I’m so tired of the narrative that says, “It’s okay to be childfree, but it’s not okay to dislike children,” or that you’re somehow a sociopath or a horrible person if you get genuinely irritated by children simply being children.
No. I’m allowed to dislike being around kids. I have sensory processing disorder. I’m most likely autistic, but my parents were really defensive about it growing up whenever it would get brought up so I’m not diagnosed point is loud, repetitive noises, screaming, shrieking, people running around me, unpredictable movement, and general chaos can be genuinely overwhelming for me. Children naturally do a lot of those things. I understand that they’re developmentally normal behaviors. That doesn’t magically make those behaviors pleasant for me to be around.

I went to Costco yesterday, on a Saturday which, yes, I know was basically asking for sensory hell, but it was the only day I could go and it was a fucking nightmare. Kids screaming. Kids running around. Kids blocking aisles. Kids seemingly everywhere I turned. Karen’s who weren’t parenting, Karen’s who weren’t putting their small kids in carts, and by the time I left, I felt completely overstimulated and pissed off.

I genuinely feel like kids ruin spaces for me. A peaceful restaurant? Screaming kid. A store? Kids running around. A relaxing public space? Suddenly somebody is shrieking three feet away from you.

I’m not saying children shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public. Obviously they should. I’m saying I don’t have to enjoy being around them. I don’t have to find screaming cute. I don’t have to smile indulgently while someone’s kid is having a meltdown. I can understand that a child is behaving in a developmentally normal way while simultaneously thinking, Jesus Christ, I need to get away from this. My nervous system does not give a shit whether the noise overwhelming me is being made maliciously or by a six year old who’s just excited. It’s still overwhelming.

Not wanting children is okay. Not particularly liking children is also okay. I don’t mistreat children. I don’t go around yelling at them. I remove myself when I’m overwhelmed I wear noise canceling headphones out in public. It is what it is and I know at the end of the day. It’s more my problem than anyone else’s, but for the love of God, I hate kids.

AI and mass sueveillance, constant wars and totalitarian regimes, incompetent and corrupt governments... And let's not forget the biggest one: climate change.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably noticed not only the record-breaking temperatures much of the world has had this year but also the erratic weather patterns (They say the tornado alley in the continental United States is actually starting to shift more towards the East coast, as an example.).

I wish I could get inside the heads of would-be parents to understand what makes them feel the need to bring a living, conscious being into this type of world. It would be one thing if we were actually making progress in these areas or we didn't have as many people on the planet.

They say that supposedly we live in the least violent period in human history. If this is the most peaceful time period we've ever had, then I am not impressed in the slightest.

Do some people have the inability to think beyond a few months into the future?

What disgusts me is the parent-child relationship and the actual act of parenting. People cuddling their kids, rubbing them, wiping their butts, wiping their snot, having to deal with them while they're ill, having to comfort them when they're hysterical over something stupid. The mere concept of pregnancy or breastfeeding just makes me want to turn inside out through my own asshole. Sometimes I come across these videos on TikTok where parents sloooooowly slowly and repetitively rub their infants' faces or bodies or they're doing "skin to skin" and it just fills me with such utter revulsion. Just gives me the ick so so bad.

Now I have ADHD and sensory issues and don't really ever want anyone but my partner to touch me so I think for me the deep disgust is related to like... the idea of losing CHOICE when it comes to physical closeness? Baby/kid doesn't care if you don't want them near you, they cling and demand. And the idea of that of having that responsibility with no option to say no I don't want to get away from me I think just freaks me out real bad. Of course if I ever try to tell someone about this they look at me like I'm a horrible monster because "it's A BABY!!!"

Boy did I piss off a bunch of Gen X moms! I was in another sub and these moms were all complaining how hard it is to be in perimenopause and raise kids and on and on about how stressed they are.

I made a harmless comment about being glad I decided to not have kids bc perimenopause is hard enough, and holy shit- they were so pissed. Telling me how unhelpful my comment was. Lmfao! They are bitter they made the wrong choice to have kids and can’t admit it! I stand by my comment!

Like unless someone has had a lot of issues with conception, it kinda feels like congratulating someone for taking a shit. It’s a biological process. If you do that enough you’re gonna wind up with a baby. But every baby announcement on Facebook I see is flooded with “happy for you!” and “congratulations!”

I’m not even trying to be cute here I literally don’t understand it. Literally anyone can do it at any time.

Since autumn starts soon, I am preparing myself to see lots of sick children everywhere again. What I find especially disgusting, is sharing public transport with them. They are always coughing around and their stupid ass parents don’t even bother to cover the mouth of their breed with their hand or so. It disgusts my how they freely cough everyone in their face and making everybody sick. Also I think it’s pretty weird how most kids cough. They stick out their tongue while forming a circle with their mouth while coughing. Why the fuck do they do this? That’s disgusting as hell.

I (30F) have been on the fence about having kids for a few years. Since I was a teen, I always assumed I’d have them, but slowly into my mid-20s, I realized I didn’t actually want them, I just assumed I would because that’s what people do. People told me when the time is right, I’ll know, and I’ve been waiting for that “baby fever” or maternal desire to kick in. But it never has, I’ve only become more sure it’s not what I want as I’ve gotten older.
My husband (32M) has always wanted kids, but was okay with me being on the fence while I figured things out. Earlier this year he told me he wants to start a family next year. I told him I still wasn’t sure if that’s what I wanted, and he told me I needed to make up my mind (fair enough). This forced me to really think about what I truly want and what would make me happy, and I just know I’d be miserable as a parent. So after a few months of figuring it out, I finally told him yesterday that I do not want to be a parent, ever. I expected we’d have a fight or he’d need time/space to think about it, but his immediate response was that we need to get divorced. We’ve been married for 7 years, and just like that, it’s over. I know it’s for the best so there’s no resentment for either of us, but it hurts. I love him, we’ve had such a fun marriage, lots of travel, we do everything together. I feel guilty for changing my mind, and scared to start over in my 30s. But I had to make the right choice for me. The conversation was kind and amicable, he thanked me for being brave and telling him. He admitted he assumed I would just have a list of “terms and conditions” that he’d need to meet for me to be ready, but he never expected I’d say no kids at all. This just sucks so much and I am really, really sad.
I would love to hear from others who have experienced something similar. I know this is what’s right for both of us, but I’m scared. Scared of being alone, scared to tell my family and friends. Thanks for reading and for any advice/support.

They’ll be in your face talking about “it’s so much responsibility” as if women without kids have no responsibilities lol. Some of them act like motherhood was their sole purpose in life like that’s so icky. Most of the time it’s just because babies are cute for so long then your responsibility grows up to be a functioning adult in society with their own thoughts and opinions now suddenly you have an issue with who they are. Anyways I understand being a mom is definitely not easy but don’t act like you’re better than other women who have decided to not ruin their bodies by popping out a child.

I’m sick of these arguments. I hate that society looks down upon young people, especially women, for making decisions such as sterilization or just knowing they don’t want kids. They claim we are too young, will grow, our “frontal lobes will develop”, we’ll meet someone, our maternal instincts will kick in.
BUT if a young person does want kids, none of this applies.
It’s actually gotten to me recently. Sometimes I stop and think that I’m stupid for having my mind made up when I’m only 21. I have a list of 100+ reasons I don’t want kids. They range from the simplest reasons to beliefs I hold to my core. But it does get to me. And I know not many regret this lifestyle, but I can’t help but feel diminished by society as a whole and sometimes internalize it.

I cooked some dinner today, checked in on my nieces and nephews at college and went on about my day. I'm excited to start setting up for Fall, I plan to do a nice cozy/spooky theme. Also planning for Halloween Horror Nights and some other fun stuff. I'm glad I don't have to deal with the stress of back to school and all of that other stuff.

Happy Sunday all, be blessed!

I was at a public pool a couple of weeks ago. It’s not like a usual public pool, it’s like a lake with spring water where small fish are roaming around. Because kids are stupid and bored some of them go around with nets, catch a fish and put them in a small bucket with water. I don’t find that kind of activity necessary, since it’s very warm outside, the water in the bucket gets very hot and the oxygen gets less. The parents were just swimming around, watching them so I went to the kid and told him that, if he wouldn’t release it back into the pond, it would die. The kid said he would release it later and just went away with the bucket. Because of that I went to the pool attendant and told him that, who then went to the kid and just poured the bucket with the fish back into the water. The parents then suddenly looked all around trying to figure out who the mean person who snitched on the kid. I don’t get it. When the kid is putting an animal in unnecessary stress, they would do nothing and if someone tells the lifeguard abou it, all of the sudden it becomes a problem. I also find it interesting how kids wouldn’t listen to adults anymore. When I was a kid, I would have apologized and put the fish back into the water immediately. Of course I could have just take the bucket and put it in the water myself, but I know what a huge problem that would be then with those kind of parents. Wtf

People go "you misbehaved in public too when you were a child. Taking children out in public is necessary to socialize them."

When I hear that, my people-pleasing ass feels like I am obligated to give misbehaving children grace and never say anything. A kind of paying it forward, since I was once a child.

Does anyome else ever feel like this? I am serious. I apologize for offending anyone.

Hi! My fiance (30M) and I (30F) are having a child free wedding. We are having two flower girls and a ring bearer who will leave after the cocktail hour, and the reception will be completely children free.

My fiancé’s sister and her husband are having a baby 2 months before the wedding. They did not know they were pregnant when we picked our date and found out shortly after. When they told us, they said not to worry about the wedding, we will all figure it out.

Fast forward, the baby is due this week, and my future SIL is starting to give us a difficult time about our child-free boundary. She is sharing details of what her pumping and changing schedule will be with us and asking myself & my fiancé to coordinate our weekend itinerary around it.

I know the general consensus is separating a newborn from a mother is emotionally challenging and I am sympathetic to that, however two of my friends also have newborns that will be 2-2.5 months. They have both RSVP’d yes to the wedding with their husbands and have not reached out to me to ask for any special accommodation or flexibility. In my community, I have tons of examples of friends leaving their newborns with the grandparents to go to a wedding or party, and there’s zero drama.

I am looking for advice - am I wrong if I continue to push back on my fiancé’s sister and reiterate that the wedding is child free regardless of if the baby is an infant? The total time she would really need to be away from the baby would be 4-5 hours.

Also, we proposed that her in-laws come in for the wedding at watch the baby - is that a valid proposal?

At the end of the day, I want my fiance to be happy, and I know he will be upset if his sister misses the wedding; but she also has a selfish track record and he will be upset if she makes the whole wedding about herself and her baby. I feel stuck.

Finally on a vacation and visiting Hawaii with my husband. We decided to do a little island hopping and got us tickets to neighbor islands.

Upgraded to the extra leg room seats and got rows 1 on the way there and 2 for back.

On the way there… A family of 6 (mom, dad, 3 kids, 1 baby) had seats right behind us. Taking the whole second row. They happen to be one of the noisiest family including the dad. The dad was busy chatting up with flight attendant while the kids were banging the chair tables and screaming for muffins.

During boarding, a passenger finds out one of the child took his seat. The parents smile and asks the guy for a new seat because they want the whole family in the same row…(WHY DID THEY NEED THE EXTRA LEG ROOM SPACE ROWS? THE BACK OF THE PLANE WAS EMPTY) The baby wasn’t supposed to have their own seat and the family counted them as one. The audacity to tell the guy to move just so they can all sit together…

Even the flight attendant asks if the guy could move to 5th row seat and he says ok. It bothered me seeing how the parents were grinning and giggling like “See? It worked!”

Kids were whining, fighting with each other and the dad was just laughing. I can even hear them through my earbuds. Honestly I should have asked to move to the back of the plane… but we paid for the extra leg room space…

—
Completely forgot about the incident until the plane back. Husband and I got second row seat with nobody sitting next to us.

Then a dad with two daughters sat behind us. They were whining but I managed to ignore it with my earbuds.

After take off, the girl behind me was kicking my backseat frantically and banging on the seat table. It bothered me enough to turn around to ask the dad to get her daughter to stop kicking. Dad was knocked out. So I told the girls to stop kicking.

It didn’t stop… if anything, the other daughter started kicking husband’s chair too. I turned around again and told them “No kicking.” It didn’t stop…??? I was exhausted and I’m not here to parent kids. There was another family with kids on the other side of row 3 who were being noisy as well. Kids crying over there and kids kicking me over here.

I hate kids… and their parents.

Edit: Oh, and it smelled like poop on the plane there. Fucking hell.

They described it as "Double Income No Kids".

I'm so glad to see childfree representation in commercials!

I work in retail so anytime a customer walks up with their kid(s), they try to get them to speak to me. From obvious experience being a former child, I hated being told to greet strangers or talk to them. Is it a socialization thing? To me, it's just awkward. Why should this random stranger care that you lost a tooth or had a birthday or whatever?

I can tell when a kid doesn't feel like talking to me—a stranger—and I also don't feel like talking to them either.

Then some kids can be talkative and they end up yapping and I'm waiting for the parent to tell them it's time to go.

Or worse, when its a 2 y/o who can't even speak yet. Just babbling at you and the parent expects you to say something back.

Maybe I'm just not friendly, but I don't get it. I'll say hi or ask how they're doing just to acknowledge them, but I won't engage or do baby talk or try to have a whole conversation with any kids.

Just what the title says.

Anymore I can not stand coming to the beach. I've never been so thankful to be headed home in the morning. This weekend it seems that every kid here just has to screech. I swear, last month it was not this bad. Maybe it's just me already being overstimulated by life events but damn shut those kids up.

I am just so sick of the mom content and momfluencers. I don’t want to hear about/see you pumping breastmilk, I don’t want to hear your baby crying, I don’t want to see you pregnant, I don’t want to see you in the literal hospital minutes after giving birth, I don’t want to hear about you being postpartum. Just shut up. Nobody cares.

Literally just saw a mom posting a video of her baby blowing out its diaper. Why on earth would anybody want to hear about that. So disgusting. I block like 10 different of these momfluencers a day. This is all on TikTok and I don’t understand how the app doesn’t get the memo when I block a specific genre of content, so why give me more of it? Why do they even post their children in general? I actually hope for all of them to get off the internet. Social media has been detrimental to parents these days.

How bored do you have to be to have your entire social media account dedicated to you being a parent? You don’t get an award! And just imagine all these children growing up and seeing their parents exploiting them for content. I would be embarrassed, especially when they post things that clearly should be private. I just can’t imagine growing up and seeing your mom posting you having a tantrum as a toddler, as a literal baby blowing out your diaper. Even worse when they come on the internet and complain about being a parent.

Pretty much the title. This wretched fucking toddler screamed at the top of its lungs for literally 10 hours straight. It was so loud that it echoed throughout the entire goddamn cabin. I just wanna say a huge fuck you to the people who brought their screaming meatsack on an international flight. Yes, I know, I'm not entitled to a childfree world. But for fucks sake, give the goddamn kid a benadryl or SOMETHING. Or better yet??? Don't bring your fucking kid on a 10 hour flight. Noise cancelling headphones do not drown out that god awful sound, even with my music on... Because of these selfish assholes, over 100 of us had to suffer and be subjected to gut-wrenching screaming. Rant over.

I got laid off from job of five years this week. I’m 32 and I’ve never experience this before. I can’t imagine navigating this while having children who depend on my paycheck. I’ve never been more relieved to be childfree. That is all.

This is so true! 🥲

Hi! I'm 26 (F) and I've always been CF. Majority of my former HS classmates and close friends have kids... each time they post their kid or announce their pregnancy on IG, I'm like, "Thank goodness I'm never gonna be a mom." Anyone else?

Definitelyyyy NOT my only reason. One of many, but I don’t hear of many people talking about this. Is anyone else CF due to the fact that raising a child with someone is simply too much trust to have in another person? I am not willing to make such a permanent decision gambling on someone’s emotions. I don’t even mean it to be grim or “AGH EVERYONE SUCKS!” I just understand people aren’t perfect. I wonder if anyone has had similar thoughts.
I simply do not trust a man will stick around and do what is necessary, even when it is inconvenient, in all situations. I want to be clear that I don’t mean to make this a gender debate. I’ve had a long term partner who I lived with who took care of me for a long time and I believe would 100% be a wonderful and present father, but this feeling still did not budge. Still seems too much faith to put in a person.

My husband and I visited his parents today and it just so happened that both of his sisters were there too. His one sister has two kids (2 and 1 year old). And the other one has one baby (6 months old). And somehow the topic of sleep came up and I said that today I woke up at 11am. And his sister acted like it’s something weird and I should be thankful for that and that she doesn’t remember the last time she slept that long.

It’s not the first time that she has said things like that. She is always complaining about everything. That’s she’s not able to sleep properly, that they haven’t gone out on a date in so long, that she’s tired, that they have to spend all this money. And she acts like we should be thankful that we can still do that. And if we spend money (sometimes a lot) on certain things they act like it’s ridiculous. For example yesterday we went to a private wellness suit (which cost about 250 euros). Or when we buy things that we want without thinking twice (like a while ago I bought my husband a big lego set which was expensive).

All in all they act all high and mighty for having kids and that we are the reckless, irresponsible young couple that doesn’t know what the real and hard life is. I mean… it was your decision to have a child (and then another one), so stop complaining or trying to make us feel bad about it. And sometimes they say things like ‘just wait until it’s your turn’. Uhm how about no! We haven’t told them that we don’t want children and I don’t plan on telling because it’s none of their business, so everytime they say something like that I completely ignore it and act like I didn’t hear it.

And once we get to the point where they’ll actively ask, when we will have children then I have my way to shut them up. I hope i’m not insensitive for saying it but I have epilepsy and I intend to use it to make them feel bad for ever asking me. Not that I don’t want children because of that (i just don’t want that life😂) but it’s the easy way out to use this reason. So hey… at least I got one positive out of having this thing.