For those of you who don’t want children, do you ever check in with yourself just to make sure?
Maybe it’s because I’ve heard the “You’ll change your mind when you’re older” or “ Well you never know” crap for sooo long that it makes me think maybe I really don’t know myself and I second guess my decision.
I found myself subconsciously doing this exercise. Every so often I imagine what the steps to having a kid would look like and then I decide one by one if I could do them:
Make appointment to remove my IUD✅
Time with SO✅
Buy a pregnancy test✅
Then I get to the part where I think about letting a human develop inside of me and my brain absolutely nopes tf out of that scenario. Soooo that’s a big❌
I’m pretty queer and the thought of child bearing just makes me feel sooooo uncomfortably feminine and I hate it.
Sometimes I even try to skip the pregnant part in my mind in case its the pregnancy that freaks me out. I mean pregnancy is temporary after all, maybe it’d be worth it. So then I try to imagine SO and I caring for a baby. Feeding it and making sure it sleeps well and is happy and I just- I dunno. It sounds messed up but my gut tells me I’d be absolutely miserable raising a kid.
So then I check my “still definitely don’t want kids” box off and make sure my birth control is still doing all the things it needs to.
This exercise helps confirm that I know myself well enough to know parenthood insn’t for me.
Do you guys ever do anything like this or is it just me? What do your check ins look like?
I think more from a ethical standpoint, on one way it is a duty to procreate, on the other hand we must consider the effects it has in a world like ours which is full of pollution due to overpopulation.
Another important factor is to consider the population pyramid of your country, for example Japan and some European countries have a system that is going to collapse as there are many more elders than young people so the solutions are either mass immigration or policies to encourage procreation.
Ethics also play a role in my decision, admittedly though not the main role.
You are right, far too many people in too many places. Until technology and popolution trends advance enough to fully cover issues like the ones you mentioned, it will always play a role in my decision.
I found out too late that I was sza and what that meant. I wasn’t diagnosed sza until I was 34 and I had my first psychotic break at age 23. But I had my first and only baby at age 20. I never dreamed that I would have sz someday when I got pregnant at age 19.
As soon as my child was born, I knew that I was in over my head and I swore I would never get pregnant again. I was very unfortunate in that my beautiful little boy would grow up to be p. sz and die of suicide at age 30.
I don’t want or need any rugrats running around. I lived with my sister and my two nephews for three years in my thirties. The nephews were 5 and 16. They weren’t terrible people but they really used to push their boundaries. That three years cured me of ever wanting kids. Sometimes it was fun being the cool uncle but usually it was just gritting my teeth and putting up with them.
I prefer nieces and nephews too. Kids make me nervous because they’re so unpredictable but once I know them, it’s okay. I’m not one of those people that just gets along with kids. I need to warm up to them just like I do with adults. Then I’m great with kids.
They do drain my energy though so nieces and nephews are good. Just bring them back to their parents haha.
IMO it’s good to visualize all the details like this. If I visualize it and can’t see myself finding a way to deal with any part it. Then I decide to continue avoiding it.
Thanks for writing out your steps. It’s interesting to see someone else’s process.
personally i wouldnt want to have kids…you just dont know how they would turn out…theres so many bad influences in society and then the worst fear of all would be, imagine if they were abducted…that is the worst nightmare.
Ya know I think I had something similar. As soon as I truly realized my body could have kids, I wanted to stay waaay the heck away from even the idea of having them.
I suppose my Spidey sense was strongly influenced by having a pretty shite childhood but nevertheless. It prevented me from procreating before I knew about my SZ.
or tamagotchis
