own recklessness plumetted me into the parent role. It isn't a place where I can say 'If I could turn back time....' but like most people, I would have liked to have chosen my own fate through information and decision making rather than through irresponsibility. I doubt this helps you much though!

**Vonny** · 04-17-2011, 08:45 PM

I'm the same as you, only I've never really seen the purpose in marriage either.

Many people probably have some strange thoughts about me, as they are not able to pigeon-hole me. I mean, I'm really quite ordinary, I think, but I don't fit neatly into any of their boxes ...of nun, church "sister-worker," wife and mother, welfare mom, lesbian, promiscuous/playing the field, or 300 pounds/committed to ice cream and the Oprah Show.

At 19, I was devastated when a guy whom I thought I would marry, broke up with me. Through tears, and not knowing what to do with myself, I randomly picked up a book called "The Women's Room." The setting of the book was much before my time, but upon finishing that book I was content with the break-up. As the years have passed, I have realized how lucky I was with that outcome. I look at his current wife on Facebook and am so relieved that that's not me.

I don't spend too much time wondering how other people are judging me, (especially my neighbors and co-workers), because I'm too busy contemplating them, as well as feeling thankful that my life isn't the kind of catastrophe they've turned theirs into. The people who matter to me don't judge me because they are really "weird" (ordinary) like me.

I never wanted to be tied down with brats, but many women want kids for the opposite reason, so they can "lock-in" a man. And then if the man does manage to wiggle free, the women just suck the welfare system dry, all the while exclaiming how God has so generously blessed them.

Here are some thought I've had on the subject, which may be correct or incorrect...

Traditionally, I think, many children were desired within families because they were indentured slaves to work the farms.

Governments have traditionally instilled these values into subjects because they've needed droves of under-privileged expendables to fill their millitaries.

Nowadays, societies need many consumers, as well as sweat shop workers, to keep them strong. A huge population drives down wages. There can't be an extremely wealthy class without a lot of poor people being robbed.

(I hope what I'm saying here isn't considered political, since it's not about any particular country or party. If it is, someone please let me know.)

**The Atheist** · 04-17-2011, 09:43 PM