Reply #265: My husband and I don't want kids

[MedleyMisty]

Once we were volunteering with the cat rescue group at Petsmart and this dude was there and lectured us for like an hour on kids and how we'd change our minds.

Generally people don't bother us too much, though. My great aunt, who I think got married at 14, asked where our kids were when I said I'd been married for six years. I said we had cats and she didn't say anything else.

My mother drops little hints, but nothing too pressing. And well - she's the person who taught me to make my own choices and do whatever the hell I want to do and she's the main reason that I am mostly unaware of social pressure to conform now, so yeah. Plus, she's the one who ripped the article on birth control from Reader's Digest and gave it to me with notes and underlined bits when I was 13.

Usually people ask, I say that we have cats instead, and they laugh and say that's a good choice.

But then again, I don't know - my 15 year old sister-in-law is living with us and my husband, her oldest sibling, has shared legal guardianship of her along with her oldest sister (my husband is the oldest of five). I do treat her pretty much the same way my mother treated me, but she's 15 and so pretty much able to take care of herself anyway. Their mother died shortly before I met my husband and their father is crazy and most of them don't like him. She's living with us because he let his house go to the point where it's unlivable and he's on a downward spiral and it just isn't good for people to live with him right now.

My half-brother got a girlfriend pregnant once. His daughter is actually the same age as my sister-in-law. And she has four younger half-siblings, all by different men. Some of the fathers are in jail for life. Oh, and my mother called the other day and said that my brother's ex-girlfriend is pregnant again. Her mother, who is religiously insane, is raising the kids. Apparently my niece has been in the mental hospital but we don't know why.

My other half-brother got married to someone who I think just wanted kids and married my brother because he was willing to father them. They have four kids now. I don't know - it's what his wife wanted and I guess she's happy, but having sat in the living room crying while that brother waved a pistol around I do worry about those kids.

My half-sister, who I don't know very well because she graduated from high school the summer before I was born, had kids. Then she got divorced and her husband got custody.

So I guess that I really don't have any examples of reproduction around me that make me think that having kids is a good idea.