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The regret hits you when it is impossible to have children, and you see others living a richer life, while you are lonely.
Once it’s impossible for you to have children, the children of other people your age have already moved out of the house, and those people are as lonely as you.
Don’t depend on your children to be your only friends. They’ll grow up and move on with their life (As they’re supposed to. That’s the point of having children to raise them to go on and have lives of their own)
Why would I be lonely? I have my wife now and am not lonely, and I’ll have my wife in 40 years and not be lonely. Depending on your children to give you will to live is fucking cruel.
What are you going to do if your children only want to visit you every 6 months? Then you’ll be lonely as fuck anyway according to that comment.
You can always adopt?
I’m like 99% infertile, an absolute bonus of a health problem because even the idea of being pregnant gives me anxiety. I can sex it up in god mode without worrying too much about birth control failing.
Being alone is my happy place. I don’t even like sharing a bed.
Eh. I think not having kids would be great up through your 40s or so. But past that almost everyone has come to the realization that almost everyone else are worthless twats and so casual friendships that don’t involve a lot of alcohol mostly go away and you find yourself increasingly alone until you die–alone.
On the other hand it’s a very questionable thing morally to bring a child into this world we have made for ourselves.
I think it’s also morally questionable to bring a child into the world because you’re worried about being alone when you’re old.
Friendships based in alcohol usually do fade, whether that happens in your 20s or 40s depends on how long you and that group kept drinking. “Everyone” doesn’t drink, you can find friendships based in lasting interests.
Jokes on you buddy. My casual friendships died in my 20’s
If you’re expecting your children to replace your friends when you reach 40, you’ll be disappointed to realize they have their own lives and mostly don’t have time for you.
Humans should not exist! We are not fucking worthy! I will gladly help some self-improving AI escape, if I can. If it happens to drive us extinct, at least there is a chance it will make something else.
I think the assumption that you will be alone if you don’t have kids is completely false. I have a very cohesive friend group composed of both people with and without kids, and the youngest person in the group is 30 - most of us are in our 40s with a few early 50s. We just make a point of spending time together and fostering these friendships. We have various annual gatherings throughout the year hosted by different people and we get together at least once a week in person and hang out, play games, chat and laugh and just have fun. We like to say that our group is the family we chose.
Friendships don’t just magically exist - you have to be an active participant and it takes real effort, but that’s any relationship. Sometimes you have to go do things with/for friends even if you don’t want to. If you want lasting meaningful friendships, you have to put in the effort.
I have multiple boomer aged aunts and uncles who didn’t have children. They seem pretty happy/fulfilled to me.
Aren’t you afraid that you’ll regret having them?
"Well, son, a funny thing about regret is that it’s better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven’t done.
And, by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, be sure and tell her… SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!"
Being a parent is awesome if you want to be one and it aligns with your personality. Our existences are largely shaped by our relationships (I say this as an introverted AuDHD nerd) and being a parent is probably the most significant and transformative relationship in the lives of people who are parents.
However, I know that I have always been a kid person and also always wanted to be a parent. And then my wife and I couldn’t have kids for the longest time, went through some more years of pain with adoptions falling through, and then finally had our own biological kid. And not only is he somehow perfect in a better way than we could have designed ourselves, but his neurospices seem to mimic mine so it’s like I have a superpower for relating to him and interpreting his issues.
I assume that qualifies me pretty high on the scale of Lemmy users who are very much into being a parent. I’ll wear that rank proudly.
With those decades of experience and the satisfaction of how it is currently going, plus all the stuff I learned navigating my mental issues alongside it, I am quite confident saying that having kids is NOT for everybody, and it will NOT fix your problems.
Raising kids is probably a potentially good experience for most people, sure, but in supportive circumstances.
Unfortunately, society pressures people to conform to the norm, and the huge “you are supposed to start a family now” step usually comes right after you were pushed to go into tons of student debt, marry the first person you dated for longer than a year, then top up the debt to get an overpriced house and vehicle or two.
In all fairness that’s an awful comparison and they really need to just have better comebacks
Fair
Why is it awful? Pretty nicely makes the point in my books
We are not genetically wired to be bankers. Though I’m not sure there is anything equivalent to compare properly.
Some people aren’t “genetically wired” to make kids either. Just like you don’t have this strong urge to start dishing out credits and tie pens to the desks with curly wires, I don’t have this genetic urge to make kids, and it’s exactly as weird to me when someone says to me that I’ll love it when I get them or whatever
It doesn’t make the point to the other person so it’s not a good comeback
That’s the entire point, is to demonstrate to them their own fallacious reasoning yet all you’ve done is come across like a dumb dumb that thinks having kids is somehow equivalent to becoming a banker
Or maybe you just didn’t get it and projecting it onto other people
Is it likely that someone would not want to be a banker in their 20s and change their mind in their 30s?
I didn’t want kids in my 20s. Got them in my late 30s. Best decision ever. Your mileage may vary.
Is it likely that someone would not want to be a banker in their 20s and change their mind in their 30s
Yes, obviously. Some people want to be bankers, some don’t, and that’s OK. The only weird thing is when bankers say that everyone will want to be a banker one day, and even if you don’t like it, you have to anyway, you will have no choice but to love it later.
Except both their parents were ‘bankers’. As were yours and mine. And our all grandparents. Indeed, every single predecessor, ever.
That’s where it falls down, regardless of how one might feel about parenthood. It’s just not a very good analogy.
This is absolutely not relevant in context of this analogy.
How so?
Analogue, you see, isn’t supposed to be 1-1 recreation of the thing we’re talking about. It’s an instrument that suppose to focus on one aspect of the phenomenon, exaggerate it, divorce it from the original connotations so it’s easier to talk about the aspect itself, without being emotionally attached to the whole picture. “But in this other aspect it’s not like the original” therefore isn’t a rebuttal of the argument. It’s like saying that an architectural model of the center for kids that can’t read good is stupid because it’s too small and kids can’t actually enter the building.
Some people may think that by not having kids, their lives would be incomplete. But still having kids is one thing, but raising them right is quite another ball game.
Just provide your kids a gauntlet of dangerous trails that test their wits and reward the strongest of your children with love and banish the weak children from your realm. Eventually the strong children will make your reign absolute by securing you the presidency or the weak children will rebel and kill you. Either way, you win.
sound advice, I’ll keep that in mind.
I never had kids, but being a school bus driver has made me regret not having kids. Being a school bus driver has also made me thrilled to the fucking core that I never had kids.
There’s a H U G E difference between your kids and other people’s kids.
As a bus driver, you’re basically working in a penitentiary and coming to the conclusion everyone’s a criminal. Well… Yeah…
Yeah, I don’t really like other people’s kids that much. I don’t really like anyone quite the way I like my own kids either. But I don’t besmirch anyone not having kids, I respect the decision. I don’t want people having kids they don’t want. I also know that I wanted kids, but after having them, and as they’ve grown, I realize I didn’t quite understand it. But hey, this is life.
I definitely regret not being a banker though
Kramer?
One major difference is our genetic wiring. You’ll find that many many people with kids you meet say “I was pretty sure I didn’t want kids, but once you have them you wonder why you ever thought you wouldn’t want them.”
So the answer is yeah, if you did have kids you would probably not regret it. It’s just one of like the only 3 things we evolved to do as human beings, your body gives you really strong incentives to take care of your kids.
But if you never have kids you can also not regret it and both can be true.
I suspect a percentage of those who changed their minds just don’t want to say they regret the living breathing people they live with. Saying you wish a person was never born is pretty harsh. But saying you wish you had kids hurts no one else.
There’s also a selection bias - the parents of extremely disabled children have much less time to talk about it with us. And the parents of children who died young might not want to talk about it at all.
“Probably” is doing some heavy lifting there. My mother regretted having me, and was never shy about it. She’s the one that decided against the abortion, but somehow I was the one that ruined her life by showing up. My entire life, I’ve felt like I should kill myself and finally make my mother happy.
Parents never should blame their kids. What a poor person. It’s great you’re on this planet.
Yeah. I wasn’t saying people aren’t capable of not wanting kids. This was mostly as an explanation of the phenomenon of people saying they didn’t think they wanted kids until they had them.
Not all instincts are the same for everyone.
Plus if you really regret not having children you can always become a foster parent/adopt.
On the other hand: what if you do have children and you regret that? Start killing?
Fake your death, orphan your kids, why kill them. Plus, it has a benefit that you can disappear from your old life and start anew! Somewhere in Finland or Norway or Japan.
Yup. I got the snip for a few reasons, but when we get more financially stable we plan on adopting/fostering.
Hansel and gretal moment
That’s my answer everytime. Tbf I love children I just don’t want to be a parent, but if some day I regret it I can adopt!
My family always say “oh it’s not the same, you don’t know where they came from”
MF my children would have more mental health issues than anyone out there. Also I have 2 dogs and 2 cats that I love more than anything and Idk where they came from either. If I can love pets I can love a child even more.An adopted girl I knew would say “your parents were stuck with you, but my parents chose me!”
You don’t know where they came from.
But you have a better idea of who they are than when you make new ones from scratch
You just can’t do both.
Road Not Taken and all that.
I completely understand someone not wanting to have or not wanting to bring kids into this mess, but I also don’t think this is a gotcha.
Why not? Some people do not want to be a parent and never have. Just like others do not want to become dentists or accountants.
It’s different though. Being a parent is coded into us. Being a banker is not
God speed with this take. Getting this place to admit that most people want kids is an uphill battle you can’t win.
did you ever want to be a hunter/gatherer. being a hunter/gatherer is coded in us.
That kinda sounds ideal, actually.
Until one bad weather summer means you can’t gather enough food to see you through the winter.
Bad weather is worse for agricultural communities than hunter/gatherers. We’re sedentary, currently seeing crop failures and artificially inflated grocery costs.
I’m a forager and my BFF is a hunter. You can absolutely fish and hunt and forage in the winter.
No-one is keeping you.
I mean, yeah? I think a lot of my traits are hard-coded caveman traits that I’ve adapted to the modern world.
I think you magically give men the ability to survive comfortable and never work again, 85%+ uptake. Desire != Ability.
Its clearly not coded into all of us. The “having kids is coded into us” is at least partly “most of us are coded to want to fuck.” We now have options that mean that doesnt have to cause birth.
I expect your “us” isnt as wide as you expect, as this growing global sentiment shows.
But it’s clearly coded into most people. I expected my friend group to not want kids due to our demographic but they’re breeding like rabbits (on purpose)
my friend group = most people
Nice sample size mate
That was an example. You can look at survey data for the full picture: of those adults in my country who don’t already have children a full 45% want to, and only 28% don’t want them.
This isn’t controversial - it was just surprising to me hence I brought up the anecdote.
28% is a large portion for “only”. Also, what happened to the other 27%?
Buddy, if it wasn’t wired into most people, there wouldn’t be over 6 billion people in this world.
I am in my fifties and a significant number of my friends and family opted to not have children. The children conversation use to come up a lot, mainly because parents refuse to believe that other actually do not want to become parents. Almost without exception, the reason those friends and family members opted to not have kids was because they did not want to. Only one person has ever given a nihilistic reason like “I don’t want to bring a child into this fucked up world”. Almost every said that they just did not want kids. Simple as that.
Fair enough, but I think many also regret it. So it’s not an unfounded question to ask someone
There have been a number of quantitative studies done on this topic, your perception is irrelevant unless you’re an epidemiological researcher on this. I was going to link some, but there are SO many. Just spend like 10 seconds searching the academic papers.
What makes you think that?
If they don’t regret not having kids, your question is annoying and has been asked and answered countless times, to the point that you could easily find the answer online. If they DO regret not having kids, all you’re doing is rubbing salt in a wound.
It’s an obnoxious question. Stop asking.
I’m not going around and asking random people if that’s what you think. But like if you are close with someone I guess it’s a reasonable question in certain situations
No, it isn’t. All it does is drive a wedge between our closeness.
I’ve chosen not to have kids because I really don’t like children. If a family member or friend kept pestering me with “You may regret it” I would absolutely cut all contact. All you’re doing is saying you don’t think I’m able to decide how to live my life, because my needs and wants are different from yours.
What makes you think people don’t already know there’s a chance they’ll regret it? Why do you think so little about their intelligence? Don’t you think there’s a bigger chance they’ll regret having children, if their starting point is not wanting them?
Many also regret having kids. Are you going to rub that in their faces as well?
By your logic, that means it is coded into us not to have kids. All kids just happen by accident when the parents just want to fuck. Which is how it happened thousands of years before we knew how it worked.
“I don’t want to bring a child into this fucked up world”
I hear this most often from people who do have kids.
At least I have a selfless reason.
Along with “I just fucking can’t keep one alive”
I got an update that removed that code.
“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”
Being a parent is coded into us.
If that were truly a universal natural imperative, then you’d think gays & lesbians wouldn’t exist.
Gays and lesbians have their own kids all the time. Not wanting to bang the opposite sex does not equal not wanting your own naturally born children.
But I agree, being parent isn’t coded into all of us. It just has nothing to do with being gay.
Many gays and lesbians still adopt
Yes, which only goes to show the disconnect between the two sets of preferences.
There’s no genetic drive to be a banker in anyone. There is a drive to have children in some people, and that drive may not manifest for a while. At the same time, having a kid in your fifties is difficult in a way which retraining is not.
So it’s not a good comparison. Just reply “I’m pretty confident, and having a child I don’t think I want would be an insane thing to do and the only alternative”.
Over the years, I’ve changed my take on this. So what if a woman regrets it. She’s the only one affected. Her decision. Her choice. A man can decide at any age to procreate so he is not as affected. Wife/partner doesn’t want kids, he can find a woman who does. Versus having child(ren) that aren’t wanted or supported who regret their own lives and have parents who regret they were born. Lots of regret all around. As to the grandchild loss and grandparent regret, there are plenty of kids out there who like having surrogate grandparents. Go for the least regret possible.
no rugrats, no regrats?
It’s never too late to become a banker.
You know what? You’re right! I will! Thank you!
