BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Many People Don't Understand What Childfree Means

This post will be on the long side.
After reading the exchange between Carennedy and Yehonala on the stupid baby shower thread, it made me realize that many people do not understand the meaning of the word childfree. Yehonala, your post today about the challenges you deal with teaching in a low income district was very well written.

I have a dating profile on match.com. After months of receiving winks and e-mails from women who have or want kids, it was a welcome sight to receive this message in my inbox two weeks ago(only a portion is shown).
Hi Mike,

I enjoyed your profile, too. I appreciate your independence and realism. It's rare to find other people who are dead set against breeding, as I'm sure you know. You wouldn't believe how many guys contact me who want kids or have them already. I am forced to assume that they are illiterate.

I could commiserate with her. I quit sending polite no thank you's to the women contacting me who have or want kids. I just hit the delete button instead. My CF stance is clearly stated in my profile:

Please note that my childfree status is firm and permanent. I have undergone a successful vasectomy and will never, ever consider reversing it.
I did meet the CF gal for dinner last week but she felt we didn't have enough common interests to continue seeing each other.
A few days later I receive this message from another woman.

Good Evening,
I am new to this, so please bear with me. I live in Los Alamos,
am very outdoorsy too. Love to hike, bike(need more training though), cross country ski ( would like to learn down hill better, but last few years have not been conducive to that). I am very physical too, former ballerina, aerobics instructor. I work out everyday and value that in men a lot. Have decided to meet some new people. My son is growing up and needing me less these days. I don't work at the lab but am a professional in another field here. I have traveled extensively in Europe, read a lot, watch almost no TV, love movies, animals. Let me know if we should keep talking and I will send a photo soon, and let you know more details.


I liked everything she wrote except the part about her son. Since her message was nice, I decided to give her the courtesy of a reply rather than just hitting the delete button. Here is my reply:

Hi,
Thanks for your very nice message. I liked what you wrote about being active, not being a TV watcher and traveling. There is a good chance we could hit it off together except for ONE BIG ISSUE, your son. Please reread the paragraph about my childfree stance. I don't date women with kids. I don't want any kids and have taken responsibility to ensure that I will never father any children. It astonishes me that women with kids or who want kids continue to contact me. I wish you the best. I am sure there is a guy out there who is a better match than me.

Perhaps I confused her with my reply because this came in today:

I just wanted to say that probably a lot of women, when they write back only remember that you didn't want to HAVE any children, they forget or it didn't really sink in with them that you had said you didn't even want to date anyone who had any already.. I went back and read your profile after your response to see how I could have missed that.
Here is my reply to that message:
My profile has been revised with the sentence,"I don't date women with kids." In the "about my date" section I have checked "none" for both has kids and wants kids. I have no interest in having kids or being an an unpaid babysitter to someone else's kids with an ex husband or ex boyfriend in the picture. Good luck in your search.

Thanks for reading the above rant about my online dating frustratrations. I am going to hold out for that CF gal, no matter how long it takes. In the meantime I am talking with my brother about a biking trip in Austria next September. Here is a link to that event
BellaOnline ALERT: Raw URLs are not allowed in these forums for security reasons. Please use UBB code. If you don't know how to do UBB code just post here for help - we will help out!

Hi Mike,
I think lots of women just assume they can talk their partner into having children and sadly, some women just stop taking contraception and claim an "accident". I know that many men become fathers this way - worn down so they go along with it or caught out...
Given you have taken steps to protect yourself - I would have thought these women would move on pretty quickly after finding out you are firmly and permanently "in control"...
The ones that have kids and contact you - perhaps they think it will be easier to incorporate you into their lives without the addition of your kids and ex - or again, that you've made a decision not to have your own kids but that their kids are fine...
The dating site should have an option in the profile section,
"I don't want my own kids or anyone else's" - that would cover it....
I know if I were looking for a new partner I'd definitely be cautious about taking on someone with kids - why would I take by default something I didn't want for myself?
I've heard men say that all women want to have kids at some point - I know that's not true - keep looking - she's out there somewhere...

Mike - that is so frustrating! I do agree with what Deborah said that they think it would easier to work you into their lives b/c you don't have/want kids. BUT, that's one of the reasons you don't want one - you don't want your life ruined, complicated or compromised by kids. And, that's really hyprocitical if you think about it... they want you or a CF person to deal with their kids, but don't want to deal with the hassle of someone else's children. One of my main reasons for never wanting kids is that if the current relationship doesn't work out no one would ever want to date me if I had kids from the previous relationship. Or, it would be that much more difficult. I've seen the men my friends that are divorced with kids have been able to meet, and it's just awful. Most of them would be better off single.

I always wonder about the reconstructed families - how much enjoyment they have with their new partners when the kids from two families are trying to adjust with living in the same house. Doesn't sound sexy to me. Have you seen Yours, Mine and Ours? It's an extreme example, but still.

I think you handled the situation well, but I'm sure it's getting old. Some things just aren't negotiable...and I'm with you. There is no way in hell I would want to raise/babysit/caretake for someone else's kids. That would really [censored] me off.

Good God, inlaws are difficult enough to deal with. Who wants to deal with someone else's kids from another relationship? What a mess.

I think unfortunately most women just can't fathom not wanting kids. They just can't get it into their brains, no matter how many times we say it.

Mike
Deborah and Happy,
Thanks for your replies and encouraging words. I have always had the following checked in the �About My Date� section on Match.com: have kids = none, want kids = no way. Today I added the sentence to my profile,�I don�t date women with kids� to go along with the previously described firm and permanent CF stance. The cf lady I mentioned in my earlier post told me that many people (both men and women) will simply wink or send out form e-mails to hundreds of men/women without reading their profiles. That staggers my imagination, but it is certainly believable.
Mike

I'm beginning to realize that my brother is a bit of a "saint" because he married a woman with two boys from a previous marriage. Luckily, they're good kids and he has a good relationship with them, and their bio dad is a loser and not in the picture, though the grandparents on that side are supportive of the kids' mom, my brother's wife. Kudos to my brother, because I know I could never take on a man with kids. Even if they were totally with their mom and never visited, there would always be the responsibility of the father. And child support...ugh! I know I'd resent that, so I'm lucky I found a man with no kids, even though he was married once. If I were ever single again, my Match.com profile would read much like Mike's. It might take longer to find someone, but it would be worth the wait to not settle for someone with kids, and all the aggravation that would bring.

Cindy

My brother has taken on 3 kids from his girlfriend's first marriage and a new baby and his life is a nightmare - fighting, arguing and financial problems. The ex husband pays no child support - he has been in and out of work for years and now lives in a share house on a beach 900 kilometers away....
An easy question, who got the better deal?
I might add my brother is only part of this woman's life because she fell pregnant.
What a shame he didn't follow your example Mike and protect himself...

I am a bit surprised that a dating site even ASKS if you want kids. That's progress!

As for women responding who already have kids, I can't explain that. Perhaps other posters are correct, they just assume you'll "grow out of it" or "be talked into it."

I think the perception is that men are wild and crazy and don't want kids, but eventually they WILL "settle down" and start a family.

People really don't understand being childfree -- remember, there are SO MANY people out there who do want kids, you may literally be the very first person they encounter who doesn't want kids! And that sounds crazy, considering how important it is to all of us in our own lives.

Hang in there for the CF woman -- she IS out there! You'll find her.

Kim
MNK Editor

Kim is right, we are out there. I met my CF guy on MySpace AND we are in our forties! There was no way in hell I was going to date a guy that had kids in any way, shape, or form

I haven't seen a dating site that doesn't include the want kids/have kids thing. At least they know enough to realise that for many people it's a dealbreaker.

I'm totally with you, Mike. And yet I have girlfriends who just can't fathom why I wouldn't date a guy with children. Huh? If I don't want any of my own, because I don't want the stress, cost, aggravation and responsibility, why would I take on somebeody else's, who aren't even anything to do with me? They have two parents who bought them into the world, they can deal with them.

But what about if the kids are grown, they say? So what if they are? Being a parent doesn't stop when the kids turn 18. Every time they need a hand with some crisis or other, they first people they're going to finger is their parents ... and if you're that parent's new partner, you'd better believe that YOUR priorities are going on the back burner.

I've read so many posts where parents (much more so mothers, but a lot of fathers as well) swear black and blue that their kids will "always come first", and any new partner had better understand that, "or they're down the road". Why would a childfree person want to put up with that? Why would you get into a relationship where you know that your partner is never going to invest in you to the extent that you invest in them? It makes no sense to me.

I'm hanging out for the childfree guy as well. I've tried the child thing, and it just doesn't work. Like Cindy says, it's worth the wait.

I completely agree. It is likely the kids you would be dealing with have not had the best beginnings, either. How much of a chance is there that they would have emotional issues and baggage from the divorce and the terrible home environment that no doubt preceded that? Their formative years have been deeply dysfunctional. Like you want to jump on that train wreck just in time for the teen years�oh yeah. I think people who do it, and do a good job of step parenting, are amazing, because it can be a minefield. I'm sure there are above-average kids who float through it unscathed, but I certainly didn't.