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It's just the fact that when you become a parent, you have another human being who is completely dependent on you. How you raise this child usually determines how they are as adults.
Sometimes I feel like I can barely take care of my own and I find doing so exhausting; just working, paying bills, having enough money for anything, keeping track of important documents, paperwork, cooking, cleaning, etc. At the end of the day, I feel so tired like I wouldn't even have enough energy or will drive to take care of children as well.
And how do you even know you are parenting the "right way"? Do you just go with the flow and learn as you go? As I sit down and think about it all, it all overwhelms me.
And there are times where I also feel like forcing someone's existence just because I wanted to have kids is in a way, selfish. I mean, humans have been having kids since we came around but it's still not something to take lightly. It's a huge deal to devote your time and energy to raising another person.
Sorry to come to this late and I'm sure you got comments like this already (at least you really should have!) but you sound very mature. It would seem to me most people don't think about this. My parents didn't. I grew up listening to my mom tell me, "Never have children, [my name]".
I'm the only one of my siblings that listened to her (have a brother and sister). I thought about all the things that you had written and decided that it would be best if I don't. Most of my life I did not want children, but when I was converted to biblical Christianity in my early 30s I thought that I would actually. But then I ended up marrying someone who was 25 years older than me and we decided that with his age it would be best not to (and we were both really on the fence about it).
It seems to me to have been the right decision. Sometimes you just know you're not cut out for something. I live by myself (husband passed away recently) and I don't know how people who work full time also take care of children. I can barely get everything done and have to leave lots of things I want to get done for the next day. It would be unbearable to think of fitting taking care of and raising a child in my life. It would not be right for the child.
Wish you the best, but the things you mentioned are definitely something to consider. I'm sure others have considered this and decided to go through with it and they've managed. But I'm so, so very grateful that my husband and I decided to not have children.
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Originally Posted by msRB311
Maybe this is a reason people with kids want grandkids so badly.
Edit that to say "most" people with kids want grandkids badly (of course). My mom wouldn't have cared if none of us children didn't. She got one each from my sister and brother and each one was born many years apart from each other so by the time the one was pretty much grown the other came around. Only one lives close by and my sister-in-law drops off her son for my parents to watch, they're so glad when he leaves! She says she loves seeing him but that it's just a drain on her energy (she's in her 70s, so is my father).
I just always found it odd how like not like your typical loving mom my mom is. And not that she's mean or cold or anything too-that's the strange part. She's the most self-sacrificing person you will ever meet and I have a huge attachment to her (which was damaged a bit when I married my husband because my family did not like him; but it got better. She's really like my best friend now that my husband is gone). But she really was one of those people who if she'd really thought it out--and not have listened to my dad, as my mom told me that she was good with not having children but it my father who told her something like, "What else are we going to do?" She told me, "Yeah, we realized we could have been doing plenty of things!"--she probably wouldn't have had any children.
Last edited by Basiliximab; 03-10-2022 at 05:58 PM..
Gee, but you mentioned "selfish" three times here, Silibran ...
And I made the point that I suspect the “selfish” reasons often given are not the whole story. But, I have often been struck by the selfish sounding tone to some reasons.
If you are very career minded, and want to achieve extreme financial success, or if you want to bring medical care to underserved third world peoples, you will have to be selfish in order to achieve those goals.
Why does anyone want a dog? That's a lot of responsibility and curtails your lifestyle and costs about $1K a year or more. And it dies in less than 20 years, which will be a heartbreak. You have to train it and mop up accidents and put up with barking and chewing your possessions and take it out in the snow and rain to poop, sometimes in the middle of the night. You need to take it to the vet for checkups and shots, and worry about it when it's not well. You get a dog because you want to love it and have it love you.
I could never understand that about dogs either--they're waaaaay too much maintenance for me (and more annoying with the barking and way more gross with the slobbering and having to more directly clean up after their going to the bathroom). Cats are definitely less so. You need to take them to the vet every now and then and they scratch your furniture up (for me it's not so bad since I don't have nice furniture, but still; it is kind of annoying). But much of the time-consuming and gross stuff you get out of (don't take them out and they go in the litter box for the most part, at least all my cats did).
All my cats were affectionate too. Two of them (I call those my two main cats since the other two I took more as a favor to my sister; but unfortunately, I wouldn't have like picked those out on my own. They were still pretty affectionate though. My one cat I even played fetch with like a dog) way over-the-top more like a dog than a cat, so when people say they don't like cats because they keep to themselves and don't show you affection like a dog does, I figure they must have gotten the wrong cat then.
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Originally Posted by wac_432
I think the COLA of an area .
What's a COLA (besides the drink)? I know I can look it up, I just get lazy (and don't have much time). I'm one of those who hardly get any of the abbreviations people use on here; outside of the obvious ones like LOL and a few others. At least I found out I'm not alone; I was listening to a sermon a few months ago and the pastor said that he too will get a few of them but most of them go right over his head (like me!).
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Originally Posted by happygrrrl
The way the world is now, that alone would be the deciding factor for me.
Same here. I know I would have trusted God if it had happened, but I'm soooooooo glad it did not. The world is so deceptive with it's philosophies (I was caught up in it before I was converted) and it leaves you without hope. I don't know how these parents do it knowing that the world which has already changed drastically since I was little, will be a shadow of what we have now and their children will likely be living with so much more of a poor quality of life. Unless you're drastically wealthy. Because we're on the direct path, swiftly moving forward to it as I had said all along, to that more along the lines of a 3rd world country where you have those who are incredibly wealthy and then you have the poor. Mark my words. There will be no middle class here shortly. Definitely not by the time the children of today are grown up.
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Originally Posted by bus man
Having kids is the way that we perpetuate our species, which is why God/Mother Nature/blind instinct made it so most people would choose to have kids, even if they haven't the slightest idea of why they would want to. Some things just "are," and this is one of those things.
Sometimes, kids bring indescribable joy to the lives of their parents. This is probably what motivates a lot of people to have them. Of course, the flip side is also true; sometimes they bring a lot of pain. There are no guarantees. I remember the night when my daughter was sick, and I spent most of the night either comforting her or cleaning up her voluminous throw-up when she wasn't able to make it to the toilet in time. The thought that kept going through my head: "They never mentioned this in the parenting brochures." You take the good with the bad. And thankfully, for me at least, the good has greatly outweighed the bad.
I'm glad it worked out well for you. I don't know if my parents would say the same, though out of their 3 children I'm the only one who speaks to them on a regular basis. My brother refuses to speak to my parents and hasn't in over a year. My sister maybe calls or texts perhaps twice a year. (Texts generic holiday greetings but I don't count those). I think they're unnecessarily cruel to my parents, especially my brother. He blames them for something he did (??); he's a narcissist. My sister, she just holds a grudge and only wants money from my parents (at the very least she'll be there when something dire is going on like she was there for when my dad had acute kidney failure and she actually saved his life, and she was there when my husband passed away and they came over and spent a good week or so with me).
I sent a Christmas card to my parents saying they were the best parents I could have had and when I told my sister about it, she said something like You must be blocking out a lot of your memory then. I know they weren't perfect, my father had a temper but it could have been so much worse. There's so many bad parents out there that manipulate their children, abuse them verbally and physically and sexually and even kill them. I just don't think my brother and sister realize how fortunate they have been to have been blessed with good parents who loved them and provided for them; we went on family trips, my father played with us kids when we were little and was the only father in the neighborhood to take the kids on places like six flags and what not. And they helped us when we needed money. Yes, my father had a temper and my parents couldn't provide all the new and trendy clothes my sister wanted, but no one's perfect.
Last edited by Basiliximab; 03-11-2022 at 04:03 AM..
And I made the point that I suspect the “selfish” reasons often given are not the whole story. But, I have often been struck by the selfish sounding tone to some reasons.
If you are very career minded, and want to achieve extreme financial success, or if you want to bring medical care to underserved third world peoples, you will have to be selfish in order to achieve those goals.
I agree that to achieve one's personal goal, one must be "self-ish" -- as in making one's chosen goal their highest priority and putting it before all other aspects of their life. Excellent parenting is an example of this priority and is one of the hardest goals to achieve.
People who don’t want kids shouldn’t have them. And I find it curious that some segments of society are all about pressuring people into have them.
There are no bad reasons not to have a child, because you are refraining from creating another living person that needs, and deserves, love, attention, and comfort. On the flip-side, there are a million and one bad reasons that people do choose to have children.
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