Reply to Do you regret being childless by choice later in life?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You should post this in the Fifty and Over forum.

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

I would love grandchildren, however!  [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

+1. Some of my best teachers were child-free by choice. [/quote]

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.

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