I Don’t Want Children: A Gentleman’s Perspective

Until we’ve healed completely, and are emotionally and financially competent, we’re better off not subjecting ourselves to having children. No?

If you’re reading this, by now, you might have some experience with the most primal of nature’s biological programs — the creation of life. If not, maybe I’ll say something here that makes you rethink having kids. While I’m not here to convince anyone that having children is the wrong thing to do — we’re all here because someone laid down and made us — I do want to challenge the idea that having kids is an essential part of a desirable adulthood.

I’m a 35-year-old guy who likes women. In fact, I’ve liked them all my life and I still don’t have kids. Sure. I’ve thought about them. But I’m not convinced they’re necessary. Why? Besides being expensive and time-consuming, children require the deepest investment in their financial, emotional, and mental well-being.

Whatever the reason, many adults are not healthy enough materially or emotionally to provide this level of investment. When we create children prior to being ready, the results are fatherlessness, single-motherhood, depression, suicide, poor education, poverty, etc. We want to avoid these plagues on society.

(M.O.C) Money Over Children?

USDA cost estimates of raising children from birth to 18 years of age are over $230,000 ($12,777/yr). Although this number could easily be more or less, I’d bet that a fair amount of people, rich and poor, would if given the chance to decide before getting pregnant, reconsider having children in the following scenario:

You have a choice. You can take $230k now, lump sum, no strings attached. Or, you could raise a child that costs you $230k over the next 18 years. Initially, this offer would only be given to those who don’t already have kids. This is to give incentive to the age range of people likely to be more sexually active. The catch is, if you take the money, you have to wait 10 years from the date you receive it to have children.

This scenario raises questions. Would paying people not to have children really slow down birth rates? What about paying people who already have kids not to have any more? Subsidizing the womb? Insane right? When did life get so unpredictable that we need to pay people not to have children?

Obviously, you don’t have to take the money. You could decide you don’t want to have kids, or, you could have as many children as you want. If you choose the latter, you’d have to divert some of your energy from building wealth and self-development, to raising children. This is a reality for many people across the world and a large part of my reason for not wanting kids.

The burdens of parenthood make life a bit more difficult in terms of finance, and maintaining mental and emotional health. Add to this the potential torment of struggling to facilitate a suitable environment for the development of emotionally stable and healthy children. Headache-inducing variables work themselves into parents’ lives without fail and often create sheer havoc on their nervous systems. I ask if this is necessary.

I strongly believe that parents need to understand that the responsibility to properly nurture is a call for earnestness of intention. Commitment matters most when raising a child. The energy behind sex is an all-consuming fire and in a moment of passion, we can create an entirely new universe in bringing about the life of a child. During sex however, most likely are not thinking about the prospect of manifesting and developing a life.

Fix You Before You Have A Child

I’d say we all need to do healing work on our psyches before we create children. Many of us still hold on to traumas from our own childhoods. We harbor resentment towards those who’ve offended us and sometimes, we’re too stubborn to let go so that we can heal.

How can we carry this kind of negative energy for others and yet, hope to promote ideas of a better world to our kids? Children imitate what they see. Currently, they inhabit a world where emotional intelligence is sorely lacking. To experience uncomfortable feelings and deal effectively with them is an art of the highest form.

Create The Right Environment

The art of emotion management is simple to teach children because they are amazing ‘watchers’. Kids behave the way they see their elders behave earlier in their lives. Later, they become more concerned with how their peers behave in order to acquire social acceptance. Considering this, we have to set an example for children and show them how to understand their mental and emotional faculties. To do this, we first have to comprehend our own.

Children who come from two-parent households with parents heavily invested in their well-being demonstrate much higher levels of emotional intelligence and mental stability. They score higher on standardized tests and enjoy upward social and financial trajectories throughout their lives. No one would deny this is the path they prefer their offspring to travel.

Yet, if you have children before you’re adequately prepared, you risk handing a life of struggle and depression to your children. This isn’t to say you can’t have love in your home without money and a high degree of mental stability in your environment. You can. It’s simply that when you aren’t stable in your emotions and finances, raising a child proves to be much more of a challenge. Better to wait until you are settled.

Protect And Cultivate Young Minds

In a world with so much division over the birth, life, exploitation, and death of our children, we ought to consider the consequences of bringing life onto the planet. You can look up statistics if you like on abortions, child death rates by nation due to disease and malnutrition, or bullying and domestic violence towards children to see that we need to honestly look into what we are doing when we make a child.

Even in less extreme cases of neglect, children without the right guidance grow in ways we might not wish them. In affluent regions of the planet, places where people seem to have everything they need for a quality existence, doubt and strife commonly exist in the lives of its citizens. Uncertainty over financial security is a major cause of peoples’ frenzied actions. It’s also culpable for the manic levels of stress much of society exhibits.

In developed nations, immense depression — due to low job rates, political and social apathy, poor financial training, and lack of marketable skills — causes adolescent men and women to commit suicide in not insignificant numbers.

This occurs only because we do not foster the development of societies with high degrees of emotional intelligence. The mental stability of our youth is threatened in subsequent generations as a result. Until we’ve healed completely, and are emotionally and financially competent, we’re better off not subjecting ourselves to having children. No?

Final Thoughts

It’s ultimately up to everyone whether they decide to have children or not. For me, there is more I wish to do and logically, having children would make achieving my goals much more difficult.

I also don’t see children as a necessary part of adulthood. I think you can enjoy life just fine without the added stress that comes from raising a child. I don’t feel a biological urge to reproduce. Maybe this will change as I achieve more of my dreams. For now, I’m keen on thinking intelligently about the choices I make. Life already throws us enough curveballs. The home run is in waiting until you are capable of supporting a child and family effectively before attempting to do so.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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