@Cerridwyn that would probably be worth a fortune now; could even pay for a college education. But when I was in college, “reg fees” were $250-$400 a quarter.
The answer is we thought we “had to” as it was the cultural norm at the time, but we both were around 40 already. Both excited and terrified, mostly the latter. Turns out for a medical reason, it didn’t work. But the reproductive endocrinologist (did not know there was such a thing) said maybe we want to consider adopting a girl from China, which was a thing at the time. Not that it would have been bad at all, but facing 15+ years of driving to schools and PTA meetings and soccer practice just seemed like maybe too much to sign up for. And with my work we were enjoying business trips to Europe, which would have been out the door, basically. And realizing we would be in our 60s pretty soon. A lot of people I worked with were already becoming grandparents at the time.
So my wife is enjoying spending time with a great-niece and great-nephew, which as you say you can borrow and then return them.
@pmarin I was 41 and my wife was 39 when our youngest was born. We were definitely some of the older parents at her various school and extra-curricular functions. But she turned out to be an amazing kid (and now an amazing adult).
My kids (4 of them!) are all healthy, self-sufficient, college educated and employed adults now, happily living their lives in various parts of the US.
@macromeh
My 5 are all grown now and out of my house. 2 of them married and only one grand kid. Just remember that they are now the ones paying into Social Security so that the fund doesn’t go dry before you die! Also, the younger generation will be the ones that take care of you when you get older and need a caregiver; if you don’t have family then it’s someone else’s kid that fills the spot!
@jkawaguchi
I’m perfectly fine paying someone else’s kid to wipe my butt. Plus, I am saving for retirement under the assumption that Social Security won’t exist by then.
@jkawaguchi@kittykat9180 Yeah, I would definitely not have a kid just to make sure I had a caregiver. For starters, that doesn’t always work out; kids move away, start their own family, have their own lives and problems, etc.
And tbh, as I watch friends in my cohort dying long before retirement? “What will happen to me at 80?” seems like an increasingly unlikely problem to be faced.
@brainmist@jkawaguchi
My parents have two kids. My brother will spend the rest of his life in prison, and I moved to Europe.
Having kids didn’t guarantee them anything.
EXACTLY! There’s NO guarantee that your children will be around or available to take care of you. And, I can’t think of anything worse than having children just so you can think they’re going to wipe your butt and be your nursemaid!
This hits a little close to home for me and I’m probably more angry than I need be…
My BIL is doing just that, stifling and controlling his kids so they’ll be available to take care of him and I find it disgusting!
He and his wife have raised 3 kids and have limited their education. Two have minimum wage jobs and one is physically breaking his back working for his parents lawn care company but refuses to work 40 hours a week, can you say selfish and lazy…
Two of them are living in homes that he purchased but they aren’t kept up, (I’d NEVER live there) no regular maintenance and they pay cheap rent. By the time the parents die the houses will most likely be ready to be demolished!
The third child, he’s 40 and the youngest, is still living at home and always has. He’s already being made to care for his father who is 65 years old and help his mother with anything physical. In my opinion It’s a sad situation!! They’ve taken their kids lives and manipulated them to fit their needs.
They also have one of their grandsons living there, at 15 or 16 he’s a HS dropout and refuses to do anything but sleep all day, no job, no money, and no future plans for anything productive! If you guessed that he came from the son that won’t work a 40 hour week and starts his day at 11am you got THAT CORRECT! Like father like son!
SO YEAH, I think SOME PEOPLE should definitely think twice about WHY they are wanting children, and some people just SHOULDN’T BE PARENTS!
I guess the eternal optimist in me says I would still choose to have kids. It seems to me that you are contributing to the hopeful betterment of society if you raise kids to be caring responsible adults. It takes time for societies to shift direction. I have hope that the US will course correct (as well as many other places in the world).
@kittykat9180
Way to plan and execute!
Parenting is one of those things that not everyone wants to undertake. I have the utmost respect for those people who decide that and then stick with it.
@chienfou@kittykat9180 Ugh, yeah. How can people who decide not to have kids be so “selfish”?
But no one can seem to explain why it’s selfish to decide I don’t want a kid… and then not have one. Seems like it’d be a lot more selfish to have a kid grow up being unwanted.
@brainmist@kittykat9180
In truth they’re the ones being selfish. Probably just looking to shore up the number of people paying into their social security eventually.
@chienfou@kittykat9180 I think a lot of people had kids because they felt like they had some obligation to fulfill, and seeing that no, you can actually just choose to not do that, makes them feel cheated somehow.
I do think everyone has an obligation to future generations. But that can be so many things OTHER than bringing more babies into a very messy world. Like supporting public schools and libraries, affordable childcare and healthcare, and environmental conservation/ rehab with your efforts, taxes, and votes.
@brainmist@kittykat9180
Absolutely. That’s sort of like we taught our kids (yes we did have them). Whenever we would go camping we always made them clean the campsite and leave it in better condition than we found it. The same goes as adults now. Leave the world a better place than you found it. Love your neighbor. Help the less fortunate. Be a champion for the powerless.
In short… Don’t be a dick.
@brainmist@chienfou
In reality, nearly everything we do is for selfish reasons, even the decision to have kids or to not have kids.
Although it is true that some people never realized that it was a choice. They just grew up knowing that having kids is what you do when you become an adult.
@brainmist@chienfou@kittykat9180 I spent years not wanting children. I didn’t think I was “mature enough” for that responsibility (not to mention I wanted kids who were old enough to wipe their own butt, dress themselves and feed themselves as someone else more or less said). In fact I offered to be a surrogate for my cousin and his wife knowing that there was no way I’d change my mind and keep their child.
It took until I was far older until I finally decided I was ready. I adopted a nearly 10 year old (was told she was 5 and when I said 5 year olds don’t have permanent eye teeth, was then told she was 7) because my parents would have freaked out if I used a sperm bank and didn’t think it was worth that. As others in the extended family had adopted I knew that was acceptable (there are 5 other adopted kids between all my cousins).
Turns out she was 9 years and 11 mo at 38 pounds and 42 inches tall. I didn’t realize the extent of corruption in international adoption, although I was well familiar with what goes on in domestic adoption and was a foster adopt foster parent in 3 different states. I spent 5 years trying to adopt locally and every time a 2 parent home study came in I lost the accepted referral. So I finally bagged it and adopted from Asia,
I wanted a kid clustered in the ages of her cousins so that she would “fit in” more. Had I known her true age when the size of a 4 year old she would no be my kid as I knew that that level of long term malnutrition creates incredible life long problems which is what traps me in the armpit of the nation trying to keep these kids out of social services. I am not raising 5 kids ages 4-13.
It has been incredibly tough having her as my child. And there are plenty of times I wondered, “What was I thinking?”. Would I do it again? Not with this child, but then again we don’t know what we “get” so to speak until it is too late. Had I known she was nearly 10 she wouldn’t be my daughter as it would have been clear she would have had extensive malnutrition brain damage (well had she had a traumatic life in her home country too which left it’s mark so had full blown reactive attachment disorder, mood disorder, oppositional defiant order and significant trauma…) and I hadn’t gone into this wanting to adopt a severely special needs kid. But of course you can’t change the past.
@kittykat9180 I didn’t find out how old she really was until she had been home six months and found her birth mom. In 1998/9 not as much internet about stuff like this to really realize what goes on. they just said paperwork error. I was dumb and believed them.
There were sibs I turned down that I was told were 6 and 10. An illiterate 10 year old with no English was more than I thought I could handle (the joke was on me though). It turned out those kids were really 14 and 16.
@Kidsandliz
Maybe I am misunderstanding.
I thought you said originally they told you she was five and then when you were hesitant, they changed the story and told you she was seven.
@kittykat9180 they told me she was 5. Someone who was over there sent me an informal photo where she was smiling and I saw she had adult eye teeth. I challenged them on her age. They said, oops, paperwork mistake, she is 7. Dentist told me that is possible but not all that common. I also challenged them on her height and weight. They said south asian people, on average, shorter. I was looking for a kid 5-8. Then 6 mo after she was in my home someone found her birth mom for us and we found out she was actually 9 years and 11 mo old when adopted.
@kittykat9180 I had already paid $4500k and 5 or 7 was in my age range I was looking for, the explanations sounded reasonable, including checking with a dentist at this end. Had it not been I would have declined the referral and lost that money and not had enough to finish an adoption. In retrospect, of course, I would have rather lost the money and not adopted at all rather than adopted the kid I did and ended up, which has meant so far a life time of problems, some of them serious.
But I don’t have ESP and unfortunately you can’t just walk away. Or at least I couldn’t/can’t. And trust me, I thought about disruption multiple times but I had a responsibility regardless of being lied to. And that facilitator finally did get her due. Lost her beach front property in Hawaii, ended up in federal prison for visa fraud, etc., and that shut down the country for adoptions but that was several years later. And, of course that didn’t solve my particular issues.
Things to do with my upbringing and my personality and emotional habits, and the thought that I would not make the greatest parent way back when
By the time I got past much of that and thought I might actually be a decent parent I still didn’t want a child. I guess I’m just too selfish. I like my own activities and so forth.
Also, the landscape for parenting has changed so much in many households women still do 90% of the work or more
I don’t care to do that work if I’m doing it alone, but I’m in a partnership
Also, I know an awful lot of people who … this seems to be a modern thing for some reason a recent thing …
Have kids with fairly severe mental or emotional or behavioral problems that show up in early childhood and can never really be mitigated
To the point where these parents never even get a second off to breathe
And there is very little chance, the kid will ever be able to function or live independently
This just isn’t a kid living in the basement and playing a lot of video games who is having trouble in the modern job market admittedly there are a lot of of those and admittedly the job market is absolutely terrible for almost every entry job
These kids are a bit beyond that with severe autism or other behavioral issues that mean that even without complimented emotional issues, they would never be able to live on their own and they would always need constant care
And given that almost all the adults, I know work or at least almost all the adults I know under the age of 75 or 80 work full-time
And most of them are not worth five or $10 million
I’m not sure how you deal with that and the social services exist but they’re not at the level people truly need
And given that all the adults work now, there’s no neighborhood full of people whose job is housekeeping, childcare, family, keeping, and all that who can sort of trade-off
So if I were at the right age to even consider adding children to my life, and I wanted them, and I felt confident that I could probably be about as good as parent as most of the people I know
I’m still not sure given the financial risk if there are serious medical or behavioral issues that I would be capable of taking that on
I have met in the course of my life and work several people who were basically prisoners of their home because of the more extreme needs of their children or a child
And some of the children in these scenarios were already adults
And these people just didn’t have much support from their families or friends and I don’t blame the families or friends. That’s just the way it is. Everybody is over stressed.
That these parents love that child deeply and are completely committed. They certainly lived that way.
But that’s not a lie I would ever want to choose
Now, if I had a child and that turned out to be the situation, I hope and I believe I’m the sort of person who would do everything for that child, including giving up much of my selfish personal activities and interests
But having seen the affected head on these individuals, I’m not sure I would choose to put myself in that possible situation
Maybe it means that I’m emotionally deficient in some way or socially deficient in some way
But during the error where these things worked out a bit better, a lot of the women didn’t work and so they had access to communities of other women who didn’t work and had children
Nobody has stepped up to take the place of those communities and men certainly have an offered as far as I’m aware
In a situation where a child has extremely unusual needs it can turn into a full-time job where every shift is a double shift and where there is never a minute where you are not on call and there’s barely a minute when you can go to the bathroom
Now that’s extreme and unusual and the odds are that kids one has will be more or less normal
But I think I would not want that either. I think I like my life.
I also wouldn’t want to be one of those parents who was wealthy and just handed everything off. There’s an extreme example (EM) of that detachment living in Austin right now. WAY lots of kids and I wonder if he even knows all their names, but I’m sure he can afford them (in the financial sense at least)
I wonder what all those kids will think of him when they grow up
@f00l My kid (adopted) falls into the category of what you were afraid of. I don’t have a life even though she is (fake age) 34, (real age) 37 (see my post above). I didn’t go into this wanting to be a therapeutic parent. I wanted a family which I did not get. In retrospect it would have been better to have used a sperm back and dealt with my (in particular) mother’s opinion about unwed pregnancy.
Her kids are very troubled as well because she is a crappy parent, emotionally neglects them… I spent the summer teaching one kid (12) how to do basic things like hug back (no you don’t stand there with your arms limply at your side) and what it is like to have someone pay attention to you. When he left at the end of the summer we were hugging and he wouldn’t let go. Breaks my heart.
But with so many cancers, one with no cure and being followed for potentially two more I can’t take them in. They need someone in the generation of their mom to be their parents so they have someone for years (baring being hit by a bus) to help them feel anchored and to be there for them at 20 and 30 and 40 and beyond. My mom died last year and I now understand why my uncle, when his mom died at 99, exclaimed, “I’m an orphan” and meant it. These kids need the security of a family they can count on for decades and decades. Especially after what they have been through.
In fact the older two now, as of July 18, don’t live with their mom anymore. Someone else they know well, and is of the “right” generation, has guardianship of them and hopefully will get the middle child too sometimes soon but my kid doesn’t want to give up the 10 year old yet as she has her babysit the younger two. The youngest 2 kids are already in their biological grandmother’s house (where their biological dad lives too, but he is unemployed due to being on house arrest for low level drug dealing (yeah I know not ideal but their grandmother is the best thing that has happened to them) were my kid and all 5 grands were living recently.
This parent thing is hard. And it doesn’t stop when the kids are “adults”. My cats are what keeps me sane.
I DID want kids at some point, or rather, just assumed I’d have some… but…I’m 46, my Fiancee is 40, neither of us has any kids. …and at this point in my life, I’m kinda hoping not to have any.
yes, we’re middle aged, but we both have retail jobs with rather mediocre pay… not Terrible, not great… and we just bought a house. I’m too poor to be a parent! except to the four legged feline types.
My oldest is nearly 20 and my youngest is 6 months.
I love having kids.
I remember being in tears pregnant with my oldest worried about being invaded by another country… war… what I was bringing her into. I would have missed out on these two amazing decades of watching her grow up and the next few decades I get to still be on this Earth with her and the rest of them.
I learned a long time ago that allowing fear to run my life was not worth it to me.
4 yr old and 9 month old over here and we are absolutely terrified and burnt out. But it’s absolutely worth it. Idk what else I would do with my life that is even half as meaningful.
I was terrified at the age of 24 when I found out I was going to be a Dad. New wife, new career, family in 2 continents, still weaning myself from college / bachelor habits and lots of time consuming interests. And no sugar coating it, marriage and having kids was absolutely exhausting and frustrating a lot of the time. But our 2 kids were amazing; bright, talented, athletic, attractive, natural leaders, wicked senses of humor, and despite some setbacks, having a strong moral compass. Now they are talented professionals in good relationships and trying to make the world a better place. We have 5 grandkids having similar, maybe even better strengths. (Despite huge differences in interests, dispositions and challenges). And they all live less than a half hour away.
I couldn’t have been able to imagine at 24 how much I would love each of them. Now I can’t imagine life without them. Yeah, the world sucks, but I feel like we contributed a little something to make it just a tiny bit better. Certainly my little corner is better.
@mehcuda67 In reference to your first sentence… after trying for 2 years my sister said, when she found out she was pregnant (I was there when she found out), “I’ve changed my mind. Can I give it back?”.
I’m in a weird stage of transition from parenting teens to parenting young adults… It’s challenging and stressful but it’s also so cool. I created these actual human beings with my body and now they’re their own people with their own opinions and skills and senses of humor and everything. It’s amazing. 12/10 no regrets
I wanted kids more than anything back in the 80s and 90s when I still thought it was possible. I only wanted 8 of them if that explains anything. Unfortunately I found out when I was around 33 that it wasn’t a possibility for me due to medical stuff, severe endometriosis. I was crushed but fortunately I had already met my guy when his son was only 14 months old, and he had custody 5 days a week including every weekend. So while I didn’t have full control and the same responsibilities as I would have had if he was born to me, I most definitely enjoyed being there and taking care of him. Those were the best years of my life!
I can’t say I’d want 8 kids today, not in this world, but I’m pretty sure I’d at least like one or two. I just love kids too much not to have any at all.
My 29 year old niece is going through this dilemma right now. Her husband wants at least one but she doesn’t see it happening. She’s looking at it from the side of her child won’t have any living family after she’s gone. No cousins or even any other extended family. She’s got a good point, it wasn’t something I had ever thought of. She has very long days and a busy life with 7 horses, an Equestrian business where she teaches riding mostly to children, while also being a full time HS earth science and agriculture teacher.
For HER, right now, having her own children isn’t a priority but she’s still got time to change her mind.
Either way, whatever she decides, she’ll continue to make children’s lives BRIGHTER and BETTER EVERY DAY!
I’ve come to see through everything she does that there’s so many more ways to make an impact on children’s lives other than having them yourself!
Glad mine is grown and glad she and her spouse decided to be DINKs forever.
It’s a fucking sad world we live in.
Mine owned her own computer, technically, when she was about 5. It was an old Apple ][+ with an old TV as a monitor. So she grew up with screens but …
@Cerridwyn that would probably be worth a fortune now; could even pay for a college education. But when I was in college, “reg fees” were $250-$400 a quarter.
Personally, I always want to raise kids… as long as I can return them back to their parents.
Well lets just say at times there are good reasons why some species eat their young. Like this evening. And she is grown.
The answer is we thought we “had to” as it was the cultural norm at the time, but we both were around 40 already. Both excited and terrified, mostly the latter. Turns out for a medical reason, it didn’t work. But the reproductive endocrinologist (did not know there was such a thing) said maybe we want to consider adopting a girl from China, which was a thing at the time. Not that it would have been bad at all, but facing 15+ years of driving to schools and PTA meetings and soccer practice just seemed like maybe too much to sign up for. And with my work we were enjoying business trips to Europe, which would have been out the door, basically. And realizing we would be in our 60s pretty soon. A lot of people I worked with were already becoming grandparents at the time.
So my wife is enjoying spending time with a great-niece and great-nephew, which as you say you can borrow and then return them.
@pmarin I was 41 and my wife was 39 when our youngest was born. We were definitely some of the older parents at her various school and extra-curricular functions. But she turned out to be an amazing kid (and now an amazing adult).
My kids (4 of them!) are all healthy, self-sufficient, college educated and employed adults now, happily living their lives in various parts of the US.
@macromeh
My 5 are all grown now and out of my house. 2 of them married and only one grand kid. Just remember that they are now the ones paying into Social Security so that the fund doesn’t go dry before you die! Also, the younger generation will be the ones that take care of you when you get older and need a caregiver; if you don’t have family then it’s someone else’s kid that fills the spot!
@jkawaguchi
I’m perfectly fine paying someone else’s kid to wipe my butt. Plus, I am saving for retirement under the assumption that Social Security won’t exist by then.
@jkawaguchi @kittykat9180 Yeah, I would definitely not have a kid just to make sure I had a caregiver. For starters, that doesn’t always work out; kids move away, start their own family, have their own lives and problems, etc.
And tbh, as I watch friends in my cohort dying long before retirement? “What will happen to me at 80?” seems like an increasingly unlikely problem to be faced.
@brainmist @jkawaguchi
My parents have two kids. My brother will spend the rest of his life in prison, and I moved to Europe.
Having kids didn’t guarantee them anything.
@brainmist @jkawaguchi @kittykat9180
EXACTLY! There’s NO guarantee that your children will be around or available to take care of you. And, I can’t think of anything worse than having children just so you can think they’re going to wipe your butt and be your nursemaid!
This hits a little close to home for me and I’m probably more angry than I need be…
My BIL is doing just that, stifling and controlling his kids so they’ll be available to take care of him and I find it disgusting!
He and his wife have raised 3 kids and have limited their education. Two have minimum wage jobs and one is physically breaking his back working for his parents lawn care company but refuses to work 40 hours a week, can you say selfish and lazy…
If you guessed that he came from the son that won’t work a 40 hour week and starts his day at 11am you got THAT CORRECT! Like father like son! 
Two of them are living in homes that he purchased but they aren’t kept up, (I’d NEVER live there) no regular maintenance and they pay cheap rent. By the time the parents die the houses will most likely be ready to be demolished!
The third child, he’s 40 and the youngest, is still living at home and always has. He’s already being made to care for his father who is 65 years old and help his mother with anything physical. In my opinion It’s a sad situation!! They’ve taken their kids lives and manipulated them to fit their needs.
They also have one of their grandsons living there, at 15 or 16 he’s a HS dropout and refuses to do anything but sleep all day, no job, no money, and no future plans for anything productive!
SO YEAH, I think SOME PEOPLE should definitely think twice about WHY they are wanting children, and some people just SHOULDN’T BE PARENTS!
Rant over.
I guess the eternal optimist in me says I would still choose to have kids. It seems to me that you are contributing to the hopeful betterment of society if you raise kids to be caring responsible adults. It takes time for societies to shift direction. I have hope that the US will course correct (as well as many other places in the world).
I didn’t want them yesterday, I don’t want them today, and I won’t want them tomorrow.
I had elective sterilization after undergrad.
@kittykat9180
Way to plan and execute!
Parenting is one of those things that not everyone wants to undertake. I have the utmost respect for those people who decide that and then stick with it.
@chienfou
Agreed and thanks.
You’d be surprised how many people get angry about my own life decision.
@kittykat9180
As Carl would say… Fuck 'em!
@chienfou @kittykat9180 … and thanks to the elective sterilization, now you can! (Among consenting adults, presumably. )
@chienfou @kittykat9180 Ugh, yeah. How can people who decide not to have kids be so “selfish”?
But no one can seem to explain why it’s selfish to decide I don’t want a kid… and then not have one. Seems like it’d be a lot more selfish to have a kid grow up being unwanted.
@brainmist
Right? Selfish to who exactly?
My response is always “if that’s true, isn’t it a good thing I don’t have kids?”
@brainmist @kittykat9180
In truth they’re the ones being selfish. Probably just looking to shore up the number of people paying into their social security eventually.
@chienfou @kittykat9180 I think a lot of people had kids because they felt like they had some obligation to fulfill, and seeing that no, you can actually just choose to not do that, makes them feel cheated somehow.
I do think everyone has an obligation to future generations. But that can be so many things OTHER than bringing more babies into a very messy world. Like supporting public schools and libraries, affordable childcare and healthcare, and environmental conservation/ rehab with your efforts, taxes, and votes.
@brainmist @kittykat9180
Absolutely. That’s sort of like we taught our kids (yes we did have them). Whenever we would go camping we always made them clean the campsite and leave it in better condition than we found it. The same goes as adults now. Leave the world a better place than you found it. Love your neighbor. Help the less fortunate. Be a champion for the powerless.
In short… Don’t be a dick.
@brainmist @chienfou
In reality, nearly everything we do is for selfish reasons, even the decision to have kids or to not have kids.
Although it is true that some people never realized that it was a choice. They just grew up knowing that having kids is what you do when you become an adult.
@brainmist @chienfou @kittykat9180 I spent years not wanting children. I didn’t think I was “mature enough” for that responsibility (not to mention I wanted kids who were old enough to wipe their own butt, dress themselves and feed themselves as someone else more or less said). In fact I offered to be a surrogate for my cousin and his wife knowing that there was no way I’d change my mind and keep their child.
It took until I was far older until I finally decided I was ready. I adopted a nearly 10 year old (was told she was 5 and when I said 5 year olds don’t have permanent eye teeth, was then told she was 7) because my parents would have freaked out if I used a sperm bank and didn’t think it was worth that. As others in the extended family had adopted I knew that was acceptable (there are 5 other adopted kids between all my cousins).
Turns out she was 9 years and 11 mo at 38 pounds and 42 inches tall. I didn’t realize the extent of corruption in international adoption, although I was well familiar with what goes on in domestic adoption and was a foster adopt foster parent in 3 different states. I spent 5 years trying to adopt locally and every time a 2 parent home study came in I lost the accepted referral. So I finally bagged it and adopted from Asia,
I wanted a kid clustered in the ages of her cousins so that she would “fit in” more. Had I known her true age when the size of a 4 year old she would no be my kid as I knew that that level of long term malnutrition creates incredible life long problems which is what traps me in the armpit of the nation trying to keep these kids out of social services. I am not raising 5 kids ages 4-13.
It has been incredibly tough having her as my child. And there are plenty of times I wondered, “What was I thinking?”. Would I do it again? Not with this child, but then again we don’t know what we “get” so to speak until it is too late. Had I known she was nearly 10 she wouldn’t be my daughter as it would have been clear she would have had extensive malnutrition brain damage (well had she had a traumatic life in her home country too which left it’s mark so had full blown reactive attachment disorder, mood disorder, oppositional defiant order and significant trauma…) and I hadn’t gone into this wanting to adopt a severely special needs kid. But of course you can’t change the past.
@Kidsandliz
Wow, i’m surprised you didn’t back out when they couldn’t keep her age straight.
@kittykat9180 I didn’t find out how old she really was until she had been home six months and found her birth mom. In 1998/9 not as much internet about stuff like this to really realize what goes on. they just said paperwork error. I was dumb and believed them.
There were sibs I turned down that I was told were 6 and 10. An illiterate 10 year old with no English was more than I thought I could handle (the joke was on me though). It turned out those kids were really 14 and 16.
@Kidsandliz
Maybe I am misunderstanding.
I thought you said originally they told you she was five and then when you were hesitant, they changed the story and told you she was seven.
@kittykat9180 they told me she was 5. Someone who was over there sent me an informal photo where she was smiling and I saw she had adult eye teeth. I challenged them on her age. They said, oops, paperwork mistake, she is 7. Dentist told me that is possible but not all that common. I also challenged them on her height and weight. They said south asian people, on average, shorter. I was looking for a kid 5-8. Then 6 mo after she was in my home someone found her birth mom for us and we found out she was actually 9 years and 11 mo old when adopted.
@Kidsandliz
Which brings me back to my previous comment.
“Wow, i’m surprised you didn’t back out when they couldn’t keep her age straight.”
@kittykat9180 I had already paid $4500k and 5 or 7 was in my age range I was looking for, the explanations sounded reasonable, including checking with a dentist at this end. Had it not been I would have declined the referral and lost that money and not had enough to finish an adoption. In retrospect, of course, I would have rather lost the money and not adopted at all rather than adopted the kid I did and ended up, which has meant so far a life time of problems, some of them serious.
But I don’t have ESP and unfortunately you can’t just walk away. Or at least I couldn’t/can’t. And trust me, I thought about disruption multiple times but I had a responsibility regardless of being lied to. And that facilitator finally did get her due. Lost her beach front property in Hawaii, ended up in federal prison for visa fraud, etc., and that shut down the country for adoptions but that was several years later. And, of course that didn’t solve my particular issues.
@Kidsandliz @kittykat9180
Wow! That’s a lot to ‘unpack’!
I never wanted them
Things to do with my upbringing and my personality and emotional habits, and the thought that I would not make the greatest parent way back when
By the time I got past much of that and thought I might actually be a decent parent I still didn’t want a child. I guess I’m just too selfish. I like my own activities and so forth.
Also, the landscape for parenting has changed so much in many households women still do 90% of the work or more
I don’t care to do that work if I’m doing it alone, but I’m in a partnership
Also, I know an awful lot of people who … this seems to be a modern thing for some reason a recent thing …
Have kids with fairly severe mental or emotional or behavioral problems that show up in early childhood and can never really be mitigated
To the point where these parents never even get a second off to breathe
And there is very little chance, the kid will ever be able to function or live independently
This just isn’t a kid living in the basement and playing a lot of video games who is having trouble in the modern job market admittedly there are a lot of of those and admittedly the job market is absolutely terrible for almost every entry job
These kids are a bit beyond that with severe autism or other behavioral issues that mean that even without complimented emotional issues, they would never be able to live on their own and they would always need constant care
And given that almost all the adults, I know work or at least almost all the adults I know under the age of 75 or 80 work full-time
And most of them are not worth five or $10 million
I’m not sure how you deal with that and the social services exist but they’re not at the level people truly need
And given that all the adults work now, there’s no neighborhood full of people whose job is housekeeping, childcare, family, keeping, and all that who can sort of trade-off
So if I were at the right age to even consider adding children to my life, and I wanted them, and I felt confident that I could probably be about as good as parent as most of the people I know
I’m still not sure given the financial risk if there are serious medical or behavioral issues that I would be capable of taking that on
I have met in the course of my life and work several people who were basically prisoners of their home because of the more extreme needs of their children or a child
And some of the children in these scenarios were already adults
And these people just didn’t have much support from their families or friends and I don’t blame the families or friends. That’s just the way it is. Everybody is over stressed.
That these parents love that child deeply and are completely committed. They certainly lived that way.
But that’s not a lie I would ever want to choose
Now, if I had a child and that turned out to be the situation, I hope and I believe I’m the sort of person who would do everything for that child, including giving up much of my selfish personal activities and interests
But having seen the affected head on these individuals, I’m not sure I would choose to put myself in that possible situation
Maybe it means that I’m emotionally deficient in some way or socially deficient in some way
But during the error where these things worked out a bit better, a lot of the women didn’t work and so they had access to communities of other women who didn’t work and had children
Nobody has stepped up to take the place of those communities and men certainly have an offered as far as I’m aware
In a situation where a child has extremely unusual needs it can turn into a full-time job where every shift is a double shift and where there is never a minute where you are not on call and there’s barely a minute when you can go to the bathroom
Now that’s extreme and unusual and the odds are that kids one has will be more or less normal
But I think I would not want that either. I think I like my life.
I also wouldn’t want to be one of those parents who was wealthy and just handed everything off. There’s an extreme example (EM) of that detachment living in Austin right now. WAY lots of kids and I wonder if he even knows all their names, but I’m sure he can afford them (in the financial sense at least)
I wonder what all those kids will think of him when they grow up
@f00l My kid (adopted) falls into the category of what you were afraid of. I don’t have a life even though she is (fake age) 34, (real age) 37 (see my post above). I didn’t go into this wanting to be a therapeutic parent. I wanted a family which I did not get. In retrospect it would have been better to have used a sperm back and dealt with my (in particular) mother’s opinion about unwed pregnancy.
Her kids are very troubled as well because she is a crappy parent, emotionally neglects them… I spent the summer teaching one kid (12) how to do basic things like hug back (no you don’t stand there with your arms limply at your side) and what it is like to have someone pay attention to you. When he left at the end of the summer we were hugging and he wouldn’t let go. Breaks my heart.
But with so many cancers, one with no cure and being followed for potentially two more I can’t take them in. They need someone in the generation of their mom to be their parents so they have someone for years (baring being hit by a bus) to help them feel anchored and to be there for them at 20 and 30 and 40 and beyond. My mom died last year and I now understand why my uncle, when his mom died at 99, exclaimed, “I’m an orphan” and meant it. These kids need the security of a family they can count on for decades and decades. Especially after what they have been through.
In fact the older two now, as of July 18, don’t live with their mom anymore. Someone else they know well, and is of the “right” generation, has guardianship of them and hopefully will get the middle child too sometimes soon but my kid doesn’t want to give up the 10 year old yet as she has her babysit the younger two. The youngest 2 kids are already in their biological grandmother’s house (where their biological dad lives too, but he is unemployed due to being on house arrest for low level drug dealing (yeah I know not ideal but their grandmother is the best thing that has happened to them) were my kid and all 5 grands were living recently.
This parent thing is hard. And it doesn’t stop when the kids are “adults”. My cats are what keeps me sane.
I DID want kids at some point, or rather, just assumed I’d have some… but…I’m 46, my Fiancee is 40, neither of us has any kids. …and at this point in my life, I’m kinda hoping not to have any.
yes, we’re middle aged, but we both have retail jobs with rather mediocre pay… not Terrible, not great… and we just bought a house. I’m too poor to be a parent! except to the four legged feline types.
My oldest is nearly 20 and my youngest is 6 months.
I love having kids.
I remember being in tears pregnant with my oldest worried about being invaded by another country… war… what I was bringing her into. I would have missed out on these two amazing decades of watching her grow up and the next few decades I get to still be on this Earth with her and the rest of them.
I learned a long time ago that allowing fear to run my life was not worth it to me.
4 yr old and 9 month old over here and we are absolutely terrified and burnt out. But it’s absolutely worth it. Idk what else I would do with my life that is even half as meaningful.
Four kids, all adults now. For a laugh, I like to watch their reaction when I tell them:
“Just remember, I used to change your diapers!”
I was terrified at the age of 24 when I found out I was going to be a Dad. New wife, new career, family in 2 continents, still weaning myself from college / bachelor habits and lots of time consuming interests. And no sugar coating it, marriage and having kids was absolutely exhausting and frustrating a lot of the time. But our 2 kids were amazing; bright, talented, athletic, attractive, natural leaders, wicked senses of humor, and despite some setbacks, having a strong moral compass. Now they are talented professionals in good relationships and trying to make the world a better place. We have 5 grandkids having similar, maybe even better strengths. (Despite huge differences in interests, dispositions and challenges). And they all live less than a half hour away.
I couldn’t have been able to imagine at 24 how much I would love each of them. Now I can’t imagine life without them. Yeah, the world sucks, but I feel like we contributed a little something to make it just a tiny bit better. Certainly my little corner is better.
@mehcuda67
In reality, that’s all we can ask for or expect…
@mehcuda67 In reference to your first sentence… after trying for 2 years my sister said, when she found out she was pregnant (I was there when she found out), “I’ve changed my mind. Can I give it back?”.
Looks like my schedule is pretty much booked for the next couple of days. Maybe check back next week?
I’m in a weird stage of transition from parenting teens to parenting young adults… It’s challenging and stressful but it’s also so cool. I created these actual human beings with my body and now they’re their own people with their own opinions and skills and senses of humor and everything. It’s amazing. 12/10 no regrets
I wanted kids more than anything back in the 80s and 90s when I still thought it was possible. I only wanted 8 of them if that explains anything. Unfortunately I found out when I was around 33 that it wasn’t a possibility for me due to medical stuff, severe endometriosis. I was crushed but fortunately I had already met my guy when his son was only 14 months old, and he had custody 5 days a week including every weekend. So while I didn’t have full control and the same responsibilities as I would have had if he was born to me, I most definitely enjoyed being there and taking care of him. Those were the best years of my life!
I just love kids too much not to have any at all. 
I can’t say I’d want 8 kids today, not in this world, but I’m pretty sure I’d at least like one or two.
My 29 year old niece is going through this dilemma right now. Her husband wants at least one but she doesn’t see it happening. She’s looking at it from the side of her child won’t have any living family after she’s gone. No cousins or even any other extended family. She’s got a good point, it wasn’t something I had ever thought of. She has very long days and a busy life with 7 horses, an Equestrian business where she teaches riding mostly to children, while also being a full time HS earth science and agriculture teacher.
For HER, right now, having her own children isn’t a priority but she’s still got time to change her mind.
Either way, whatever she decides, she’ll continue to make children’s lives BRIGHTER and BETTER EVERY DAY!
I’ve come to see through everything she does that there’s so many more ways to make an impact on children’s lives other than having them yourself!
@Lynnerizer
nicely thought out!
@chienfou
Thanks!