childfree by choice : Most liked Posts

Mummy martyrdom at its finest.

If this is the case, then as a single working woman without kids then I too haven’t had a break since I started working age. I get up. I shower, I go to work, I clean, put the shop away and sleep. Then do it all over again.” ITS called LIVING A BORING MUNDANE LIFE! We all trudge through it and get on with it whether you have kids or not!

Downtoearth said:

I think there are judgemental opinions happening here on both sides.

If you're happily childfree, why feel the need to come and wax lyrical about it? Smile smugly when you get catty comments from people, and go and live your life quietly on your own.

I don't think now is the time to really be debating something which in truth, is not a priority for most people right now.

For what it's worth, I am working from home with 3 kids on my own (other half is a very important key worker). Am I frazzled? Yes. Am I laughing heartily at all the frazzled parent memes? Yes. Do I look forward to our 90 mins outdoor exercise, followed by dinner, bedtime and WINE? YES!

But can I think of anything more dull than sitting in my quiet house, watching Netflix, having a nice run and then a sit down all day.... For weeks.... Or months..... No. I can't.

We all make our choices, if not wanting to be tired or stressed sometimes is what stops you from having kids then great, it's obviously not for you. But own that decision and live your life accordingly. Threads which end up as catty as this one aren't right.

Peace out folks

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I would love to know why a frazzled parent of 3 is even on a thread titled 'childfree' and feeling the need to comment.

I certainly don't read threads on potty training, home schooling or peppa pig episodes. Because it's not my life and I'm happy it isn't! Those things don't interest me.

There is no need to come on here, as the previous poster did, and say how 'there's no love like it'. there are threads here ASKING opinions on 'do you regret having kids?' and that is where these comments belong.

This is a thread for the childfree to peacefully chat about their quiet quarantines. If you are happy with your kids then chat about it on a thread that cares?

Adding on to the whole discussion of people not saying ‘no’ to their kids, there was an episode of eat well for less I watched where the couple had a few kids and would cook a meal for themselves and then all separate meals for the kids. I forget how many kids it was now but say three, so they would be cooking 4 meals a night, one for the adults and all different ones for the kids which obviously costs a lot and leads to a lot of waste. Even worse if a parent cooked what a kid wanted and then the kid changed their mind or tried it and didn’t like it, they’d cook a whole new meal for that kid! And they had no idea how to get their shopping bill down!

When I was a kid we all ate the same, anything anyone really hated was left off of the plate and we all took it in turns to choose but there’s no way my mum would’ve cooked us all a different meal and there’s no way we would’ve expected her to be making sausage and mash, fish fingers and chips, macaroni cheese, pizza and spaghetti bolognaise for one dinner

This may be an unpopular opinion but I don't see how having a child makes your life better.

All I see from my friends and my sister's experiences is that they are a serious drain on your money and time. You can no longer put yourself and your needs first in your own life. Like I would be depressed coming home from work to deal with children and taxi them around to various activities and birthday parties. It sparks no joy in me. It sparks dread. I don't understand why people do it.

Jane Porcupine said:

There's a thread on Mumsnet at the moment about how this generation of grandparents are lazy and selfish because they don't want to provide free childcare for their grandkids. I'm genuinely baffled that people have kids assuming everyone is going to falling over themselves to help look after them. They're YOUR kids, you wanted them. You look after them!

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Here’s what I don’t understand

‘When I was a kid my parents would regularly send us to our grandparents house for sleepovers, they looked after us after school and in the holidays, they basically raised us…. Why don’t my parents want to provide free childcare?’

I don’t know how to say this nicely babe but they didn’t want kids, they shipped you off to your grandparents at every opportunity and now they’re older/slower/tireder/have more time/have more money/have no societal expectations/no legal obligation and don’t want to raise someone else’s kids after mostly opting out of raising their own.

Beaversabout said:

I was just sitting in the car eating some chips and a family walked past with a lad who then decided to scream at the pigeons, frightening them and shouting - we don't like you! Ffs leave them alone!? There not hurting anyone! The parents didn't say a word even though he looked old enough to know better. Ugh. Why do they never say anything to them? I really hate kids, and their parents.

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I judge parents who let their kids run feral. I judge them even more if they are pricks to animals.

And it's why we don't have them!

I think employers who allow people to work really flexibly because of children should make that the case for everyone. I don't really care if my colleagues go to do stuff with their kids in work time in theory, but I recently requested to change my hours so I work them over 9 days instead of 10, and jeeez they're making me jump through so many hoops, fill in loads of forms about how it will affect the business and how I will mitigate that, and then comments from my manager (who leaves early to pick her kids up a lot) about how I need to make sure to show I'm actually doing the extra time to make up for the day off etc. Sooo annoying that because it's nothing to do with kids they are more weird about it.

It's when it's one rule for parents and another for childfree people that really annoys me.

I haven't posted here much but been loving reading your posts!

When I was working on cruise ships I met a few older ladies who lived on the ships. It was actually cheaper than a retirement home in the USA and they got to see the world and be looked after constantly. One lady I spoke said she loved it because each week or so new people got onboard and she’d make a whole new set of friends to hang out with. The crew loved them like they were family.

That is my plan for old age sorted … I’ll be selling up and sailing away

Snowjoke said:

I think even tho we are child free and parents feel like they are better than us hahaha they do also compete amongst themselves too about what type of birth they had, breastfeeding, what their kids eat etc.. it’s like they can’t just focus on themselves some mums really seem to turn it into a competition!!! Can’t compete with me when I’m on the sofa with my dogs bitches

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I'm right there with you, and my cat!

I'm generally irritated with parents online at the moment. As you might've seen in the news (although I don't even know if this qualifies as news anymore), we've had another school shooting and three 9 year old students were killed. Soooooo, so so so many people on basically every social media platform saying stuff like "my mama heart is broken!" ( that phrase), "parents hold your babies tight" (k I'll grant that), and "you'll never understand this devastation until you're a parent" (um fuck off?).

I was a paramedic in a city with a high rate of gun violence for five years. Honestly, I do not know the number of pediatric gun shot victims I attended to in five years but I feel confident saying it was three figures. Including adult GSW patients, easily over a thousand. I was also one of the first medical responders on scene when we had a mass shooting in a temple and assisted with clearing the injured and triaging the dead. Do not fucking tell me that I do not understand the pain of yet another act of senseless violence just because I don't have (living) kids. Honestly, fuck off with that.

Also, petition to make people stop using "mama" when talking about other grown ass women. It's annoying. And "mama heart" should be banned from life.

Absolutely hate this too. I think parents become so numb and desensitized to the consant noise that they forget other people can hear it too. It is a new phenomenon though because like you all said, my mother used stared me down until I shut up, on the rare occasion that I was loud.

Not setting boundaries for children is emotional neglect. Kids need to learn rules and where to stop and how to behave. This isn't about the comfort of strangers, it's about the safety of the children. They act out because they don't know where the line is and they are trying to find out. If the parents don't let them know when they cross that line, they will be taught later on either by people who don't love or care for them, or by law enforcement. No consequences at home or school give them a false sense of security. I'd hate to be there when the "free" kids of today get some sense knocked into them in the future, by people who are way less compassionate than their parents.

It is worrying how much arrogance children get away with because the doormat parents fear the kids won't love them or the schools fear the entitled parents will sue them. I despair.

IndominusRex said:

I’m 40 and childfree by choice but lately I’ve been struggling a bit with 2 aspects of it and wondered whether anyone in here might have any advice?
1. Friends drifting away - I was always the one that had to travel/arrange and since covid it’s got worse and I’ve lost the impetus if I’m honest, the hassle to then spend the whole time talking about their kids just doesn’t really seem worth it.
2. I’m feeling that as I’m getting older my life is lacking positive milestones - I realised that most people switch from thinking about their future to looking forward to their kids doing things. I’m really happy with my day to day life and wouldn’t change a thing but the idea that all of my major life events from now on are likely to be losses has hit me pretty hard.

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I feel the same on the friends thing - I just can't be bothered to travel all that way to have their kids interrupt chitchat. I've tried to see more of my child free friends, but that can be hard if all your friends have kids. I'd say it might get easier to see them (without the kids) when the kids are a bit older and they regain the impetus to meet up with friends for some adult time. With some friends I kinda accepted I had lost them when they had kids, but when the kids were 5-7 they got back in touch for some 1-2-1 meet ups.

For the milestones, I guess the only thing is trying not to pin happiness on other people congratulating you on things. Which is hard as society is really focused on the traditional milestones. When my friends do things like get a new job, move house, buy a new car etc I'm really happy for them. Things like learning a new skill, success in a hobby (growing my first pepper this year felt like a huge win for me in gardening!) should also be celebrated.

This is going to sound horrible as I’m not sure how to word this properly but the one thing I feel when I see a couple I know announce their pregnancy or a friend tells me they’re pregnant is… how boring. It tells me that you’re not content just being in your relationship for a while and enioying that, it’s another thing you wanted to tick off the list like marriage after being with your partner for X number of years and it’s just so predictable and dull. Often I’ll think.. you?? Wanting to be a parent? Really?

I can’t think of a single couple I know who are my age and have made the decision to be childfree - they either want kids / are trying or have just had a baby. I wonder how many of them actually want children or just see it as the next step in their relationship / are pressured into following societal norms? It’s bizarre that not wanting children is seen as ‘abnormal’ over making the conscious decision to bringing another life into the world, with the massive responsibility that brings.

Reading a very interesting thread where OP is saying basically she doesn’t want to move to care for her elderly mother. Neither do her other 2 children. Everyone is saying don’t do it/they wouldn’t do it/leave her to it/put her in a home.

So having three children isn’t enough to guarantee my care when I’m old and a thread running for hundreds of posts has basically no one who cares for their parents, knows anyone who cares for their parents or thinks anyone should care for their parents. But my not having children is a bewilderment to many because of not having care when I’m elderly…

The other night, me and my OH got last minute tickets to see Shrek the Musical. Now we knew it was half term and there would be millions of kids there but we had seats right up in the gods and it didn't look too busy on the seating plan so we picked seats that were miles away from anyone.

I don't know if anyone knows the Bradford Alhambra but the upper circle is seriously steep and not for the faint hearted (but for £20 a ticket I wasn't complaining ) I was shocked to see a couple of rows in front of us 2 families with small children no older than 3 years old (the rows in front were the next tier up so looking at £25 a ticket plus fees so around £100 per family).

The kids fidgeted the whole time, kept climbing along the route of seats, on and off dad's knee on to mums, and at one point one of them actually fell from one row to the one in front (very lucky someone broke her fall as its so steep she could have gone a lot further) Then less than 10 mins into the second half the kids were being passed around again as they were so tired they couldn't keep their eyes open. At least one of them fell asleep.

Why would you take such young children to a show like this on an evening? Way past their bedtime (there had been matinee performances all week). It's a waste of money as they didn't watch it and the parents can't have seen much either.

I don't know if it's just that I have worked with kids so understand child development, but some parents really don't grasp what is and isn't appropriate for kids of a certain age. There are lots of theatre shows aimed at such small kids that aren't on as long, run during the day, etc so why not take them to that instead?

Don’t usually comment and lurk instead, but just had to vent. A local business is doing a Mother’s Day event which consists of a Michael Buble tribute act, Prosecco and afternoon tea. Due to the nature of the event, the business have said no kids are allowed. It’s obviously catered for adults and their Mum. Of course all the Mum’s are on the local community page SLATING them for not allowing young kids. I feel like now a days, parents expect pubs etc to cater for kids. It’s a pub! I have bought tickets for the sheer fact I know I can go and have a drink without other peoples kids running wild

ATV2021 said:

Yeah...this is a "childFREE by choice" post. Not a get pregnant and you'll feel differently. I won't. It will trigger BDD off me in if I did for one, two I can think of nothing worse than some alien spinning round inside me and then having to birth it...then keep it alive after. I'll keep to my actual child free for life life when I can skip off where and when I want haha

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thank you for this. i thought i’d stumbled into the wrong thread for a second

“get pregnant and you’ll feel differently” is such a dangerous rhetoric in general.

DCICassieStuart said:

That is NOT a form of contraception.

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There was a thread on mumsnet a little while ago where someone was asking something about contraception methods, she said something like she didn't like the side effects of the pill and would tracking her ovulation and her partner pulling out be OK and someone replied saying that's the method of contraception her and her husband use and they've got 6 kids

penny1992 said:

I am curious what bc you all use to prevent pregnancies? I've been on Depo for over a decade... Controversial I know! But it also is the only medication that minimizes my endo symptoms. My gynecologist and Dr are not worried about me being on it long term as they've said the "worrying" studies about bone density are very outdated. I've never had any issues on it. I'm actually so glad to never have a period . I did come off it for a couple of months and my period came back straight away and it was fucking horrible. I got so used to not having one, I would hate to have it every month. Lmao.

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Being a lesbian! It always makes me laugh when I get asked if I could be pregnant at a medical appointment and say no, and then they always ask, but are you sure? Yep, 100% certainty here.