Did your relationship with your parents effect your desire to have kids?

Well, crap relationship with parents here, but I don't think it affected my desire to have kids much - I never had ANY desire to have kids! I mean, I was like 5 years old when I first said I never wanted kids of my own, but please please please could we get a puppy, and from there I grew up to be an adult who loved animals and disliked children.

But the fact that my parents were from close families and highly educated, and were generally good and ethical people, and my mother worked with children professionally and seems to have done it well, and they STILL fucked up the parenting thing... showed me just how hard it was to be a good parent. Although knowing that just solidified my natural inclinations to not breed.

Yes. It made me not want to. They were both clearly miserable about becoming parents and my existence ruined their youth, especially my mother's (teen pregnancy). I was an unplanned mistake and it was very obvious.

No, and it didn't affect it, either.

Some people weren’t made to be parents.

I think having more than one kid nowadays is tricky with finances, and we live in a very different world than the one we grew up with. When I got the chance to be a father in my 30’s, the girl was a former club kid and couldn’t stay sober. We would’ve had beautiful children, but she couldn’t stay away from meth and went crazy from it. If we had a kid, I’d be worried how she cared for it and her influence.

I think people focus too much on the desire, rather than setting up the ability to provide a heathy, structured childhood. While I can see a gay couple raising a kid, I have NO desire to do so. I think those with multiple children that rely on and expect welfare and public assistance are in for a rude awakening the next decade. The employment push towards kids means they may cut off assistance for parents at an even younger age if the child is able bodied to work.

The earth is on fire and the last thing we need right now is another billion people burning up resources, There needs to be universal healthcare and birth control initiatives to reduce population.

[quote]If we had a kid, I’d be worried how she cared for it and her influence.

As you should've been. Based on that story, the child could've very likely been born an addict. Which is awful for multiple reasons.

The fact I prefer dick in my ass was a much bigger reason.

How old are you, OP?

Do you realise this is a gay forum of mostly older fellas? Most of us were breeding age during a time homosexsicles did not raise children. Unless the homos were closet cases.

R7, I’m 41, and today it’s never been better for gay men to have kids.

No.

I never wanted them. My upbringing was fine, but I had no desire to spend 20+ years bringing up crotch fruit. There are many more interesting ways to spend my time.

OP, how can you have kids if you're gay? Are you going to cough up $80,000 for a test tube baby?

r10 Apparently the below is actually a thing. Digital human breeding farms. What a time to be alive.

Nope. But being a "gold star" gay with absolutely no sexual interest in women did.

Gay parents are sometimes just as insufferable as their heterosexual counterparts.

AFFECT!!! One of my pet peeves, affect vs. effect.

Answer is yes. My parents were miserable and so was I. I think to some degree you can't help becoming like your parents. I take it as a positive achievement that I'm not inflicting that misery on a future generation.

yeah, 100%.

Have kids for what? the future is bleak!

It never occurred to want kids, or not want kids. I'M GAY. That a gay man posted this thread is as weird to me as that other variation on gay that's become the rage in the 21st century. Sometimes I think my dead friends were the lucky ones.

No. I had and have good relationships with my parents, so IF I'd ever had any desire to procreate I think I'd at least have a decent roadmap for how to raise children without traumatizing them. But I didn't like being around kids when I was a child, and that certainly hasn't changed as I grew older.

Of course your relationship with your parents affects your decision to have children. Being gay gave me an out when people asked, but not without a few bumps along the way. I have always known I did not want children. When I was about 8, a friend of my mother asked me if I wanted kids and my reply was one of those things I said that I've never lived down: "No because I would be a bad dad. I have awful role models." I can only imagine the hurt it caused when my mother heard this come out of my mouth, and even though I meant it about my father, she took it on herself as well. And for that I've always felt horrible, but the truth is evident.

My brother has two kids and his eldest, a boy, failed to launch. He's 28 and lives with them, is an alcoholic that took 8 years to get through college (but finally did, thankfully) and waits tables and while everyone is happy he has a job and works, we're not talking anything close to where he should be given his talent and privilege. It's really sad. However, I never talk to my brother about his kids. I vowed to myself I would stay out of his child rearing before either were born, and I'm proud to say I haven't said a word because if I could tell him what I think, it would only hurt him: he's a bad dad because our father was a bad dad. And it's not his fault he's ill equipped to deal with fatherhood. I hate it when people say this, but it is what it is.

Oh, yes. Once my chipper, career-gal step mother got her claws in my widower dad (who had four kids), she must have realized what a horrible mistake/miscalculation she must have made re: her capacity to handle four kids ranging in age from 4 to 13. She went from trying to be the living incarnation of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music to a grumpy, martyr-y DRUDGE who never let us kids forget how we wrecked her life by simply existing. Thank God, she's DEAD. And no, I never wanted kids after getting my head filled with her nonsense.

I was on the fence for a few years. But it all worked itself out.

I knew guys in my 12 step program who were basically prostitution whores. Once they sobered up, they got married (not to each other) and adopted kids. Maybe one day them used a surrogate. But I remember that one of them was caught by the police getting bred between two parked cars. But today he’s Carol Brady, as smug and entitled as any frau who has kids. Whatever, Mary, but we knew you when…

There's 3 of us kids and the other two are straight.

My mom was an abusive narcissist who ruled through fear.

The doted on kid had a family.

Not sure if there's a connection but personally I was turned off of any form of kids and possibly even companionship (outside of animals) due to my upbringing. She was Joan Crawford and yes it was as bad as the movie.

I want to tell my mother she ruined my life but she's old now. It won't accomplish anything. I just stay away from them as much as possible.

Yes!

"My mom was an abusive narcissist who ruled through fear. The doted on kid had a family."

OMG you're one of my siblings!

Because yeah, the "Golden Child" was the only one to have a long-term marriage and children. I have kept my thoughts on this to myself, because I don't think this family should be carried on. He learned parenting from people who were abusive and neglectful to their other children, and then there's the genetic propensity for serious mental illnesses on both sides...

I would never have children because I’m afraid I wouldn’t be any better at parenting than my own parents.

Um, OP, our sexuality is the main reason why the majority of us don’t have children.

From the time I took my first, "Family Life" class in the 8th grade, and I knew I had options, I did not want children. At about the same time, I knew I was gay, and realized I was very much my father's son. Even, at that point, I had a very difficult with my father.

r26 Hold my turkey baster. -- Lesbians

It's easier for lesbians to have children. Just have a one-night stand with a study guy.

[quote]It never occurred to want kids, or not want kids. I'M GAY. That a gay man posted this thread is as weird to me as that other variation on gay that's become the rage in the 21st century.

John Waters once noted that back in the day there were very few advantages to being gay, and those were not having children or having to serve in the military. No longer.

[quote] Just have a one-night stand with a [bold]study[/bold] guy.

Was this supposed to say "stupid" guy, r29? It seems to fit better.

Maya Angelou said (in an Oprah interview) that her mother was not a good mother when Maya was a young child. Maya said that her mom was a good mother to her as Maya got older (late teens, IIRC).

I think my parents were similar. Not the greatest with little kids, but decent parents as I got older. My mom told me that she never "baby talked" with me.

I think that the bad parenting from when I was little did affect my desire to have kids. (I never wanted kids.) I was probably ambivalent to begin with, though.

My paternal grandparents divorced and my grandmother hated my grandfather so much that when I was the first boy grandkid born, she was openly upset that I would be there to carry on the family name. She wanted it to die out. And then I was the only boy. But she loved me (probably more than any of my cousins or sister) and never held it against me.

And I had a fine upbringing, but my parents both had health problems and I decided that I wasn’t willing to pass on this DNA to anyone else. And then I never wanted kids so I didn’t want to adopt or get married and let a husband be a genetic father.

So she got her wish and I got mine.

[quote] I wasn’t willing to pass on this DNA to anyone else

That's how I felt, as well. I'm prone to depression, ever since I was 13 or younger. I didn't want to take the chance that I'd have a child that would suffer.

Well, I did decide if I ever have any kids that I would not introduce them to my parents.

Yes, my dad is a combative narcissist and my mom has some kind of codependent insecure fearful attachment thing going on, so that I received parent/child role reversals and "spousification" growing up. Only in midlife am I realizing how abnormal and devoid of emotional nurturing my childhood was; I've never had any desire to have kids myself. Which is great because I'd need another decade or so of work on myself to be in any good shape to raise a healthy and happy kid.

My mother is fantastic and I would want that for my kid. So yes, that has help me make my decision not to have any. Plus, she doesn’t want me to have kids, unless I’m married to woman.

Seriously, OP?

Wrong thread, sorry