The name calling is definitely over the top and I'm not even sure how I feel on the label of "child-free" . It makes them sound like a disease and to most people, they aren't. I just feel like I would be so distressed and feel like my child is a burden (if I had one) that I would spend half the day making up for all of the snapping, finger-wagging and toe-tapping I had done while dealing with their intense curiosity. I don't think children should be stifled and I'm way too militant with children. Do this, go here, do this, put that down, don't touch this, no don't put that there, did you hear me I said DON'T PUT THAT THERE!

I don't feel "entitled" to grandchildren. Two of our children are physically old enough to have kids, and at the moment don't want them. It's their life and it isn't up to me to intrude. I had MY chance to have kids. What they do is up to them.

The oldest says she doesn't want kids until her partner can make enough so she can stay home full time with her kids (smart choice) and my middle one is in Grad School and has a LOT to do before she has children (plus, she doesn't even have a partner at the moment) our baby is only 12.

My husband sometimes whines that he wants grandbabies. I think it's silly, he HAD his kids. (It's almost always when he's had too much to drink and starts reminiscing about when our kids were small.) I'm not a sentimental person, and I KNOW it's completely up to my kids when and IF they have children. I don't have a say in it.



My nephew's new wife is pregnant, so I can love on her for a while, anyway.

I don't so much mind children in public as I mind those particular parents who seem determined to pay as little attention as possible to their kids when they bring them out shopping with them.

I have customers come in to ask me questions with a whole festival of children, and the kids are constantly interrupting me/getting into things/climbing stuff/clustering uncomfortably close around me and the parent just stands there and continues to talk as if they don't care to enforce any manners.

And then there are the ones who'll let their kid wander all the way across the store, and not even seem to notice that the child was gone, and sometimes not even care when I bring the kid back to them. (And people wonder how kidnappings happen, sheesh!)

Yes, sometimes sharing public space with children annoys me somewhat, but they have a right to be there. It's the non-caring parents that are hard to tolerate.

And I am calling BOOYAH!!!

Thanks for this post!!! I agree with it and will add more when I finish reading this thread!

"I wonder if that's the difference between people who want kids and people who don't - the way we grew up? I mean it sounds obvious, but I resented people telling me what to do, how to act, and who to be when I was a kid. I certainly would never want to do that to a child of my own."

No.

I have three other sisters.

The eldest got married in 2002, and had her first child October 2005 second kid July 2007. (Very traditional white wedding, lived with the parents till she was married at twenty-four)

Sister Number two got married June 2011 and should be having her first kid this month sometime. She had been living with her husband unmarried for four years. She was thirty-three when she got married; did the run away to another country with immediate family to get married.

Me. I'm turning thirty-two this year. I had the notion to get married, but the man died in a horrible car accident. Fuckwit in the other car was drunk. I've never in my life wanted children, have no desire to get married. I see kids and prefer them to be kept at a distance and I actually will speak of my annoyance if parents leave their children alone with me for more than a few minutes. I love teaching small children, I love and adore my niece and nephew (new kid doesn't count he's not around yet). But I've never in my life have had an inkling for kids.

Sister Number three; Married October 2011 only our mother was invited to her justice of the peace wedding. They'd been living together for just over three years, and she got tired of our other sisters saying because they were not engaged or married that her boyfriend (at the time) was not invited to family events or included in pictures. She has no plans to have kids. She was twenty-nine when she was married.

My sisters and I are all two years apart.

We all grew up in the same family, had the same parents, the same people nagging at us to get married and have kids. I was the one from birth who had NEVER wanted children. My father was always so angry with my words, my mother said, "never is a long time, why not say at the moment you don't want children?", two sisters tell me I am a bad woman because my body is designed to have children to which of course I reply, "my body has evolved to go beyond primal urges to be driven by the thing called a brain. I have made my decision and just as I respect you for having kids, you should be respecting my choice too." Unfortunately; my words fall on deaf ears.

So I feel comfortable saying that no, there is no difference in the way we grew up.

I think it has more to do with choice. I refuse to beleive that a hundred years ago (or more) all girls dreamt of having six kids. Or even one child. I look at China where children are taught from a baby that their lives are owned by their parents, and that it is their responsibility to get married and have children. I look at them and feel so sad knowing that they will do what their parents tell them to do, no matter if it makes them unhappy. They will have that child or children but don't want it. (And why I teach them how to think for themselves in life's choices)

I firmly beleive that in this day and age, because we have evolved as a society to listen and respect our own choices and that we have the choice to not have children.

When people tell me that I am a bad woman because I have made the decision not to have a child, and I don't understand what it is like to have kids, that I will never experience the joy of watching them grow and learn and etc...etc... etc.. I find it odd that I have to sit there and listen over and over to the rant, but they do not listen to what I have done. Or that I am rude for getting up and walking away. Sure, I've never experienced having my own kids, but my bottom line is, I am selfish in the fact that I want to live my life the way I want to live my life. I want the freedom to wake up and say, "today I am going to go play in the mountains, get plastered, then go bungee jumping tomorrow off a bridge. Then I am going to go to India for three weeks to meet a man I met online. I'm not going to get out of bed today because I just started a new book I cannot put down." or so many wildly other random things without needing to worry about if it is dangerous, or setting a good example.

Because the bottom line is simple. You have made the decision to live the way you do, just as I have made mine. Respect the choice. Because those that respect themselves and other people, those who don't judge others for their decisions are the ones that are expressing their love not just for themselves but also for their children and those around them. For at the end of the day, children emulate those around them, take the good and (hopefully discard) the bad, become their own person, and isn't it societies job to love and respect everyone? Even those that are different from yourself?

LOL! My mother always taught us, "any idiot can have a baby, it takes a good and a strong person to raise a decent member of society".

Hmmm...when I first met my husband I was all "I love you, wanna marry you and have lots of kiddos with you"...and then he said he didn't want kids, it just all changed...I didn't want kids. I didn't want to share him with anyone and there wasn't something nagging at the back of mind telling me I was screwing up my life by not having a child.

I do often wonder who will be there to take care of me in my golden years, but we're hoping to burn out and slide into the grave sideways. I have no desire to live past 60, I'm sure that'll change when I'm 40. But, there's just no bells ringing or alarms going off telling me that I'm going to regret this path later on in life. I actually feel really positive about it.

your second paragraph illustrates another issue I have with parenting, the unspoken expectations. On the one hand it's understandable that parents should expect something on the return for their tremendous investment, both in money and time. However, the children certainly cannot agree to this beforehand and their end of the bargain usually isn't articulated until it's too late.

Parents expect grandchildren, but never mention it until they're fully grown and obligated. Parents expect to be taken care of in their old age, but never articulate this early enough for the kids to plan ahead. It's as though parents have a batch of secret benefits they expect to derive from their children, regardless of the child's desire.

As a twenty-something in a relationship I just don't like the idea that apparently all my life, society, my family, my gf, her family and friends had expectations of children, support for the parents, adherence to social norms regarding marriage and more that they've only mentioned now. If you expect your kid to support you or provide grandkids, then explain the deal. the parents support the children for 18-24 years in various ways in exchange for X, Y and Z. Don't raise them and then out of the blue demand grandchildren or support as though it were a right of the parents, it is not. A person's reproductive faculties are their own to use, our body our choice.

I'll admit it. I think an unruly child shouldn't be taken in public.

Once upon a time, screaming or misbehaving children were removed from places of business by their parents until they could calm down. It was considered polite. Other patrons are there to relax and have a good time, and an unruly child hinders that.

These days, you go to a 5 star restaurant, and parents have infants or toddlers who are insufferably hysterical, or, in one instance, throwing food and spitting at people, and not even the maitre d' has the balls to ask the parents to leave until they can get their child under control. So instead, other paying patrons who weren't disturbing everyone around them leave.

If it were a drunken adult disturbing the atmosphere, they'd be asked to leave. The same should apply to children, imo.

i hate when people with children judge me for saying i don't like or want them. i was abused and i never want to have children because of that. really bothers me.