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You sound just like all the presumptuous people who insisted throughout my 20s, 30s, and into my marriage that I would eventually want and have kids. What a shock it was to them when I told them that my ex decided he wanted kids, I would not budge on the issue, and that was why we were getting divorced.
The bottom line is that you speak for yourself, and only for yourself.
OP, I strongly encourage you to ignore people who say things like prosk8ter. They are not in your shoes or your life, and they don't know you from Eve.
Have children because you want to have them. But if you don't want to have them, then don't have them. Unfortunately, this is one of those things that is considered an irreconcilable difference. My own opinion is that people who love each other would not deprive one another of their dreams and would part ways to allow both partners to seek the lives that would bring them the most happiness--even if it meant breaking their own hearts in the process. If you love him, and he wants children, and you know you do not, let him go.
Everyone I know who doesn't want them doesn't want to financial burden or the strain on their freewheeling lifestyle. Or they don't feel they have the patience.
I have never heard once anyone say that they were worried about their partner, though they would be smart to consider that.
I knew I did not want kids. But long before I met my ex-husband, I thought that if by some odd chance there was a contraceptive failure after I got married, and there was an accidental pregnancy, well, I'd be married and I'd make the best of it and that would be that.
However, once I was actually married, if there had been a contraceptive failure, I would have terminated the pregnancy because my ex-husband said something that led me to believe co-parenting with him would be a nightmare: "You'd be the parent that sets and enforces the rules, and I'd be the fun parent who says, 'Don't tell your mother.'"
Well, I'd have been damned if I spent 18 years having my parenting undermined by my own spouse!
I could go back and start picking out quotes, but the thread is more than a year old and while the OP is still participating, I think the story is more or less the same.
We typically refer to a woman's biological clock ticking but for men who are very interested in children, enough so to state it as a deal-breaker, there's something of a biological clock as well. We start looking at ourselves, at the fact we're aging and still don't have the children we want.
I'm sure a few women will read that and fuss about how men can still have children when they're 158 years old. I think that's best addressed with a bit from the film When Harry Met Sally:
Sally: "Charlie Chaplin had babies when he was 70."
Harry: "Yeah, but could he pick them up?"
Women frequently denigrate the suggestion that men are anything more than sperm donors, playmates for children who might as well be siblings, or catering to a kind of genetic narcissism when it comes to procreating. The fact is, except for being unable to actually carry and give birth or nurse (please, let's not pollute the atmosphere with experimentation and/or freakish exception) men are just as much care-givers and nurturers and teachers and providers as are women -- which is to say either they are, or they are not, whatever the degree or level of devotion to the matter.
I knew from an early age that I wanted to be a family man, that I wanted children very much. Some men are very much in my court with regard to this. I consider myself a very good, loving and devoted father and am very proactive in my parenting efforts, and utterly happy about my son (before some knucklehead suggests gender-based nonsense, I'd have been deliriously happy with a daughter).
Some men are just that way.
I don't hold it against men or women who do not want children, whatever their reasons. I certainly don't hold it against you, either for preference or genetics. There is nothing wrong with not wanting children, and if you don't want them, don't let anyone force the matter!
But as much as you and your husband may care for one another, this is one of those big matters that won't disappear completely.
I would not have minded giving up the free wheeling life, but there are just WAY too many horror stories of women who prude out after having kids. Having a woman I am stuck with because of the kids who I have to fight to get sex from sounds like hell.
Yea we all get it kids are work and people are tired etc etc but it takes 10 min to have sex or do something sexual. FAR TO MANY stories out there about women pulling a fast one on the sex scene for me to ever want kids.
If a woman starts the prude thing in the bed room I want to be able to walk away without a long drawn out custody battle, child support and on and on.
I would not have minded giving up the free wheeling life, but there are just WAY too many horror stories of women who prude out after having kids. Having a woman I am stuck with because of the kids who I have to fight to get sex from sounds like hell.
Yea we all get it kids are work and people are tired etc etc but it takes 10 min to have sex or do something sexual. FAR TO MANY stories out there about women pulling a fast one on the sex scene for me to ever want kids.
If a woman starts the prude thing in the bed room I want to be able to walk away without a long drawn out custody battle, child support and on and on.
Think I've figured out why you'd have to fight to get some.
You will want kids at some point. I'm sure of it. When you get a little older you'll understand how meaningless life real is. Family is everything.
I'm sorry, but this is bull.
Not everyone in in a position to have children, able to have children, able to afford to raise children, or desires raising children. This is fine. Speaking as a person who is literally about to start a family with my spouse, and a person who is very, very pro-becoming a parent for those who choose to do so, honestly, your assessment is highly offbase. And not having children does not mean that you lack a family, either, for what it's worth. And or some, family is NOT "everything." I don't personally identify with those people, myself, but their experience isn't mine. I've certainly known people whose families were seriously detrimental to their lives, and they were better off with other support systems than their families. What you are saying is very shortsighted, stereotypical, not universally applicable, and certainly inaccurate.
The OP posted ages ago that she and her spouse have very different wants in this area. She has since updated that at present, things are going more toward her wants than her spouse's wants. This may work out for them, it may not. Overall, it's much better to build a long-term future with someone where the things you prioritize in life are compatible, or at least able to coexist side by side. It's hard to see how that would ever be the case in the "One wants kids, one does not" dichotomy. It may be working out for now. Unless one party is truthfully committed to sacrificing something that is very important to him or her, though, and highly committed to simply not thinking on it again, no thinking wistfully of what was given up, no future throwing of the sacrifice in anyone's face, etc., future resentment is nearly guaranteed. Sorry, but it is.
It is perfectly fine to choose to not have kids. One would hope that those doing so would choose someone else who feels the same as a partner.
The horror story excuses I have heard are women are too tired or too busy and by the time the day is done there is not time. On and on it goes, I don't have kids so its not an issue for me.
I am just saying traditionally women in the last 10-20 years have not created a safe environment for men where a man can get married and have some kids and never have to worry where his next "meal" was coming from. Now that the horror stories have become almost common place you are seeing a societal shift.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Urban Sasquatch
Think I've figured out why you'd have to fight to get some.
Clearly, your not compatible. This is an important subject to not have been discussed before now. Get out of this relationship so you can find the correct mate for you.
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