I’ve never wanted kids. I’m really introverted, I wouldn’t cope well with all of the body changes, and when I worked at summer camps I loved it but ways always very happy at the end of the day to get to be kid-free.
Why did you want kids, or not want them?
If I had just waited a few years longer… we would have had TV remotes and I wouldn’t have needed kids.
I’ve always wanted them in a vague sense but didn’t fully understand why until I had them.
For me, it’s simply life’s greatest source of love, awe, and purpose. All the cliches of experiencing all the emotions, super high highs and dark lows are true. It’s life’s biggest leap of faith.
Right now my kids are young, but I look at my parents and how much joy their grand kids give them, and it inspires me. I hope one day to experience that. I suppose at the end of the day, accomplishments in work, sport, hobbies etc is great but meaningless without people you love to share the journey with. And what better way to build that group of people to share life’s journey with than to make them and commit to raising them in to awesome people you’d want to hang out with.
Fwiw, I’m very introverted as well. I’m an over planner, and fairly anxious. Having kids was very hard from that standpoint, and it took a while for me to adjust to the chaos and very limited time one gets to themselves.
When my wife and I were dating we talked about whether we wanted children or not. She said she didn’t and I wanted the door left open so I was hesitant about getting married, but we did. After being married I decided I definitely didn’t want children and of course as she got older and the biological clock started ticking she started talking about having one, but we never did. I think deep down she regrets not having a child, but I’m ok with it. Every now and then I’ll think it would have been nice to have one, but I definitely don’t regret it. I don’t think I would have been a very good parent. I’m not a very patient person and think I would have been tough on my child, even though my parents were very loving.
I always wanted kids. Loved babysitting, playing with them, sitting at the “kids table”.
I thought 3 would be good, but then it took a while to find a partner. Getting pregnant wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Wrapped my head around having an only child - and then had a surprise pregnancy.
It would be very hard to be a good parent if you were only moderately into it. So much time/effort/energy.
My sister thinks I should have been a dad but I never felt it. Both our families are as fucked up as most, and, although we would have been better at it if we were all in, we just weren’t. Never really had to decide - it was clear we were on the same page, and parenthood just wasn’t for us.
Yes, this.
We do love our dogs and our goddaughter though.
We always wanted children. Just did. Our lives are much fuller with our children and now grands in it.
I had a horrible childhood. Raising children in a loving, supportive environment healed many, many of those wounds. I gave myself what I did not have, what I needed, what they needed, by loving them.
And grandparenting. OMG. So freaking heart warming. They are on summer break right now so they come to stay with us at the lake everyday. I am their short order cook. We garden together. Play in the lake. We read together everyday. The 12 year old is joining the HS cross country team so we run together.
We have financial resources and comfort. But nothing compares to having a close knit, loving, nurturing family.
I don’t think I ever really gave it any thought, just assumed I would have them. My wife definitely wanted them, so that was that.
That’s it exactly, for me
Kids certainly enrich your life I could see that even before I had them. There also was the sense of having kids being a great project maybe the greatest one could engage in. In addition to that I could see that when one gets old having kids that care about you is a great advantage. My mother who is 88 tells me that the people who have kids in the various rest homes and retirement places she has lived in have way more visits than those that do not. She lived in a rest home from about 2018 to 2024 then moved in with me and my wife until a few months ago and then fell and had a subdural brain bleed. She is now in a rest home two miles from my house. I am over there 3-4 times a week. Without me she would be quite disadvantaged from her current situation.
People who purposely don’t have kids will tell you that they can build a support network of friends etc. However when you get really old or even sorta old many of those folks will be quite old too some of them will be dead.
I see some of my elderly pts who don’t have kids have nieces and nephews who are quite involved in their lives. Likely a good idea to build that into your support network either way
Kids can break your heart though.
Thinking about it, it was my wife that really wanted kid(s) at some point after we were married. It was a very strong maternal instinct that kicked in and drove her. At the time, I was happy to just go along with or without or whatever. She had an ectopic, then a miscarriage, before delivering our 2. Both of those successful pregnancies were difficult and treated as high-risk throughout their terms.
Our kids are now in their early 20s. What others have said about highs/lows in raising them is all true. We had our own version of highs/lows with them and still do now and then.
If we didn’t have our own kids, a plan B was to adopt. (Plan C was to get a dog). But now that we have our own, I see how the kids each have traits and qualities of ours. There is a strong genetic component at play that I find so fascinating. They are their own persons, yet they are us.
There are no regrets. I think I/we would’ve found the best life with or without. It just is.
Okay, time for a more serious answer than mine above. I always knew that I wanted kids. My wife definitely wanted kids. In fact, she was ready to have one before I was, but not by much. I was 34 and she was 30 when we had our first. We got married when I was 31, so we hadn’t been waiting for too long.
Looking back I definitely wish that I had been a better parent. For too many years, I spent way too much time hunting, and then training for triathlon. I also wish that I had been more patient. I would love to have a chance to do it all over again, for them.
I knew from a very early age that I never wanted any. They would have definitely cut into my lifestyle. I make the best aunt and neighbor instead.
Wife and I were talking the other day about how much time and energy and resources are sucked up in end of life care, to the point that most of our cohorts are watching family homes and farms sold off and inheritance savings drained to pay for nursing home and health care expenses, at a time when inflation continues to rise, AI is set to decimate the working and middle class, and housing for our kids’ generation is increasingly unaffordable. One of my colleagues has a parent in our ICU presently for respiratory failure, lifelong heavy smoker, hoarder, piss poor health, and actively draining their substantial savings on their care and a memory unit nursing home for the spouse, which alone cost roughly $9k per month. Nine thousand dollars per month. Their house is going up for sale soon as well.
Our final gift to our children will be to spare them that future burden. We’ll support and care for ourselves until we can’t, then we’re out.
We were trying to figure out a way to make sure we’d never be financially comfortable, have limited mobility in terms of lifestyle and location, while ensuring that our emotional well-being would be bound to other individuals who can destroy it in a moment’s notice. Having kids was the obvious choice.
the world is over populated. many kids also living in divorced or no parent situations. I would adopt , but the financials of raising a kid right is too high. Also the dedication requires many sacrifices - which I applaud parents who can do it.
I get the feeling this is a pretty normal feeling, and reflects in how grandparents tend to be more likely to spoil their grand kids than they did their own. Which is totally the case with my folks. I’ll watch my dad play little toddler games with my son and give him these big hugs and be like “hey dad, I waited 30 years for my first hug, now you’re giving them away for free??”
I decided when I was maybe 19 or 20 that parenting looked distracting and not fun.
The older I got, the more these feelings became much, much stronger.
I waited until I was 36 to get a vasectomy—the best ever holiday gift from the wife.
In hindsight, I could have done this when I was 21.
I like kids. Especially when I can give them back.
My wife never really wanted kids. I was pretty sure that I would not do my share of the hard child rearing. I would be there for all the fun times, but the feeding, diaper changing, appointments, etc. were probably not going to be split fairly so it would have been pretty unreasonable to push for kids.
Neither of us do well with noise, mess and chaos. My patience is not always the best. Every now and then I would think about having a kid but 10 seconds later that thought would pass.
I think many if not most parents become parents before figuring that out, which is great for survival of the species but not always great for the individuals.
BTW I’m not complaining about being a parent, just being realistic. If I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn’t have chosen parenthood given how things are looking lately. I love my kids more than myself and I’m deeply disappointed in our and prior generations for the mess we’re leaving them with. They deserved better.
That said, being a father imparts opportunities for experiences and moments that you simply can’t have outside of parenthood and it’s hard to imagine not having those moments. It cuts to the core of your humanity.
