Never in my life did I ever want to have children. Not everyone wants to have children, and unfortunately some women feel pressured to have them when in truth they don’t want this responsibility.

I remember when I was reading the book by Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love). She said that before sleep or in the morning (I don’t remember) she would be so stressed because she was thinking that maybe she got pregnant this time. I understand that.

Some women, when they see children, they start touching them, they think they’re so cute, and they become completely different in front of children. For me, when I see children, they’re like other beings. I don’t get soft or talk in a motherly way to them.

The thought that a child is growing in my stomach just doesn’t feel right. In fact, such a thought disturbs me. I would never, ever want to experience something moving or growing in my stomach. Yet for some women the thought that a child is growing in their stomach makes them blissed out.

Even my palm shows that I’m not supposed to have children. If on a woman’s hand the first rascette is bent upwards, it shows the weakness of internal organs and the possibility of dying during childbirth. The more raised the first rascette is, the bigger the risk.

Raised first rascette in a woman’s hand shows difficulty in childbirth.

So actually for me it would even be dangerous to have children, and I see many women who are not supposed to have them because of their body structure and the fact that work is their life. But because they aren’t awakened yet, the trends of the culture have complete control over them.

For me, work is my child. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel incomplete without children (I know some women do). I provide value through my work and services, and the gratitude that I feel and receive makes me feel complete. I don’t know if emptiness would come if I wouldn’t provide service, but I can’t see myself stopping work because I love it so much.

Listen to “Why I Don’t Want to Have Children | Simona Rich” on Spreaker.

So my articles, videos, books and services are my children. I give birth to them and I know that they make a positive difference. This keeps me at peace with myself and the world, and there’s no need to create a physical being.

I believe that many women have children for wrong reasons. For example, I know a lady in London who had a child because she felt lonely. Is that a reason to have a child? That’s such a selfish reason.

In India the societal pressure to have a child is much bigger than in the West. When the woman marries, questions start pouring forth from all sides about when she’s getting pregnant. And after childbirth she is expected to change the shape – to become overweight.

If she doesn’t, people start questioning why she’s still thin! It’s very, very strange, but married women in India are expected to gain and keep weight. Of course, the very rich of India don’t follow this trend as they look up to the West, but the vast majority of people in India do.

My dance teacher in Ernakulam kept her beautiful figure after childbirth and received a lot of slander for that. I know it may be hard to believe for westerners, but this is really happening in India.

In the West there’s also pressure to have children, and also it’s important to understand that the body itself may at some point start pressuring to reproduce itself when it feels its energies declining and the old age approaching. But the body is not you and you can decide, if you’re detached from it, whether to agree with the body in having children or not.

I know the bodies have their own intelligence and they want to live through their children. But I’m not this body and I don’t want to go through the trials of childbirth and child-raising just because of the biological urge. But this urge in some women is so overwhelming that it makes them believe it’s their own desire. Thus, Plato’s advice: “Know thyself”.

My mother wants to see me and my brother’s children, so maybe my brother will eventually have them, giving my mother some relief. I have such a lovely mother who doesn’t pressure me to do anything against her will, but I know she really wants grandchildren.

Many women don’t think of the consequences of having children. They have a wonderful imaginary picture of what it would be like to become a mother but they are not willing to look at the reality of it.

The child basically feeds off you until you stop breastfeeding, and you get many years of your youth lost. Not to talk about body changes that may take place when another being is growing in you, such as your feet getting one or two sizes larger, coarse hair starting to grow on legs, hair fall and so many other ones which you can hear about in this video:

Then your woes are not over. You have to invest around 18 years of your life to make the child independent. You have to spend a lot of money for the child’s needs. And it’s a lottery about who that child eventually will grow up to be – he or she can indeed grow up into a caring and healthy adult, but that’s never guaranteed.

So having children is painful, expensive and it’s a lottery when it comes to who they will become and how they will be health-wise. I find this to be a too risky investment.

Also, many aspiring mothers don’t research enough about childbirth and the fact that 1 in 3 women are traumatized when giving birth. (In the video I say it’s 1 in 4 women but that was from another research; anyway the number of traumatized-by-birth women is really high).

Listening to the experiences of women who experienced giving-birth-trauma is worse than horror movies (just YouTube “Traumatic child birth experience”). Unfortunately many women do not choose to speak about it, maybe because of shame as many intimate details would have to be revealed; but this causes general ignorance about this very real threat.

When deciding on such a huge commitment, probably the biggest one in your life, it’s crucial to make sure you understand all the aspects of it. This should be prepared for more than any other life investment such as buying property. Yet most women blissfully jump into motherhood prepared with imagination and hopes rather than information.

Many women after giving birth do not feel any love or attachment to the new being. Some women actually end up wanting to harm the baby that wouldn’t stop crying. Some don’t realize how much time, effort and sleepless nights they would have to endure for years.

What’s also something that needs to be thought of is if you would be able to raise the child as a single mother. Because there are so many single mothers now, it’s important to not allow your hopes to overshadow the reality.

I have a friend who always wanted to be a mother. Yet the guy she had the child with within months of her giving birth faded away from her life. And now she’s a single miserable mother.

She started quickly aging because of so much pressure of having to raise a child on her own. The child turned out to be highly energetic, requiring all her attention.

Her days of posting hopeful and happy quotes on Facebook are over. Now she gets confused reactions as she posts ironical remarks about men and messages smelling of hate and unhappiness.

Also, many parents do not get prepared for raising children in a healthy way. It’s such a huge responsibility. Boys who don’t receive enough love from their mothers may become regular clients of prostitutes. Women having bad fathers will probably end up marrying bad husbands.

Children who experience violence and other trauma at home grow up to become dysfunctional adults harming many people. So parents have such a huge responsibility to research how to bring up healthy individuals. They have to be excellent as a couple too, so that the child is not harmed by hatred between parents or their constant fights.

I got much better with children with age but I remember in the past I would get so uncomfortable when they would approach me as I really didn’t know how to react to them.

I’m not one of those women who can do baby talk and act with them in a cute way. I just don’t have it in me. If I have to speak to really small children I just speak to them pretty much as to adults. I can’t do the mother role.

I believe that if the society awakens and people learn to think long-term, there will be much fewer parents in this world. I see that both men and women jump into their imagined reality of blissfully raising kids and then being faced with the harsh facts of parenthood.

And even thinking about the kind of world we are living in, would I really want to bring forth a child in such a place? The answer is definitely no. Most people are hugely undeveloped, thus it’s likely the the child would be traumatized by the behavior of some irresponsible individuals very early.

Finally…

So these are my thoughts on having children. My opinion about having children hasn’t changed since teenage years, though people would always tell me that my opinion would change with age.

I believe that if more women would detach from societal expectations and think long and hard about what they really want to do with their lives, fewer of them would choose to become mothers.

Yes, there will still be many women who desire children, but with more awareness those who are not supposed to have children would not proceed with this and save themselves from torturous years of raising them and children growing up unloved and unhappy.

Hi, I'm Simona Rich, the author of this site.

I'm from Lithuania, though most of the time you'll find me somewhere in Asia.

I write about spirituality and self-improvement, and consult on those topics.

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