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Wow. I am a woman, and I have known from about age 5 that I didn't want kids, and was not cut out to be anyone's mom. Ever.
Did I get flak from family? You bet. Wish I had a nickel for every time I had to hear, "Oh, just wait until you have a few of your own!" As if there was no other choice. As if I would "come to my senses," whatever that means.
I was in sort of a unique position--I have two sisters who are much older than I am. They were producing children not all that much younger than I. I did not like the infants, didn't see what the big deal was, and absolutely did NOT want to hold any of them. Ever. I was cunning enough to use as an excuse, "No, thank you, I might drop him/her." I didn't want to hurt my sister's feelings by telling her that I found babies repulsive. I still do, FWIW.
I never wanted to be pregnant, never wanted a baby, certainly never wanted to raise one. Other People's Kids are (mostly) OK, especially since they go home after visiting. I just never wanted any of my own.
I married in my 30s, after making sure my then-fiance understood that I was not cut out to be a parent. What happened? A few years in, he started with the "Wouldn't it be nice to have a kid?" drivel, with the attendant emotional blackmail of how badly he wanted them. So I posed a few pragmatic questions:
Who will raise it? We both work, and neither of us makes enough money for us to live on one income. Am I supposed to give up the career I worked hard for because you want to breed? I don't think so, especially since I'm not the one who wants it.
Who will babysit, so we can go to work? Your grandma, you say? Have you asked her? She's 80 years old, and has raised something like 3 generations of your family. Maybe she's tired of raising other people's kids. Besides which, she admits she doesn't have the energy to do discipline anymore and let the last one she raised run amok to turn into the nasty bratling he is now. Might be best not to assume grandma will do it, or that we'd want her to.
Day care, you say? Who's gonna pay for it? You don't want to do the income taxes or pay the monthly bills on time (I do that), and you bitch all the time about money--how are you going to afford day care?
My dear husband couldn't answer even one of those questions with anything like a reasonable answer--just some vague mumblings about, "My parents worked, and we managed." But I don't want to "manage," I want to have a decent life. And I know exactly what kind of vicious shrew I would turn into if I ended up having to raise a kid I never wanted in the first place. From my perspective, if I had a kid, my life was over.
Most of our friends are childfree. There were two exceptions--the couple who got pregnant "by accident" every time the husband got dissatisfied with life and started thinking about divorce (and no, he never wised up), and the couple who got pregnant every time the previous kid was old enough not to need mommy's constant supervision. Heaven forfend that mommy might have to go out and do something like work, or finish her degree. Never mind that daddy flat-out told her they couldn't afford another kid, she got pregnant anyway. I found that incredibly selfish of mommy, and very unfair both to daddy and the other kids. None of these ever seemed like good reasons to bring people into the world--hanging on to a reluctant spouse or being too afraid to go out into the adult world.
I'm not saying every set of parents is like the dysfunctional lunatics I've known. But I do strongly believe that nobody should be coaxed into parenthood when they don't think it's for them. Children should be wanted, 100 percent wanted, by both their parents. They are individuals, too, not little extensions of yourself and your narcissism.
As for the jerk who thinks Mary sounds like a nutjob, better she should be caring for the animals she loves than being stuck with kids she doesn't. At least she has love to give to creatures that need it.
