On Babies...Again

I've been watching The Rachel Zoe Project.

Rodger & Rachel are older and haven't had any children yet. The show is really putting a lot of emphasis on the fact that not having kids yet is putting a strain on their marriage. Obviously I don't know the details of their relationship & I don't know if they've had as many talks about kids as Alexey & I have. As an outsider looking in, it seems as though they each want kids and had decided to have them until Rachel's career got in the way. Once again, this is purely speculation.

Watching the show makes me worry that Alexey & I will turn out that way if we go through with skipping the whole kid thing. Or that by the time we realize being childless isn't for us I'll be too old to have children. What I could really use is some perspective from couples who have lived a life without children.

Naturally, I went to Google hoping to find exactly what I was looking for. What did I find? I found some stories from and a few websites for couples who've decided to not have kids. The problem? All of these people seem to HATE kids! Out of our many reasons for not wanting to have kids, hating them is NOT on the list. Sure, kids can be extremely annoying sometimes, but they are also pretty awesome other times. Ok, my point here is that I don't hate kids. So reading blogs and articles by so-called "child-free" couples that hate children doesn't really give me the perspective I need.

I also can't really get it from what seems to be the other half of childless couples- the ones who can't physically conceive. Not that we've tried yet (gasp- they're virgins!), but I'd assume I'm fertile. I haven't been forced into the idea of not having kids. So I can't relate at all to those couples either.

Even if I did find articles written by people just like me in similar situations, I'm still not sure it would help us make our decision. It would be a much easier decision except for expectations. Ugh...that's such a dirty word. Society (oh god, here I go getting deep...don't worry it won't last too long) expects married couples to have babies. And when they don't have babies, it's not just strange- it's wrong. Alexey & I aren't even married yet & people already continually ask when we're going to start popping out babies. *sigh*

Family is another issue. They also expect us to have kids. Here it's a slightly different story. If we don't have kids, they take it personally. We're denying them of grandkids. That's obviously hard for them, but even harder on us. Making decisions is easy when it only affects you and you alone. When your decisions affect others- and take away something from them- it gets hard, really freakin hard.

I don't want to turn this into a post again about why we don't want kids. I really just wanted to keep it about finding out what it's like for people who have been there and done that. If you have any perspective on this at all, share please! I'd love to hear it. If you don't want to post it publicly I'll try to post something in my sidebar to allow you to email me.