2 of my girls cant- i aged out, 1 had a hysterectomy for endometriosis. the other wd like 1, but hasnt rly settled into a relationship. she’s 38.
my boys likely wont. 1 cant get settled in life, and hopefully the other knows better.

i feel like i did my job. i didnt hide the toll it all took on me.

several children.

They say we need a workforce for the economy but there won't be an economy when we have depleted our resources.
I'd rather fight 10 people for food and water than 1000.

Said she'd help out. Promise wasn't kept. Partner doesn't help..his life continued unchanged.

knowing your partner wont b there.
that was a big part of my misery.

There was no way in hell I was going to do it alone. I’d seen peers with a kid or two, with exes who at best were no help and at worst made things 100% worse. I’d never met anyone that I would completely trust to stay around.

#1 reason was I just flat never wanted kids.

They balk at the responsibility..hand it over to their mother or new spouse.

He's the oldest and lives a more conventional life style. One son's partner doesn't want kids - and she's aging out - he's open to parenthood, but then again they wouldn't be able to travel the way they do.

My daughter is 44 years old, but when she was younger, she pondered on whether she should have a child. I reminded her that if she did, she wouldn't be able to just drop everything and go climbing or skiing at a moment's notice. She did tell me when she was 9 years old that she wasn't going to have kids. I asked her why and her response was "I see what you go through!"

My youngest is in his mid thirties and his life is not stable enough for a serious relationship or children.

I tell people that I didn't have children in order to have grand children - I had/have fun being a mom - and that's enough.

my mom ended up supporting the family (there were 7 of us) cuz my dad’s health started failing and he started drinking too much. luckily, she had won a scholarship to business school cuz she was the top of her class in high school. she got a job as a medical secretary when i was in kindergarten. not sure what wd have happened to us if she hadnt. she rly did love her job.
she was so quiet in her struggles, and her triumphs. i didnt know about that til she was in her 70’s. didnt realize how smart she was, even. i shd have. she did the sunday trib crossword in pen, and she was a very, very sharp bridge player.

i dropped out of art school to raise kids, and i couldnt have hidden that if i had tried.

to two absolutely incredible kids.
I don't think it appropriate to pressure my children to get married or have children of their own.
It's totally their choice.

Welcome to DU,enjoy your stay.

It can be fun, for sure. It can also be stressful and a great deal of work. My kids are 22 and 20. I don't either wants kids. But at that age I didn't either. But as you get older, you sometimes change your mind. My spouse and I have a great relationship. We're fortunate that way. After we were married for a fews years, we thought it would be interesting to have kids. And it has been. Watching them grow and change has been amazing. But sometimes I feel bad for bringing them into this world. They are 22 and 20. They are going to have to live in a world and country that will be on the brink of tyranny for a long time to come. They are smart kids and will figure it out. I just wish they didn't have to navigate our current landscape.

The transition may be rough but the alternative given climate degradation and droughts is not sustainable.

. . . If you try to do that on a national level, you will create an economic disaster.

And seriously who needs all this crap. I haven't bought new clothes in years. I go to our animal shelter resale shop. They have nice quality virtually new stuff.

These are not closed societies. We can accept immigrants.

The GOP wants white babies only though.

Immigration. As always.
Adult immigrants... ready, willing, able to work. Not as cute as babies, but more useful right away.

The future of the planet feels far less certain than it did in our childhood, and our quieter way of life seems more naturally suited to fewer people rather than more. We also recognized that choosing not to have children still leaves the door open—while choosing to have them closes it. For us, it felt like the more mindful path.

I have few doubts my g-g-grandfather may have had the same precise doubts, but I have even fewer doubts those negative consequences are much closer to us than they were 100 years ago.

...will force you to have them anyway--not only by outlawing abortion (they're now trying to federalize an abortion ban), but also through total prohibition of contraception. Then there's Trump's ridiculous Putin-inspired "baby boom bonus" ($5k or so) and JD Vance's idea of granting one additional vote per child per parent (so they will outvote singles).

There are any number of entirely rational causes for falling birth rates in technologically advanced societies: time demands from advanced education and training, long work hours, etc. The consolidation of farming and agriculture into large enterprises also has a significant influence. These material realities cannot be simply done away with by rhetorical hand-waving from the radtrad reactionaries at "think" tanks like Project 2025.

I assume Vance might want the husband to get not just the votes of not just the kids, but the wife.

The ship sailed decades ago.

...my response differently. I should have said "Trump and the radtrads at Project 2025 will force you to have [kids] anyway...unless you stop them now!". Because they are hell-bent on forcing a '50s-style dystopia on the country. I say "dystopia" because it will essentially be the social repression of the '50s without any of the upside: minus the high unionization rates, minus full employment with benefits, and minus the world-leading economy. Instead we will get yet more '80s-style trickle-down "voodoo economics", precarious employment with vanishing benefits, and an also-ran economy crippled by the TrumpTax (massive tariffs).

The family was able to have a pleasant middle class life on ONE parent’s salary. Now you cant afford to buy a home with both parents working. The stress is a killer for parents and kids alike. More people are depressed in America than ever before. Trickle Down Economics my ASS!

The era totally sucked for women.

Marriage is on the way out. More women know the whole marriage and kids life is a giant trap, and they want no part of it.

The 1950s are dead. Good riddance.

But as kids we didn't know what to do about it. They all got divorced eventually. If I were young I wouldn't get married nowadays.

down and cried. She loved her daughters, but wondered what she could've done in her life if she hadn't had children -- she had so many things she wanted to do, but never got the chance.

I really don't understand the current GOP urging to breed. Why would a kid be happy in a home that didn't really want them?

I knew before I even understood reproduction that I didn't like, nor ever want kids. I didn't even like babysitting, and can count on one hand the number of times I did so--with fingers left over. Been told more than once that I make a great parent. No. I wouldn't. Not unless we're talking cats and dogs...

As for the GOP push to breed, it's all about producing lots of cheap labor. They want us to be like China, where we're all just worker drones here to serve them.

I heard a joke that many pediatricians switch to becoming veterinarians - they are the less likely to be bit by their patients

That would solve the worker needs of the country. Problem is, most of them are not good at learning skills and doing real work.

Welcome immigrants

Both of my siblings didn't have children for reproductive frustrations. I chose "safe sex" because I knew our father would weaponize my children against me. You don't enhance a dysfunctional family.

And Dad (Bless his heart!) sought his retribution upon us by disinheriting all of us for not continuing the family legacy. Our surname will die out with me and my brother.

Life is not a 90 minute movie.

Do people want their kids to face this future?

Dinks. Double incomes, no kids. Having too much fun to have kids.

…and it is likely to take quite some time before such an event is even noticeable.

or "bombshell" or "epic", etc. etc.

thing as if the only reason fewer people are having children or buying houses is because it's too expensive so Thanks, Democrats! Thanks, Boomers!

Obviously it's not so simple and not only the U.S.

I walked the uncommon road: I figured out by age 16 that I didn't want to have kids. I figured out at an early age that the whole television fantasy of having kids was the key to a happy life was a delusion and that the majority of the workload fell on the woman . My love for nature and grief for the lands destruction added to my many reasons to avoid breeding.
I didn't get a college education, and had to live as best I could on dead end low wage jobs with few or no benefits.
None of this makes me some kind of entitled person, who had everything handed to me on a silver platter, who wilfully went on a campaign to ruin life for future generations.
Like many people my age, I have fought for social justice and healing and restoration of the life support systems of our planet.
It really pisses me off to be accused of all that is wrong with our society. Maybe you are too young to have experienced what it was like to face off with the most powerful government of the richest country in the world? People in my parents generation wanted us shot and/or beaten and tear gassed by the cops and the military, because we dared to march and demonstrate against greed and injustice. The anniversary of the shootings at Kent State was May 4th, and the shootings at Jackson State just a few days later.
It's too bad that we couldn't fix everything that is wrong with the world, so that future generations wouldn't have to make any effort, but we didn't get handed a perfect society either.
My point is that it doesn't do any good to heap all the blame on one generation. The same bigots and greed heads who caused all the suffering and injustice back then are the same septic sacks of $hit who are supporting the regime and their drive for total dictatorship.
Not trying to be trite, but we're all stuck with trying to work together to push back against what seems like a juggernaut.

We can't seem to feed or take care of the people that are here, why have even more?

There could be many reasons not to have children, finances I think really are and should be number one. Health issues for both the parent and children, not being or feeling able to for whatever reasons, not wanting to, not wanting to contribute to over population, and so many others.

What we found was that most of the reasons people give don't make sense.
There's only one reason to decide to have children: you love them and are willing to spend the next 18 years per child (at a minimum) investing all of your time, money, and energy in order to give your kids the best launch into their own lives. You will commit to putting them first.
Not everyone is capable of doing that, and society should not guilt trip people into being parents if they don't want to make that commitment.
I agree that it appears that humans have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. The laws of physics are not going to be violated, just for the sole benefit of humans. Over 8 billion people and counting. It's not sustainable, and I believe that the other beings on this planet have a right to life. Systems that are built on endless uncontrolled growth are no more supportive of life than the disease cancer is. We need to find a better way, a sustainable way.

is that the right is having more children than the left. So unless there is ideological conversion happening along the way, one breed is a dying breed (literally) while the other breed is a blossoming one.

I have two kids, and seeing them mature into adulthood has been the single greatest joy of my life. I have also helped raise five other kids, and feel the same way about them.

disappointed that close women friends have criticized me for my decision. Two, over the years, have told me "You're not a real woman unless you've had a baby." Found those remarks very offensive.

I have kids but I wouldn’t dream of saying that to another woman, let alone a friend.

they were miserable...didn't tell them, but felt sorry for them.

and wanted company in their misery. Poor things, resorting to juvenile comments like that.

We dnever wanted them, but we thought about it some, everyone does. And I do feel like there's things I missed out on, especially when I'm playing with my young nieces.

But we were just never in a place where we felt we could be the parents that our kids deserved, and now it's too late and we're just comfortable with our decisions. I do not believe the children are inheriting a free country anymore, previous generations pissed the greatness of America away. I fear for the wellbeing of my young nieces and nephews.

The one thing I do worry for is old age though. We are taking care of a lot for my elderly parents right now and there won't be anyone to do the same for us. But that's no reason on its own to have children.

citizens in this country. This forcing women to make babies has to end.

We can easily maintain our "society" by increasing immigration.

My wife and I decided not to have kids 45 years ago because we didn't want to.

have kids is that it's what the billionaires want. They want more workers so that there is competition for jobs and they can pay less, and they want these workers to fund the safety net. Billionaires throughout the world (South Korea, Japan, some European countries) as well as here are scared that they will be asked to contribute more in taxes if there are fewer people to support the aging population. Some are quite explicit about it.

emotions . But I have known women who desperately wanted kids. I think that initial intensity dies down after they actually find out that kids are really hard work.

and that should be the end of the matter. But my point was that billionaires are injecting this controversy into the culture because they want a higher birth rate for their own economic benefit.

Of course, Republican men can't handle that....