I always knew I didn't want to have kids (very grateful that was the case, as opposed to finding out the hard way, by having them :)) I've never wanted to be married either. I'm deliberately public about these life choices - including the fact that I'm not a relationship person, I adore being single, I cannot wait to die alone, and I date younger men casually and recreationally for sex - because we need many more role models that demonstrate you can live your life very differently to the way society expects you too, and still be extremely happy. (I'm one of the happiest people I know.) I'm asked regularly in media interviews, as a startup founder (of MakeLoveNotPorn), what's your daily self-care routine. My daily self-care is, I have no husband and I have no children :) I recommend that people look long and hard into themselves and ask, 'What would REALLY make me happy?' It may not be the societal oiled grooves we're encouraged to have our lives slip into, that popular culture and social conditioning all around us reinforce.
I am so, so glad someone asked this question. I have an incredible amount to say and try to share my opinion publicly and socially, so buckle up. There wasn’t much conversation about it 10 years ago when I first got pregnant, and I was desperate to discuss it with someone (aside from my husband). I actually got in touch with an old neighbor who had told me that she hadn’t necessarily wanted kids. That was countered by a coworker who said “my life was in black and white before kids and now it’s in color 🙄🙄🙄.
I had grown up just assuming I’d have kids, but the person I partnered up with was pretty against it. I wasn't totally sold either because I don't really enjoy being with my parents and I didn't want to have kids who'd feel the same about me. We talked about it a lot as I was hitting my mid-30’s and decided that it’s a human experience we wanted to have. It was a purely intellectual decision, without a ton of desire or emotion behind it. We were lucky enough to get pregnant quickly but I also entered a massive depression during pregnancy because I had gone off of my anti-depressants.
I’m happy for all the people who have had rewarding experiences, but it has been a net negative for us. I’m actually tearing up as I write this. I can see a point in the future when it might be easier (we have a 9yo and 4yo) but it has been 10 years of having almost nothing left in my tank for any other areas of my life beside parenting: taking care of myself, my marriage, my work - all of those areas have really suffered. I sometimes think about how much further along I might be had I not had kids.
One major factor in all of this is my temperament: a highly sensitive anxious introvert. The overstimulation is so real and so constant and on top of everything else that usually means that I have a very short fuse by the end of the day. If that is you, I’d really consider that an important factor.
I’m surprised but happy about the number of people in these comments who managed to resist the societal pressure. The jury’s still out for me, but at the moment, I wouldn’t recommend it 🙁
Hi Dacy- I’m the question asker and so appreciate this perspective. I think my mom honestly felt similar, though she’s never said it so outright. She’s told me that she “didn’t really like us all that much til we were tweens” (I had two siblings.) and that having little kids was “a real slog.” Part of what makes my decision-making feel hard is that as I’ve gotten older my mom has opened up more about the realities and challenges and deeper sacrifices of parenting and mothering specifically. As I’ve become an adult and can see her as a human, not just as Mom, I’m so grateful for our current amazing friendship, but also wish I could meet a version of her that went another direction, too. Thanks for your work and for sharing this.
Yes, that really is the tricky part, how and when and if to share any of that with my kids, while still making sure that they know they are loved and welcome and safe. At this point, I talk a lot about my brain getting stressed out when it's loud or whatever but also really trying to impress on them that they're not doing anything wrong, and that they're just doing normal kid things, it's just my brain that has a hard time with it sometimes. To the point that now, if I tell them to turn their volume down or whatever, they'll say, "mom, we're just being kids!" Really grateful to you for asking this question.
Thank you so much for that vulnerable honesty. I suspect it's so much more common than people feel able to say. There's such societal pressure to say that you just fell so in love with your children that the hard stuff didn't matter and to say anything else means you're some sort of evil shrew who never should've become a parent. When in reality there are a lot of nuanced and complex feelings within the space of "loving parent."
Yes, absolutely. And the really wild thing is that I know lots of people have a different experience than us! Like, we do have friends who seem to really enjoy parenting, even while acknowledging the difficulty of it. We just seem to have had a combination of circumstances that have made it hard. *also acknowleging the privilege in the resources we've had as help.
Honestly, as someone who cannot have children, I really appreciate hearing this. I had to decide how hard to fight to have a kid and ultimately ended up deciding not to spend huge amounts of money I don't have for exactly the difficult reasons you describe. Thank you for your honesty.
I really appreciate you sharing your experience. I am certain that many parents feel the same way, but this conversation is often missing this perspective.
Thank you so much for sharing Dacy. You're right, 10 years ago these kinds of discussions were not had. I'm also an anxious, depressed introvert (medicated for both), and I am completely spent each day, often with little energy to see friends or go out on a date. I am now divorced, and honestly, the forced kid-free time helps to give me my energy back and allows me to get so much other stuff done.
I was born in 1955, to put things in a time frame. Actually I was quite young when I realized that history repeated itself. And I was raised by people who did not know how to raise children without hurting them. Both my sister and I were very smart and had a mind of our own so we HAD to be molded. There was narcissism, bullying, and they could not let themselves be loved. All aspects of ME had to change. NOTHING of ME was okay. I was very, very unhappy and was convinced I would make the same mistakes as my parents did. I saw no way to do things differently and didn't want to put children on this earth that would most likely be as unhappy as I was. Being a fat girl/woman all attempts to find relief in therapy led to the assumption that my weight was the cause of my problems. Now that I'm 67 and finally found out - by myself - that I'm severely traumatized, and that it is (if anything) the other way around. I've started to find healing with the help of two therapists. Thanks to my mother, by the way. She left a sum of money that allows me to pay for it. I'm spending my mother's inheritance on my mother's inheritance, so to say. I never regretted not having children because I really would have f***ed them up.
Thank you! I really value your work and this community; it makes me feel safe about opening up about my heartache.
(Did I mention I have a milestone birthday happening on MOTHER’s DAY?! I will, of course, be taking care of other people’s children that day so they can be feted.)
Really debated whether or not to write this, but the most recurring question for me has always been what it will mean to be the parent of a Black child in a country whose entire history has been built on the brutalization of people who my child would look like. And I debated sharing that because reading through all of the other comments, many of which I can also relate to, it just felt really incredibly sad and isolating to see that so many white presenting folks do not even consider what it would mean to be a parent of a child who will benefit from the exact same system that makes it dangerous for me to have a child too. Just something I’ve been thinking about more and more finding myself in spaces like this.
Thank you for naming this, Ifeoma. There’s also the layer that — to have any choice in the decision to have kids or not is of course a privilege still not available to so many people. And throughout US history, absolutely not available to most Black women. So important to hold all of that.
I worked as a camp counselor and babysitter for many years and really enjoyed it. It gave me a lot of clarity about my desire to raise kids, so I knew pretty early on. That in turn was really helpful as I made decisions about relationships (I dated people who also wanted kids!) and careers (I picked a career that would allow me to support at least one dependent!).
One thing I WASN’T prepared for is sibling rivalry. I had cared for plenty of groups of children before, including siblings and including pretty large groups, but they didn’t fight for my attention in the same way because I wasn’t their parent/primary attachment figure. So having a second child, and all the conflict that triggered, was so much harder than I thought it would be. I hate conflict!
The sibling rivalry got better when my oldest child became more reasonable, and got MUCH better when my youngest child ALSO became more reasonable. They are 6 and 9 now, can behave collegially, and if they get in a fight there is more time to intervene before it gets physical. So that all got a LOT better, but I also went to therapy for a few years just to talk about sibling rivalry and everything it kicked up for me.
If you’re thinking about having kids, know that it is totally reasonable and understandable to decide to remain child free, stop at one, or have a multiple kids. If you’re under any kind of external pressure to have kids/more kids, I’m really sorry and I hope that you can hear your OWN inner voice over all the busy bodies who really should keep their opinions to themselves.
Having kids can be so great, but it is so hard and so permanent. And deciding to have kids now is different than making that call 10 years ago. Climate change is farther along, Roe has fallen, extremism is higher, etc. You can be a loving person who adores kids AND it would still be completely understandable if you don’t want to be a pregnant person or a parent under these circumstances.
Good luck with this big decision! I am so sorry about the lack of structural support that makes parenting even harder than it has to be.
“Deciding to have kids now is different than making that call 10 years ago” Yes!! I’ve been trying to convince my mom that this is the case for years now. Her thought is “you just make it work”. And I don’t think that’s the case anymore because of all the reasons you listed and more
Wow so funny you commented on this. My sister has since had a baby since I posted this, the first grandbaby. My mom commented this weekend “things are so much different now”. I had to bite my tongue!!
That sounds incredibly hard! One book I read last year that just rocked me was by Maria Coffey, who writes about chosing to be child-free (and is reflecting on it as a 60 something). Her description and dissection of her relationship with her own mom hit me SO hard. My Mom has expressed some really intense disappointment at not yet being a grandparent and it floored me when I first heard it, now I feel like I have a bit better understanding of it thanks to that book. Hope you're doing well, SL!
I had a miscarriage in January 2020, and I felt an overwhelming sense of relief after going through the initial pain and grief. I had always been pretty ambivalent about the idea of kids, going through my 20s assuming it was something I had to do eventually because it's what everyone does. And then when it did happen to me, I was upset about it. My positive pregnancy test occurred on December 31st, and I was upset I now couldn't drink the $100 worth of champagne I bought to share with friends that night. But then I settled into the thought of being a mom and started to accept that I was doing it. I finally chose this after so many years of ambivalence. And then it was ripped away from me a few weeks later. My grief wasn't from the thought of losing a child I wanted, but from being upset that I had finally made a choice and now couldn't act on that choice. But once that grief settled down I realized how relieved I was. My husband and I said we would give ourselves a year to see how we felt before trying again, and I'm so glad we did that. Most of my close group of friends gave birth in 2020 (another reason I was initially so upset), and watching their experiences really hammered home how much I didn't want what they now had. I have a freedom now they won't see again for 15+ years. I cherish that freedom so much, and I don't want to lose it. Last year, when the Dobbs ruling came out, my husband had a vasectomy and that was that. Ultimately, I'd rather regret the choice to not have kids than to have a child and regret that choice. At least I can fill in the first kind of regret through other choices -- such as being the cool aunt for all of my friends kids (something I already do) or by fostering and/or adopting (especially older children past the toddler stages).
I wasn’t sure I wanted kids, but my husband always did. I read Ayelet Waldman’s essay collection Bad Mother, and that ended up being the closer for me - her honesty about being “selfish” and refusing to sacrifice herself and her marriage but still loving her kids beyond imagining made me think it was something I could do. So I did - I was really fortunate to not have fertility problems, though I did hate being pregnant and hate having interrupted sleep, and have breastfeeding issues, and after the first one, thought I wanted 3 until I had the second.
But! I adore my kids, they’re two of the coolest, most interesting people I know, AND I would still have a fulfilling life without them. My career tanked for complex structural reasons related to my husband’s job responsibilities and the lack of systemic support for me (we move on avg every 18 months, and there’s a lot of solo parenting), and I’m just now getting back into it, and it’s hard and I don’t regret it but I do wish it was different.
It’s okay to be ambivalent about having children in the abstract even if you adore your own and don’t regret it and would do it again in a heartbeat (please don’t tell the “if you didn’t want to deal with the hard parts, why did you have them” police). It’s more that I know my life would have been different but no less “fulfilling” if I hadn’t had them, which lets me appreciate them more because they don’t have this burden of being “worth it” and justifying their existence through making my life better.
Oh I LOVE that framing. If kids are not our only means for fulfillment (and dear god, why did anyone ever think they should be) it’s absolutely better for them and better for us.
Yes!!! I have been watching my child-free friends enjoy travel, career advancements, and sleep - and realize I could have had a very fulfilling life without kids. I’m sooo glad I had my daughter, and would do it again. Like you said, she is one of the coolest people I know!
I think one of the reasons I decided to go ahead and have a baby was I started noticing all the cool, complex, and dynamic women in my life that were also mothers. Having a child did not need to define you. I will definitely check out “Bad Mother”!
My then-husband and I got married in 1999 and then spent a ton of time debating whether to have a baby. I knew he would be a great dad, but I was conflicted about how pregnancy and parenting would affect my career and the rest of my life. I really didn’t know what to do — but I had two male bosses / mentors who didn’t have kids due to infertility and both (separately) said, if you’re on the fence, give it a try and see what happens. So we did, and our daughter turned 17 a few days ago.
I was right that he would be a good dad in the traditional sense of things — he adored her, was a great playmate, advocated for her fiercely. But he was NOT good at the mental load stuff, which we didn’t really have a name for at the time. The stress of parenting a smart kid who arrived six weeks early and hated sleeping for several years definitely contributed to our divorce. He died unexpectedly from myocarditis in 2017, and parenting her alone has been both a joy and one of the hardest things I’ve ever done (and this is with a lot of privilege and an excellent support system, as well as the proceeds from a life insurance policy that I made sure to write into our divorce agreement). I am so incredibly glad she exists… and also I am 98% sure I would have had a different kind of awesome life (and tbh an earlier divorce) if we had opted not to conceive.
I was all in on kids until a few months ago. I'm asexual so it was going to be a single mom by choice thing. Which is always fun as a fat person because you get fertility experts telling you to amputate your stomach before you can get IUI or IVF. But then I moved and it was like a light switch turned off. The idea of getting home from work with a kid and having to take care of them in addition to myself was so unappealing. That there are things I want more than kids - to get my PhD, to travel more, etc. I know I can use my nurturing gifts other ways and I won't be exhausted every single day for years. And I can still eat my sometimes dinners of just popcorn!
Oooof, yes. With my chronic illness issues, I am already so deeply fatigued every day, I cannot imagine how I would function adding in parenthood on top of that. People always just say, "you find a way," or that "you don't have a choice, so you make it work," but that's not how disability works. I cannot simply push myself harder. My body will shut down. And I struggle to feed myself. Feeding children is stress I do not need!
Wow, I also experienced the “light switch” moment last December after moving. A strange experience. My partner and I had been planning on kids but after moving and changing jobs, one night I woke up and just felt differently. As it turns out he was less excited about it than I had thought as well (bit of an uncomfortable revelation). So we’re re-thinking the coming decades and it feels better & right.
I find it hard to shake the way that planning for kids got me to “fulfill society’s expectations for me” or whatever. I absolutely adore kids but I just find the whole prospect illogical.
I have told several people I would like a kid, but I’m worried about the financial burden and climate change and healthcare etc etc. Most people sort of hand wave those concerns as though my desire is somehow greater or will overcome all on its own. It’s very frustrating and I feel very torn still about it all.
I struggle with this a lot. I have on child and if I didn’t have to worry about external factors (income, climate, the state of the world) I would want 4. Hell, I still want four! However, one thing I think is important to keep in mind re:climate, is that my individual choices essentially have no impact. I can vote, sure, and I don’t own a car (even though I live in the suburbs with a kid!), I have a small house, I consume mostly locally grown food, we don’t fly often... but it’s corporations that are doing this. And corporations who have the power to fix it. So to some extent, the biggest impact I can have is by opting out of shopping. We cloth diaper (well, potty training now) and cloth our kid almost entirely in buy nothing and secondhand. So some of that is me justifying my choice, yes, but also- we’re here and we deserve joy, too. Reading My Tea Leaves (Erin Boyle) has a great discussion on it, too.
I didn't want kids for a long time, and neither did my husband. I very firmly thought we'd be child-free by choice forever. Then a close family member died unexpectedly. It was a difficult time for me; I'd never experienced grief like that before. I distinctly remember feeling like a switch flipped inside me a few months later. I thought, "how could more love be a bad thing?" And we decided to have a baby. He's 5 now and absolutely amazing. We're definitely one and done though. The newborn phase still feels like a black hole of trauma that I have no desire to ever repeat. I'm glad we have one - and only one. :)
As a happy only who is one and done, we need so much more conversation about happy onlies!! There are SO many negative stereotypes, but the research doesn’t back these up at all. It has stunned me how many people believe I’m doing real harm to my child by having one and feel the need to tell me so. One can be a beautiful option and there is no reason to worry about it (take this from a librarian who panicked while pregnant and essentially produced a lit review of studies on family size 😅).
Yes, more conversations about onlies is NEEDED. I think we are one and done for emotional, physical, and financial reasons and the guilt. is. real. I just made my first therapy appointment to try to work through these feelings bc oof, they are a lot. Shoutout to all the other one and dones out there -- kudos for doing what's best for YOUR family!
After spending the summer as a “mother’s helper” (yep, that’s the term we used in the 80’s 🤷 ) AKA nanny for a 2-year old when I was 16, I decided that I never wanted to have kids. I adored the young one I cared for but just knew that I would never want to spend that much time and attention on another human again (besides myself). And that was 35 years ago. I’ve never regretted my decision.
Before getting married I was all in on having children and when I began dating my husband, I made it clear that having children was very important to me. He made it clear that having children was also important to him. Then graduate school, unemployment, low-wage jobs, chronic illness, and mental health struggles happened. We had on-going conversations about delaying having children "until things get better". Now we're at the point where we're almost 40, financially comfortable, and our mental health is in a better place, but our priorities have shifted and we've decided to be child-free. It was like a switch flipped after we had a conversation one day about the realities of having children and the impact it would have on our lives. Between the stresses of our jobs (primarily the vicarious trauma we both are exposed to on a daily basis through work), neither of us wanting to give up our careers to care for children, the lack of parental leave offered by our companies, lack of safe and affordable childcare, not having family help (living far away, complicated relationships with our caregivers), enjoying sleep/having a disposable income/our hobbies, having chronic and mental illness, and *gestures wildly* (post-Roe, climate change, cost of healthcare and raising a child in the US, being a fat person navigating the US medical system, lack of gun control, etc), having children isn't something we want to do now. I have no doubt that we would be fantastic parents, but in order to parent in the way we'd like, we would have to sacrifice too much of ourselves (mental health/physical health/finances/etc) and we just aren't willing or able to do that. I feel pretty content and secure in our decision, but I do have those occasional thoughts of "What is end of life care going to look like for us without children?", "Who will inherit any assets we have?", "Are we missing out on something wonderful?". Whenever I have those thoughts, I quickly think about the time, effort, and sacrifice required to be a parent and my anxiety goes through the roof and I know we've made the right decision for us. Even though we're childless by choice, we still get to be important people in the lives of other kids through our jobs and our blood/chosen family and that is enough for us.
On the missing out on something wonderful question -- my thought (esp as I’m reading this thread) is sure, not having kids means missing out on some wonderful. AND having kids means missing out on some wonderful. There are a lot of kinds of wonderful and none of us are going to do them all? But it sounds like you are doing the wonderful you most want and need.
This is well-articulated. I think it is a big part of the reason I finally felt (sort of) ready to become a parent. I had a lot of stressful ambivalence, and then one day, a moment of clarity: in truth, I wasn’t uncertain at all – I wanted to continue the unencumbered life I had, AND I wanted children. Because it’s impossible to have both at once, I simply had to choose, accepting that either choice would involve sacrifice – which also meant that either choice would be the right choice. So I decided, if I must choose, let’s try this kid thing. I’m pregnant now with my first, and I feel so much calmer and happier about parenthood having acknowledged the losses it will bring.
My own parents just recently did serious estate planning after my brother and me nagging them for a long while (my mom having to deal with her brother's estate last year when he passed without a will finally nudged her to take action to make it all easier for whichever of them lives longer and ultimately for my brother and me). And while there are some sentimental things we might each want, we're both fortunate enough to be financially secure enough that any assets we'd inherit would just be cushion for our own eventual retirements. As for me, I can happily see passing on my estate to some of my favorite charitable organizations so they can do more of their good work.
i lost my mom when i was 5, had a very chaotic several years, and then my dad remarried when i was 11, and he and the new wife had a bunch of babies. the crib was in my room and i did a LOT of child care.
i loved my siblings but realized almost immediately that having a small person up my ass constantly was really, really not for me. so i've known since i was about 13 that i didn't want kids. grown ups told me constantly "oh you'll change your mind someday when you meet the right guy" but that never happened. in fact, i met the right guy and he also really did not want children. we are in our 50s now and have no regrets.
i like kids a lot and think they are hilarious, so who's to say how i would have felt without the various types of trauma i went through. but the way things shook out, this has been 100% the right path for me.
I always hoped to have children. I am a practicing Christian, and was raised in a home where, in general, humanity and people's hope through having children was always celebrated. Not like "ra ra" but more as "how amazing is it that we get to be alive". I was lucky to have wonderful parents (despite their flaws), and 2 siblings. My parents had only 3 children because they did not feel they could afford a 4th. I have had 4 children because I wanted them, and also because I could, finacially. That's a privileged position, certainly. I was and am lucky to have met and married a person who shared my interest in having children, and we mainly just waited until we both were at a point of stability in our careers and goldilocks-like not too young, not too old started trying. While we did experience 2 miscarriages, I had 4 children, 3 years apart each, 4 c-sections despite being overweight and then obese and having 'high risk' pregnancies due to high blood pressure and gestational diabetes. Having a support network and friends with kids of similar ages is one thing I'd say is really important. Parenting is the most wonderful, but also the loneliest I have ever been. I would say the definition of 'lonely together' is you and your exhausted partner doomscrolling your phones at 2am after a baby wakeup, after like, 10 years of one baby wake up or another. I expected the wonder, I did not expect the loneliness. Gird yourself for the loneliness and try to find people to commiserate with. I suggest that person not be your spouse because that can easily devolve into recrimination and exhausted arguing. An external network and outlet is sooo key. At the end, my life philosophy is "Take Joy" and that's been my guiding principle in both deciding to have a child and in having more than one.
I always knew I didn't want to have kids (very grateful that was the case, as opposed to finding out the hard way, by having them :)) I've never wanted to be married either. I'm deliberately public about these life choices - including the fact that I'm not a relationship person, I adore being single, I cannot wait to die alone, and I date younger men casually and recreationally for sex - because we need many more role models that demonstrate you can live your life very differently to the way society expects you too, and still be extremely happy. (I'm one of the happiest people I know.) I'm asked regularly in media interviews, as a startup founder (of MakeLoveNotPorn), what's your daily self-care routine. My daily self-care is, I have no husband and I have no children :) I recommend that people look long and hard into themselves and ask, 'What would REALLY make me happy?' It may not be the societal oiled grooves we're encouraged to have our lives slip into, that popular culture and social conditioning all around us reinforce.
ICON
Hi Cindy! I'm a huge fan!! I love that you're a role model for your life.
PREACH
I am so, so glad someone asked this question. I have an incredible amount to say and try to share my opinion publicly and socially, so buckle up. There wasn’t much conversation about it 10 years ago when I first got pregnant, and I was desperate to discuss it with someone (aside from my husband). I actually got in touch with an old neighbor who had told me that she hadn’t necessarily wanted kids. That was countered by a coworker who said “my life was in black and white before kids and now it’s in color 🙄🙄🙄.
I had grown up just assuming I’d have kids, but the person I partnered up with was pretty against it. I wasn't totally sold either because I don't really enjoy being with my parents and I didn't want to have kids who'd feel the same about me. We talked about it a lot as I was hitting my mid-30’s and decided that it’s a human experience we wanted to have. It was a purely intellectual decision, without a ton of desire or emotion behind it. We were lucky enough to get pregnant quickly but I also entered a massive depression during pregnancy because I had gone off of my anti-depressants.
I’m happy for all the people who have had rewarding experiences, but it has been a net negative for us. I’m actually tearing up as I write this. I can see a point in the future when it might be easier (we have a 9yo and 4yo) but it has been 10 years of having almost nothing left in my tank for any other areas of my life beside parenting: taking care of myself, my marriage, my work - all of those areas have really suffered. I sometimes think about how much further along I might be had I not had kids.
One major factor in all of this is my temperament: a highly sensitive anxious introvert. The overstimulation is so real and so constant and on top of everything else that usually means that I have a very short fuse by the end of the day. If that is you, I’d really consider that an important factor.
I’m surprised but happy about the number of people in these comments who managed to resist the societal pressure. The jury’s still out for me, but at the moment, I wouldn’t recommend it 🙁
So grateful for you and your honesty, Dacy. 💜
Hi Dacy- I’m the question asker and so appreciate this perspective. I think my mom honestly felt similar, though she’s never said it so outright. She’s told me that she “didn’t really like us all that much til we were tweens” (I had two siblings.) and that having little kids was “a real slog.” Part of what makes my decision-making feel hard is that as I’ve gotten older my mom has opened up more about the realities and challenges and deeper sacrifices of parenting and mothering specifically. As I’ve become an adult and can see her as a human, not just as Mom, I’m so grateful for our current amazing friendship, but also wish I could meet a version of her that went another direction, too. Thanks for your work and for sharing this.
Yes, that really is the tricky part, how and when and if to share any of that with my kids, while still making sure that they know they are loved and welcome and safe. At this point, I talk a lot about my brain getting stressed out when it's loud or whatever but also really trying to impress on them that they're not doing anything wrong, and that they're just doing normal kid things, it's just my brain that has a hard time with it sometimes. To the point that now, if I tell them to turn their volume down or whatever, they'll say, "mom, we're just being kids!" Really grateful to you for asking this question.
Thank you so much for that vulnerable honesty. I suspect it's so much more common than people feel able to say. There's such societal pressure to say that you just fell so in love with your children that the hard stuff didn't matter and to say anything else means you're some sort of evil shrew who never should've become a parent. When in reality there are a lot of nuanced and complex feelings within the space of "loving parent."
Yes, absolutely. And the really wild thing is that I know lots of people have a different experience than us! Like, we do have friends who seem to really enjoy parenting, even while acknowledging the difficulty of it. We just seem to have had a combination of circumstances that have made it hard. *also acknowleging the privilege in the resources we've had as help.
Honestly, as someone who cannot have children, I really appreciate hearing this. I had to decide how hard to fight to have a kid and ultimately ended up deciding not to spend huge amounts of money I don't have for exactly the difficult reasons you describe. Thank you for your honesty.
I really appreciate you sharing your experience. I am certain that many parents feel the same way, but this conversation is often missing this perspective.
Oh Dacy, thank you for articulating this so beautifully. I feel this so hard as a fellow highly sensitive introvert. The overstimulation is real!
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Thank you so much for sharing Dacy. You're right, 10 years ago these kinds of discussions were not had. I'm also an anxious, depressed introvert (medicated for both), and I am completely spent each day, often with little energy to see friends or go out on a date. I am now divorced, and honestly, the forced kid-free time helps to give me my energy back and allows me to get so much other stuff done.
i hear you ❤️
I was born in 1955, to put things in a time frame. Actually I was quite young when I realized that history repeated itself. And I was raised by people who did not know how to raise children without hurting them. Both my sister and I were very smart and had a mind of our own so we HAD to be molded. There was narcissism, bullying, and they could not let themselves be loved. All aspects of ME had to change. NOTHING of ME was okay. I was very, very unhappy and was convinced I would make the same mistakes as my parents did. I saw no way to do things differently and didn't want to put children on this earth that would most likely be as unhappy as I was. Being a fat girl/woman all attempts to find relief in therapy led to the assumption that my weight was the cause of my problems. Now that I'm 67 and finally found out - by myself - that I'm severely traumatized, and that it is (if anything) the other way around. I've started to find healing with the help of two therapists. Thanks to my mother, by the way. She left a sum of money that allows me to pay for it. I'm spending my mother's inheritance on my mother's inheritance, so to say. I never regretted not having children because I really would have f***ed them up.
Some people don’t get to decide!
I’m single and vastly underpaid—I’m a nanny—so I don’t make enough money to have a child on my own.
Nevermind the issue that I can’t be pregnant without medical help or that adoption is fully out of reach financially.
SO important. Thanks for naming this.
Thank you! I really value your work and this community; it makes me feel safe about opening up about my heartache.
(Did I mention I have a milestone birthday happening on MOTHER’s DAY?! I will, of course, be taking care of other people’s children that day so they can be feted.)
Happy birthday! And I hope there is some kind of special celebration in or around the day FOR YOU.
Really debated whether or not to write this, but the most recurring question for me has always been what it will mean to be the parent of a Black child in a country whose entire history has been built on the brutalization of people who my child would look like. And I debated sharing that because reading through all of the other comments, many of which I can also relate to, it just felt really incredibly sad and isolating to see that so many white presenting folks do not even consider what it would mean to be a parent of a child who will benefit from the exact same system that makes it dangerous for me to have a child too. Just something I’ve been thinking about more and more finding myself in spaces like this.
Thank you for naming this, Ifeoma. There’s also the layer that — to have any choice in the decision to have kids or not is of course a privilege still not available to so many people. And throughout US history, absolutely not available to most Black women. So important to hold all of that.
Yes, you’re absolutely right. Thank you.
Thank you for bringing this to the conversation. I’m glad you posted.
I worked as a camp counselor and babysitter for many years and really enjoyed it. It gave me a lot of clarity about my desire to raise kids, so I knew pretty early on. That in turn was really helpful as I made decisions about relationships (I dated people who also wanted kids!) and careers (I picked a career that would allow me to support at least one dependent!).
One thing I WASN’T prepared for is sibling rivalry. I had cared for plenty of groups of children before, including siblings and including pretty large groups, but they didn’t fight for my attention in the same way because I wasn’t their parent/primary attachment figure. So having a second child, and all the conflict that triggered, was so much harder than I thought it would be. I hate conflict!
The sibling rivalry got better when my oldest child became more reasonable, and got MUCH better when my youngest child ALSO became more reasonable. They are 6 and 9 now, can behave collegially, and if they get in a fight there is more time to intervene before it gets physical. So that all got a LOT better, but I also went to therapy for a few years just to talk about sibling rivalry and everything it kicked up for me.
If you’re thinking about having kids, know that it is totally reasonable and understandable to decide to remain child free, stop at one, or have a multiple kids. If you’re under any kind of external pressure to have kids/more kids, I’m really sorry and I hope that you can hear your OWN inner voice over all the busy bodies who really should keep their opinions to themselves.
Having kids can be so great, but it is so hard and so permanent. And deciding to have kids now is different than making that call 10 years ago. Climate change is farther along, Roe has fallen, extremism is higher, etc. You can be a loving person who adores kids AND it would still be completely understandable if you don’t want to be a pregnant person or a parent under these circumstances.
Good luck with this big decision! I am so sorry about the lack of structural support that makes parenting even harder than it has to be.
“Deciding to have kids now is different than making that call 10 years ago” Yes!! I’ve been trying to convince my mom that this is the case for years now. Her thought is “you just make it work”. And I don’t think that’s the case anymore because of all the reasons you listed and more
Hard agree. Im combing the archives and came across this post. Disagreeing with my Mom on this has been super tough for me.
Wow so funny you commented on this. My sister has since had a baby since I posted this, the first grandbaby. My mom commented this weekend “things are so much different now”. I had to bite my tongue!!
That sounds incredibly hard! One book I read last year that just rocked me was by Maria Coffey, who writes about chosing to be child-free (and is reflecting on it as a 60 something). Her description and dissection of her relationship with her own mom hit me SO hard. My Mom has expressed some really intense disappointment at not yet being a grandparent and it floored me when I first heard it, now I feel like I have a bit better understanding of it thanks to that book. Hope you're doing well, SL!
I appreciate this answer so much!
CW: Miscarriage
I had a miscarriage in January 2020, and I felt an overwhelming sense of relief after going through the initial pain and grief. I had always been pretty ambivalent about the idea of kids, going through my 20s assuming it was something I had to do eventually because it's what everyone does. And then when it did happen to me, I was upset about it. My positive pregnancy test occurred on December 31st, and I was upset I now couldn't drink the $100 worth of champagne I bought to share with friends that night. But then I settled into the thought of being a mom and started to accept that I was doing it. I finally chose this after so many years of ambivalence. And then it was ripped away from me a few weeks later. My grief wasn't from the thought of losing a child I wanted, but from being upset that I had finally made a choice and now couldn't act on that choice. But once that grief settled down I realized how relieved I was. My husband and I said we would give ourselves a year to see how we felt before trying again, and I'm so glad we did that. Most of my close group of friends gave birth in 2020 (another reason I was initially so upset), and watching their experiences really hammered home how much I didn't want what they now had. I have a freedom now they won't see again for 15+ years. I cherish that freedom so much, and I don't want to lose it. Last year, when the Dobbs ruling came out, my husband had a vasectomy and that was that. Ultimately, I'd rather regret the choice to not have kids than to have a child and regret that choice. At least I can fill in the first kind of regret through other choices -- such as being the cool aunt for all of my friends kids (something I already do) or by fostering and/or adopting (especially older children past the toddler stages).
“I'd rather regret the choice to not have kids than to have a child and regret that choice.”
We definitely don’t hear this perspective enough!
I wasn’t sure I wanted kids, but my husband always did. I read Ayelet Waldman’s essay collection Bad Mother, and that ended up being the closer for me - her honesty about being “selfish” and refusing to sacrifice herself and her marriage but still loving her kids beyond imagining made me think it was something I could do. So I did - I was really fortunate to not have fertility problems, though I did hate being pregnant and hate having interrupted sleep, and have breastfeeding issues, and after the first one, thought I wanted 3 until I had the second.
But! I adore my kids, they’re two of the coolest, most interesting people I know, AND I would still have a fulfilling life without them. My career tanked for complex structural reasons related to my husband’s job responsibilities and the lack of systemic support for me (we move on avg every 18 months, and there’s a lot of solo parenting), and I’m just now getting back into it, and it’s hard and I don’t regret it but I do wish it was different.
It’s okay to be ambivalent about having children in the abstract even if you adore your own and don’t regret it and would do it again in a heartbeat (please don’t tell the “if you didn’t want to deal with the hard parts, why did you have them” police). It’s more that I know my life would have been different but no less “fulfilling” if I hadn’t had them, which lets me appreciate them more because they don’t have this burden of being “worth it” and justifying their existence through making my life better.
Oh I LOVE that framing. If kids are not our only means for fulfillment (and dear god, why did anyone ever think they should be) it’s absolutely better for them and better for us.
Yes!!! I have been watching my child-free friends enjoy travel, career advancements, and sleep - and realize I could have had a very fulfilling life without kids. I’m sooo glad I had my daughter, and would do it again. Like you said, she is one of the coolest people I know!
I think one of the reasons I decided to go ahead and have a baby was I started noticing all the cool, complex, and dynamic women in my life that were also mothers. Having a child did not need to define you. I will definitely check out “Bad Mother”!
My then-husband and I got married in 1999 and then spent a ton of time debating whether to have a baby. I knew he would be a great dad, but I was conflicted about how pregnancy and parenting would affect my career and the rest of my life. I really didn’t know what to do — but I had two male bosses / mentors who didn’t have kids due to infertility and both (separately) said, if you’re on the fence, give it a try and see what happens. So we did, and our daughter turned 17 a few days ago.
I was right that he would be a good dad in the traditional sense of things — he adored her, was a great playmate, advocated for her fiercely. But he was NOT good at the mental load stuff, which we didn’t really have a name for at the time. The stress of parenting a smart kid who arrived six weeks early and hated sleeping for several years definitely contributed to our divorce. He died unexpectedly from myocarditis in 2017, and parenting her alone has been both a joy and one of the hardest things I’ve ever done (and this is with a lot of privilege and an excellent support system, as well as the proceeds from a life insurance policy that I made sure to write into our divorce agreement). I am so incredibly glad she exists… and also I am 98% sure I would have had a different kind of awesome life (and tbh an earlier divorce) if we had opted not to conceive.
SO relate to this: I am so incredibly glad she exists… and also I am 98% sure I would have had a different kind of awesome life...
I was all in on kids until a few months ago. I'm asexual so it was going to be a single mom by choice thing. Which is always fun as a fat person because you get fertility experts telling you to amputate your stomach before you can get IUI or IVF. But then I moved and it was like a light switch turned off. The idea of getting home from work with a kid and having to take care of them in addition to myself was so unappealing. That there are things I want more than kids - to get my PhD, to travel more, etc. I know I can use my nurturing gifts other ways and I won't be exhausted every single day for years. And I can still eat my sometimes dinners of just popcorn!
Oooof, yes. With my chronic illness issues, I am already so deeply fatigued every day, I cannot imagine how I would function adding in parenthood on top of that. People always just say, "you find a way," or that "you don't have a choice, so you make it work," but that's not how disability works. I cannot simply push myself harder. My body will shut down. And I struggle to feed myself. Feeding children is stress I do not need!
Wow, I also experienced the “light switch” moment last December after moving. A strange experience. My partner and I had been planning on kids but after moving and changing jobs, one night I woke up and just felt differently. As it turns out he was less excited about it than I had thought as well (bit of an uncomfortable revelation). So we’re re-thinking the coming decades and it feels better & right.
I find it hard to shake the way that planning for kids got me to “fulfill society’s expectations for me” or whatever. I absolutely adore kids but I just find the whole prospect illogical.
I have told several people I would like a kid, but I’m worried about the financial burden and climate change and healthcare etc etc. Most people sort of hand wave those concerns as though my desire is somehow greater or will overcome all on its own. It’s very frustrating and I feel very torn still about it all.
I struggle with this a lot. I have on child and if I didn’t have to worry about external factors (income, climate, the state of the world) I would want 4. Hell, I still want four! However, one thing I think is important to keep in mind re:climate, is that my individual choices essentially have no impact. I can vote, sure, and I don’t own a car (even though I live in the suburbs with a kid!), I have a small house, I consume mostly locally grown food, we don’t fly often... but it’s corporations that are doing this. And corporations who have the power to fix it. So to some extent, the biggest impact I can have is by opting out of shopping. We cloth diaper (well, potty training now) and cloth our kid almost entirely in buy nothing and secondhand. So some of that is me justifying my choice, yes, but also- we’re here and we deserve joy, too. Reading My Tea Leaves (Erin Boyle) has a great discussion on it, too.
I didn't want kids for a long time, and neither did my husband. I very firmly thought we'd be child-free by choice forever. Then a close family member died unexpectedly. It was a difficult time for me; I'd never experienced grief like that before. I distinctly remember feeling like a switch flipped inside me a few months later. I thought, "how could more love be a bad thing?" And we decided to have a baby. He's 5 now and absolutely amazing. We're definitely one and done though. The newborn phase still feels like a black hole of trauma that I have no desire to ever repeat. I'm glad we have one - and only one. :)
As a happy only who is one and done, we need so much more conversation about happy onlies!! There are SO many negative stereotypes, but the research doesn’t back these up at all. It has stunned me how many people believe I’m doing real harm to my child by having one and feel the need to tell me so. One can be a beautiful option and there is no reason to worry about it (take this from a librarian who panicked while pregnant and essentially produced a lit review of studies on family size 😅).
Lol! Yes! Societal pressure to have more is so strong and sometimes it gets to me. One is definitely becoming more common now though.
Yes, more conversations about onlies is NEEDED. I think we are one and done for emotional, physical, and financial reasons and the guilt. is. real. I just made my first therapy appointment to try to work through these feelings bc oof, they are a lot. Shoutout to all the other one and dones out there -- kudos for doing what's best for YOUR family!
Also one and done. :) I love my daughter dearly, but there's no way I could ever go through that again.
I have one and he is more than enough. Kinda glad #2 ended as a miscarriage. Would’ve been too much.
After spending the summer as a “mother’s helper” (yep, that’s the term we used in the 80’s 🤷 ) AKA nanny for a 2-year old when I was 16, I decided that I never wanted to have kids. I adored the young one I cared for but just knew that I would never want to spend that much time and attention on another human again (besides myself). And that was 35 years ago. I’ve never regretted my decision.
Before getting married I was all in on having children and when I began dating my husband, I made it clear that having children was very important to me. He made it clear that having children was also important to him. Then graduate school, unemployment, low-wage jobs, chronic illness, and mental health struggles happened. We had on-going conversations about delaying having children "until things get better". Now we're at the point where we're almost 40, financially comfortable, and our mental health is in a better place, but our priorities have shifted and we've decided to be child-free. It was like a switch flipped after we had a conversation one day about the realities of having children and the impact it would have on our lives. Between the stresses of our jobs (primarily the vicarious trauma we both are exposed to on a daily basis through work), neither of us wanting to give up our careers to care for children, the lack of parental leave offered by our companies, lack of safe and affordable childcare, not having family help (living far away, complicated relationships with our caregivers), enjoying sleep/having a disposable income/our hobbies, having chronic and mental illness, and *gestures wildly* (post-Roe, climate change, cost of healthcare and raising a child in the US, being a fat person navigating the US medical system, lack of gun control, etc), having children isn't something we want to do now. I have no doubt that we would be fantastic parents, but in order to parent in the way we'd like, we would have to sacrifice too much of ourselves (mental health/physical health/finances/etc) and we just aren't willing or able to do that. I feel pretty content and secure in our decision, but I do have those occasional thoughts of "What is end of life care going to look like for us without children?", "Who will inherit any assets we have?", "Are we missing out on something wonderful?". Whenever I have those thoughts, I quickly think about the time, effort, and sacrifice required to be a parent and my anxiety goes through the roof and I know we've made the right decision for us. Even though we're childless by choice, we still get to be important people in the lives of other kids through our jobs and our blood/chosen family and that is enough for us.
On the missing out on something wonderful question -- my thought (esp as I’m reading this thread) is sure, not having kids means missing out on some wonderful. AND having kids means missing out on some wonderful. There are a lot of kinds of wonderful and none of us are going to do them all? But it sounds like you are doing the wonderful you most want and need.
This is well-articulated. I think it is a big part of the reason I finally felt (sort of) ready to become a parent. I had a lot of stressful ambivalence, and then one day, a moment of clarity: in truth, I wasn’t uncertain at all – I wanted to continue the unencumbered life I had, AND I wanted children. Because it’s impossible to have both at once, I simply had to choose, accepting that either choice would involve sacrifice – which also meant that either choice would be the right choice. So I decided, if I must choose, let’s try this kid thing. I’m pregnant now with my first, and I feel so much calmer and happier about parenthood having acknowledged the losses it will bring.
Yes, absolutely. And I certainly recognize the privilege I have in being able to choose the kind of wonderful that’s right for me. ❤️
My own parents just recently did serious estate planning after my brother and me nagging them for a long while (my mom having to deal with her brother's estate last year when he passed without a will finally nudged her to take action to make it all easier for whichever of them lives longer and ultimately for my brother and me). And while there are some sentimental things we might each want, we're both fortunate enough to be financially secure enough that any assets we'd inherit would just be cushion for our own eventual retirements. As for me, I can happily see passing on my estate to some of my favorite charitable organizations so they can do more of their good work.
i lost my mom when i was 5, had a very chaotic several years, and then my dad remarried when i was 11, and he and the new wife had a bunch of babies. the crib was in my room and i did a LOT of child care.
i loved my siblings but realized almost immediately that having a small person up my ass constantly was really, really not for me. so i've known since i was about 13 that i didn't want kids. grown ups told me constantly "oh you'll change your mind someday when you meet the right guy" but that never happened. in fact, i met the right guy and he also really did not want children. we are in our 50s now and have no regrets.
i like kids a lot and think they are hilarious, so who's to say how i would have felt without the various types of trauma i went through. but the way things shook out, this has been 100% the right path for me.
I always hoped to have children. I am a practicing Christian, and was raised in a home where, in general, humanity and people's hope through having children was always celebrated. Not like "ra ra" but more as "how amazing is it that we get to be alive". I was lucky to have wonderful parents (despite their flaws), and 2 siblings. My parents had only 3 children because they did not feel they could afford a 4th. I have had 4 children because I wanted them, and also because I could, finacially. That's a privileged position, certainly. I was and am lucky to have met and married a person who shared my interest in having children, and we mainly just waited until we both were at a point of stability in our careers and goldilocks-like not too young, not too old started trying. While we did experience 2 miscarriages, I had 4 children, 3 years apart each, 4 c-sections despite being overweight and then obese and having 'high risk' pregnancies due to high blood pressure and gestational diabetes. Having a support network and friends with kids of similar ages is one thing I'd say is really important. Parenting is the most wonderful, but also the loneliest I have ever been. I would say the definition of 'lonely together' is you and your exhausted partner doomscrolling your phones at 2am after a baby wakeup, after like, 10 years of one baby wake up or another. I expected the wonder, I did not expect the loneliness. Gird yourself for the loneliness and try to find people to commiserate with. I suggest that person not be your spouse because that can easily devolve into recrimination and exhausted arguing. An external network and outlet is sooo key. At the end, my life philosophy is "Take Joy" and that's been my guiding principle in both deciding to have a child and in having more than one.