Childfree by choice #5

[pinkmug]

This is my absolute bug bear
The open attitude that you’re loaded because you don’t have kids and I think yep I probably am compared to you
We go on loads of holidays each year and the amount of times I’ve been scrutinised or reminded by colleagues or friends that this is such a luxury and almost like we’re being too self indulgent

Right? How dare you live your life the way you choose? It's amusing when unhappy parents get mad at you for daring to not have kids. Misery loves company.

i just remembered that a coworker had the nerve to ask me what I do with all my money since I don't have kids, because I was complaining about some expense or another. As if I don't have bills or food or hobbies and holidays to pay. Why does it matter? I could be pouring all my money into collecting overpriced antique teddy bears to have imaginary tea parties with and it still wouldn't be your bloody concern?! Imagine being so entitled that you think people can't spend money unless it's to feed or dress or educate a child. Miss me with that shit.

 

[mcfeez]

I think to choose a child free life and live it successfully really does require interests to occupy your time, particularly as you get older. They don’t have to be wild and exciting interests, but as your more and more of your circle of friends have families of their own you need something in place beyond coming home and chilling on the sofa with the same person every night which feels very different in your late 40s than it does in your late 20s.

Eeek what a cursed comment.

I know parents who spent years doing nothing but 'raise children' - those kids have flown the nest and after they did their realised their marriages were unhappy, they had no shared interests or hobbies with their partners and basically no existence outside their kids. But sure, it's childfree who need to worry about keeping up with their hobbies...

It's funny how we're told being child free is our 'whole personalities' yet parents cannot go a short conversation without bringing up their kids. If I mentioned how awesome being childfree was half as much I'd expect people would get irritated AF.

 

[RALN]

What bugs me is how parents think they've more entitlements for time off over Christmas, Easter, Halloween. The amount of times I've heard 'sure they've no kids, they can work over Christmas'

Really grinds my gears. Is my time off less important that yours? Sorry if this was already discussed, I just found this thread tonight

 

[judgejohndeed]

Although similarly, without getting into murky subjects about who should be "allowed" to have children, I think there are a lot of attitudes that having a baby is right for everyone including people that have serious mental illnesses or other conditions the child will have to deal with down the line.

I used to practise child law and I have a lotttt of opinions on this (agreeing with you) I'm generally not a huge fan of unnecessary state intervention in our private lives but having seen the way some children are treated completely changed my mind on e.g. there being some kind of regulation about who has kids, what kind of monitoring parents have etc (these are not developed thoughts btw so I have no details as to how that would all work) it's incredibly sad that some women have baby after baby after baby and they're all removed. Equally, middle class parents fly under social services' radar and inflict some awful things on their kids that would be considered neglect/harm if their parents weren't so well-presenting that nobody notices.

 

[penny1992]

Hey guys! Love reading this thread so I thought I’d jump in. I’m 26 and have never wanted kids, I am very work orientated and I couldn’t think of anything worse than giving things up to have kids in the same way that my friends have! A few examples being ‘ can’t go on holiday I have a child’ ‘ i have to be home by 7 because of xyz bedtime’ ‘ oh I look a mess #mumlife’ you get my point but fast forward and I’m 6 months pregnant! I do believe that until you are pregnant and you start feeling your baby ect you don’t realise how much you want/ love that child but I will NOT give anything up! He will be a part of my life and I never want to lose myself in that. How annoying is it when people just use their kids as an excuse to be lazy and have no goals! Only problem is I don’t think I’ll have any mam friends who agree with my views

Your brain is wired to release oxytocin when pregnant and have a baby. That is why you feel that way. Anyway sudies show that pet dogs can create the same hormone for people so I will stick with that. Less costly and they will never yell that they hate you!

 

[AshMay]

This cat

 

[Rippedjeanmaybe]

The thought of 'needing to have a fantastic, fabulous, adventurous life to make up for not having children' makes me uncomfortable. I don't know what surprises life will serve me, none of us do. I may end up having many different experiences that are unavailable to parents, I may just have a small, simple life that only contains me, a few friends and maybe a holiday or two a year. At my old age, I may or may not look at my youth, thinking about the wild times. I may be only known to the mailman or the cashier at the shop at that point, or famous, or just a regular person who has some good relationships and mostly casual ones. Not having children shouldn't come with a binding contract of needing to lead a crazy life to make the most of our child-free lives and (apparently endless!) disposable incomes. If you are child-free and leading a "boring" life, your decision is still valid. It's not really about choosing one or the other.

I agree. Me and my husband are late 20’s and we aren’t wild at all, I think our bins go out more
Honestly we love nothing more than coming home from work and just chilling on the couch and cooking tea together. Weekends spent baking, walking or just doing not much

We do holiday, but nothing too adventurous and I actually prefer UK holidays anyway, I love my home country

Idc if people think I’m boring and that I should be doing something amazing because I don’t have kids. We live for ourselves and we love it.

 

[judgejohndeed]

Yes! I’m expected to ‘like’ your photos of a baby, but you never ‘like’ my holiday pics or photos of my cat. One girl I was friends with said she deleted folk from her Facebook because they didn’t congratulate her on her pregnancy, how psychotic is that??

I had coffee with a friend this week who commented that I 'never like photos of her baby on Instagram', it made me so uncomfortable that she's monitoring it. I've been trying to phase her out for a while tbh as literally all she does is talk about her kid, even if I've said something about e.g. work or something completely non baby related she just goes 'oh that's nice. Well X sat up the other day and..' etc etc.

 

[judgejohndeed]

I definitely think people should have the choice of voluntary euthanasia. Personally I think we all live far too long these days, I don't want to be in a care home for years and years and I really don't want to live with a horrible condition for years either. If that happened to me and I had still control of my faculties I would for sure consider Dignitas. Yet another reason not to have kids tbh, I bet the guilt of 'going too soon' is really hard when you have them

 

[Falkor]

I wouldn't let my husband get cows for exactly the same reason - he'd be all over them for a week and then they'd be my responsibility! Sheep I can handle on my own, cows I'm very wary of. Fortunately a couple of years ago he needed some sand and a neighbour of ours told us he could go and get some out of the back of the dunes on her farm, so off he went with the quad and a couple of empty feed sacks to fill up. Her bull was in that field, saw him filling the feed sacks and thundered over with an expression of 'SECOND BREAKFAST!!!!' Husband nearly shat himself as 750kg of prime Aberdeen Angus came trotting up to him and hasn't raised the cow question again since

 

[judgejohndeed]

It makes absolutely no sense to me that someone who intends for their life to stay the same would even have a baby. Like what enjoyment are you getting from having kids if you want to live the same life you did pre kids, just with a child somehow in the mix?

 

[Chandler Bing]

I think another reason I would struggle with kids is the expectation you constantly chatter to a young child. I understand it’s supposed to help their speech develop but I don’t want to have to keep up conversation all the time, even if said conversation is about Peppa Pig or “Mummy, poo!”

Same. I'm deeply introverted, and just having to speak to people in work all day long exhausts me to the point where i just have to sit in silence for at least 30mins when I get home. I can't imagine then being forced to having another 6 hours worth of inane chit chat with a child.

 

[judgejohndeed]

This is exactly one of the reasons why I don’t want children - things will always fall on the mother the vast majority of the time, despite the husband/partner saying before & during pregnancy how much they’ll help.. doesn’t transpire once baby is here. Have witnessed it so many times with friends; even when children are a bit older & in nursery / school, it’ll be mum who’s called to pick them up if they’re sick, then mum who has to take leave to look after them, mum who takes them to their appointments, birthday parties etc. And then it just breeds resentment in the relationship.

I read this awful post on Mums net the other day, this woman who had two kids under two and one was a baby. She had norovirus so was in the bathroom all night and on the Saturday, she asked her husband to stay home from playing football to help and he said no…he just left her, vomiting etc, looking after a baby and a toddler on her own as she had nobody else to help that day. It’s not even just the game itself, this guy went to the drinks afterwards - he was gone for seven whole hours. I could never

 

[Millais]

I’ve just seen a girl I was at school with put on Insta that she’s tired after her fiancé made her put up all the Christmas decorations at 8 months pregnant with covid. Baby’s not even here yet and it’s started.

 

[mcfeez]

I just don’t get it - my manager at work said “you’ll never regret it” about having kids, yet in the 5 months I’ve been in the company has said NOT ONE positive thing about his kids. Just complaining they’re noisy, selfish, rude brats, “little shits”, can’t get no sleep, driving them to 3 different activities, holidays are “like work” etc. I’m like mate…..it sounds a bit like you regret it! You’re not really selling it to me!

If no one regretted it then there wouldn't be absent fathers and mothers who walked out on their children.

So many folks like your manager. They want to come across as martyrs but if you say you don't want the same things as them, it somehow insults and invalidates their choice to them.

 

[mediocrehouseplant]

Childfree by choice #6 sleeping well at night, petition for childfree flights

or

Childfree by choice #6 happily childfree, spending my money on me

or

Childfree by choice #6 living my childfree life while complaints from parents are rife

 

[aidil]

I’m starting to get really pissed off with my friends who are mums. A handful of them have all had babies this year (luckily all from different friend groups!) and it’s really grating on me how they clearly view my time as disposable because I’m child-free. All of them are constantly demanding I drive to their houses to see them, asking me to visit at ridiculous times around their babies’ routines and refusing to take their babies out of the house. So I’m expected to bend over backwards for them as if I’ve not been working my arse off all week while they’ve been at home? The entitlement is making me SO angry.

 

[Anne1448]

I think every parent who contributes to this thread thinks they're going to be the one to change or minds with their success story!

They are like "My husband and I don't have sex anymore. I'm always tired. My child ruined my life and I can't see my friends anymore but why don't you want kids? "

 

[ElectricDreams]

I saw that thread and it made my blood pressure rise reading the OP! I sort of saw her point but she'd already pissed me off with the comment about it not impacting on her colleagues day so I struggled to have sympathy for her.

I grew up with a mum who was a nurse and who worked pretty much every Christmas, sometimes she wasn't there when we got up, sometimes she missed Christmas dinner, sometimes she would have to work on the evening. We would go to grandparents with my dad. Not once did I feel like Christmas was ruined because she wasn't there. In fact I was proud of her because she worked in a nursing home and it meant that the old people had someone to share their Christmas with. Besides, I had my new toys and I'd highlighted all the Disney films I wanted to tape in the TV guide, I was fine

 

[ElectricDreams]

I realised it isn't so much the children I dislike but their useless parents. It isn't the child's fault their parent is a thoughtless dick head

I don't dislike kids but I find that the ones that irritate and annoy me with their behaviour are doing as a result of poor parenting. Well behaved, well mannered kids are lovely (in small doses)