General Relationship Thread

I will cop to once having this view. But now I figure, if you don't want a child, and have thought it through and believe you are not suited to raise one, then good for you for not having one. Why should you attempt to raise an unwanted child? Not good for you and not good for them.

I can't help but suspect that some people who feel that way are wrong and would turn out to be fine parents, but it's their loss. Who am I to judge?

What's wrong with making yourself happy? Number 3 is the good reason to have kids. Anyone with parents that had kids because they genuinely wanted kids is a lucky person.

edit: My post was not meant to judge negatively people that choose to have kids. I guess I shouldn't have used the words "selfish" and "egocentric" because those words have negative connotations, but I didn't really think it all the way through. There's nothing wrong with being "selfish" when selfish means that you want to have kids and make them happy because of natural biological impulses.

I apologize to anyone with kids or planning on having kids that was offended by my post, that wasn't the intention.

Also I was wrong about the global population crisis. I shouldn't post things I remember hearing without checking my facts! Apparently the first world is actually reproducing slower than it should be. I still stand by my opinion on having kids though. However swap the word selfish out for just neutral as it appear having kids isn't actually a bad thing at all (unless you don't think it through and just have them out of a sense of duty or biological imperative).

Note to self: lurk and do not post during 96 hour work marathons in which 18 hours a day is spent reading boring ass biology/math papers and 6 hours a day is spent sleeping.

How about this.
How about we say "if you want to bring lives into the world with the intent of raising them to be happy, healthy, and educated and are properly equipped to do so" is a good reason.

How about that?
There we go. Because I mean saying "I WANNA HAVE KIDS" and having the only reason be "BECAUSE I WANT THEM", but not being educated, patient or financially stable enough to have them is...is not a good thing.
/looks at high school
/looks at middle school

That's the thing that bugs me most, the assumption that because I do not want to be a mom, I don't like children. I actually really like kids! Other people's kids.

Ugh. We can't have children, and it is the biggest (only?) sadness in my life. My wife doesn't want to adopt, and has offered me a no-fault divorce if my desire to have kids ever >> my desire to grow old with her. It doesn't, but I do still get twangs when I see families playing in the park etc.

Kids is a thing for me, man.
My doctor pretty much said "It's gonna be insanely difficult for you to have kids because of this thing you had/have no real control over................" It's scary because I want kids. I love kids. Wanna love all the kids. Sure, if it means I can only adopt, so be it; there's absolutely nothing wrong with adopting children. I'd just like some of my own. At the same time, would I really like to pass these genetics on to some poor, unsuspecting kid? So now I have to sit here and wonder if I'd be a terrible person if I did bring a kid into the world that's susceptible to my mental things and other things.

man. man. shit's tough.

You'll just have to believe me when I say the world is better off if I don't pass on my messed-up genes and mindset to some poor, innocent soul that never asked for them. My greatest fear whenever having kids was mentioned was having a child that turned out to be like me. But of course the whole thing is a moot point, as I have no interest in being a single mom and am not really in a position to support a child financially and emotionally when I have trouble taking care of myself. I'm fairly certain if I had had children I would have messed them up irredeemably. Nowadays I think I would be okay around kids, even though I'm really uncomfortable around them at first. I wouldn't object to marrying someone that already had children, I just really believe that I should not be the one to have them. I don't feel like I've lost anything by not having kids, I feel more like I've spared some poor soul a life of pain and suffering that would have occurred if I had been their mother.

As someone once said to me,"I really like playing with my nieces and nephews! And the best part is, I get to send them home when we're done!" :D

The "you'll change your mind"-thing is perfectly logical, because statistically most people do. And since the age by which people in the western world starts having kids have been steadily rising, it makes sense, that some young person saying "I don't want kids" will turn into an adult with a family - that's how it mostly goes.

Of course not everybody changes their mind and whether they do or not, it's totally not anybody elses business, so I really don't get why anybody would give you a hard time about it. But then unless you really know the person, I don't get the asking in the first place. There's also a growing number of people having trouble with having children, so there's more than one reason your question might cause somebody pain.

I really don't like small kids (under 7s), which apparently might be an only child thing as I wasn't really exposed to babies in my youth. I would however like a lion. I would take it to school and it would help me with behaviour management. "Miss R is a really soft touch, you just have to be careful for Mr Tiddles."

I've always admired the people who have figured out that they don't want kids. I seems to me they have thought about it and figured out the personal pros and cons to parenthood.

It's like any decision - if you're fifteen and say "I won't ever want kids!", you don't know shit from shit, pull up your damn pants, and I will laugh at you because you're fifteen and not even fully sapient yet.

However, once you're in your twenties and have actually experienced a year or two of full cognitive capacity and life experience, then your decision becomes more valid and should be respected.

I don't like kids. I just don't know how to react to kids. And I also think they're annoying for like 65% of the time. It varies per kid of course, but all kids have that moment where they're crying because of something I think is bullshit, and I would be the kind of parent who would literally tell them that (telling your kid you think they're full of shit, bad thing right?). I used to say I don't want kids (and still do sometimes, and sometimes it's true), but I don't know where I'm going to be in ten years time. Maybe I'll have kids someday, I think it it'll depend on the situation. Maybe if I have a partner who really wants kids and who is pretty good with them I won't be opposed, but I don't really feel the need to have them.

My mom always said she felt this way about every other kid but her own.

I treat 'em like they're people, they seem to dig that.

In my defense, by that age I had seen what the day-to-day of raising a child was like, which was why I decided I wanted no part of it. And I don't care how young/immature/uninformed a teenager's decision appears, if it's not a decision that is causing them harm, then respect it. Roll your eyes inwardly all you want, but don't display outward contempt. That's just rude.

I know, that's why I won't say "I'll never have kids". But there are a lot of different reasons why I don't want 'em, that's just the main one. I also just don't feel the need to, I enjoy spending time alone every now and then and I don't like the idea of being responsible for a human life right from the start (no maternal instinct or whatever). I also have this weird thing about pregnancy and childbirth, but that's a whole other story. (Sorry if that sounds harsh, it's a good argument but my mum uses it on the subject of kids so I've naturally come to loathe it ;) )

I've tried this, and they go along with it alright. It's the parents (in my experience, not slagging of the parents on this forum of course) who don't seem to like it. Something about "bad influence"...

If the parents leave the kid alone with me, that's what they get. :P

Well yes, but you never actually had teenage years. You went from eleven to forty.

I do the same. Everyone's always so surprised by the fact that kids love me, too. My SIL never misses an opportunity to point out how incredibly weird it is that our friends' children think I'm awesome. Because I'm such an unlikeable monstrous asshole to the adults, I guess?

Not always.

My wife and I knew we wanted kids, which, when we got married, was slated for some vague point in the future. When she got pregnant about 4 months after we were married, we rolled with it, because we knew we wanted kids anyway. Our son is amazing, and an absolute blessing - even moreso when we found out that due to our particular genetic/physiological what-have-you, we only have about a 10-15% chance of actually conceiving. Although it means it's going to be tough for us to conceive a 2nd child, it's not impossible, and our son is proof that we could beat the odds that we didn't even know were stacked against us. What I'm basically saying is that sometimes it just happens, regardless of the odds.

let me just hug you.
is that okay?

I am granting my hypothetical teenager's inevitable wish that s/he had never been born. I say that makes me a good parent!

Fixed.

(also: grats and likes)

But if you consider them as people, they're complete failures at it. They cry at complete bullshit, believe the dumbest things, and have the attention spans of gnats.

So... yeah. Treating them as people is right out. I'll continue to treat them as tiny inscrutable aliens.

I can't tell if you're purposefully joking by describing a large portion of the adult population or if this was unintentional.

I don't really like kids, but my niece is awesome. She's not like any other kid I've ever met, though, including her brother. (Is it horrible that I don't like her brother very much? It's just that he's almost five and acts like he's still two...) If I had a guarantee that any child I had would turn out as cool as my niece, I would almost consider having one. (Almost.)

MulMizu, my sister was never supposed to be able to have children, and she's got two. Never give up hope.

I can treat 'em like people without thinking of them as people. Not very hard.

The key is not using the ATTENTION: I AM SPEAKING TO A CHILD voice some people do.

I read that as "attention spans of grunts", and combined with treating them as tiny aliens...



Yeah, that makes children make a lot more sense now.

Oh, he was talking about children...

That's rough man, all I can say is I feel for you.Sincerely.

Having a wife you WANT to grow old with is a pretty good thing to have, too, though. I hear there are folks that don't have that, but do have the kids. Having both is like some glorious dream. ;)

Same thing here! I have one kid I consistently like, my cousin. He has the same interests I have had as a kid (Star Wars, Led Zeppelin, Batman) so it's a little easier for me to interact with him. With his little sister I really have to force it. She's really into the whole princesses thing and girls-should-wear-pink-and-boys-should-wear-blue bullshit which I hate. Her big brother on the other hand is the cousin who wanted to be Pippi Longstocking (another thing we have in common).

You're still showing your bias, because the implication of the bolded section is that people who don't want kids are just afraid we wouldn't be good parents. Which is horse shit. I know I'd be a fine parent, but that's not the point. I don't want to be a parent, that's why I say "I don't want kids" and not "I'm not worthy of having kids." I also don't want an Escalade, even though I would be at least as good of an Escalade owner as most people.

I only framed my response that way because of the number of people in this thread who had stated that they knew they would not make good parents and therefore did not want children.

Bah, nobody knows if they will be a good parent or not until they have kids. And then we they do, they are pretty sure they are doing it wrong. It takes a good 20-25 years or longer to know if you were a good parent in my opinion. My main goal as a parent is to fuck them up less than my parents did me and then, if they choose to have kids, hope they weed out a bit more of the fuckedupedness and so on.