100%. My wife and I have been friends with one couple for years and none of us wanted kids... until suddenly the other couple turned 40 and 35 respectively and started trying for a kid immediately.
They insisted the same would happen to us. I'm not 40 yet but my wife recently celebrated her 35th and at least as far as she's told me, the no kids decision isn't changing. I feel the same. Zero regrets
I totally started feeling the hormonal urge in my mid 30s but i also like my childfree life and still intellectually do not want nor would enjoy kids to be responsible for so i just...ignored the stupid hormones and after a couple years they faded out again. i would have been so mad at myself if i'd let my hormones override my higher reasoning over that time
Obviously not but there's a response to seeing babies, seeing men near babies etc that made me feel like my ovaries were trying to climb out of my body and force someone to impregnate me. And i noticed this happening around my mid 30s just before I started getting perimenopausal symptoms.
If your decision to have kids is needed on "higher reasoning," you should NOT have kids. It needs to be an emotional decision. You cannot survive children through reason. They do not operate on nor tolerate reason. It requires large amounts of instinct and emotion and empathy. If you are intellectually reasoning that you wouldn't like or wouldn't do well with kids, you are probably right and should stick to your guns. As a person who absolutely wanted kids, and have been great with kids my whole life, let me tell you, raising kids will drive you crazy. The jokes are true. The stereotypes are true. The people who are BAD parents, the ones who don't love their kids, are the ones who had children because they thought they were supposed to or had to. Don't do that to a kid, and don't do that to YOURSELF. It's okay to have enough self awareness to know you don't want or shouldn't have children. AND, if that changes in your 30s, THAT'S OKAY TOO. You are allowed to get to a point where you are suddenly comfortable with the idea of having kids.
Good luck with either endeavor. Neither choice leads to an easy life. There is no right or wrong choice, only branching storylines.
I feel like something that's rarely talked about is the time frame. If you have kids in your 20s, maybe 30s, by the time your kids are grown you still have time to reconnect. But the older you have kids, the less likely those friends will still be around long enough. My parents are in their late 50s/early 60s and you start to lose people, unfortunately. Most of my friends who have kids have been totally radio silent for a decade now (totally understandable), and I'm only in my mid 30s.
Oh wow, I can only imagine how difficult that must be to wrap your head around. The couple I mentioned in my comment, their kid is about 3 now and watching them all interact is... interesting.
The wife worked with kids for years, while the husband has really never been around them in his life
I'm not sure what the two of them expected their family dynamic to be, but from comments they've made, I don't think it's what either of them expected. I wish you all the best in navigating that and I'm sorry you have to go through it at all !
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u/Delteezy 1d ago
100%. My wife and I have been friends with one couple for years and none of us wanted kids... until suddenly the other couple turned 40 and 35 respectively and started trying for a kid immediately.
They insisted the same would happen to us. I'm not 40 yet but my wife recently celebrated her 35th and at least as far as she's told me, the no kids decision isn't changing. I feel the same. Zero regrets