Anyone Child Free By Choice?

poet123

prettyflamingo wrote: »

exactly
however theres probably very few people on this thread who will have a change of mind having read your reply, considering that is only one of many reasons why people choose to be child free.
i'm not here to get into a debate about it, for me there is no point. i will never change my mind :money:

I am not trying to change your mind, why would I? I respect your choice, it is just that, your choice. My point was that you cannot solely ascribe a lack of material things to having children.

Oog

Ha, ha!

Thought I'd drop in on this thread as I was CFBC but I'm now in the final stages of changing my mind.
I laugh because just today I was discussing with the OH about holidays but with the possibility of being pregnant within the next few months, my ideal diving trip to Egypt would be a bit of a let down!! No diving for me... Snorkelling perhaps...
Hmmm, perhaps I'm not really mentally prepared for this...!

I agree with a previous Poster that having kids is selfish. I can justify it myself by saying a family is something we both want but if it doesn't happen it doesn't happen. I also would not want to have kids on my own. There are already plenty of children in the world, and I think it's hard enough bringing them up when you have a wealth of family helping out. I would also have to do it without any expected help from the state which would be even more difficult if on your own.

On a different note, what really annoys me about people questioning you about not having kids is that the very same people never paint parenthood in a wonderful light. I recently asked someone with a really useless OH if she had considered, before the kids arrived, effectively being a single parent. She said yes!! Doesn't say much for relationships, does it?!

Steel_2

kdenty wrote: »

My other half went out with a group of his friends last night who now all seem to have young children. He said they spent hours complaining about being woken at 4am, 5am, toddler tantrums and the stress etc. Then they asked him "when are you and your Mrs having Kids?" :rotfl:Needless to say we are happy with sleeping well and not stressing about 'little people problems'.

We get this a lot.

We find people get very annoyed, sometimes even angry with us for not having children. We've cut down the amount of time we spend with family and friends who have children simply because we get no peace from the questions and comments about us being CFBC.

One friend got quite irritated with us once and said: "We have to suffer, why shouldn't you." Wish it had been a bit of tongue-in-cheek jokey comment but I'm not sure it was thinking back on it.

We're pretty easy going and have no problem with kids being around us or going to do things with our friends that involves activities for their kids. It's just we can't deal with the endless comments and conversations about the subject. And sooner or later some twerp will always ask if there are any problems in the bedroom department and is that why we don't have kids.

prettyflamingo

we also went through all of the subtle hints from family, which you start off answering fairly subtly because you dont want to rock the boat (i.e. MILTB 'hinting' since the BILTB has 3 kids already), but ive actually just started to be blunt about it now. 'No, we wont be having any kids because we dont want any'. end of story. OH has a couple of times gone down the route of 'no we actually cant have kids' which generally resulted in embarrassed backtracking by the questioner, which he reported was faintly amusing!

dark_lady

Steel wrote: »

We get this a lot.

We find people get very annoyed, sometimes even angry with us for not having children. We've cut down the amount of time we spend with family and friends who have children simply because we get no peace from the questions and comments about us being CFBC.

One friend got quite irritated with us once and said: "We have to suffer, why shouldn't you." Wish it had been a bit of tongue-in-cheek jokey comment but I'm not sure it was thinking back on it.

We're pretty easy going and have no problem with kids being around us or going to do things with our friends that involves activities for their kids. It's just we can't deal with the endless comments and conversations about the subject. And sooner or later some twerp will always ask if there are any problems in the bedroom department and is that why we don't have kids.

"We have to suffer so why shouldnt you." Sounds like thinly veiled jealousy to me. Im CFBC too by the way.

Pee

I think I am going to be child free and not really by choice but because having children wasn't a priority when I was younger. I don't wish that I could go back and erm.. try again and I am genuinely convinced that there are benefits to having children and benefits to being child free.
I do find it hard with some of my friends who have children when I complain about a lack of time and I appreciate that compared to them I do have lots of time to myself, but it still isn't enough if you see what I mean. (I work full time and commute a reasonable distance.)
It is also possible that I have never been very fertile, which might explain my ambiguity for most of my life. I also wasn't with the right partner until I was 32 and it took me a while to be sure he was the right one and for us to start trying. I have a friend who tried for a baby in a marriage for a long time and then decided that she wanted a baby more than she wanted her husband. Whilst I think this is a valid choice for her, one that has made her happy in some ways and unhappy in others (she rushed into single parenthood, feeling possibly correctly that that was the only choice for her), it made me think and another older friend commented that for her she had chosen the man and if children happened or didn't happen (unlikely for her now) that was the man she wanted to be with.
Obviously I have friends where children have brought them closer together, but I also have friends where children have torn them apart.
I don't feel that my life will be meaningless without children.

babymoo

Hi

I originally started off desperately wanting to be a mum, I found out that I couldn't have children when I was 16 and up until last year (now 24) it tore me to pieces that I couldn't have children, more the choice had been taken away from me if that makes sense. At the end of last year all my friends suddenly started popping out babies left right and centre and my brother and his gf were pregnant with their first child and I started to realise that actually I quite enjoy my life without children in it, dont get me wrong I adore children but actually theyre just not for me.

I absolutely love my neice as though she was my own but since being around her and having her over night 3 times since she was born on March 4th this year I can honestly say that children are just NOT for me. Since realising this i've felt rather liberated to be honest as everyone around me expected me to be upset about it forever and its been quite a shock to most I think but I am very happy just being me. I have my kitty and when I finally leave my mums I will have a puppy as me and DP both want one and that will be us both happy. DP can't stand children so all is good hehe.

red_devil

dark_lady wrote: »

"We have to suffer so why shouldnt you." Sounds like thinly veiled jealousy to me. Im CFBC too by the way.

yes sounds like jealousy to me.

dizziblonde

Steel wrote: »

We get this a lot.

We find people get very annoyed, sometimes even angry with us for not having children. We've cut down the amount of time we spend with family and friends who have children simply because we get no peace from the questions and comments about us being CFBC.

One friend got quite irritated with us once and said: "We have to suffer, why shouldn't you." Wish it had been a bit of tongue-in-cheek jokey comment but I'm not sure it was thinking back on it.

We're pretty easy going and have no problem with kids being around us or going to do things with our friends that involves activities for their kids. It's just we can't deal with the endless comments and conversations about the subject. And sooner or later some twerp will always ask if there are any problems in the bedroom department and is that why we don't have kids.

Try getting told you shouldn't be allowed in your chosen career (which I'm very very good at) because you suffer fertility problems and miscarriages. So yes, I'm not CFBC - but I still get hit with the same inane, rude, offensive, presumptuous, judgemental comments. There would be (and is) an utter outcry if people suggested mothers were unable to do a job, or were less "worthy" as people or whatever - yet it's perfectly acceptable to make those pops all the time at those without kids - I've got a heck of a lot of sympathy for the CFBC movement because of that - because I'm sick to death of those without kids being judged because of it. (BTW ask any fertilityally challenged person and they've usually got comedy golds about stupid things people have said... my best one was someone suggesting after my last miscarriage "are you sure you're doing it right"... ya know - I never knew we weren't meant to be aiming for THAT hole!)

Takes a heck of a strong person to be able to walk that path less conventionally walked by society - takes probably a stronger person to do it with intent rather than drifting along it by fate's decision like I do. I think it's a heck of a lot more selfish to have children for some of the reasons people do - in the hope of supergluing a failing relationship back together, to feel needed, because they want to buy cute little clothes - than to make a concious informed choice about whether or not to bring another life into the world... I come from a childhood of being the kid of a rebound abusive relationship, of a mother who isn't the maternal sort and who even now believes I should express my undying gratitude at being born by indulging her narcisstic bullying whims (she forgot my birthday this year - again!)... I'd rather no child have to go through having that sheer barrage of emotional baggage hitting them repeatedly if there's the option.

babymoo

Dizzi, I could write a book on all the stupid comments and the "i mean well but have no idea what im talking about" comments. They do hurt but I learnt to laugh at it eventually. They know no better.