Tag: childfree | A Banana Peeled

One of my ways of relaxing is to hit the random post button on Ask A Manager and keep doing that until I find a post I want to re-read. Today, I came across one called, “my bross is pressuring me to get pregnant” from 2017. It was refreshing because there were several people who said that they didn’t want to have children (many of them women!). One said that she knew it was PC to say that you like children, but don’t want them. I made sure to make that point when I was in my twenties.

Then I dropped the I like kids part because true or not, it didn’t matter. And I did not need to apologize for not wanting them/having them. It really wasn’t anyone else’s business, even though MANY women acted to the contrary.

I agree that it’s more of a ‘don’t hate me because I’m saying this’ and less of what I actually felt. If I were to be brutally honest, no, I don’t like children. I don’t dislike them, but I don’t like them specifically. To expand on that, though, I don’t like adult people, either. To be clear, I care about people in general and about specific people. But I do not care about every adult I meet so i don’t see why it shouldn’t be the sae with children. Or elderly people, either.

I also find it amusing that people say it takes a village to raise a child, but then are pissed off if you dare say anytihng to them or their children about their behavior. You can’t really have it both ways. You can’t say you want other people to help you out, but then get mad if they give gentle correction to your children.

This is something I don’t agree with when it comes to common wisdom–that you can’t criticize someone’s parenting. If it affects me, I most certainly can. Not the parenting, maybe, but the behavior. I have told kids kicking my seat to stop doing that after ten minutes or so of the parent most pointedly not saying anything. And it’s not as if they can’t hear what their children are doing.

If you want to be able to bring your children into the general public, then they need to adhere to the norms. I’m not saying they can’t run around and be a bit noisy, but they need to keep their hands and feet to themselves. And again, I gave it a good ten minutes before telling them to stop doing that. Once was in a restaurant; once was in an airplane,; and once was in a baseball game.

Here’s another reason I don’t particularly like children–they are self-absorbed and all about them. That is not their fault because they were made that way. It’s necessary for their development. I’m not faulting them for it, but having two parents like that and being forced to parent them, well, it’s probably no wonder that I don’t have any particular fondness for children.

I’ve read about other people who have either had to parent their parents or parent their siblings who wanted nothing to do with other children. That’s how I feel. When I was in my twenties, people commented on how good I was with children and what a shame it was that I wasn’t having any of my own. Yes, I am good with chldren because I know I can give them back after an hour or two. Or if it’s just chatting with a kid in public, that nothing is really expected of me.

The pandemic has been hell for many reasons. One of them is because parents have had such a hard time juggling work and caring for their children, especially when schools and daycare centers were shut down as well. Some companies have responded by giving more flexibility to parents, which is a good thing. But, some of that flexibility comes from demanding more of people without children. Which, in case you can’t guess, is bad. There was a letter at Ask A Manager related to this and one of the letter writer’s points was her frustration that people judged her negatively for her lack-of-child state. That elicited commiseration from several commenters, including me.

And it made me sad because I had recently read that there is still pressure on women and female-presenting people to have children. Most of the commenters commenting on the post (if not all) were younger than I am, which means this attitude hasn’t changed much or at all from my heyday. That’s depressing. I would have hoped that 30 years after my birthing years, we would have progressed beyond pressuring women to have children.

It’s so difficult to talk about this without seeming like an asshole, so I’m just going to embrace it. I don’t like kids. I don’t dislike them, mind, but I have never gotten the whole ‘kids are the light of the world’ thing that many women proclaim they feel.

I never got gushy and squealy over kids. Actually, I’ve never gotten that way over anything. I honestly thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have that proverbial ticking biological clock. It wasn’t that I had one and was stifling it or burying it in the back of my closet. I never had one and I still don’t.

When I talk to children, I don’t use a different tone of voice or dumb down what I’m saying. i mean, I’m not going to talk about quantum physics to them (not that I do to adults, either, come to think of it), but I refuse to say shit like, “Who’s a widdle-bitty baby? You are!” It’s just not me and would sound disingenuous coming from my mouth. I kept the discussions age-appropriate, of course, but otherwise, I didn’t change anything else.

Tag Archives: childfree

No I don’t like kids, thank you for asking

Maybe no baby yes?