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 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 !humor@lemmy.world

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 :)

First of all, I find this picture hilarious regardless of whatever. It was in a healthcare textbook, baby reflexes.

Also, sorry I didn't know how to rotate. Is it something easy on this app, Jerboa? I'm clueless

Anyway, thought it could be good material for one of those "what people think child free is vs what it really is".

Listening to a book..."Sapiens". Author talked about how dependent kids are. How compared to other animals, our babies need alot of support in the early stages of life.

Like alot of you I'm sure, I've got a fair amount of kids in my life...none of "mine" but some kind of are. I guess my point is we may not have kids, but really, they are all our kids, as supported by evolutionary biology, it takes a village.

Edit: Going a bit deeper...the author explains that for millions of years, while we were tribal, nomadic gatherer/hunters. We didn't know who's kids were who's, obviously the mother was primary caretaker, but, circling back, we evolved to raise kids as a community, not so much of the "traditional" mom/dad/child dynamic popular today.

I don't plan on "having kids" but still, I think it's all our responsibility (hopefully a partially enjoyable one) to help. Hard to argue anything more beneficial for our societys future than having well developed youth.

Going to a parent friend's birthday with many of our friends who have kids, so there'll be a gang of young, screaming kids...

A bit of a rant, pre-sorry but so sad and annoyed right now.

Went to my favorite barber shop today. It's built on being nice, upscale, and men's haircuts. They do the works, good cuts, beard trimming/shaping, hot towel, the whole thing, and it's built to be man's place, they have a pool table, they have a couple of kegerators, they'll pour you a whiskey while you wait. Very nice.

(Note I say man's but really if you're a woman/any other gender and you like that sort of thing, then awesome. I mean man in the masculine sense)

Until recently this was my favorite place, but apparently it's gotten on the mom groups online and now the last few times I've gone it's just filled with children and moms. Where I could go and get a whiskey while I wait and find someone to shoot pool with, now kids are literally running around and as for the pool table they're just throwing the balls around. Meanwhile the moms are either talking with each other or hovering over Bradley getting his hair cut and how cute it is.

On top of it all, because there was a group of them instead of my normal 20 min wait it was almost a 2 hours wait. I just walked out.

I'm just so tired of it, this place obviously was built for adults but god forbid we have any adult places that aren't "actually meant for children". I mean obviously it was built for children, there's 2 kegs and a shelf of nice scotch but yes, bring all of your children here.

How come every place that used to be for adults is now a child zone? My favorite breweries used to be great places to let off steam after work and now I have kids playing tag in the middle of them. I flat out don't go to movies anymore because even the super late showings are just dumping grounds for inattentive parents to leave their kids. And god forbid you ever mention outside a community like this that you want to drink a beer without a kid running around or you're literally the devil who should be shunned.

Anyway, this isn't going anywhere specifically, I'm just really sad, and I didn't get my haircut today.

...feedback welcome! 🙃

Feel free to post all your off-topic questions, issues, achievement and other stuff here - go wild!

In addition to teaching lots of private lessons and directing three teenage performance groups, I also direct an adult band, which currently has eight people between about 30 and 70 in it. I'm 28 and my codirector is in his 30s, but this week, he was out, so the school owner guy, who's in his 40s, subbed for him, making me the youngest person in the room by a margin of at least ten years.

In past iterations of this adult band, we've had some non-parent members, but right now, everyone in the band is a parent, and the owner guy also is, so this past week, I was also the only non-parent in the room, so naturally, everybody was passing around Father's Day well-wishes. And inevitably, one of the moms asked me, "what about you, teuast? Do you have any kids?" So of course I said no, and she said "Oh, not yet."

Not yet. Lol. I have a vasectomy and a girlfriend with a bisalp.

I did tell my girlfriend about it and she was suitably derisive, but in the moment I just let it slide off me. Nothing to be gained from explaining what's going on with my balls to a bunch of geezers at my work who I'm not sleeping with. And it's not going to come up again for at least another year, because, again, at work.

I’m pretty close with this person outside of work and we used to have good non-work conversations but now I feel all I get is stories and photos of her children. We work in a tight knit team so I can’t really avoid them.

I got no less than 3 updates this weekend about a sports event with her kids including photos; more photos and another update about said event this morning; another photo of another child; updates about what her toddler was doing, and updates about how her kid made the track and field team and she absolutely needs to take time off work to go.

I don’t ask for this and I don’t really respond when she does it. I prefer to talk about other things. We used to talk about other things and now it’s kids 99% of the time to the point where it feels really one-sided. I tried to talk about a concert I went to this weekend and got really lukewarm reception.

I’m thinking I need to tone it down and say goodbye to the relationship/chit chat for a while? I feel if I tell her bluntly I’m tired of hearing about her children it will hurt her feelings. Any ideas?