Reply to Can You Live A FulFilled Life Without Kids?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have kids and a large part of me regrets it. That is worse.

Some of my closest friends are child-free couples and they live great, fulfilled, complete lives. Many have kids in their life tangentially which is enough for them — ie being aunts and uncles, occasionally seeing their friends’ kids, etc. [/quote]

Why do you regret it?[/quote]
Because I did not fully understand or appreciate the fact that 95 out of 100 days with kids are a complete slog that you're just trying to make it through. No family member, person I knew, or tv show growing up explained the sheer amount of work kids would be and how thankless it is. I was the oldest sibling and the the oldest cousin in my family, so I was the first to get married and have kids -- did not have much experience with kids prior to having my own or getting to see the hard/dark parts. It's portrayed as "hard, BUT super rewarding" but honestly, what are the rewards? I see few about 10 years in. I do love my kids and feel moments of joy with them, but I also think I could have found those feelings in other ways as a child-free person too.

For additional context, I have had a disengaged partner who did 0.1% of parenting for many years, a child with mild ADHD who didn't sleep through the night for his first four years of life, and live 1,500 miles from the closest family, which has certainly made it all more difficult.

But the point is, as a PP so eloquently put, I had such a narrow understanding of what parenting would be that I didn't even consider the above complexities were possible or likely. [/quote]

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