Do You Have Children?

Not posted in parenting because duh....

Curious. Seems to me there are a lot of ?voluntarily childless adults on this forum and I wondered how that compared to real-world stats (still working on a reliable source for those)

....and if there are more than population average, I wonder if it's because personality or life experience makes non-parents more likely to use online forums, or they just have more time.....?

Fuck no, rug rats are the bane of society.

Stepkids are more age-related. Very few 40-year-olds have a biological baby, but it's never too late to add a stepkid to the mix. So if the forum skews older (which I can't prove but I feel like it does,) then I bet it skews more toward stepkids than the general population, too.

To be fair we were younger when we snuck into the cellar.

I can currently say I have kids, but in three years, poof. They will be adults.

damn

And, still your kids.

biological children, step children, I'm a dutch uncle and a godfather. And Twil's kids call me Dad, making me in loco parentis, right?

It just didn't happen for me. I've been a strange duck all my life and never ever heard the clock ticking. I was more afraid of accidentally getting pregnant while single. DID NOT want to live life as a single Mom. Plus, I didn't get married until I was 40 and he was 'fixed", so there's that. He did have two boys, so it wasn't like we were childless. He did ask me early on in the marriage if I would like him to get it reversed, so that we could have a child together. I just thought it was too late for me to get pregnant (and was still secretly worried that I would end up raising it alone sometime in the future, anyway.)

Never really wanted them. Don't regret not having them. Too late now (tubes tied, and now I'm an old :crone: too!).
Far far too scary to send anyone I care about out into the future, too, tbh.

I can clearly see both paths.

I have kids, and am glad I do, but I'd be happy without kids too. I'd be doing different stuff, I think.

Kids are gonna be gone soon anyway, so I should get used to the idea of it just being me and Mrs glatt. Without kids, you get to focus on yourself more. Instead of having all your energy and time going in to the kid thing.

Plus vacations in the off season rock! My wife needs to transition out of teaching so we can do that again.

I have no children. By choice. By many, conscious, purposeful choices.

Gravdigr;984187 wrote:

I have no children. By choice. By many, conscious, purposeful choices.

Me Too.

glatt;984158 wrote:

I can currently say I have kids, but in three years, poof. They will be adults.

damn

In a month, 2/3 of my kids will be adults :eek:

glatt;984186 wrote:

I can clearly see both paths.

I have kids, and am glad I do, but I'd be happy without kids too. I'd be doing different stuff, I think.

Kids are gonna be gone soon anyway, so I should get used to the idea of it just being me and Mrs glatt. Without kids, you get to focus on yourself more. Instead of having all your energy and time going in to the kid thing.

Plus vacations in the off season rock! My wife needs to transition out of teaching so we can do that again.

Absolutely my situation too! But the little one's only 3,5yo, so I'm focusing a lot on projects I like to do and hoping she will pick up my interests by dragging her along ;-)

I was married to a person who was incapable of feeling emotions. She kind of knew she had no soul, and decided she didn't want to have kids.

Good choice. It's bad to have a mother without a soul.

She would have forced them to reflect her perfectionism. They would have had eating disorders and painful anxiety at the minimum.

I am multiple right now. I don't have kids. I don't think I want kids, but being perpetually single, I don't know if that will change if I meet someone soon. I doubt it, but it's a possibility. Besides - only 3 years left until I'm 40 and then, regardless, these tubes are getting tied.

bbro;984262 wrote:

I am multiple right now. I don't have kids. I don't think I want kids, but being perpetually single, I don't know if that will change if I meet someone soon. I doubt it, but it's a possibility. Besides - only 3 years left until I'm 40 and then, regardless, these tubes are getting tied.

Same here. I may be just 23, but I really don't want kids and I can't see myself having any. Maybe, just maybe, if I do meet someone this might happen, but honestly if at any point in the future I will feel the desire to have kids I'd rather adopt.

That'll change.

Not whether you'll want kids, you may or may not. Lots of people don't. But "if at any point" in the future you do want kids, I promise on a stack of Bibles that the kids you will want will be your own. The whole biological impulse is around the fact that they're yours. If you have the impulse, you have the whole impulse, not just an intellectualized morally superior version of the impulse.

[SIZE="7"][COLOR="Red"]SPAM[/COLOR][/SIZE]

Clodfobble;984899 wrote:

That'll change.

Not whether you'll want kids, you may or may not. Lots of people don't. But "if at any point" in the future you do want kids, I promise on a stack of Bibles that the kids you will want will be your own. The whole biological impulse is around the fact that they're yours. If you have the impulse, you have the whole impulse, not just an intellectualized morally superior version of the impulse.

Why not?

Perhaps she doesn't want to give birth, or carry a child.

Perhaps she can't give birth, or get pregnant, or carry a child.

There has to be more reasons to have that 'version of the impulse' than I could even come up with, being a guy and all.

Maybe she's a guy. If she doesn't have the gear to produce children, is her impulse still an "intellectualized, morally superior version of the impulse"?

Maybe she's adopted, and wants to pay it forward, so to speak.

My aunt, who was adopted, couldn't have children, and would love to have had her own, but, she has fostered literally dozens of children. She didn't adopt any of them, but all but six chose to stay with her through adulthood. And they still treat her like their mother.

There has to be many, many reasons for one to have that "intellectualized morally superior version of the impulse".

Has to be.

You can marry into kids too. I had two stepkids for five years before I had a biological child.

Not saying I carried and delivered the child when I say 'I had'.. Duh.

Gravdigr wrote:

Perhaps she doesn't want to give birth, or carry a child.

Perhaps she can't give birth, or get pregnant, or carry a child.

There has to be more reasons to have that 'version of the impulse' than I could even come up with, being a guy and all.

Maybe she's a guy. If she doesn't have the gear to produce children, is her impulse still an "intellectualized, morally superior version of the impulse"?

Maybe she's adopted, and wants to pay it forward, so to speak.

My aunt, who was adopted, couldn't have children, and would love to have had her own, but, she has fostered literally dozens of children. She didn't adopt any of them, but all but six chose to stay with her through adulthood. And they still treat her like their mother.

There has to be many, many reasons for one to have that "intellectualized morally superior version of the impulse".

Has to be.

Except she very clearly said, "I really don't want kids."

You're right, she might be a dude, but Charise is a woman's name, so I took that at face value. I could be wrong, sure, about all of it. I got a vibe, is all. The "I don't want kids, but if I did I'd be a better person about it than all you people who do want kids" is fairly common among 23-year-old women. And young gay men, for that matter. The kind of people who refer to people with kids as "breeders."

And like I said, it's totally cool if she doesn't want kids. And it's totally cool if she changes her mind. Life's going to happen to her, one way or the other, so whatever.

You're a very quick judger.

Perhaps it's because women receive more comments about the "right" way to have kids than childless men do. It's a whole thing.

Not a woman thing, in general, but I see you edited your signature. . How come?

Paying very close attention there... :) It was just because I haven't updated it in almost a year, and I don't foresee doing so within the next year, if ever. It pays for its own hosting fees, so I'll keep it alive, but I don't have time to take and edit pictures anymore. I have a book to finish writing.

Clodfobble;985038 wrote:

Paying very close attention there... :) It was just because I haven't updated it in almost a year, and I don't foresee doing so within the next year, if ever. It pays for its own hosting fees, so I'll keep it alive, but I don't have time to take and edit pictures anymore. I have a book to finish writing.

I see, this makes me happy! WTG, Clod!

Ghost writers in the sky.
Write 'em up, print 'em out.
Write 'em up, print 'em out.
Write 'em up, print 'em out.
Move on to fame, MS hide.
Ghost writers in the sky. :D