Recently, I had a revelation. I’m not going to have children. Big news, I know, but the real revelation came in the idea that, if I wasn’t going to be a mother, I must be destined for something even greater.
I have several friends who have big dreams. One has a natural ability for spotting new musical talent, another would love to quit her accounting job and become a landscape architect, and at least two others would love to go back to school and earn their degrees. But they all have children and their obligations prevent them from following their hearts. For some, their dreams are on hold for now, but for some, they’re on hold forever.
We don’t have those obligations. Yes, we have bills, partners, jobs, and assorted other things we have to do, but we don’t have other human beings relying on us for food and shelter. In a lot of ways, it’s very freeing.
Several of you have already made a leap in your life and gone back to school or changed careers, but let me ask you: If you could be or do anything you wanted, what would you do? And if you’re not going to have children, are those things now a real possibility?
My husband and I are in the process of adding onto our house. My husband thought it was a perfect time – to keep us busy…keep my mind off not having kids. When we were going through the IVF cycle, I worried how we could do both. Now I don’t have to.
Now that we won’t be having kids, our plan is to take an awesome trip (probably more expensive than we could afford if we had kids) every summer when I am not teaching. And our latest plan that we are super excited about is to start saving (again, more at a time than we’d be able to if we had kids) in order to buy some property and build a cabin on it. If we had kids, this probably wouldn’t be able to be done until we retired, if at all. It’s still some years off, but it’s a lot closer than it would be otherwise.
Not having children – I ended a successful career, have been and plan on extensive travel, and plan to retire early.
Wow!! I love these plans. I think we need to add somewhere to post photos of all these fabulous plans.
One of the biggest ideas for me is that I can now live anywhere I choose. I can even live in two different places if that’s what takes my fancy. I do like the idea of writing my blog posts from a small French cafe.
Fantastic! I have been thinking 2 places as well, and living a nomadic lifestyle for awhile. I would like to learn another language, and I think I should learn from the natives, LOL.
Yeah, I’ve seen it so many times throughout my life: Women (actually, lots of men too now that I think about it) feeling pangs of ennui, feeling trapped by their obligations, as if life had passed them by…Remembering they once HAD dreams in life, but because they started a family, life shifted to such a high gear they either put it aside or unknowingly forgot about them. Only for them to realize years later that they’re still there, only now they have to be put off or in some cases realize that it’ll never happen and just declare them as dead altogether.
I think the childfree community has a term for that:”Breeder’s remorse”.
It’s also that dawning epiphany of realizing that by having kids, they bought into SOMEONE ELSE’S dream and it’s not what they really wanted, but something they ONLY THOUGHT they wanted. But of course, by then it’s already too late. So sad to see happen. Especially to your own friends
:.(
Actually, I’ve noticed with the increase of unplanned pregnancies, the number of parents who appear to have contradictory feelings about parenthood:(confessing to loving their children YET AT THE SAME TIME WISHING they were not their parent) is on the rise. Is there a correlation between the two? Or is that just something more parents are having the stones to confess nowadays? Something to think about. Maybe that should be your next topic to blog about *lol*