It’s hard to know the day that both my wife and I decided to remain childless. Maybe it wasn’t a day. Maybe it was over a year or two. I think I was the first to come to the realisation. My wife went through her own journey to come to the same conclusion. It would be naive of me to think that my decision didn't affect hers. I had tried to be in the middle but I had always said if you don’t have a strong urge to do something then don’t do it.
For me, my youth was a nightmare, at the time I felt I had grown up with parents I didn’t want, going to school I didn’t need, spending time with other school children that I couldn’t stand, all at the same time as my family being poor. At the time I felt I was living in purgatory. The feeling when I think about having kids brings up those same thoughts from when I was young. For me it seemed unfair to anyone to suffer that and the only way to do that was to raise the child differently. However this means someone not working to cater for home schooling, which then meant less money, which then meant less life exploration.
Was the sacrifice worth it? My thoughts said no.
Obviously parents who absolutely feel the need to have a child should do so if their circumstances permit. In a way I sometime think about what it would feel like to have that feeling but I can never fully make the connection. I can’t speak of my wife’s process but I had ensured her that I would support whatever decision she wanted. If she wanted a child we would have one and I would be the best father ever. However her decision, eventually, was also not to have one. I do wonder if my lack of a positive force affected her decision. I suspect it did. In retrospect I may have changed how I would have done it. Maybe re-iterate and discuss it more often than what we did.
I’d say we talked about I occasionally, but maybe we should have talked about it regularly.
In the end, I think we’re both happy with where we are. We both didn’t want the same life as everyone else. We wanted the opportunity to explore and enjoy freedom. We’re still married happily and we both enjoy each others company. Sometimes when you don’t have something you don’t really know what you are missing out on.
