cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/21819841

I don't always love his videos, but this one hits home.

I'm childfree for many reasons, but there are so many obvious ones - no one should be wondering why millennials are choosing not to have kids.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/18359129

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8929454

Homo sapiens has evolved to reproduce exponentially, expand geographically, and consume all available resources. For most of humanity’s evolutionary history, such expansionist tendencies have been countered by negative feedback. However, the scientific revolution and the use of fossil fuels reduced many forms of negative feedback, enabling us to realize our full potential for exponential growth. This natural capacity is being reinforced by growth-oriented neoliberal economics

Many decades aho I went child free mostly becase of this, it seems it's just getting worse.

Hi all,

As our community is still small and not overly active, I thought instead of trying to have a weekly or monthly chatter thread up as a sticky, we could try a perpetual one and see what happens.

So anything you feel doesn't warrant a post of its own, just put it here.

Cheers and take care!

I'm in my early thirties and adamantly childfree. I'm lucky enough to be in a long-term relationship with someone who brought up her desire to be childfree on more or less our first date. But I am not having too much luck with my friends from childhood and university - they all seem to be wanting kids, and learning of their pregnancies leaves me with a feeling of sadness. I don't hate kids and think no one should have them, and I am happy for them if they truly wanted this, but I also know what them having kids will mean - we are essentially putting our friendship on hiatus, and I still don't know whether waiting 10 years for the kids to be a bit more independent and not requiring as much attention will mean I suddenly have friends again, but somehow I very much doubt it. And I also don't want 10 years without other friends than my girlfriend. She is in very much the same situation, and while we are good at making the best out of not having kids and stressing about having them, we both would want to be able to hang out with good friends once in a while, both common between us, but also some that are exclusive to each of us.

My assumption is that this is quite common - so I am hoping someone would like to share some success stories in turning this situation around. :)

I woke up this Sunday and the house was dead silent. I had time to lay in bed until 9:30 AM or so. I went downstairs, ground my coffee beans, made a pour-over for myself with some toast.

I wouldn't have it any other way. There's nothing better than having this time alone to just sit and think. On weekdays, I can come home from work and actually have time to decompress and do nothing. I have time for reading and hobbies.

I thought I'd take a moment and count my blessings for being childfree.

What helped you make the decision to be child-free? How do I be sure about what I want? Looking for recommendation - resources, articles, books etc.

My partner just let me know he would be ready to start trying in a year. My head just spun. I am not ready now at 31 (as a woman and my clock is going tick-tock) and I don't think I will ever be ready. I am neither excited about the process of birthing nor does a crying pooping tantrum-throwing machine excite me!

Hi all,

Just thought I'd share my story real quick. I had a bilateral salpingectomy in March of 2020 (squeezed in just weeks before the big panini). All went well. I healed up and it seemed like everything was fine. Hell, my scars looked great! Well... Over the course of several months, and eventually years, it became clear something happened. I started getting really bad pain in my bellybutton area each month on my period. Then I started actually bleeding from my belly button each month. Then the pain became nearly constant, also coming on during ovulation too. I'm also allergic to bandage adhesives, so you can imagine the nightmare each month when I'd have to somehow manage the bleeding, but that's besides the point.

I'm now recovering from a surgery to remove the endometrial umbilical hernia, which I ignored for far too long. When they did my laparoscopic sterilization, the endo cells migrated where they shouldn't have, and reproduced. I'm childfree af but also an endometrial mess with a 3-4in incision/scar who will no longer have a bellybutton at all after this surgery (too much damage done by the endometriosis—it was not worth reconstruction according to the surgeon). Thankfully I wasn't big on bellybutton piercings, but still, it's unsettling to go in to a surgery not knowing they'll take a whole-ass part of your anatomy off that you're not expecting. It feels like some autonomy was taken from me there, but at the same time, I'd certainly rather have that than the amount of pain I was in.

I say all that just as a cautionary tale and food for thought. I still think that my snip was the best decision I could have made for myself so this isn't a "I shouldn't have done it and here's why you shouldn't either" post. I love being sterile. But I also wish I knew about this VERY MINIMAL but possible risk before I had my original surgery, because when it comes down to it, sterilization is a procedure of bodily autonomy—and everyone deserves to know the possible outcomes even if they're unlikely.

Open to questions. AMA.

Don't ask me for translation, just google Corendon xd

How do people in relationships make friends when you choose to be child free? Every other couple we know is having kids and I don’t care to come over to hang out when your kids are running around screaming. Getting lonely in our 30s

I'm feeling especially happy to be childfree and wanted to share. I have off from work and am spending the week home with my husband and dogs. The house is so peaceful. I'm getting in hours and hours of digital painting practice. I can't fathom why anyone would voluntarily choose to care for a kid for 18yrs, rather than have that time for relaxation and to pursue interests/hobbies. Working fulltime already makes me feel like I don't get enough time to simply enjoy life.

'I don’t come here to enjoy other people’s children!' Should pubs and restaurants be kid-free zones?

Children were once banned from most British pubs. Some owners and customers miss ‘the good old days’ – but can they really turn back the clock?

Like holy fuck do you not hear your kid screaming? Do you not have consideration for other fucking people? Or are you just so fucking useless you have zero ability to parent your child? I'm assuming the latter.

Fuck people.

I'm chilling in a hotel hottub, and there's a kid in the pool just screaming, fucking just screaming on and off at the top of their lungs, the sound just echoing off all the tile, it's fucking horrible, holy fuck.

Ughh, just really needed to vent that. Thank you. And fucking thank god they just left.

Fuck I'm greatful I don't have kids.

-edit-

New group of kids started floating around the hot tub bumping into me 😑 Asked them to stop, and then had to speak to their parents about it.

Hi folks, I thought I'd create some content and share some experience and learning around any concerns I had about being childfree in my first 10 years after my tubal. I hope this can help those that are at this stage now.

I will say that 35 years after my tubal, I realized in retrospect, somewhere during that time, that I knew in my teens I didn't want kids. I did go through a period, soon after my tubal at 24, of about 10 years where a lot of my friends tried to pressure me into either spending a ton of time with their kids or even adopt, where I wondered if I really wanted kids cuz I liked babies under 6 months of age. It wasn't until I got close to someone and her newborn, where I spent plenty of time with her kid over the next 3 years and she was TOTALLY accepting of my decision and NEVER pushed an agenda. I finally realized I truly lost interest in the kid after about 6 months of age and knew I wasn't interested, not because I was pushing back against acquaintances who were pushing their own agenda in opposition to mine, but because I JUST LOST INTEREST. It took a good, secure in their parenthood, friend to let me understand there was zero interest on my part.

As it turns out what I like about babies was the oxytocin hit from carrying them around, which I learned I could get from cats and small dogs, of which I have 2 now, and they stay small forever instead of just 6 months!

Been on Lemmy for a month or so and just found you guys. SO happy we have a Lemmy instance!!

Is there some federated way to re-create the childfree-friendly doctor list that the subreddit had, on here? Not that I need it anymore myself—I was snipped ages ago—but that was a resource that helped a lot of people.

Hello, I am a young CF man of thirty years. I want to hear from my elders CFs. How they were living in their thirties.

Crosspost from: https://lemmy.world/c/humor [email protected]

Greetings from Finland! I got my vasectomy yesterday at the age of 30. Starting from that age a Finn can get sterilized with just the approval of the doctor that's going to perform that surgery. That procedure was a huge relief in my life. It may sound weird to some but I rejected all kinds of intimate interest from women (even though I am a hetero male) until this point in life mostly because I always, since childhood, had that nagging fear of procreating which is something I really want to avoid as one could see 😃 Girls must have kind of thought I just don't really like females or something 🤣 Temporary contraception to prevent pregnancy is too unreliable to me in my personal case; I don't want a relationship where I would constantly worry about contraception failing. The contraceptive items could break, I couldn't know for sure if a woman has used her contraceptives; and some female contraceptives would carry too big of a health risk to her (I just cannot tolerate those risks to my prospective lady but want to cherish her).

I'll just have to wait a few months to hopefully get a negative lab test to show there are no cells to create offspring in that stuff. Then I can finally start looking for a spouse without fear of pulling a trolley around the balcony later on. I have realized lately that a relationship usually just doesn't work (not all cases of all people are such, however) if one of the partners is a childfree-minded individual and the other is not. So I think the only way to find happiness and longevity with a spouse in my case is to find a partner who is sterilized, too. I just know of too many cases of a person telling to their not-willing-to-reproduce partner that they don't want kids, either, and after basically building their life together, telling to that partner that maybe a kid would be a good thing after all and then divorcing.

This surgery was one of the best things to happen to me ever. I am really happy with my decision. However, some very conservative religious relatives and other such people around me might give me some nagging and whining if they somehow find out that I got sterilized. I still have my Christian faith like I used to, I just won't make kids. Marriage is not meant to be a Victorian era "Shut your eyes tight and think of England" kind of thing, anyway 😃

TL;DR at the bottom.

I (24f) am going through the legal elements of a divorce but have been separated for a few months now. I loved my ex husband, but before marrying I made it clear I didn't want kids and didn't want him to wait or hope for me to change my mind. He agreed and told me he would be happy with me even if I never wanted kids.

Just under a year ago he sat me down and told me he had been realizing more and more that he changed his mind and thinks he does want kids. I asked how long this had been happening, he said about a year. I already knew where this was headed, but thought I owed it to us to at least try. Months of therapy and thinking and talking and waiting for him to come to the same conclusion I had brought up to him and accepted pretty early on and we finally decided mutually that we would have to divorce. I didn't want him to stay with me and risk having any resentment towards me and feel unfulfilled, and I dont want kids. I don't know if I'll want them in the future, I don't think I will, but he wanted them ASAP so it was irrelevant anyways.

At least the separation/divorce has been amicable, but it was (and sometimes still is) incredible difficult emotionally. I'm grateful that his family didn't guilt me when they learned of the reason for the divorce, though the reason he gave for me being childfree was medical reasons which is only kind of true. Still, at least I didn't get any flak for it from anybody.

The guy I'm talking to now is vehemently childfree and it's great being able to freely make faces about or feel annoyed by children, not want to go to baby showers or baby birthday parties, and all other things that I used to feel alone in with my ex husband (and made me wonder for a while if he was truly childfree like me). Not to say you have to dislike children to be childfree, but I would often get a weird look about my attitude and discomfort around children.

I was never active on the subreddit but I'm making more of an effort to be active in the communities on Lemmy, so I guess hi everyone! How are you? Anybody here with a similar story?

TL;DR My husband changed his mind and I didn't so now I'm a 24 year old divorcée introducing myself and my story being childfree :)