BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids You won't know love until you have kids.....

I have had similar feelings but had never thought about it just that way. You put it into words perfectly. It feels like an ethical decision as much as anything else.

Welcome, Rarring!

Good to have you along. And wow, it's wonderful that you do rescue work.

When people talk about their all-consuming love for their kids, they often do it with something bordering on near-mania that reminds me of people talking about drug experiences (like acid and heroin). Maybe it *has* changed your life, and maybe even for the better, but I'm not going near it, thanks!

Even the ones who talk about it all very calmly remind me of the saying "Put all your eggs in one basket --- and then watch that basket". People love their kids very much, it seems, but it's also all seemingly very colored by how much they've sacrificed and adjusted for their kids...the child represents such an investment of time and energy and money and life force. Everything, for the parent, seems to be in that "one basket". An intense experience, I'm sure...but again, not for me.

Elise (of the Many Baskets)

Quite honestly, folks, if people read enough philosophy and psychology and thought happy thoughts, they would realize that only they could make themselves happy. As Marcus Aurelius said, "Your life is colored by the quality of your thoughts. If you think happy thoughts, you will be happy."

One of my co-workers on this archaeological dig I'm working told me that she has been in therapy for twenty years. She said that her two kids are the best antidepressents. I might add that she still goes to therapy. If she is trying to find fulfillment through her two children, she will be miserable when they leave the nest and disobey her.

"For me, love wouldn't make a $hitty job less $hitty."

A resounding "DITTO!" to that! (Goofy censors! I had to change the s to a $ to get it to actually show the word!)

"Even the ones who talk about it all very calmly remind me of the saying "Put all your eggs in one basket --- and then watch that basket". People love their kids very much, it seems, but it's also all seemingly very colored by how much they've sacrificed and adjusted for their kids...the child represents such an investment of time and energy and money and life force. Everything, for the parent, seems to be in that "one basket". An intense experience, I'm sure...but again, not for me."

I often wonder if parents tend to put all of their love in that basket as well. Is that perhaps the underlying reason so many parents end up in cold relationships and/or divorce court? People talk about the strain of child-rearing on a marriage, but they rarely specify what aspect of parenting was most strenuous. Do some moms put so much love and attention into that little basket that their husbands no longer get a share?

Several studies have listed what couples most fight about: Money, sex, and childrearing issues/differences. Parents have less of the first one for sure; probably less of the second, as well; and of course they are the only ones who have to argue about the third.

It's all very unfair, until one stops to think that now, for the first time in human history, it's all a choice. Please think it over and, if you decide to take the parenthood plunge, please be one of those people who truly want children, in the pit of their soul...there is no other reason to have them!

We watched Celebrity Fit Club on and off this season, and on the last episode, Cledus talks about his fear of flying - and he took a plane in that episode to see his daughter in Phoenix. He starts blubbering on about how you don't understand the sacrifices you are willing to make until you have a child, and how you never know the lengths you will go to until you love a child (or something along those lines.)

It made me think of all of you, and how that statement is very insulting to the CF.

I told my husband as such, and he said it's not a derogatory statement, it's more that you can't understand how a parent feels until you are a parent. You know, he said, like if someone has cancer, you can't understand how they feel unless you have cancer yourself.

I know he didn't mean to sound like he was comparing having children to having cancer, but it was so funny that I just had to close my mouth and not say anything so that I wouldn't laugh!

But, I still disagree. My grandma had cancer, and it was really, really hard on all of us. Maybe I couldn't FEEL the physical pain she was in, but I certainly KNEW the physical pain she was in. And I understood very well what she was going through, because I was with her several times a week for hours at a time.

Just because you aren't experiencing something for yourself doesn't mean that you can't understand how other people feel about it or understand what they are going through.

I also think that another reason parents say that we can't understand how deeply you can love until you have a child are probably people who DIDN'T love that way until they had a child. I, though, think that I have experienced total selfless love many, many times, from having so many animals to bonding with my nephew. We should feel bad for those people who can't feel the strength of such a love until they have a child. So when they say that you don't understand how much you can love until you have a child, they mean THEY didn't realize how much THEY could love.

See I think it is more like the you can't know unless you've been there. Very much like the cancer example. You can know what it's like to lose someone to cancer, or to support someone battling cancer, but you can't know what it is to HAVE cancer until it's you.

I think the "love" is a hormone induced reaction, that you can't have it unless you've been through it. BUT, that's ok... AND it passes. At least that, I have a shiney new baby and I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOO in love, turns into something a little less intense over time.

Romantic love is also, a delicate hormone induced mania.

Anyway, I personally am fine with the idea that perhaps a parent does feel a certain chemical/physiological reaction that I won't experience. They also get to feel sleep deprived, anxiety, and a whole host of negatives I won't have to feel either.

I am prepared to accept that the love a mother feels for her child may be different from the love she feels for her husband, but why assume that the former is some ultimate kind which eclipses all others? No feelings, including love, are predictably the same - people can love different partners differently but love them no less. I doubt that all parents love their children in the same way. To say that childfree people don't know what love is is deeply patronising; the point which has been made about adoption is a very good one - clearly there is more to love than biological relationships.

This is exactly it, VF. That's why, when people want to have kids because "all their friends are doing it", I say "find some parents of teenagers and get more of the picture before you jump in". When you're at a stage with all of your friends having babies and young children, all that oxytocin is in the air, to say nothing of the "ratings boost" phenomenon we've talked about.

As a high school teacher, I can tell you that the evangelist zeal for converting non-parents into parents is just about gone in most reasonable people by the time they're parents of teens. At that point, the ones who still love parenthood are the ones who've really, really done the work (and I don't mean pregnancy and childbirth...I mean raising a child properly). The others, at that point, are just being buffeted about like helpless leaves in the wind...

It is about hormones...oxytocin, isn't it called? The "cuddle hormone"? Nature's way of making the reproduction thing happen! Fortunately, medical science has given modern man/woman the means to transcend what nature wants for us (I was born with three kidneys, two of which don't work...they used to back up like bad plumbing, but since hitting adolesence, fortunately, they've just gone dormant. If it weren't for surgery to reimplant the ureter on my working kidney, I'd have no working kidneys. Yay, science!).