BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Your the only one I ever met who doesnt want kids

I havent posted on this site for a while but I was amuses by this lien I got from a coworker today. The speaker was a grad student who is doing an internship at my job (a public school for severely cognitively adn physically disabled kids). He is working with our speech therapist. We were taking the kids to the supermarket and teh student commented on how he couldnt imagine having a child liek the one's we work with (teenagers who funciton at the level of infants and very young todlers) I said I know I cant imagine having any kids. He said but you want kids some day right so I said No. He was shocked and siad he had never met a women who didnt want kids. He asked how old i was of course (29) and said hte requisite youll change your mind. I was kind of annoyed but mostly amused so I said: "I love the kids I work with btu everyday when I get home from work I am overjoyed that i dont have kids. Im so happy to just have the love of my four dogs and three cats who dont ask for moeny constantly and dont need non stop attention and care or a college education. Im so happy after working wiht these kids and taking care of their needs I can go home and just think about what I want to do and what makes me happy and that the money I earn will go for the things I want and I dream about and not what a child would need." He looked shocked for a minute and then he said you actually make a really good point.

I would think after being around the children you take care of, he would have been more sensetive. When you get pregnant, no one comes along and asks if you want a special needs child or one without difficulties, do you want one who refuses to sleep or one that sleeps through the night, do you want one that throws up easily or one that keeps it all down...you get what you get. That alone should be enough to fighten MORE people into NOT having children.

I used to want more then one child but circumstances of being single put that out of my mind. I have been raising my daughter on my own. Now even if I were to meet someone in the next year or two, what kind of risk would I be taking having a child at my age? I would HATE to put my daughter in the position of having to give me up completely to take care of a second child at all, never mind a special needs child. I was reading the other day that the divorce rate among parents with special needs children is around 80%.

It's good that you're introducing the idea to people who obviously haven't thought about it in that way! Most people jump right into it without thinking "this is a choice I have that will change my life forever".

Its so strange for me to come on this forum and hear some people have never heard of people choosing not to have children. Everyone at my work knows I like children but don't want any of my own for a variety of reasons. Must be a consequence of living in the city. A couple of people who do contract work for my firm are adamantly child free as well so people were used to it by the time I showed up.

That said, one of my coworkers did fess up that she just did it without ever thinking it through.

How bizarre!

I'm pretty used to being around people who do not have children and some of the folks that do tell me that they support my CF beliefs.

That was a great and intelligent way of pointing out your beliefs!

I remember being sent to a country town to take several statements when I was in my early 30s.
I was invited to an afternoon tea by one of my clients - such lovely, warm people. I will never forget how uncomfortable and different I felt fending off the questions about children. No, I didn't have children. Did I want a large family? No etc..
In the end I said that my husband & I were not that keen and probably wouldn't have children. I was met with stunned silence.
I felt like a freak at the show.
I spoke to my mother that evening - having been raised in the country she understood perfectly. She said life is simpler in the country, everyone wants and does the same things and children are a given...they simply wouldn't understand my position....if I had said I was from Venus they probably would have been less surprised.

Whenever I got a new job, I tended to find that one of the first questions people would ask is, "Do you have kids?"

Sometimes I got the feeling they were childfree and wondering if I were one of them. I'd always just answer, "No."

The childfree would smile. The ones who just wanted to fish for common ground to start up a conversation would seem noncommittal, and move on to other topics.

The ones to whom having kids seemed VERY important would always go on to ask, "Why not?" This seems so intrusive!

The only answer I could ever think of is, "It wasn't in the cards," but often this sounded just mysterious and uncooperative enough to put an end to the questioning right there. Anyone can feel free to use my answer if you think it will work for you.

i can say that many many people here in switzerland don't contemplate not having children (even if the wife doesn't whole heartedly want them)
switzerland was traditionally a farming country (some parts it still is) and many cantons are catholic or protestant.
swiss women are expected to have children. period.
I live in a bigger city and so there are many expats (like me) and i have seen a trend for the swiss career women, they are not interested to get married or have kids. this in turn i think is making the swiss men worried. so thus many marry foreign wives!

Because I feel so strongly about being CF, and because by most accounts I'm pretty normal, I have to imagine there are TONS of people out there who either have kids because they think they "should" or don't think about it at all and end up a parent. I could be wrong, but I do find it a bit odd that I'm the ONLY one of a very large group of close-knit friends who doesn't ever want to be a parent. Society has not yet evolved enough anywhere, even in the States, for CF to become a cultural norm. I think that one day, childfreedom will be like interracial marriage, or gay relationships: what was one deemed totally unacceptable becomes increasingly prevalent until one day it's acceptable and normal. Single women used to be "spinsters" and now are just...well, single women. Like any idea that goes against tradition, it will take time. Fortunately for our species, we've been reproducing like crazy for the past few hundred years, so we will probably have no worries about our population dwindling down to nothing...

Val - my husband is very blunt and when people are rude enough to ask us why we don't have children, he says: "I don't like them and I don't want to pay for them."
Then they walk away..