The Childlessness Issue in New Beginnings

Last week I was having lunch with some of my coworkers. For a couple of days every month end close, my department orders a lunch for the accountants. It’s a nice perk that kind of compensates having to work late. My coworkers and I usually eat lunch together in one of the conference rooms. During this particular meal, the conversation turned to one of my more elderly coworkers, Travis, whose youngest daughter recently got engaged. Travis remarked how he missed being a father when his daughters were little. Most of the other coworkers in my group have children, some who are fully grown and some who are still in elementary school.

Listening to nearly everyone else talk about how much they love their kids and being a parent made me wonder if I’m a nihilist. I don’t want kids. Well, that’s not especially true. I don’t like to say I don’t want or like kids. Doing so comes off very ogre like. I just don’t want to be a parent. I really, really don’t want to take that plunge.

When I was younger, accepting that desire was easy. Of course, when I was a teenager who decried he didn’t want children, whoever I was speaking with would say, “Oh, you say that now, but one day you’ll meet the right girl, and she’ll change your tune.” Actually, I think my mother was the only one who said those exact words to me, but even most of my peers, especially the female ones, would parrot a similar remark. At the time, I was put off by the arrogance they had, or at the arrogance that I perceived. The notion that these other people knew what I would want more than my self made me want to wretch. Looking back, I can’t really blame them. If having children weren’t the normal, none of us would be here. Undoubtedly, among the many people who have children, a not insignificant portion must have believed they would remain childless. I had a very pretty, quiet, bookish friend early in college who vowed she couldn’t stand children, and she took the plunge into parenthood during her mid twenties. Still, some of those people must have never changed, and I think I fall into that group.

During my college and mid twenties, not wanting to be a parent was still easy. Especially during college, most everyone who could have kids doesn’t want to, so they understand the drawbacks that turn me off of parenthood. I think that’s why they were less critical. Granted my late twenties were marked by unemployment and isolation, but even when I worked in Atlanta, most everyone kept that collegiate attitude towards not wanting children.

As my age climbs into my 30s, my choice and desire makes me increasingly feel like a grain of salt in a pepper shaker. People who previously didn’t want kids have grown bored with their normal lives. Women, especially, are succumbing to the alarms of their biological clocks. Finding a woman who’s doesn’t want children at my age is daunting enough. Even those who are undecided don’t seem to want to risk becoming emotionally invested in someone who at least isn’t open to the idea. Even among those who share my goals, that’s already a rather small group, and finding someone I’m otherwise compatible with in terms of values, religious beliefs, other goals becomes that much more difficult.

I even wonder if I’m really as committed to not wanting children as I say. When I was younger, I’d pledge to get a vasectomy as soon as I graduated college. I didn’t, but I figured that was more a result of not having any romantic possibilities, so it didn’t feel imperative. I wonder if I could or should do it, but then I think about all the experiences that made me not want children. First off, not that my family was particularly disfunctional, but we weren’t exactly a 1950s sitcom. If anything, we were probably about half way between the Cleavers and the Bundys, granted we were at the upper middle class economic level. I remember my mom being exasperated with my sister’s and brother’s rebellious years that seemed to stretch on indefinitely. I remember being nervous and awkward and how so many of my peers tortured me because of it. I hear people’s views that children as angels, but my recollection was that they more closely resemble asshats. I think about how after that huge unemployment ordeal I suffered, I’ve finally become able to establish a comfortable, if somewhat solitary, life, and I don’t want to risk ruining that happiness by becoming a parent. I don’t want to turn into my screaming dad or crying mom. I think about how one of my old friends who was dead set in wanting to have children, two children, got what she wanted, and now she spends so much time griping on Facebook about how hard it is. I wonder if that’s what becomes of people who knew that they wanted children, how could someone like me come out on top. I think about all the articles on Scary Mommy that make parenthood seem like a waterslide through the seven rings of Hell.

Just as convincing are my thoughts about the good stuff about my life, too. I think about sleeping in on Saturdays, keeping a clean house, not worrying about my finances, being able to be charitable, reading books in the quietness of my home, planning meals how I like, and playing PC games all day while I bingewatch Netflix. I’m happy, perhaps modestly so, but happy nontheless. Perhaps, after all that grief I went through during the recession, just having this much happiness seems like paradise, and it’s a paradise I’m not willing to risk even if it makes me feel like Quasimodo to the 90% of the rest of society.