Reply to Neither AC wants kids. I can't help feeling like I failed.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DD has said she was a teen that she didn't want kids. Ha-ha ok you will change your mind is what everyone always told her. No, she's never wavered. She's in her late 20s and has been married for 3 years now (with her husband for 8 years total). She just told me that she found a doctor who was willing to do a tubal ligation so she could be done with birth control. It felt like a gut punch when she told me.

DS is in his early 30s and is getting married this fall. He's been with his fiancée for 4 years and they too have told us they have zero desire for kids. I thought for sure they would have kids as she's an elementary teacher and works at a kids camp in the summer.

How do I get over these feelings of failure? I know I raised great kids but at the same time, I feel like both are being selfish and it makes me angry. Is this something therapy helps with? 
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Working as a teacher or at a kid's summer camp is FANTASTIC birth control.

I babysat every weekend and many weeknights too most of my pre-teen and teenaged years. I never ended up having kids - still love them, I'm a group leader at the moment at a YMCA before/after school program, but I don't really regret not having kids. Part of my hesitation was having had a man in the home who did not behave like a loving father and having been very selective in my dating as to the kind of man I was willing to stay with and ultimately didn't find one I wanted to reproduce with.

But today's young people have a lot of reasons to balk at parenthood. It's ridiculously expensive and there are few supports. The planet is warming and the future could be very bleak if governments fail to act, soon. Inequity in our society is off the charts and kids today don't have any certainty of meeting their parents' standard of living, much less improving it. Also 8+ billion humans on the planet, we don't really need more - we just need to relocate some of them to the USA to grow our economy and fund our social security system into the future.

Enjoy your adult kids, OP. They will have much more time to care for you as you decline into old age if they don't have kids of their own. You could volunteer at the Y, at Boys & Girls Club, or as a Big Sister/Big Brother or CASA if you really want to be instrumental in the life of another child before you die.

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