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I have 3 kids and it totally was worth it. The love you have for your children is like no other. One of mine developed a drug problem that he has yet to overcome. While it’s sad it’s not mine or my ex’s fault. I enjoy the company of my other 2 sons and my Dil. I didn’t have kids to care for me in my old age. Only one is married and they decided not to have kids.
If you're questioning the worth of having kids then no, it's not.
Never "test yourself" by having kids when you don't want them hoping you'll get attached afterwards. Maybe you wil but chances are you won't and then you've sentenced your kid(s) to a lifetime of hell they didn't deserve.
It's a touchy subject, but having kids has not made economic sense since child labor and parental ownership of children's wages were outlawed.
I have relatives in a rural area who maintain a legal form of this seniority system even to this day. They are farmers and grandpa owns the land. Son farms the land for decades and slowly buys pieces of it from grandpa to fund grandpa's retirement. By the time grandpa bites the dust son has purchased most of the land. Son then semi-retires and begins renting out his land to grandson. Rinse, repeat.
Emotionally, it depends. Sometimes parent and child are not compatible.
The poor rewards for being a parent is the number one reason the birth rate is so low. We will have to figure out a new arrangement eventually. As it is the system is powered by sentimentality and altruism, often misplaced.
What's the point of this thread? To show ONE person's reasons for not having kids? I think just about everyone will agree there are pros and cons for having kids but that's nothing new. I'd say for most the pros outweigh the cons, just by looking at the number of people who have kids vs those who don't. Sure you have some that have kids but didn't want them but that's balanced with those that want kids but don't have them. I truly believe kids are not for everyone, as some will be happier without kids, but for the majority of people, they do want their own children.
Personally I do want my own kids but I think it's too late for me. Of course I don't know what it's like to have kids but I do think I would be much happier if I had my own family, despite all the things the OP mentioned. Funny how the OP never mentioned the positives, which I think far outweigh the negatives, of having kids.
I think more people regret not having kids than regret having them.
Life is definitely easier not having kids but near the tail end of your life I think that's when regret rears its head and the pros and cons come out flying.
Not everyone should have kids and sometimes the kids become adults who are detrimental to society and cause more harm than good. Sometimes the kids will end up hating the parents till the death bed and vice versa.
#1, if you know or feel that not having kids is better deal for you, please do that. I support you spiritually in your decision. And maybe you'll feel differently in 5 10 or 15 years.
#2, having kids, caring for them, teaching them, inspiring them, watching them grow, change, learn, fail, fall, try again, help them up, hold them down, occasionally whoop their @ss if that's what required, watching them figure out how they can do it better than you, walk the stage, tears in both your eyes when they move away, get married, join the army, take that first good job in NYC or LA or Chicago, have their kids (your grandkids), still mad at you for not getting a pony or a dirt bike for their bday, reject your religion/life philosophy or adopt just the same. The outcome is not guarnanteed. Make no doubt about it, they will take ALL your time, your good looks, your health, your nerves, your freedom, your patience, your creativity, and yes especially your money. And it's worth every ounce of your Life Force you gave them. If you found a time machine at age 99, but went back to when you were 9... you'd hopefully say "yeah I'd do it all over again. No question it was the best decision of my life". No one gives a rats @ss what job you had or what money you made. In most cases, your children are your legacy, the only things of value you produced in your lifetime (unless you invented cellphones or lithium batteries or something).
'member you can always adopt - or semi-adopt some step kids that came with your partner. lets be honest, 9/10 of us came from broken dysfunctional poor family situations, because real life isnt a damn Disney movie, and your kids might steal money out your own purse, the way I did to my own mom (sorry mom!).
Or not. Maybe you'd rather buy a sailboat, keep all your gold in a warchest at your feet, be single/childless for life, singing Heyy Diddiley Dee, a Pirate's Life for Me. an old bedraggled parrot and bottle of rum might be all the family you need. (your liver will quit first).
Here's an "art sculpture" which expresses the idea in one frame:
the son is formed of the holes in the father.
(somebody should make a mother-daughter version, to be fair)
It's only amongst a very small, exclusive portion of the world that this is even a question or a debate.
Wrong. Childbirth rates are lowest in ALL developed countries, Japan for example has had a population decrease problem for a while now.
Quote:
Japan’s rapid population shrinkage is primarily caused by persistently low fertility. Japan’s fertility rate has been declining since the mid-1970s, reaching a total fertility rate (TFR) of around 1.3 children per woman in the early 2000s.
There is little out-of-wedlock childbearing in Japan. Childbirths outside of marriage have constituted around 2 per cent of all births since the 1950s. The decline in Japan’s fertility rate is mainly due to fewer young women getting married.
Quote:
Young Japanese women are increasingly reluctant to marry and have children in part due to the rapid improvement of their economic opportunities.
Japan’s declining marriage rate is also attributable to the persistence of traditional domestic gender roles, which place a heavy burden on women to manage housework and childcare. Japanese men’s contributions to domestic tasks remain very low and the gender imbalance in domestic labour is still notable.
Educated, financially independent, successful women have lower childbirths than their poor uneducated counterparts. These are facts, not a debate. Many prosperous women have no plans to be the "stay at home mother" that many societies expect.
So yes, it's clear that "kids are not worth it" for these women.
I'm a black American, and I have to think very long and hard about what it means to bring another black American into this world. A world that is not exactly welcoming of such people all the time. Maybe I will get kids one day, maybe I won't but it's not as black and white as you seem to think. We are in a new age where, as you can see above, many women just do not want kids.
There are plenty of orphans who could be given love. But there's an ego component to having a child. People want a child that looks like them.
Those kids often come with baggage........stuff the adoptive parents are not always aware of (health/mental problems). If the child was born to a drug addicted parent then that could affect them growing up.
Choosing to stay childfree was the smartest decision I ever made in my lifetime.
Sorry, having kids is not for everyone.
I had a friend tell me this years ago. She was cute, very successful and said she would never have children because she wouldn't want them hurt like she was..........ohhh, there is a lot of damage behind those eyes.
She had struggles with alcohol in her later years, I suspect she was carrying a lot of baggage around in her head.
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