More on Why I'm Childfree

The last post about family size got me to thinking about my own experience. I used to get some flack for being childfree and was told that I was selfish or immature or foolish. How could I voluntarily forego the joys of parenthood and the many benefits thereof? Some infertile couples would kill for a child, and here we were wasting our eggs and sperm. Nowadays, being childfree is much more accepted.

Frankly, I just never saw the attraction, and the costs and pains seemed to me to outweigh the potential amusement that I might derive from having children. Besides, Mrs VF’s and my siblings didn’t seem reluctant at all for us to take their children off their hands any time we wished and to be entertained by them free of charge. That the nephews were, for the most part, godawful children reinforced our decision to live childfree. We did not want to take a chance that we might get stuck with even one child like them.

Being an uncle is way more fun than being a parent. The kids behave better with me than they do with their folks, because they soon come to realize that I don’t have to like them and that I will stop being so fun and generous with them if they piss me off too much. I can enjoy them a lot more knowing that I will have them around only for a very limited time.

My own childhood doubtless played a role in how I weigh the costs and benefits of parenthood. My father abandoned us, so he clearly didn’t value us very much, and my mother made it known that we had “ruined” her life. I think I reminded my mother of my father, because she never liked me very much. Right out of the gate, I was prejudiced against being a parent.

Also, I find children a little creepy. When they are babies, I don’t much like to be around them what with their drooling and stewing in their own urine and excrement much of the time. They’re as much fun as someone in a persistent vegetative state. And when they start walking around with their grubby little fingers and constantly running noses, they seem to me to be little more than vectors for various pathogens.

Once they become proto-sentient, which happens as early as five or so with some kids, I can abide them fairly well in small doses. I try to treat them as if they were people and to talk to them just as I would anybody else. Ironically, I am pretty good with children, and they seem to like me a great deal. I would have made a great father, many tell me. They’re wrong. I would have been a lousy father. I would have been a wonderful uncle, which I sometimes was and am, or acquaintance, but I would not have been much good at being responsible for the development of another human being. I admire those who chose fatherhood, but I wouldn’t want to trade places with them. I’m not that heroic.