Confession: I Don’t Want Kids – Here’s Why

I am 32, and I do not want kids.

I have been saying that I don’t want kids for as long as I can remember, and I have always been told that I would eventually change my mind. Well, it has been 32 years and I still have not changed my mind. My mom still has hope though, and she is not shy about telling me so.

I recently had the joy of spending a week alone with my two youngest nieces. Don’t get me wrong, I love my nieces and should anything unfortunate happen to my brother and sister-in-law I will be the one to gladly take them in, but I do not want kids of my own.

Save your judgement

I’ve always said that if I did have kids, I would adopt, because there are enough children out there who are in need of a good home. Now, whether or not I would be able to provide a “good” home is another story, and after my week with the nieces I think I have come to the conclusion that I am not made from the same cloth that most “motherly” women are.  Now, I know that it’s always “different when it’s your own child”, but how do you really know if that is true? I think this is all more than just saying that my biological clock needs batteries, I think that it is straight up broken because I have always lacked something when interacting with children. Ask my brother, I don’t know how many times he has had the ‘you need to play with them’ talk. Kids aren’t puppies; you don’t just play with them and then give them back to their owner – they are actual small human beings.

For starters, children require a level of patience that I have not yet mastered. I can be a pretty patient person but when it comes to dealing with little kids and their quirks I am afraid all of my natural instincts are thrown out the window. How on earth are you supposed to get children to wear what you need them to wear, or eat what you want them to eat? Some times there is no reasoning with a child .

I was told that my nieces eat pretty much everything, with only a few “minor” quirks, but it turns out that I was misinformed. The upside is that my nieces love (most of) their vegetables, however they have to be made a certain way. And the girls weren’t too keen on eating the food on their plates without a lot of coaxing. My grandma always catered to whoever was eating over, and for the longest time I heard my mom say that we were not at a restaurant so we ate what we got. That is how I was raised, you ate the food on your plate because there wasn’t anything else. Unfortunately you cannot do that anymore unless you want to deal with crying children and I do not deal well with crying children. Just ask my nieces – they cried multiple times a day while my brother and sister-in-law were out-of-town, and I had to fight hard not to shut down when they started crying.

Another thing: I give serious props to single parents. Not only was I taking care of my nieces during this week, but I was also driving them to school, to appointments, running to and from the store and I was also working. Granted not much work was done during the daytime as there was always something going on that pulled me from work, so I couldn’t really do anything until the girls were asleep. So to all of you single parents, balancing kids and work or school, kudos to you. I do not know how you do it!

It’s my life – it’s OK to be selfish!

Kids are time-consuming and in my regular every day life I barely have enough time to take care of myself, let alone a child. “Quit being selfish” is how most people respond, but I think it is OK to be selfish. Especially when I know that this is my decision. There is still a lot that I want to do with my life and children wouldn’t allow some of it. I thought that by this point everyone in my family had come to terms with the decision I made many years ago, but coming out of this last week my mom asked if I had changed my mind yet.

Nope, my mind has not changed. I am still pretty confident in knowing that I don’t want kids, and that is OK. But that is not to say that I do not love my nieces. Like I said, I would gladly take them in and am grateful for every year that passes that allows them to become independent and functioning little adults.

So if you are ever talking to a woman and she says that she doesn’t want kids then leave it at that. There may be more going on behind her decision than you might think, just respect her for knowing what she wants because that does not necessarily make her a bad person.