I Am Childless By Choice
In my family there wer 4 children two boys and two girls. We had a pretty good life growing up in the 50's and 60's. My father was the breadwinner and my mother was busy raising the children. Occassionally my mother had part time jobs.
We were raised in the catholic church. At the time they emphasized getting married and having children. My brother and I started to say that when we got married we would have two kids or no kids. My brother had one child and then he got divorced. His second wife already had two children. He did not have a child with his second wife. My brother's child is a boy so there is someone to carry our name into the future. I really do not care about carrying our name into the future. That is something my father worried about. My brother took care of that issue.
I did not do much dating when I was growing up. I was very shy. Being 6'6" did not help. Eventually, when I was 28 I meant my wife. She is 7 years older then me. She was 35 when we meant, very close to the end of her fertility. We have been married for over 28 years and we are very happy.
When we got married we talked about having children. She had a child from a previous marriage. He was a very good step child. I got a lot out of being a parent to him. We had to work with his father. Rob, our son did not live with us during the school year. We had a lot of time to ourselves and we liked it. Rob is married and we have a grand daughter. Because they live in South Carolina and we live in Pennsylvania, we have had a hard time starting a relationship with our grand daughter. We had a good experience with her on our last vacation. It seems that we are going to start to build a relationship withher.
I think it is very stressful to get married. I do not care how much you love each other or how perfect everything is, it is a major life change. We wanted to give ourselves a few years to adjust to being married. By then my wife was 37 her fertility was coming to an end. My wife tried to persuade me to have a child. I just did not want to do it. At some point the discussion stopped and we decided to not have any children.
My wife was the bread winner, she made more money then me. She is a nurse. I was going to nursing school. When we got married I stopped out to work as an insurance salesman. I was not the best at that job. It took me aboout 10 years to finally go back to nursing school and graduate. I do not know how we would have afforded a child in the first 5-7 years of our marriage.
I like children but I have a very low desire to be a father. It just seems like it would be too much responsibility. In order to have a peaceful, low stress life I decided to not have children. My wife would have had a child with me but I did not want to have a child. I was not depriving her of the experience of having a child since she already had one.
Not having children is a big decision. I used to think about it a lot. I do not think about it now because there is no way that I could have a child with my wife. We are well past our fertile years.
My wife and I have had a good life. We have our health and so far we are still working. We will be paying off our mortgage and home equity loan in the next 24 months. Life is good. Hopefully it will continue to be good.
We will not have a child who can help us in our old age. Our son lives in South Carolina and we live in Pennsylvania. We will have to rely on ourselves.
I do not have any regrets about not having a child. I can not forsee any time I will say "Damm, I should have had a child."
