anythings.org

Not everybody likes children. Not everybody wants to have them. Not every woman (or man, for that matter) has dreams of growing up and having a family. When I tell people I don’t want kids, I always get told “oh, you’ll change your mind. Don’t worry.” I’M NOT WORRIED!

I’m not going to change my mind. I may be only 20, but I can honestly say that I have never wanted children. I’ve thought about the lifestyle I want and the person I am and I’ve decided children aren’t an option for me. I’m not so selfish that I want a child from my own womb so desperately that I’ll pay thousands of dollars for IVF. It angers me that people place the value of their own children that they can’t have over the needs of thousands of abandoned children across the globe. You can love an adopted child just as much. I think the people who have children are selfish. They think I’m selfish. It is all a matter of perspective.

It bothers me that people question my reasoning behind not having children. It bothers me that people think I’m going to change my mind. But even moreso, it bothers me that when people say they want to have children, nobody questions them.

Last time I checked, wanting to have children was more complicated than not. So why aren’t people questioning the choice to have children? It should be a well thought out and planned thing (of course, accidents do happen). If you know you want children, you should organize all the variables: financials, emotions, jobs, day care, insurance, everything that isn’t cute while baby just sits there being oh so adorable. There should be more to wanting children than the “burning desire” to hold something you created in your hands or that you’ve “dreamed all your life” of being a mother/father/whatever.

Perhaps it is because I am extremely defensive of this particular position because I’ve been attacked so many times, but I have yet to hear one reason that doesn’t involve emotion or unrealistic ideals of family life for having children. If you can’t have children naturally, why turn to IVF? Yes, the technology is amazing and yes it has so many advances for science… but you’re always throwing away precious stem cells every time an egg fails to implant in your uterus. What is so wrong with adopting someone else’s baby? You can love that baby just as much.

I think my reasons for not wanting children are solid… just like I believe that many people have convinced themselves that their reasons for wanting children are grounded in something other than emotion or an empty hole they can’t satisfy any other way. What I want to know is if those people who want children ever honestly looked at their lives and thought about not having children.

Why is not wanting children so questionable and wanting them so acceptable? To me, it has always been the other way around. But that might be because I’ve actually thought about it both ways.