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][quote=Anonymous]I can see how someone might not want to raise kids.  But it's  hard for me to imagine how an older person wouldn't want to have adult kids.  I have to imagine that on some level there is a certain regret that they don't have adult kids around, even if they don't think raising children would have been worth it. [/quote]

You can imagine? Uh, okay. How about you imagine the opposite, which most childfree people have confirmed.[/quote]

Why in the world would a person not desire to have a relationship with an adult child of their own?[/quote]

[b]Are you kidding? You think that's the only important relationship in a person's life[/b]?[/quote]

Of course it's not the only important relationship, but it's HUGE, and incredibly rewarding.  I certainly very much enjoy having an adult relationship with my own parents, as they certainly do as well.  [b]I think this is true in the vast majority of cases [/b]unless there is some sort of estranged relationship, but that's not the norm.  Why in the world wouldn't someone want to experience 30-40 years of having a relationship with their own adult child?  A stage that lasts far, far, longer than the child-rearing years. [/quote]

Do you have any actual statistics or research to back that up?  I actually don't think that's true.  I think there's a lot more dysfunction in adult child-parent relationships than what you realize.

And that is the problem with these threads: people assume their experience is the defining experience, is the norm.  It's impossible to fathom that maybe not everyone -- maybe not even most people -- have their experience.

Even though the child-rearing years don't last long, the effects of them can be long-lasting.  You assume it all ends well!  But look around.  Often, the child-rearing years add just the right amount of stress to break a marriage. Or a woman opts out of working and is never able to fully get back to being financially independent.  Or those years change the dynamic of a relationship in such a way that it never recovers, even if they stay married.  Not to mention, the child care issue doesn't end when the kids starts school.   There's after care, activities, camp.  These things can be impossible for two working parents -- who work in inflexible careers -- to juggle.  Or the teenage years end up being far more challenging.

I'm not saying those things happen all of the time.  But this suggestion that "it's just a few years of breastfeeding and then it's all downhill from there!" is BS.[/quote]

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