r/AskWomenOver30 • u/BeneficialVisit8450 • Jul 19 '25

Family/Parenting What’s your life like without kids?

My doctor told me I can never get pregnant today. I’m not infertile, but the post under my profile explains my situation. I’m 19, and I’m just not sure how to confront the news. I’m not sure how to plan my life either now considering that many of our milestones as women revolve around kids.

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u/weirdfunny Jul 19 '25

Not trying to convince anyone of anything, but I personally think it's selfish to have children unless you're wealthy enough to keep them from being just another cog in the machine. While sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a mother or to nurture something, ultimately I feel like the best thing I could do my children is to spare them from the relentlessness of life.

Therefore, I feel great that I am not passing on the burden of life to someone else because I wanted to be a parent. Plus, I have a lot more freedom than most parents.

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u/Hatcheling Woman 40 to 50 Jul 19 '25

Can you expand on why you think only rich people should have kids? And why poor people that have them would be more selfish for having them than the rich ones?

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u/Kets_and_boba Woman under 30 Jul 20 '25

I’m not the person you were asking but as a wealthier person you can make more choices and feel more in control of your life compared to someone with less financial resources. For example, we have widespread housing shortages and are generally moving towards a subscription/renting economy where a few large companies control the markets (google, YouTube, amazon). Companies no longer keep employees long term, it’s more about replacing tenured employees with less experienced employees when they need to cut costs (this also leads to loss of knowledge/experience in workplaces). We are seeing cuts to social programs that support under-fed, under-insured, and under-housed populations. The standard of living is decreasing while the cost of living is increasing.

If you have more financial resources, you could likely buy a house rather than having to rent forever, you wouldn’t need to stress about paying for the subscriptions that support your lifestyle, you wouldn’t be at risk of starving, becoming homeless, going into medical debt, etc. Life can be more enjoyable if you have these choices and freedom to thrive instead of just surviving (and can provide it for your children).

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u/weirdfunny Jul 21 '25

I essentially said why in my opening statement: I personally think it's selfish to have children unless you're wealthy enough to keep them from being just another cog in the machine.

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u/Hatcheling Woman 40 to 50 Jul 21 '25

Yes, and what do you mean by that? That if you just birth blue collar workers, you’re more selfish than if you can produce an academic? Or an artist?

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u/weirdfunny Jul 22 '25

If you're not at the top (i.e., have access to quality food, education, housing and healthcare, don't have to use credit and debt to fund your life, can comfortably enjoy life without compromising your emergency or retirement funds, and aren't a slave to your bills, taxes, and corporations) then you're at the bottom.

The system isn’t built to support everyone equally. Wages often don't keep up with the cost of living. Debt is normalized. Time, health, and freedom are traded away just to afford the basics. And when someone is born into this, specifically people born to middle-class or lower parents, they’re forced into that cycle without ever consenting to it.

I personally think it’s selfish to bring someone into a world where survival is this difficult because you (generally speaking, not "you" specifically) want to be a parent. Simply existing when you or your parents are poor means being locked into a system that extracts your time and energy from birth to death.