I´m sure in this thread we are all pretty much agreed;
1. If you want children it´s for you and your partner to decide.
2. Some people make good parents, some don´t.
3. If you are lucky, life is full of benefits whether you have children or not.
If ladyislingering has felt pressure to have children, that can be uncomfortable. I´ve seen it from parents eager for grandchildren, and like any family disagreement you have to diffuse it or confront it as best you can. Pressure from outside the family is pretty easy to laugh off, I imagine. In fact in many European countries that kind of social pressure disappeared about 50 years ago.
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Originally Posted by ladyislingering
I suppose I've been very fortunate in the respect that I'm not yet 30 but have a clear and precise image of everything I want (and everything I don't). Just because other people are on the fence about some things, well ... that doesn't matter to me. Better to be in-between than rushing into some bull**** you're probably going to regret later (e.g.; children)
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^ I thought this remark was a little provocative, because it seems to suggest that there´s a commonplace connection between bull****, regret and children, although that particular combination is just one of many possibilities.
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... but some of us live in a comfortable black and white state of mind - we already know what we like and don't like, and I sort of feel bad for people with too much grey but they'll figure it out eventually.
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^ As someone who has been wrestling with grey all his life, this comment really surprised me!
Yes, sometimes grey is confusing and can leave you feeling directionless, but ambivalence has its advantages too; keeping an open mind, not commiting yourself until you have to, debating, assessing new evidence. Stuff like that is what the whole edifice of modern science is based on.
The great thing about grey is that your options stay open, and I would say this to any young person who is deciding against having children; qualify your declaration by saying, "I don´t want children
at the moment." Because things can change, and your own feelings can change, regardless of how strong and certain they may feel today. (That certainly happened in my case; across a period of about fifteen years, the benefits of my child-free existence, which I had enjoyed for so long,began to feel hollow and repetitive, so that I was ready for a change even before I became a father.)