My husband doesn’t want kids: how do I cope with his choice?
My husband recently told me he definitively doesn’t want children. I knew he’d been leaning that way over the past few years so we’ve been waiting. Silly me, I’d always thought he’d eventually change his mind. If I’m honest my heart is quite broken. I’ve always looked forward to being a parent. How do I move from wanting a child to child-free?
How we’re re-building a life without children
I’m not a parent, but I want to be. However, after five years of trying to get pregnant and going in circles about the pros and cons of adoption, my partner and I decided it was best for us to stop trying. We’re not preventing pregnancy, so there is still a chance, but the statistics are not on our side given the amount of time we’ve been trying and our respective ages.
That was two years ago. Here’s how we’re moving forward with a life without children when we planned for them in our lives…
Gifts to welcome your newly announced childfree friend into the fold
Being childfree (as in, choosing not to have children for any number of reasons) hasn’t been and still isn’t well accepted in a lot of circles, particularly more traditional ones. So the decision to declare yourself childfree to friends and family can be met with a lot of push-back.
If you find yourself in a situation where a friend has told you they have decided to be childfree, perhaps you’d like to give them a token of support, and these childfree gifts are an awesome solution. Whether they’ll be a traveling adventure-seeker, an kick-ass aunt or uncle, a devoted fur parent, or none of the above, there’s a way to say you support them at every turn…
I’m grieving for the kids that we now can’t have. How do I cope?
We’ve discovered that my mental health isn’t anywhere near as stable as I thought it was. And we had to make the difficult decision to stop trying to get pregnant. I know that this is the right choice to make, for my sanity if nothing else. But I feel like I’m grieving for the life we planned, and the kids that won’t be a part of it. Any advice?
Scars, costs, and regrets?: My tubal ligation FAQs
A few women have asked me about my tubal ligation, including a couple media outlets like ABC News and Huffington Post. As sterilization with the goal of never reproducing now seems to be a hot topic, I thought I would discuss a few frequently-asked questions. I hope this information helps other women who are thinking of making this decision for themselves.
How do I talk to my Child-Free partner about maybe having kids?
My husband and I have been together for five years, and married for almost one. Up until recently, neither of us have ever wanted to have children. We’ve made this perfectly clear to all interested potential grandparent parties. However… I’ve recently started to think about having kids more and more, and it hit me the other day that I would very much like to have a kid.
Will I resent my partner if we never have kids?
My feeling has always been that I love my partner and I want to be with him, and that that trumps any hypothetical kids I might have with some hypothetical other partner that I could hypothetically find if my partner and I weren’t together any more. But now I’m starting to worry that I’ll resent him if we never have kids. I certainly wouldn’t want to pressure him, though — having kids with a partner who didn’t want them would be worse than not having kids at all.
I’ve gone from Child-Free to confused and now I’m grossed out
In the break rooms at work, over lunch, next to coffee pots or in store aisles while shopping for high gloss paint, I have proclaimed with unwavering conviction to at least a hundred people: “I never, absolutely never, want kids.” This stance has come to symbolize a lot more than my choice on children: it represents my autonomy, my position in (or not in) various social spheres, and, to some degree, my rejection of conventionality. And thus, my recent confusion about whether or not I want a kid has felt like a lot of very unpleasant things.