Originally posted by mickeyboat
Truthfully, I have wondered why some people choose not to have children. Not that it is any of my business, mind you, and not that there is anything wrong with that. My father and mother were divorced several years ago and my father married a much younger woman (3 years older than me). My dad has had a vascectomy and has made it very clear that he doesn't want to have any children. She understands this completely and agrees, but I often wonder how she came to the decision that in order to spend the rest of her life with the person she loves, she would have to give up having children.
Denae
I am the same way with my BF. (We have no plans on getting married ;that opens up another bunch of nosy, obnoxious questions from people too, whom I usually respond to by saying we are not religious, don't want to be legally bound to each other, I've already been through an ugly divorce).
I would like to have a child, but he refuses and so I know it's either him or have a kid with someone else.
I don't want to be with someone else. So that pretty much means, no children for me.
And no, he will not change his mind about this ever and has made it quite clear to me that as happy as he is with me, if I decide I want a child, he leaves the picture and I will have to find someone else to have the child with. He is 32.
His primary reason is money and he does not want to alter his lifestyle at all for a child. He has actually said, it's not even the young kids, he loves babies and small children but he knows he would not have the tolerance and patience to deal with a teenager.
We BOTH love other peoples kids. I HATE IT when people assume that because we are not having kids that we must hate kids. That is the farthest thing from the truth. We oooh and ahh at every cute baby we see, we spend lots of time with our neices and nephews.
MY primary reason for not having children is money. I don't have the finances now to raise a child to my standards. If I had a child now, we would be living a very tight life, unable to have nice things or travel and we would be getting by on the bare minimums.
That is just not how I want to raise a child. Perhaps it is because of my upbringing that I have high standards for how I'd want my kids to live. I grew up in affluence, I was lucky enough to have wealthy parents who gave us everything.
But I am not my parents.
I know you don't HAVE to have a lot of money to have a happy child, but I do not want to raise a child in poverty. I know wealthy people can suddenly have something come up and lose all their money , but that is different than knowingly having a child that you KNOW will go without a lot because you don't make enough.
I refuse to explain myself to strangers (except those on the DIS of course! 
) and always say - "All I ever wanted was a little angel - now I've got her, why on earth would I want another!!!!!"
Why, if you don't have a baby right away after getting married, does that mean you won't have kids at all? Some people! We would jokingly tell people we didn't want kids, we like going to Disney too much, etc. We knew all along we'd do it, eventually. 
