"You are heartless and have no soul."
"What is the matter with you?"
"You'd make wonderful parents!"
"You must hate kids then."
"So why did you bother getting married at all?"
"You can always adopt."
"Who's going to take care of you when you're old?"
"You'll change your mind."
"Don't you want to give your parents grandchildren?"
"It's different when it's your own."
"Don't you want to carry on the family name?"

Those, my friends, are what we call "bingoes." Just a few of the lovely questions and comments people tell Scott and I when they find out we don't want kids.

A friend of ours was talking to us the other day about how he was afraid of turning forty and being unmarried and no kids (he's in his early thirties now). Jokingly I turned to Scott and said, "It's pretty awesome you'll be 40 this month and have no kids. It's worked pretty great for us!" The friend sighed heavily and said, "Yeah, and I think that's so sad. You two would make great parents."

Oh for the love of...

I thought I would take a minute and explain this apparently foreign idea of why Scott and I chose not to have children for those of my readers who don't know. While I acknowledge that getting married and not having children is certainly not the norm, especially in this area, I will shout from the rooftops that parenting is not for everyone.

Simply put, I have never wanted kids. I just never had the desire.When Scott and I were dating and discussing marriage, I told him I didn't want children and wanted to have surgery to prevent pregnancy from happening. He agreed, he didn't want kids either, and agreed about the surgery. We got engaged soon after and began making plans. I told him I was looking into getting a tubal and he told me not to, that he would get a vasectomy instead. What a guy, huh? He had the surgery a month before our wedding and thus began our wonderful marriage!

Fast forward 8 1/2 years later. We still stand hard and firm on our decision.

There are a lot of reasons why we, as a couple, don't want to have children. Our most important one is that we don't want to give up the life we have together now. I feel like something is compromised between a couple once they have children and I don't want that to happen to us. Don't get me wrong. I know quite a few couples that have kids who get along great together and have great marriages. But I think there is an intimacy that's lost once a child is in the picture. Your focuses are now split and your life as a couple is not the same anymore. I feel the friendship is lost or is dimmed (a lot of times) and you become less husband and wife and more Mom and Dad. For those that have kids, that's perfectly fine. They've made that sacrifice. For us, not so much. I love that my home is just Scott and I and I wouldn't give that up for anything.

Another reason I don't want kids is going to make me sound like a great-great-great-great grandmother. I feel that my generation has made a mockery of parenting. Parenting has been replaced by friendship. It seems the parents don't want to parent the child anymore and want to be their friend instead. Along the same lines, I feel they have made children far too fragile anymore. We are living in an age of everybody wins, no F's in school, no red ink correcting papers, and whatever you do, don't say no to children. What the heck? I wasn't raised like that, nor was Scott. None of my friends had parents like that. To this day, I love my parents, but I still respect them as parents, not friends. My generation is raising a generation of kids who have no idea how the real world works.

That said, there is no way I could parent with mentality running amok. Like I said above, not every parent is like this, and not every child is a raging brat. DO NOT think that I believe every child is evil. I don't. I have nieces and nephews and I love them very much. I'm not painting every parent in this light. I'm just explaining why we chose not to have kids.

When asked if I have children a lot of times people respond with a sad, "Well, you know you guys could always adopt." That is one of those killer annoying platitudes that well-intended folks heap on people with disabilities. I have not had any kind of fertility workup to see if my equipment works, but I am perfectly capable of carry a child to term. Most people assume we don't have children because I can't have them. That is as frustrating as being bingoed for choosing not to have children. We are not childless, we are childfree. There is a huge difference.

I know this seems ranty and angry, but it really is just a vent. I've had a lot of, "Why don't you have kids?" situations pop up lately and I've been feeling the need to vent. I am a healthy woman whose body is my own and it will never grow a human being. I don't have the desire to be a mother, frankly, I don't understand the desire, and that's okay. We are a nice family of two and we are going to stay that way. It would never occur to me to ask someone, "Why on earth did you two decide to have kids?" It's just as rude to ask a childfree person why they decided not to.

Thanks for reading my vent!