I just didn’t think I would be a good mother. Plus, my family was kind of messed up and I didn’t want to foist our particular brand of insanity onto another generation.

I was never really motivated one way or the other. When I was younger, I had a few names on a list I thought would be cute. As I got older and more established, I stopped caring if I would have kids. Then when I was 29, I was in a near fatal car crash and broke my back. That kind of solidified no kids for me, I already get enough frustration from my spinal fusion, I don’t want to add birthing a child to that. I can always volunteer somewhere if I want, plus my neighbors, cousins, and friends all have plenty of kids for me to be around.

So now, my partner and I are happy bunny parents :)

Maternal instincts make me want to have kids I guess, but I want to be a positive influence and figure in others’ lives. If I could help a child grow up well, I would be very happy.

Since my girlfriend and I can’t have biological children, I’ve been looking into becoming foster parents. I think that’s still a few years away from doing it seriously since we would want to move to a more stable place (i.e. not renting)

Wife doesn’t want kids, and I didn’t want them enough to give up on an absolute catch and jump through all the hoops it would’ve taken to have them.

If I could do so physically: because I’d like to experience the ‘journey’ of carrying myself. But ignoring that incapability, it is also because I want to learn more about life and to foster a new generation. It’s a bit circular, but maybe that’s my mind.

children? in this economy?

My family suffers from generations of inherited trauma and mental illness, I don’t want to pass it on. Basically I don’t believe I’ve healed enough, or that I’m immune from perpetuating that harm.

And I can’t reasonably afford it. If I had a child, I would want to be in a much better place financially so they will have the best possible future. This means I would want to have the money to guarantee them access to transportation, education, healthcare, healthy food, etc. - I have failed to ensure those things for myself, how can I provide them for another person?

I’m barely keeping myself alive, I can’t fathom being responsible for an entire other human.

Once I’ve got my shit more together? Sure, I’d love to be a mom, that’s why I got my swimmers frozen before starting hormones

I don’t want to change my life to revolve around someone else.

No children. So many reasons.

I have zero maternal instinct. I have no idea how to talk to children, it’s actually really funny. Give me an animal and I instinctively can care for it, intuit its needs, communicate with it, etc, but throw a baby or a small human at me and I’m like “what do I do with this thing and how do I talk to it?”

I also have ADHD that wasn’t diagnosed until my 30s and am so far behind my peers in life. I deal with the depression, anxiety, and shame that go along with that. I struggle to take care of myself, specifically when it comes to food and healthy eating habits. For some reason preparing food and eating itself just really annoys me and I’ve gone several days forgetting to eat before realizing the reason I feel like shit is because I haven’t eaten. The thought of having to plan and prepare meals for a child multiple times a day for years sounds like hell.

I also get sensory overload very easily. I absolutely love cuddling and being touched and honestly crave it, but there’s also a switch in my had that will just shut off and I need to be able to be like no that’s enough no more. I can do that with an adult, but if that was my child that would be incredibly hurtful to them in a lifelong way. I wouldn’t want my child to have lifelong scars remembering that their mother pushed them away and wouldn’t cuddle with them. I also hate loud noises, especially normal children noises.

I had an abusive childhood and I truly don’t know what being a good parent looks like or discipline that isn’t abuse. There’s also financial reasons and selfish reasons. I like being free to do whatever I want whenever I want. I’m an introvert and I work in healthcare, so I spend long hours being “on” and when I come home I like to just be able to crash and not have the responsibility of caring for another person.

I’ve never had the urge to have a child, and that’s good, because I would want to be a good mother but I truly wouldn’t be. As the child of a mother who never wanted me and did her best to pretend but was abusive, it would kill me to know that I fucked up and left lifelong scars on another child. I’m in my 30s and still have nightmares about my mother and I would rather die than inflict any of that on someone else. But I’m very single and don’t see that changing anytime soon and thankfully I also was able to get surgically sterilized so I don’t ever have to worry about it.

I made a considered choice at 16 to not have children. Entirely for selfish reasons at the time. I just never saw any reason, after watching my classmates and friends and such get married and/or have children, to procreate myself at any point thereafter.

I work better as “that crazy auntie” (even if the “auntie” in question is a family friend, not a blood aunt). People (family or otherwise) gladly hand off their children to me (because I genuinely like children) when they get frazzled, overworked, or need a vacation from the brats. And I just as gladly hand them back at the end (slightly twisted).

But if I had my own and had to deal with them 24×7, that joy I have when dealing with children would vanish.

I have kids. It always sounded fun and interesting to have kids. But I had non negotiable bucket list to complete before trying. I was able to accomplish what I wanted in my career, travel to a few places, be financially stable, and find a partner that I wanted to build a family with. It took a lot of work to do all those things. I didn’t do those things so I could have kids, I did them for me. But accomplishing it all lead me to feel stable enough to care for children.

I had decided I didn’t want kids pretty early on. I am a pretty lazy person and I don’t want to have that kind of responsibility. I’d rather devote my time to my hobbies. But that combined with global warming, the political climate getting worse (even 10 years ago), and the financial climate getting worse - all those combined made me say No with certainty.

And then I got chronically sick and was told that getting pregnant would kill me. So that makes it much easier to give an answer to pushy middle age people who expect children from any mildly level headed women.

That all being said, I do wish I had a niece or nephew I could do fun science experiments with or go catch bugs or identify mushrooms. Y’know, druid aunty things. But neither of my siblings want/can have children either. The bloodline ends with us.

I’ll start,

I don’t have kids and I got my tubes tied when I was 27 so that wouldn’t happen.

I was raised like crap, and have zero maternal instinct. I chose not to reproduce because my mother should have made that choice but didn’t and I know how that turns out. I’m no more maternal than she was.

She tried to avoid kids, and managed until she was 32, which says a LOT about what she wanted (as a woman born in the 50s, raised catholic, and who went to catholic school for her whole education, including college), but my dad came home from a business trip and forced the situation (religion was involved, I feel for her) so she had my older sibling… and they chose to have me to be a companion… that didn’t work; my sibling and I have not spoken in almost 20 years…

My sibling doesn’t know, and I don’t plan to tell them (mother died shortly before we stopped talking and was the catalyst)… they and my mother never got along… probably for a reason on mother’s end…

All work would have fallen to me and I’m just not physically or mentally capable of that. My husband has cerebral palsy. This makes taking care of a baby very difficult. He’s also older than me by quite a bit. I’m already going to have to take care of him as he ages. I can’t deal with both ends of this at the same time, child and elderly care. I know what I signed up for when I met him, a child I do not know the problems it could have until its too late.