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Your life is perfect now. However, I just came home from the funeral of my 50 year old brother in law, who died suddenly and unexpectedly. My sister and he decided not to burden themselves with children and live pretty distant from all other members of the family. Her friends have been great but it’s been a few months, the calls and visits are slowing down to pre-event levels, and I think she’s starting to sense the loneliness of her situation.
Dude, I hate to break the news to you, but having children is not going to protect you from the kind of wretched loneliness your sister-in-law in experiencing.
My Aunt raised two children. One died of a drug overdose, and the other became a doctor and moved 3000 miles away. He is to "busy" to stay in touch. She has multiple sclerosis, fends for herself, lives in poverty, and has very few friends because quite frankly she lived for her children and occupied herself entirely with the "mommy" thing.
Visit a nursing home sometime and talk to some of the extremely neglected parents and grandparents who never hear anything at all from their progeny. I sincerely doubt that any of them expected their lives to turn out this way.
Somewhere along the way, you have to accept that parenting entitles you to nothing-- you still have to take care of yourself. Giving birth does not exempt your from living your own life-- I think a lot of people who become parents do so frankly because the latter feels a lot scarier than the former. That's called a cop-out.
Now a couple without children might very well spend their ample free time cultivating a wide network of friends and taking part in fulfilling activities that will last them until the day they die. My own career is in software, but I am also a human right activist, a writer, and spend many evenings after work strength-training, kickboxing, and fencing. I reckon I will always have someone to spar with, a poem to write, a cause to work for. Can you say the same?
