I know that now it is too late for Josh and I’m sorry, but what worked with me was that my husband started to push me to quit the job I had and follow my dreams in the professional career I really wanted. If I’m working for a dream I do not have time to think about babies.

The other thing was, my husband started to talk with me about more romantic holidays and I started to think about him and the relationship and how much I loved him.

All of this made me respect his opinion and see life with his eyes. But you cannot just say “I don’t want kids” and do nothing to compensate that, you see? Why would I not have kids? – people need help to think.

I hope this helps someone who is in this position. Show your partner what life can be without babies, go out, have fun, and push the one who wants kids to follow their dream career now. Then give them time to adjust, let them whine a bit, be patient but be active. If she loves you she will respect you back.

One yes plus one no should equal NO.

If I married someone who had the opposite idea about kids to me it would be almost impossible for me to stay married to him. It is so FUNDAMENTAL to most people whether or not they have children. It’s hard to believe people make the decision to marry somebody without first finding out whether their partner wants children or not!

In the UK at least, if I recall correctly, the divorce/separation rate is far, far higher amongst those with children than it is those without them.

MT: Your last comment could have been written by myself.

Kids or no kids is one thing. To be pressured into having kids is a totally different matter. Especially when you are not being heard at all but just expected to fall in like “everybody else” since everything else is abnormal.

After a while it seemed like not only my opinion about kids were totally ignored. Probably unnecessary to say, but that relationship (just recently) ended. Good luck with yours…

You think her parents have spoiled her. Well, just picture them in her corner, looking at you like you’re some kind of ghoul. Picture the three of them– her and them– looking all smug when she “oopses” you.

She won’t change, and, with luck, neither will you. This is a deal-breaker. Get out now, before Little Miss Condescension tries to trap you with a baby-related “accident.” She sounds like a real piece of work.

Your attitude that the childfree are undermining the institution of marriage are nothing short of insulting. Are you saying that we are not entitled to marriage simply because we do not want children? That’s a little unfair don’t you think when you consider how the childfree are constantly financially supporting the choice of people who choose to have children, namely through our taxes. Why are the childfree not entitled to the same choice of marriage as those who choose to have children? Us childfree simply want to make our union to our partner formal, in the eyes of our families and friends, just like you Mama C, have the right to do.

It’s ironic that you raise the point that the childfree have noted that we can walk away from our unions if we so wish. Just as many childed couples leave their partners as the childfree. In fact, the childfree, in my opinion, have so much more invested in each other than the childed. In a lot of cases, couples stay together in unahppy unions because of the children, and when/if they do eventually separate, the only thing typing the couples together still, are the children.

Lastly, Mama C, the greatest irony in your opinions set out above several times, is where you state that the only point of marriage is children. Many married couples end up separating/divorcing because of this “society rule” that marriage = kids, whereby if they can’t conceive naturally they will bankrupt themselves to go down the IVF path. This path puts a huge strain, emotionally and financially, on couples which eventually drives them apart!

Lastly – yes, this time it is – Mama C, you are browsing a childfree website. This website is for like-minded people to converse and support each other. This website is not the place to be preaching to us that we are wrong to get married if our aim is not to have children.

As far as she is concerned, her life would be incomplete without children, she compared me not wanting children, to her not wanting air to breathe.

The thing that frustrates me the most is her total lack of empathy for my point of view, if I say why I don’t want children, she will just tell me all my points are wrong or ill-informed.

I’ve always been pretty honest about how I felt about having children, I started off being ambivalent, I didn’t think too much about it, it seemed a long way off. As I get older (I’m 30, she is 27), I’ve thought more and more about children, and how I simply don’t want them. She makes out I’m some kind of child-hater, which I’m not, I just couldn’t deal with them 24/7.

Everytime we have this argument, she tries to convince me I’m wrong, the sad thing is, the more she does this, the more it convinces me not to have children. Do I really want a relationship with someone trying to bully me into agreeing with her point of view?

She was very spoilt by her parents, and still is, I wonder if this has resulted in this self-centered attitude to life, that I’m simply a meal ticket/sperm bank…

“t seems to me that a whole lot of childed people bail on their marriages and relationships too, and having children doesn’t seem to be much of an impediment to that, does it?”
My thoughts exactly. As any child of divorced parents will confirm.

As an adult, you’re free to go where you want, when you want, and it’s always a ‘personal matter’. It seems to me that a whole lot of childed people bail on their marriages and relationships too, and having children doesn’t seem to be much of an impediment to that, does it?

“The only thing still lending “Marriage” any of its old social gravity and formal recognition is the prickly matter of bearing children. We haven’t figured out a broadly satisfactory replacement for it in that sense, (yet?) and so it drags on. Nobody would care a bit about it otherwise. ”

Sure we have a replacement for it. It’s called “have a kid if you want one, nobody cares that you’re a brainless unmarried teenager.” I don’t know what planet you’ve been living on for the last twenty years, but being married is certainly no prerequisite for having kids these days, and to be honest, the only people who do care about marriage are God-botherers and dinosaurs.

Where is it written that you ’shouldn’t get married unless you want to breed’? And following this train of thought, does thie mean that infertile couples should immediately get divorced, because their marriages are pointless? Puh-lease. As Britgitl so rightly pointed out, maybe it’s about making a commitment in the eyes of your friends, family, and society in general, standing up and saying you want to spend your life with someone you love. Nobody makes you do it, but some people choose to. Not to mention, the tax breaks and legal upsides are kind of helpful.

Not everybody chooses to frame their relationship in the confines of an outdated Christian mindset. Deal with it already.