Why is the narrative always..when you have children....

Post Reply New Topic

^Yes, I know men can push for early commitment, as my post said. I was simply questioning the idea that so many women bring up babies, in detail, early. And that this--not our ability for reproduction--is why society assumes all women want children.

The rest of your post is a whole different topic, concerning early dating experience, insecurity, and communication.

I'm betting that the bible has something to do with this. Lots of men assume that there is something horribly wrong if a woman does not want to pop out children & they try to force women to have kids by making abortion illegal & restricting access to birth-control under the guise of religious freedom. It's one of the many reasons I'm a male feminist. Men like that make me ashame to be biologically male.

My girlfriend wants kids & has spent a bit of time with kids when she was in her early 20s like volunteering to help teach bible study & volunteering at the library. She's been told more than a few times that she would be a good mom. I never wanted kids & she knew that when she got together with me so she kinda made the decision not to by choosing to be with me. She has lots of various issues that would make it extremely difficult for her to be a parent & she can barely handle taking care of our two pets & me & being there for her family so she realizes that she could not handle being a parent. I guess it's possible things would be a lot easier for her if she was with someone much more independent like a normal non-disabled guy instead of me but it's best not to dwell on the What If thinking. I felt like a parent at times in all 3 of my romantic relationships, especially my 1st & current & that's more than enough parenting for me. I def could NOT handle raising a kid & I'm sure no decent social worker or psychiatrist who would know all my psych & mental stuff would ever let me have kids. Me & Cass both think that the planet is waaay to overly populated by humans so that's probably another factor as to why she's OK with not having kids.

My partner and I have heard that for most of our lives.

A sentence that begins with "When you have children..."

I used to try to correct people, now I don't even bother.
It's a mindset some people get set in. I want to have children. Having children is normal. You should want to have children too. What do you mean you don't? Don't be silly, everyone wants to have children.

Happy to just let the expectations and assumptions wash over me now, I'm past caring.

We both have never had any desire to procreate. The planet is already overpopulated.
We've never been able to stand what parents go through. The noise. The chaos. The tantrums.

Parenthood certainly is for some people, but it's not for us.
Our family size is two. We're both in our 40s and are doing very well for ourselves in life.
No sign of children, we just enjoy life.

Words like "always" and "never" invite wild overgeneralizations, and there are always exceptions. (Heh. See what I did there?) In this case, I'd wager that there are more people of every gender who are choosing to be childfree for all sorts of reasons these days--myself among them.

That said, I do understand why people gravitate towards those "women always..." overgeneralizations-- especially when movies, commercials, songs, and other media are still heavily overpopulated with 1950s-era nuclear-family values: stay-at-home moms, happy little children, wonderful little picket-fence life.

Ugh.

No offense meant to those who have chosen that life... or had it chosen for them. Hey, more power to ya. But it ain't the only way to pursue fulfillment in this wacky world, and those of us who gleefully choose to remain childfree (and spouse-free, baby!) still have plenty to offer, have plenty of value in and of ourselves.

My motto? If the narrative sucks, write a new story.

And we are.

"But of COURSE you want/will want children. It's just a phase that you're going through right now..."

Pretty long phase if you ask me, it never happened!

Though I do have to laugh at the idea of finding an obstetrician that takes Medicare.

There are some people who absolutely love children, but equally hate the thought of having their own.

Being the rich or cool aunt/uncle or godparent should be a more widespread and valued role in society.

Though I'll accept the grumpynwho hates children too. My aunt has a single child from a marriage that didn't last. And the new man she found was someone who really doesn't like children, and they've lived happily childless long past fertile years.


There was a whole lot of weird written in this thread, but I'll comment on only one thing: The Bible.
Some people keep reading that old testament, forgetting whatever rules written pertain to Jews only. In the new testament, there are lots of letters written by this man called Paul. And he warned people against letting their daughters get married, mostly because having children in such a terrible world would be a woeful fate.
To be a good Christian (not Jew), don't get married (pretend you aren't intimate with anyone). Unless you want those children so bad that life doesn't seem worth living without them. If youvare a woman.
I think the advice he'd like to give men is generally just to not have sex. But in today's world, we know how to do consent and birth control, so I guess we don't have to listen to a man who lived two thousand years ago.

Neurotypical capitalist society expects people to do three things: to consume, to breed and to labor. If there is no competition for jobs there's no way to drive down salaries and drive up prices and create useless management hierarchies. Driving up prices is possible because when there's enough people it's only marketing that creates a way for people to differentiate and create an identity: buying stuff. Because if you take a rich person and put him in a poor person's clothes and house, they are a poor person despite whatever they think internally differentiates them from the poor, it's mainly their status: their things, their logos, not much else. Of course looks and social abilities matter too but the first one is an investment of diminishing returns and the second is something that can only be fabricated to a point (learning marketing or its original word: propaganda) and is in most peoples cases as much of a luck of the draw as the looks department.

Even education is based on logos. It doesn't matter if you have the best teacher and understanding in any subject, if your school is Harvard it will look better on the resume and your chance to be hired is greater despite ability. There is no inherent security in inner qualities, only financial security is security in a capitalist world. If it weren't true, there would be less competition to climb to the top and far fewer bodies in the wake of the climb.

And the ugly monopoly requires players, new wage slaves. Oh well, actually in modern times somehow people are even convinced to work years for free! For the experience of course. If you don't participate in the game you aren't only useless, but a threat to the system and the chore beliefs which is with hard work you can have the most status too. That is why it is assumed that you will entrap yourself by it like the rest of society. It is unfathomable to the brainwashed that there is a thing called being content and that you can be of use without being used.

I have the same pressure on me and I hate it. Why do I have to want children? They (not children, those people who love talking) make me feel like a weirdo. I find myself trying to understand what is wrong with me. Will I regret? Am I being stubborn? Am I trying to be cool/different? Then I imagine having a child and I don't feel warmth or love or whatever parents feel. I feel like trapped, a huge responsibility, like the nightmares ''how did I end up here, in this huge building full with strangers and chaos and I can't find where the exit is, and there is fire and earthquake... '' It feels like a huge mistake... Why people don't want to see that some people shouldn't be parents? I'm sure everybody knows some 'bad parents', maybe they also didn't want to have children but couldn't/didn't think of resisting this pressure. And birth control is a very new invention. So I guess that's why people can not really see the fact that just because we have sex, we don't HAVE TO have children, not anymore.

And the fact that I don't want to have a child doesn't mean that I dislike children. I like them. I love to see how they see the world differently, how innocent they are (even when they become cruel). I hate to see them treated badly or see them in pain. I think they are cute too (most of the time) but mostly interesting, exciting to see how they develop. But I just don't want to create a new one, I don't want to own the responsibility of having them. I want a better world for them all, I don't want to focus on mine. It's like really wanting the world peace to happen but not founding a new charity organization to make it real. But still trying to support the organizations that were founded by other people.

You have every right to not have children if you don’t want to. I know that is stating the obvious. I tend to do that state the obvious. Anyway in our traditional culture from years ago that was the expected thing for a woman to get married and have children. A lot of the children from the situation ended up being neglected and abused and it was very tragic for the children. People really should stop pressuring others to have children because it’s a terrible reason for someone to have a child just because they got pressured into it. they’re being big dunderheads.