This is a rather old thread, but for once I actually have something worthwhile to say here so forgive me for bumping it up.
Children. Nay for me.
This is not something I will grow out of. I'm twenty-two and so is my fiancee. She doesn't want kids either.
Number one, I'm disabled. I have a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos. My particular type is hypermobility, MEANING: all the muscles, tendons, cartilage, fat tissue, skin tissue and vascular tissues have a very weak consistency and they tear, dislocate, subluxate and break very easily. My geneticist tells me that I have one of the worst cases of hypermobility EDS that he's ever seen (go me). If I were to have a child 'the natural way', there's an eighty percent chance that I'd die in child-birth. I've been told that by both my geneticist and my former gyno.
This does not upset me.
I'm one of those odd women who cannot fucking STAND children. When I'm around them, my blood starts to boil, I unconciously bite the inside of my cheek from rage and I struggle like hell to control my temper. Particularly if the little demons run up to me and yank down on my hair (my hair hangs down to the insides of my knees) or yanks down on my corset strings that perpetually hang out the back of my shirt/dress/whatever (I have to wear a corset because of spinal instability. that and I adore the way they feel) I don't find children cute, amusing, lovable, or any other positive thing that other people do. I hate them. Part of this stems from the fact that my mum's a kindergarten teacher and because of that I was around kindergarteners all the time growing up. Even as a child, I hated children. I found them annoying, bratty, self-centered, loud, and useless. Yes I had friends in my own age-group, but not very many (that was due to the fact that I was the darkest kid at a private school, and because I was a girl who loved horror films). Now that I'm older I've found I hate a good deal of people my age and older as well. The other part of my hatred of children stems from my hatred of the human race. Yes there are some good things about humans, but considering that we've gang raped the planet and killed off so many animals when we're not killing and raping each other...well, forgive me if I don't want to create another human.
Then, of course, there are the financial reasons. I don't want to care for another being for twenty plus years. That's what's happened to my mother. She adopted me with no knowledge that I had EDS because the woman who squirted me out didn't know she had EDS. I'm twenty-two and still living at home and my health's so bad that I'm a huge financial burden on her. My disability's helped some, but still...she's the only one in the family that can work--my dad's heart's so bad he can barely move some days--and sometimes I feel like I'm causing her to work herself to death simply so I'll be able to stay a dependent on her insurance. I guilt like fuck about that because my dad and I hate each other, but my mum and I are majorly, uberly close. I love her so much and I hate the fact that I'm the reason she can't retire yet.
Back on topic. I'd much rather pursue my own happiness and that of my wife. She loves Indian and Hindi clothing as well as MAC and other cosmetic lines, so I've been buying her the beginnings of her own collection as she currently lives out in the country in Australia. I myself love finely made expensive as hell lingerie like Agent Provocateur and La Perla in addition to my love of rubber and latex clothing like Marquis sells and the fact that I want to start up a custom-made corset collection. Then there's my art. Acrylic, alcohol markers, watercolor, gouache, etc. Then there's H's aspirations of us starting our own special effects company. We have way too many endeavors that we'll gladly put in front of children.
My fiancee understands my revulsion of children--she shares the same attitudes. One of the reasons I'm marrying her. All the boyfriends I had in the past at one time wanted to talk to me about children. It didn't seem to matter to them that I hated them, would've been a terrible mother and probably would've left the kid and the husband altogether, oh no, they still pressured me to adopt a kid with them. Or fuck to have one, regardless that childbirth would kill me.
Even if childbirth didn't kill me, there's a fifty-fifty chance that I'd curse my spawn with my EDS and as much as I hate kids, no kid should go through the chronic pain, dislocations and subluxations that I have to. And the stupid thing is that my siblings do, all because my birth-mother's a stupid uneducated irresponsible bitch!
My mum adopted me when I was a few days old. I was born by a fourteen year old idiot who had a previous child by her boyfriend. She gave me up for adoption and then got pregnant four more times. Jesus Christ, just fucking shoot me. There's a good chance that my siblings, wherever they may be now, are half if not all afflicted with EDS syndrome thanks to my bitch of a birth-mother. Honestly, is it that hard to tell your boyfriend, "No, I'm not gonna fuck you. I've had six kids, goddammit! You want sex, go get a whore!"
This is not to say I'm devoid of a maternal instinct. I actually have a very strong one. It's gone toward nurturing animals in need. I used to be a squirrel rehabilitator and me and my mum took in baby squirrels that fell from their nests and had nowhere to go. (some people have an undying hatred of squirrels. I have an undying hatred of children. I mother squirrels, others mother kids. to each their own I guess.) How I loved caring for them....feeding them their milk wrapped up in my lap, holding them till they fell asleep, playing with them, and then releasing them out in our backyard. If you go outside in our backyard, about ten squirrels will jump down from trees to say hello, purring and jumping with happiness (and yes, squirrels do purr when happy. it's louder and a bit deeper than a cat's purr).
Because I'm more disabled than I used to be I had to quit rehabbing and it about broke my heart. Mum got me several rats to help with my loneliness and now I spoil them rotten. I'm planning on getting a Gambian Pouch Rat when my standard fancy rats have finally passed away. I'm a rodent person.
Show me a hairless, eyes-closed baby rat or baby squirrel and I'll squee and go all melty and maternal on you. Show me a human baby and I'll flinch back and insist that no, it's okay, I really don't want to hold it, it's all good. really.
I don't like children. I never will. And I'm disabled to the point where adopting a child would be incredibly abusive because I wouldn't be able to care for it and neither would my soon-to-be wife. She's disabled as well, spinal instability and her skin burns severely with the slightest exposure to the sun, the exact name of the disorder escapes me at the moment. So the maternal stirrings we have result in rats, rabbits, guinea pigs, flying squirrels and the occasional cat. We're happy like that, too. We adore our little animal-kids.
It does, however, piss me off when people tell us that if we love our animals we'll just adore a child, that oh you're young you'll change your minds and, of course my all-time favorite, 'all women love children!'. Thank you for the moralizing, jackasses, but I think we know our own minds. And we're happily childfree. I still can't figure out how or why that upsets people so greatly. Why the fuck would anyone want me to reproduce? Do you want a child to suffer with EDS? I'll tell people that during children-rearing debates and some will come back with, "Yeah, but there's a chance it wouldn't get your disease!" I'll answer, "You'd have me take that fifty-fifty chance of giving a kid a degenerative connective tissue disease?" More often than not, they'll say that they absolutely would want me to go for it.
I think that's all my reasonings for wanting no children, ever. If I've left out any words or misspelled any, you have my apologies.
Reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld where someone's friend had a hideous baby...the look on Kramer's face when he laid eyes on the kid...priceless! hehehe!
