Why I'm NEVER Having Children

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maybe in the next life.

I am not sure why you made a list. You do not have to justify to anyone why you do not want children. Are people in real life nagging you to have kids? If so, it is none of their business. If you do not want kids, don't have them and tell people to butt out of your reproductive decisions.

My choice to be child free is one I made when I was a child. I could never fathom giving up my time, energy, and everything I like doing to raise someone who would just as soon spit in your face when you tell them they cannot have something, usw. The world is already overpopulated, we have to deal with a sea of whiny, selfish idiots, and not to mention, I just like to spend my time pursuing interests.

50 percent of babies are unplanned. See all those parents out there with two kids? Statistically speaking, one of them is a "whoops" kid.

Stuffed, there was a time in my life that for a long time I felt the same way. It was only by a specific chain of circumstances that my views began to change. But I did have quite absolutist views on the matter, as you have now, and yes they were all justified. It was only until I was much older (I am guessing your are as young as your photo looks, but I am a terrible judge of age) that a seed was planted in my mind that germinated and bloomed into something else. You have your whole future ahead, and you may feel the same way 20 or 30 years from now, or you may not. You might change your mind and be as adamant about procreating as strongly as you are vehemently against it now. We never know what the future holds, but you seem pretty passionate about your views, and I'm just saying just be careful cause that sort of passion going the other direction can get you in all sorts of trouble, some not so good and some... well...

mikassyna, I was just going to say that!

That said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with not having children. However, one of the things to know about having them: you do not have to be perfect. You can make mistakes, even relatively serious ones, and both you and your children will bounce back from them, provided you are making an effort to reach out for help when you need it and to do the best you can and not give up when things get hard.

To frame what mikassyna said differently: your post indicates a certain lack of flexibility. Learning to be flexible is important to parenting, but it's also important to all kinds of other aspects of life. I think if you work on flexible thinking and being able to roll with things a little, your life will generally be easier...and maybe one day you will change your mind about being a parent; but even if you don't, being flexible is a good thing.

I can't grasp how kids can be unplanned. People don't use birth control and they don't bother to get fixed after they decide they are done having kids. Oopsy babies are easily preventable. Birth control rarely fails. Also I have seen women have admitting online how they try and oops their husbands into having kids so they will poke holes in their condoms or skip their birth control pills or put their semen inside them hoping to get pregnant or lie to their partner saying they are infertile and can't have kids. Now I wonder of all the kids that were unplanned, how many of the fathers were actually tricked into having them when they have unplanned children. I wonder the same about my brother in law. He did not want kids and he was dating a woman and a doctor told her she was unable to have kids and bam she got pregnant with their son and then she got pregnant again with another guy when she cheated on him. I wonder if it was a genuine oops or if she lied about it but I will never know.

So I still can't grasp how kids can be unplanned because why aren't people getting fixed or using birth control? When I didn't want kids, we used condoms. When I wanted another one, we stopped using them and just let it happen if it does and I plan on getting a IUD after I have my baby so we wouldn't have to buy condoms. Are people really not this smart? I knew in my teens if I had unprotected sex, I could get pregnant and I knew it could happen the first time too. To me this isn't even rocket science. I did see someone say at Babycenter when she was in her teens, she thought you had to have sex 100 times before you got pregnant or else people would have so many children instead of three and that explained to me why teens are so stupid when they have unprotected sex and get pregnant. Makes me wonder if any adults are this stupid too when they have it so that would explain why their kids are oopsies. In certain cases I can see how they can be unplanned if the woman believed she couldn't have kids because that is what a doctor told her or if the man was tricked because the woman oopsied him or birth control did fail and the woman or the guy did nothing to make it happen.

Be aware: birth control statistics are for birth control when used PERFECTLY. A study of long-term birth control use in a real-world situation found that oopsies do, indeed, happen - people make errors over time, just like with anything else.

If you are not in a situation where you can handle an oopsie, you should be very, very careful - use several methods together (e.g. birth control AND a condom) and make sure you understand all the ways birth control can fail (for instance, are you up on all the different medications - like, for instance, antibiotics, that render birth control pills ineffective? Did you know that a vasectomy can be ineffective until the body clears itself completely, which can take as long as 3 months (you should be tested before assuming you are sterile.)

You're right in that many people don't educate themselves properly and are careless, but it's still possible to make a mistake you aren't aware of.

I know I don't have to justify to anyone why I don't want kids, but there are people who have told me "God's plan for me is to marry a special someone and procreate" and attempt to justify their reasoning with the Bible. I have even been to a website called gotquestions.org that answers questions about the Bible, and they actually tried saying a major reason why people don't have kids is for "selfish motives." They are actually attempting to say wanting kids can't be selfish, while not wanting kids can be selfish. It was shocking that they would stress that type of viewpoint for me, and who knows, maybe they are right, but that was one reason I really wanted to make a list of why I didn't want to have kids. There are too many kids on Earth, to the point that we can't feed them all, and yet this darn "Biblical" website tries to say that you may be "selfish" if you don't want to bring kids into this starving, overpopulated world. And *surprise*, they didn't even mention child starvation or anything, they just had to express how selfish not wanting kids can be. So that grinded my gears a little.
Here is the web page: http://www.gotquestions.org/should-I-have-children.html
Another reason was that I was mad at my parents at the time I wrote this list, and even though I legitimately do not want kids, I wanted to list some of the things I felt my parents did badly to me and that I'm afraid I'll do to my kids, so that I would be making a positive decision off of something negative by writing this list. I do feel like writing this list was a positive choice for me.
Also, I hear church sermons and religious websites giving reason after reason on why I should have kids, and they never give one reason on why you shouldn't have kids. It appeared to me that they were trying to say God wants everyone to have kids, even the psycho crack addicts. So I wanted to make this list for myself, as well as for the people who have heard brainwashing speeches trying to make people have seven kids and whatever without giving warnings.

I'm really surprised at this. I thought that many priests in Christianity, if they haven't married within a certain window, are not allowed to, and must then wholly devote themselves to God and the teachings of the Bible. So by their erroneous reasoning, then priests are guilty of being selfish too LOL

I wouldn't take what they say to heart. They are simply trying to justify their own life choices by attempting to convert you to their logic. And ironically, in my opinion, that is being pretty selfish of them.

I know what I am going to say may take some aback, but to call a child an "18 year punishment" is simply outrageous.

if he had couched it instead, as "18 years of a punishing and often thankless responsibility," would that have been both truthy as well as less [outrageously] harsh?

If he had said "18 years of a punishing and often thankless responsibility"? Oh. Yeah. That's cool. But it this revised version, the kid is not the punishment. The experience of raising a kid is the punishment. Big difference.

I believe that is what he meant to say but did not use precise language with which to say it.

Much of my approach to parenting has been to make sure I don't make the same mistakes my parents did. They have been sort of anti-role-models for me, and it's mostly worked - so, keep your list around in case you change your mind, it may well serve you as a parent.

You have choices in life (including the choice of whether or not to procreate) and you don't have to be bound by some idea that just because your parents did something, you will too. You can learn not to yell, or to yell less, or to apologize when you yell and screw up - I did. You can learn appropriate anger management, you can promise yourself not to lie and hold yourself accountable to that promise, etc.

I guess what I'm reading in your list is a lot of stuff that has very little to do with wanting kids or being a parent. You seem to feel stuck in life, and I remember when I was young I felt the same way - but I did learn. It took me a long time, but I eventually did learn to manage most of the things that worry me (and also to learn not to consider perfection the only goal, but to be satisfied with improvement.)

I think there are religious people who view "being fruitful and multiplying" as God's directive. I am not a religious person, so i am not qualified to speak to that from that perspective.

I don't think it is practical or desirable for everyone to reproduce, certainly not if the person him/herself does not see that role as being rewarding or successful. I don't know how old you are, but you can just ignore your parents and others when they talk about this, for now. If you want to get married then of course you would need to talk about it with your prospective partner, and make sure you are both in agreement, but it is no one elses business.

I am sorry if your parents are annoying you. My mom is annoying me right now, too. LOL