I Thought I Wanted Kids Until I Realized These 10 Things – Now I Don’t Anymore

I used to think that some day I’d be a mom, but now that I’m in my 30s, I’ve changed my mind. While I used to dream of being a mom, I’m not going to be taking kids to soccer practice or helping them learn how to be amazing adults after all. These days, I have no desire to be a parent because I’ve realized some pretty important things.

  1. I can’t afford kids. You want to know just how expensive kids are? Consider this because it blew my mind. On average, parents in the U.S. spend $233,610 on costs related to raising kids from their birth all the way up to the age of 17. This amount doesn’t even include college!
  2. I don’t want to go through pregnancy. I think pregnancy is a beautiful, miraculous life event, but I just don’t want to go through it. I don’t like the idea of the unknown and how many doctors’ visits I’ll have to go through. I don’t like that my body’s going to change and make me experience weird symptoms, some which can last forever, like gassiness and breathlessness. I’m a hypochondriac who can’t deal with all that.
  3. I don’t want to be responsible for someone else. Here’s the thing. I can’t keep cacti alive, okay? That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t keep kids alive, obviously, but I just feel stressed out about the thought of being responsible for tiny babies who are completely dependent on me. Kids need their parents for every little thing and that scares me.
  4. I don’t want my life to change. Call me selfish if you want, but I don’t want to change my life. I love the way it is right now. I love being able to read entire books on the weekend, and I love being able to focus on my career and creative hobbies. I don’t want any of that to change because I’ll have to put so much more time and effort on being a mom.
  5. I want to chase my dreams. Look, it’s already tough enough to try to get time to focus on my dreams because life and work gets in the way, so I can’t imagine being able to do that if I have kids. Honestly, I’m not sure I want to put my dreams on the back burner.
  6. It’s bad for the environment. I don’t want to green guilt anyone, but thinking about what it would do to the world’s resources to bring a kid into the world contributed to making me not want to have kids. A Swedish study found that having one less child per family can save 58.6 tons of carbon every year for a parent’s life. That’s huge!
  7. I don’t want to be sleep-deprived. Okay, here’s another reason why you might call me selfish: I don’t want to lose so much sleep! When I hear about how much sleep new parents lose – almost two hours of sleep every night for the first year after having a baby – I realize that I need and love my beauty sleep too much.
  8. I’m a neat freak. Seriously, I can’t handle any untidiness in my home, so I don’t think I’d get used to having a messy house if I have kids running through it. What about all my white furniture? What about my expensive bedding? What about my clothes? I just can’t. I know that sounds shallow and a relatively minor issue but it’s a big thing for me.
  9. I want more time with people i love. Kids are great and it’s a blessing to be able to raise them, but honestly? It’s just not for me because I don’t want to lose out on friendships and relationships with loved ones, such as my romantic partner. Research has found that while all couples experience decreased relationship satisfaction, couples with children will go through it faster than those who don’t have kids. That upsets me.
  10. I want to get up and go. I want to travel, and decide to go somewhere spontaneously. I want to be able to move around and explore new things. Parents can (and do) do these things but it’s much more difficult to travel with kids and break out of routines. If I had to have a kid, I know I would feel too guilty to leave them behind, so I probably would put all those travel plans on the back burner too, which I really don’t want to do.
Giulia Simolo is a writer from Johannesburg, South Africa with a degree in English Language and Literature. She has been working as a journalist for more than a decade, writing for sites including AskMen, Native Interiors, and Live Eco. You can find out more about her on Facebook and LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter @GiuliaSimolo.
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