Ask Lemmy

Yes.

I was never a "kid person" growing up. I didn’t relate to children and didn’t have much experience with them, but I always saw having a family as the natural path in life. Just like dating leads to marriage, I saw kids as the next chapter after marriage. When I really think about why I wanted kids, it comes down to two main reasons.

First, the experience itself seemed undeniably compelling. I’m introverted and not naturally a risk-taker, but I’ve learned over time that it’s important to challenge yourself and embrace growth. The last thing I want is a life that feels stagnant or boring. Skipping out on something as profound as raising kids felt like missing out on a major part of life.

Second, my wife is incredible. The idea of taking on the adventure of parenting with her felt both exciting and deeply meaningful. It’s intimate, difficult, fun, scary, and rewarding — and I couldn’t imagine a better partner to share that with.

Now, fast-forward to the present: we have three teenagers, and we’ve genuinely loved raising them. I’m not looking forward to the quiet days after they head off to college — the energy and fullness of having kids around has been one of the best parts of our lives and I'll miss it when they've gone on to start their own independent lives.

Wait - is she his ex, or are you married to both of them? If you are all one family, I do understand, that sort of makes sense not to make 3 more and end up with a family of 9 people.

If she is his ex, what the actual fuck?

Why should his ex have a say?

No, I don't really enjoy life and never really have. I don't want another person experiencing what I do.

45m I knew from a very early age that i never wanted to be a father. I have always been very upfront about it with my partners and it has ended one relationship. She found out that she did grew, after two years of being in a relationship, to have a child wish. And I could have at that time become a dad, and im sure i would be great at it, but im very happy that never happened. I got my vasectomy soon after that, i was around 30. Just to make sure there were never any accidents.

For the question of why... I don't know. I've tried to analyse it but i can't give a deeper reason than feeling a deep aversion. I have a good relation with my parents, had a decent childhood and i love my nephews dearly. I like children and i don't mind being around them. I don't particularly care for anti child propaganda either.

My partner and i are living a child free life. She also has zero interest in having children of our own.

It is abusive to bring children into the world as it is now.

Either we make a better place for them, or give them the peace of never having being born.

I grew up in a cult where the expectation was that I'd get married and have multiple children. Luckily my own parents somehow managed to raise me right in spite of the indoctrination, and when I went to college I realized both that I could choose and that I didn't want kids.

After my partner and I had been together for 15 years or so, we started seriously rethinking being child free. It was something we decided to do together. My kid is now about to turn 9. I adore him and love spending time with him. I still don't much like other children and I never considered going through pregnancy again. My partner and I have talked about potentially fostering or adopting if we manage to retire early, but I'm content either way.

43 male, have 3 kids. They’re a ton of work but they’re also incredibly rewarding. The house is full of love and joy constantly. I can’t imagine life without them (and my wife) and I wouldn’t want to live in it if they were no longer here. That’s how much of an impact they have on you.

That’s said, totally respect you not wanting them. They’re one of the biggest sacrifices and commitments.

No but mine is 23 and I feel it's too late to tell her.

No. Not even close to financially stable as a college student in his mid-20s.

Also, if I did want kids, I think I'd rather adopt than bring a child into a world that is dying and end up not being able to ensure they have a future that doesn't end in apocalypse.

As fucked up as his ex wife's request may be, if you're indifferent that's reason enough not to.

I don't want kids. I can't even take good enough care of myself and basic household upkeep. Adding the stress and cost and limitations that come with having a kid are just non-starters. That and I just don't feel any need or want in the first place.

That said, if I could actually have a real biological child with my same-sex husband and the question wasn't purely hypothetical, I'd have to think about it some more.

Or maybe if the universe threw a homeless queer teen at us who had nowhere else to go, maybe I'd consider adopting, maybe. But adopting an actual child or infant is a real tough sell, even if I would ideologically prefer that to having an actual biologically hacked together two-dads kid

My first kid is almost 3 and we have another on the way. It is so fucking draining and so fucking awesome. My wife and I joke about what the hell we did in our free time before our daughter. We both have careers and hobbies so it's not like we were bored, but it is so much fucking fun having a kid. We would definitely kill for some more free time, but highly recommend it. Also, if you decide to have kids, it's not very difficult, it's just a lot of work.

The child-free voices are strong on social media and this comment section seems pretty one sided.

I'll chime in to say I'm a man who wanted kids. I've got 2 now. One has additional needs and is a whole lot more work than even what people are trying to avoid with "normal" kids. The kids are super young and my job is super busy..... Despite how crazy all this is: I'm loving it. If I went back in time, I'd tell my younger self that I wouldn't change a thing and that awesome things await.

This is going to turn into a mini essay. I’ll preface it with saying the following truths are to be taken as presumed throughout: 1. You do you. You’re obviously allowed to make your own choices for your own reasons. 2. My reasoning and conclusions for myself do not apply to others. Just because I have chosen to take on a task, does not mean other are lazy for not doing it. My conclusions are personal and obviously I expect most to come to their own conclusions for their situation. 3. There is no objective truth and it is possible to take any path.

For me, I really don’t think life is about having lots of free time or to min/max responsibility vs pleasure. I see responsibility and difficulty to be inseparable from the joys of life. I don’t like hearing my parents talk about what I should do with my life, but I put work into maintaining a relationship with them because I want the joys and benefits of a good relationship with my parents. Equally, I want the joys and benefits of kids. The closest analogy I can think of is of getting a dog. No one online questions the joy thay looking after a dog brings, and it is easy to understand the huge responsibility being worthwhile. I find kids very worthwhile.

I accept that everyone doesn’t have resources and privilege, but (no matter who you are) there will never be a “good time” to have a child. Literal millionaires are complaining about not having enough. There is almost never a time in life when you feel you’ve got tons of extra time, money and sleep. There is no training to prepare for children. You can avoid time around a particular exam, job move or house move…..but other than that, any time you have a child you will be equally unprepared.

There are 2 types of joy in life. There are things that are pleasurable at the time (being slumped on the sofa and binge watching Netflix) and pleasures that come in hindsight and achievement (running a marathon, that sucks at the time but gives ongoing joy because of the achievement). I’d say kids fall firmly into the second category. I didn’t go to university because it was easy, I put up with the difficulty because I wanted to have a degree. "We go to the Moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard".

Objectively, it is remarkably difficult to have children now. Houses are difficult to afford and everything is expensive. Childcare is extortionate. Work is busy and unforgiving. There is no community to help with children anymore. Parenting is expected to be more intensive than it has ever been (when our parents were children, they used to leave the house for hours and play by themselves; now we’re deemed neglectful parents if we aren’t actively engaged with our children 24/7). The final point I would add is: no one else makes this decision for you….not Lemmy comments, not your parents or in-laws, certainly not a partner’s ex(?).

No, I don't think I can be on-call 24/7 for years

I'm probably the only person i know irl that wants to have kids. Every one of my colleagues is rather against it, and i totally understand them. Economic difficulties, environmental protection, ...

Yet i do feel like having kids would be nice. I'd definitely love them. That's all i need to know.

Not really, but I guess I'm stuck with them. ;)

I was supposed to be childfree. I have c-ptsd from childhood, like my guardian did prison time for how bad of a parent they were.

Of course, I had no support from family as a young adult and found myself in a DV situation at 23. He never hit me, but did all the other standard abusive things. I tried leaving him around the three month mark, but it took me 3 years.

He was hell bent on having a baby. He wouldn't let me on birth control, nor could I afford it anyway, so we used the oull out method. Until he'd pin me down and just, rape me. My son is my third pregnancy. The first two I was able to discreetly taken care of, by the third pregnancy from this man in a year, I felt guilt, and didnt have the freedom to even go to the doctors on my own. So I kept him.

Got free for real when my son was 14 months old. I dont deal with his father at all. No child support, once he lost control of me it was apparent he wanted nothing to do with the baby he had to have so badly.

My son is 12, with severe adhd and odd, mild conduct disorder.

Ive dedicated my life (giving up my career) to helping my son navigate his emotions and express them in a healthy way so we don't repeat the patterns of, nearly every male in my and his bloodline. I'm thankful for the behaviorial health field of study.

Sometimes I feel like my kid's father still has me trapped, especially on bad days. I wont discuss what regrets I have, we just move forward and do better tomorrow than today.

I sure as fuck am not abandoning my kid to the wolves as my family did to me. I wanted to break the cycle the easy way and just not habe kids, instead, I'm doing it the hard way and idk. Im doing it. I love my kid, hes a good kid.

She was supportive of him taking a second wife, with just one request: no more children.

Unfair! Overstepping! None of her business! She just wanted to limit who the heirs will be later.

He is NOT bound to this in any way. Not at all, even if he has made promises to her accordingly.

I think you must tell him this in very clear and explicit words, because I suspect that he is having such thoughts, and maybe still feels bound by her in this regard.

I didn't want kids for the entirety of my twenties. I've been with my partner since we were 21 and she wasn't keen on kids for that whole period either. We got married at 30 and it wasn't long before we both felt like kids was something we wanted.

She is currently 35 weeks pregnant and we are both super excited about the impending birth of our daughter.

We have the occasional "Oh shit! What have we done." But mostly we can't wait to watch her grow and teach her about the world and do exciting things with her.

We know it's going to be a huge change but we are very stable in our lives and the time is right for it. We are both really good at supporting each other by now so we know we can cope with change together.

I'm a childfree woman. I am being sterilized in less than 2 weeks. I have a very very long list of reasons I don't want kids. I won't bore anyone by typing them out.

What I find most interesting in this thread is how people have so much of an option on other people's choices still. It's 2025, can we just let each other live?

No, it is not immoral to have kids. The world has always been messed up and it will continue to be until we all die out. Maybe that will happen in the next generation, maybe it won't happen for another 50 generations. We cannot know either way.

No, it is not immoral to not have kids. You do not have a responsibility to continue your bloodline or some nonsense. You can still be invested in the future even if you don't personally have kids.

I wish everyone had put their gender in their replies though. As a general rule, I often see more childfree women than men. I think this is because women are often put in that caregiver role earlier than men and they see how hard it is. Also women have to do the pregnancy/birth part and that seems awful. Men think of the time they'll have to teach and play with their kids, women imagine having to cook a nutritious meal every night or get called negligent. Of course that's not always the dynamic but you have to acknowledge it swings that way.

No

I think if you truly understand the current situation in the world we live in, economicly, socially, and environmentally, it is an extremely selfish act to create more human life.

That being said if I can ever escape poverty and have the extra money i would love to adopt

Im 36 years old. No I dont want them. I would never wish a life to experience this economic selfish and greedy system.

Average salary in the United States is 40,000. People are paying over 60% of their income on housing. Prices for everyday goods continue to rise and the commitments to protecting the Earth aren't taken seriously.

Weather continues to be more extreme and oddly behaving. Corruption increases in politics and technology is being developed without ethics in mind.

No way in hell I subject my children to any of that. Plus my husband and I have both mental illness in our families and suffer from depression from time to time. I never wanted to be here and neither did my husband. We wish everyday we didnt have to exist here. We love each other and our families, but this experience on Earth is not it.

No.

1. I don't like responsibility because I take it really seriously.

2. I try to minimize the must-do things after work.

3. Perhaps most important I generally don't feel any compelling reason to have any.

With what I've learned about humanity and reality over the years, I've only become more sure the right move is to never bring another life into this mortal hellscape only to be obliterated at the end. I have the desire, but I deny my own selfishness.

30M: Growing up I wanted at least 3 kids. Than I realized: Holly fuck our society is literary made up against having children. WTF? From age 5 or even earlier you are put in a 9 to 5 where you have to perform if you don't want to be labeled as stupid. In a system that does not care if you are the artsy type, the sporty type, the neat type etc and God forbid you have ADHD or something... the system does not care all it cares for is grades and that you shut up in class and memorize shit you'll never use ever again.

And as a parent: You are encouraged to go to work and give your kid for someone else to take care of. You want a kid because you want to spend time with it. Be involved in their lives and be a good parent. But hey if you want to afford to provide for it, you better be working from 7 till 7... so you're either fucked financially or you no time for your own kid.

Just yesterday at work, a coworker showed the card her nephew had given to her after she took the day off to go to an amusement park with them. The coworker was super proud showingit aroumd and you know what was written in the card? "Dear xy, I had a blast today it was so much fun. Thank you you made time for me in your busy schedule and did spend time with and took an extra day off for me. "

Quite sweet, until you realize: That poor kid is so used to be a second priority to work, that it has to emphasize so much how great it was someone prioritize them over work. I whish I was making this up...

This made me realize I'm quite happy with no kids. I wouldn't mind having them with someone that would actually tale their time to raise them with me. Like someone who is ok with being part-time stay at home (where we both work 50% and gake turns taking care pf the kid) else I don't see a point in having a kid.

Edit: RIP my English...

I don't think the request is valid.

And I do! Hopefully soon, God willing. And why? I need someone to hear me yap about morals and competent screenwriting, my wife wants someone to dress up and pour her love into. Usual reasons, I guess. 😅

38 (cis-M) here. Yes, I do want kids and have pretty much all of my life. I want to give them opportunities that I didn't have, encourage pro-social attitudes, and share in the joy and wonder of discovering things that, as an adult, are very much taken for granted. At this point, however, I'm getting pretty doubtful that it will happen.

Coming up on 10 years with my spouse and I'm not sure that I'd even have the energy at this point - being sole income and providing care for someone who has disabling mental health conditions and endometriosis has been extremely stressful and exhausting. And she's back and forth on whether she even wants children, due to said conditions (which is not unreasonable). If we had more partners than just the two of us to share the load, it could work but, endo is chronic, degenerative and hers has only been getting worse recently so, I'm not too optimistic - for bio or non-bio.

Quick footnote on the subject: The "selfish ones" related to having children are the anti-natalists and anti-childfree people who think that everyone has the same life experience as them and want to judge others based upon their myopic views. Having children is not inherently moral or immoral - it's just a function of biology and a personal decision.

34 male. Grew up with 3 siblings. Always wanted kids when I was younger. As I got older, met my wife and started living together we had lots of discussions about kids. She was never really interested in them and the whole pregnancy and giving birth thing terrified her.

On lots of reflection I realised that I was only interested in kids because of family and societal pressure, I think the world is over populated and generally heading downhill (fascism is massively on the rise globally, global warming, various wars) so decided that I didn't want to bring a child into that.

There's plenty of children in the foster system so if we change our minds later we can adopt and give a good home to a child that needs one.

In a perfect utopian world, I'd like the idea of having children and raise it with a loving partner. In this dystopian world where I'm dealing with severe depression, I can barely take care of my cat, and I have trouble wanting to go outside, and the world is collapsing into a climate catastrophe, I don't have that strong of a will to even live, let alone raise a child to even enjoy a better childhood thann what I had.

I've already lost my childhood due to abusive parents, I don't really want to lose my adulthood either, so... sorry to the "soul" out there who would've been incarnated as my child, but honesly you wouldn't have missed much, maybe go reincarnate on another planet that has passed the great filter.

I mean unless we magically get a fix that solves the authoritarianism in my country and my depression is also fixed. And I have good income, then, only then, maybe I'll rethink it.

Not for me (34m). I like having my niblings around and play with them, but I like it even more to give them back into their parents care after half an hour. I simply could not stand to be responsible for another human being and devoting almost every minute of my life to them for several years, and taking the appropriate measures to ensure I will not father a child was the best decision in my life.

45yr old woman here, I have never wanted kids. When I was a kid myself and all the other little girls were playing with Barbies and baby dolls, I was playing with Transformers and building forts with the boys outside. When the little girls wanted to play "house", I was always the pet. Babies and little kids have always had this weird, foreign feeling to me and were something I never wanted to be a part of.

My dad left my mom when I was 8 and my brother was 3. Guess who raised her brother from there on out because mom was working? Add to this that we were poor, it was the 80's so we were latchkey kids and alone a LOT, and now look at how shitty the world has steadily become since then, and there is no fucking way I was gonna bring a child into it and do that crap all over again, but this time from the very beginning of their lives. Now my aging mother bemoans the fact that she's the only one left in our extended family that isn't a grandma (because SURPRISE! My brother is childfree too! Can't imagine why!), and I have to threaten to stop speaking to her for the hundredth time because I've told her I will NEVER have children, do not ask me again.

As I've grown into adulthood, there have been so so so many instances where life has gone bad for me, and the FIRST thing I always say to myself is "Thank GOD I don't have kids!" Every one of those moments would have been exponentially harder if I'd had kids during that time.

Then I look at people I know/have known growing up who have kids, and the ones who have kids with Autism, behavioral issues, major learning disabilities, the parents who know they're stuck for life with some of these kids, and I thank God again that that is not me, because I dunno how they do it.

Call me selfish, tell me I don't know what "real love" is, tell me I'm not a "real" woman because I don't have kids, I don't give a shit. This is my life, not yours, and I chose not to have kids. "But what if you meet someone you like who has kids!?" I very deliberately only date childfree people, it said as much on all my dating profiles, kids are a deal-breaker. Lo and behold, I've been with a childfree partner I found for 5 years. They do exist!