Do you regret being childless by choice later in life?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should post this in the Fifty and Over forum.

But my answer is no. I am 62 with no kids, and although I am a preschool teacher, I have always known that children were not the right choice for me.

I would love grandchildren, however!

I find it interesting you're a preschool teacher who doesn't want kids. I would rather die before being a teacher. I dislike being around others' children. However, I adore my own!! I would think if you don't want your own you wouldn't want to be around children in general.

That is a stupid assumption to make. I am 32 and childless but am a nanny. I enjoy working with children but have no desire to be a mom. You can't compare working with kids to having your own. It isn't rare either, I know a lot of childless women who work with children. We aren't all children haters as we don't want our own either.

Agree that it's a stupid assumption as well. One of my colleagues does not want kids but she is a prosecutor specializing in child sexual abuse. She is the biggest champion of children I can imagine. She is wonderful with them--the most damaged and scared children out there. She loves her job and is incredible at it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My sister just pretends my kids are hers when she's around them and is fine.

Ha! My brother-in-law and his wife do this as well. They love to take my kids for the day and do family things. We get free babysitting for the day and they get to play family. Win-win.

[Anonymous]

I am the nanny who posted and also used to work in a daycare. I have lost track of the amount of times the moms of the kids I care for have looked at me like I have two heads when I say I don't have children and don't want them. I enjoy my job and find it very rewarding but I really don't want to be a mom. I feel I have to justify why time and again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am the nanny who posted and also used to work in a daycare. I have lost track of the amount of times the moms of the kids I care for have looked at me like I have two heads when I say I don't have children and don't want them. I enjoy my job and find it very rewarding but I really don't want to be a mom. I feel I have to justify why time and again.

Which makes no sense, because these are the same women complaining about how they get no family help with their kids. If they weren't so judgmental, they might see they could take advantage of the childfree people in their lives instead of judging them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister just pretends my kids are hers when she's around them and is fine.

Ha! My brother-in-law and his wife do this as well. They love to take my kids for the day and do family things. We get free babysitting for the day and they get to play family. Win-win.

Nice! Yes, win all across the board!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am the nanny who posted and also used to work in a daycare. I have lost track of the amount of times the moms of the kids I care for have looked at me like I have two heads when I say I don't have children and don't want them. I enjoy my job and find it very rewarding but I really don't want to be a mom. I feel I have to justify why time and again.

Which makes no sense, because these are the same women complaining about how they get no family help with their kids. If they weren't so judgmental, they might see they could take advantage of the childfree people in their lives instead of judging them.

Exactly....

[Anonymous]

I am child free and don't regret it. This world and this country is not kind to women with children. Maternity leave in the US is a bad joke.
It seems like the country promotes immigration more than reproduction of its own women. Pumping breast milk at work - you got to be kidding me, it's cruel to women and babies that are separated from their moms at such young age. So no, no regrets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am child free and don't regret it. This world and this country is not kind to women with children. Maternity leave in the US is a bad joke.
It seems like the country promotes immigration more than reproduction of its own women. Pumping breast milk at work - you got to be kidding me, it's cruel to women and babies that are separated from their moms at such young age. So no, no regrets.

Yep. This is 80% of the reason I think we may be one and done.

[Anonymous]

I totally understand one-and-done (I'm an only child of an only child and love being an only), but as someone who is childfree by choice, having just one seems like almost the worst situation. Your time and money are still tied up in all that comes with having kids, but it seems like the chances of having grandkids, having someone to take care of you when you're older, enjoying the "adult children" lifestyle, having at least one kid who lives near you - goes way down.

No knock on one-and-done, because I think those are all very "selfish" reasons for wanting to have kids (what they will do for you later in life). But to me, and as other posters have mentioned, the adult children and benefits they bring really seems like the big payoff in parenting, and with one child it seems like a lot riding on just one person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should post this in the Fifty and Over forum.

But my answer is no. I am 62 with no kids, and although I am a preschool teacher, I have always known that children were not the right choice for me.

I would love grandchildren, however!

I find it interesting you're a preschool teacher who doesn't want kids. I would rather die before being a teacher. I dislike being around others' children. However, I adore my own!! I would think if you don't want your own you wouldn't want to be around children in general.

That is a stupid assumption to make. I am 32 and childless but am a nanny. I enjoy working with children but have no desire to be a mom. You can't compare working with kids to having your own. It isn't rare either, I know a lot of childless women who work with children. We aren't all children haters as we don't want our own either.

+1. Some of my best teachers were child-free by choice.

NP here. All of my best teachers were childfree by choice.

In high school, I directly asked one teacher about it. She was the kind of person you could talk to about real things. And she said that she and her husband knew they could only do so many things and be able to those things well, with the time and attention and energy needed to do them well. She said she didn't feel like she could have kids and raise them well *and* still do the other things she wanted to do.

I don't understand the parents who fixate on people regretting being childless later in life. I mean, I know people who aren't at all happy with their lives now and they have kids. Maybe they'll be happy when they're 70. Or maybe not. Maybe their kids will be, as another PP suggests, off living their own lives.

It's all a gamble b/c there is a huge unknown in all of it. I know moms who are happy and love and enjoy they're children. That's great. But I also know moms who aren't happy but won't admit it (in part, because admitting it would make it harder for them to soldier on, and I understand that). But I don't believe that having children is the defining experience of love. And I think the fact that society pushes that shows that we really don't have a good definition of love. I don't doubt that having children involves a strong biological instinct of attachment to the child. But I view love as attachment that has nothing to do with obligation, biological instinct, etc. When you have NOTHING to gain but still feel and overwhelming sense of concern and attachment to another being, that's more akin to what I call love than the instinctual attachment a parent feels toward his/her biological offspring.

But the drumbeat of "you'll never know love until you have a child" continues. I'll get flamed for saying this, but I know people who have children and are really good parents, but I actually don't think they've ever really known love. They care about their kids, are attached to their kids, etc., but in so many ways, it's clear to me that all of that is largely connected to the sense they have that their kids are extensions of themselves. So when they say "you'll never know love until you have kids," what they really should be saying is "you'll never know the biological attachment and instinct a parent feels toward a child." And sure, that's true.

Even then, I've seen enough examples where even that doesn't seem to be in place.

Of all of the reasons to have a kid, regret later in life seems to me the worst.

And I get tired of this question being asked about older childless women. I work with a lot of older women who have grown kids. Every.single.one of them has kids over 25 who still live at home and depend on them financially. Some have delayed retirement because of it. This whole BS notion that your kids will take care of you or make your life easier when you are older is misguided. It might. But it also could make it harder.

I also know of people who had to raise grandchildren b/c of their own kids' issues.

And beyond that, I know of a person whose own kids are too busy to help her. So my husband and I help her with stuff. So, yeah, I get particularly angry when people tell me we're selfish for not having kids or ask some idiotic question like "who is going to take care of you when you're old?" as if having kids is a guarantee of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I totally understand one-and-done (I'm an only child of an only child and love being an only), but as someone who is childfree by choice, having just one seems like almost the worst situation. Your time and money are still tied up in all that comes with having kids, but it seems like the chances of having grandkids, having someone to take care of you when you're older, enjoying the "adult children" lifestyle, having at least one kid who lives near you - goes way down.

No knock on one-and-done, because I think those are all very "selfish" reasons for wanting to have kids (what they will do for you later in life). But to me, and as other posters have mentioned, the adult children and benefits they bring really seems like the big payoff in parenting, and with one child it seems like a lot riding on just one person.

Whether people have one kid or three, I think it's a lot of pressure and expectation to put on your kids -- this notion that they're going to make your life whole, that they're going to take care of you, that they're going to fulfill you.

I've felt that immense pressure from my own mother my entire life, and maybe that's why I put off having kids so long. (Eventually, I did give it ago, although with hesitation and still conflicted, and alas, I only had miscarriages.) I've always felt a strong aversion to this idea that motherhood is supposed to complete you b/c I think it puts enormous pressure on your kids, especially when they're adults. I don't want to be anyone's source of meaning and identity and fulfillment. That's a huge obligation and also an impossible one to live up to.

But I hear that message all over the place. I think mothers think they're making their kids feel special when they tell them that they're the most important things or that they give their lives meaning or that they're the center of their universe. But I cringe when I hear it because it hard enough for kids to grow up and understand and cultivate their own identity; to be also responsible for your mother's is a burden no one should have to carry. I mean, it's one thing to make your kid feel loved and valued. But the mommy martyrdom takes that another level and, I think, actually is harmful to kids.

[Anonymous]

Nobody should have kids if they want them to be an extension of them or are having them purely so they can be looked after in later life. A colleague said to me (I am the nanny poster again) "You should have children as they will look after you later on in life." As others have said, that is a selfish reason to have them and of course, there are no guarantees that will happen.
I am one of three and my siblings don't have kids/want them either. I know my mother is secretly devastated that she won't ever have grandkids but I refuse to apologise for that. I am my own person and need to live my life my way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Based on the men and women I know, it seems that it may go in waves. Whether it is a sign of love, really, power, or wealth, or most likely a mix, older man I know are very happy to have grandchildren. And older men without children or grandchildren seem to be the odd man out much more so than during the high points of their careers. For women, there seems to be a shift in the late 40s or early 50s where what the woman has done as a career, or whether she has had a career at all, is much less defining socially. It is not that everything becomes about the grandkids, but careers, which are often a key component in someone decided not to have children, seem to lose a bit of their importance in terms of a woman's self identity. Other things come to the four, whether children, helping ailing parents, medical issues, divorces, or just the ends and outs of seeing more of the world over time. For women who decided against having children specifically due to wanting to focus more on their careers, I have seen among my friends regret that kicks in at this stage. Though I do think we all look back and assess our decisions and wonder how another path would have played out.

While this may be true, I don't think the issue is being childless. I have seen plenty of men who "focused on their careers" AND had kids and still ended up regretting focusing so much on their careers when they're old. Why? Because when you reach retirement, you realize that the job is gone. If you didn't spend time cultivating other interests and hobbies and things of that nature, you have a void. It's foolish to assume, though, that children/grandchildren are the only thing that can fill that void.

But we don't have threads and threads and loads of commentary warning men about focusing too much on their careers because they might regret it later in life. But we do chastise women for that.

The problem isn't that those women (or men) didn't have kids. The problem is the same problem even some parents make: putting all of your "meaning" eggs in one basket. If you spend most of your adult life with one thing being your sole source of meaning and definition and focus, then you very much run the risk of being left feeling empty if that one thing goes away or doesn't end up as you thought.

I've seen it with women who define themselves by their kids. But if their kids don't live near them later in life or don't turn out to be their buddies as adults or -- gasp -- end up not giving them grandchildren, those women have the same kind of regret and existential crisis that women (and men) who focus their entire adult life solely on their careers have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I totally understand one-and-done (I'm an only child of an only child and love being an only), but as someone who is childfree by choice, having just one seems like almost the worst situation. Your time and money are still tied up in all that comes with having kids, but it seems like the chances of having grandkids, having someone to take care of you when you're older, enjoying the "adult children" lifestyle, having at least one kid who lives near you - goes way down.

No knock on one-and-done, because I think those are all very "selfish" reasons for wanting to have kids (what they will do for you later in life). But to me, and as other posters have mentioned, the adult children and benefits they bring really seems like the big payoff in parenting, and with one child it seems like a lot riding on just one person.

Whether people have one kid or three, I think it's a lot of pressure and expectation to put on your kids -- this notion that they're going to make your life whole, that they're going to take care of you, that they're going to fulfill you.

I've felt that immense pressure from my own mother my entire life, and maybe that's why I put off having kids so long. (Eventually, I did give it ago, although with hesitation and still conflicted, and alas, I only had miscarriages.) I've always felt a strong aversion to this idea that motherhood is supposed to complete you b/c I think it puts enormous pressure on your kids, especially when they're adults. I don't want to be anyone's source of meaning and identity and fulfillment. That's a huge obligation and also an impossible one to live up to.

But I hear that message all over the place. I think mothers think they're making their kids feel special when they tell them that they're the most important things or that they give their lives meaning or that they're the center of their universe. But I cringe when I hear it because it hard enough for kids to grow up and understand and cultivate their own identity; to be also responsible for your mother's is a burden no one should have to carry. I mean, it's one thing to make your kid feel loved and valued. But the mommy martyrdom takes that another level and, I think, actually is harmful to kids.

It's scary how much damage this behavior does to children way into their adult lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nobody should have kids if they want them to be an extension of them or are having them purely so they can be looked after in later life. A colleague said to me (I am the nanny poster again) "You should have children as they will look after you later on in life." As others have said, that is a selfish reason to have them and of course, there are no guarantees that will happen.
I am one of three and my siblings don't have kids/want them either. I know my mother is secretly devastated that she won't ever have grandkids but I refuse to apologise for that. I am my own person and need to live my life my way.

I'm the PP of the few long posts above. And that is exactly my situation. It has actually really caused a rift between me and my mother. My siblings don't have kids either, and it has put a strain on all of us dealing with her.