I know several people my age who deliberately did not have kids - they are great aunts and uncles. (And in one case since the grandmother basically decided she didn’t want to do the normal grandparent stuff that was a good thing.)
As for me, I am sad that my oldest does not have a relationship with anyone and never has as far as I know. I don’t think he ever will. He’s shy and not particularly user friendly. But there’s nothing I can do about it, and I have never said a word about it.
My younger son met his wife his junior year in college at study abroad. They got married two years ago. We think she’s great, but he’s in the Navy and she’s working on her dissertation. He’s about to spend another few months on a ship. I know they are wrestling with what they should do next. I think his next posting probably won’t involve being shipped out on a regular basis, meanwhile she’s thinking that academia is probably not where she wants to go. She speaks several languages fluently and her research I think could be of interest in the NGO world. There’s still three more years before the age I was when I decided I was ready for kids, so I am hopeful. From various things she has let drop, I think they will have kids eventually, just not right away.
My parents have 15 grandkids, ranging in age from 14 to 40s. There were 7 of us “kids.” Only the oldest “kid” is a grandma, with 5 grandkids (from her 3 D’s). One other of my nieces is married and pregnant. The others aren’t married but T one will have his Covid-postponed wedding in Nov. my S is engaged but no idea what he and fiancé want to do about kids. As they’re in mid-30s, they need to figure it out sooner than later.
On BIL has one grandchild who just turned 2. No idea whether there will be any others. The parents are in their mid-30s as well. His other child is doing his best to stay ahead of his debts and clean and sober.
Hmmm, I think this is interesting. I’m not sure I would expect that the parents would just hand over a huge hunk of money without the occasion of a wedding. I see that the parents incurred a large expense for the other 2 siblings and not for the 1 unmarried, and perhaps that feels unfair to her. But I think of parents paying for their daughters weddings (if traditional; or chipping in towards son’s weddings or whatever more modern permutation people opt for) as a gift on the occasion of the wedding. I think of gifts as optional, and often spurred on by an occasion. I don’t know that I would have thought it obvious that if one of my kids doesn’t get married, I should just hand over that huge amount of money. Kind of like we were willing to pay for college, but if one of my kids didn’t go to college, I wouldn’t have handed over $200,000 to them. Or I’d give my children a baby shower gift whenever they get pregnant. Or a graduation gift when they graduate. Without the occasion, I don’t see why the gift occurs.
However, if this daughter was truly upset by it, I would hope she communicated nicely to her parents about it. If they were good parents, perhaps knowing this caused the daughter hurt or jealousy or whatever, they could work out a good solution. Although your post implies they may not be the type to want to arrive at a good/happy solution, so maybe the communication wouldn’t have done anything positive. But anyway, I don’t necessarily agree that it’s obvious the unmarried daughter is “owed” the cost of a wedding without going through with a wedding. I think traditionally, it was parents way of saying, “hey our daughter is getting married, come celebrate with us!” Maybe a good option for this family would be, if it’s clear this child isn’t getting married, to throw an expensive and beautiful 40th birthday for her, a way of saying, “hey our daughter is pretty special, come celebrate with us!”?
This probably should be over on “gifting to adult children” but I do believe that all the kids should have recieved the same. I would gift both kids the same amount of money whether they decided to have a larger wedding or elope. How much I give is up to me–how they use it is up to them.
I do agree with you and I don’t think the parents owe the unmarried daughter anything. Personally I think she’s being a bit ridiculous.
But she has stopped attending holidays (mind you the parents won’t make any vegetarian friendly main dishes) and I know my daughter has commented that her friend won’t attend family vacations either. My daughter attended a lunch where the dad begged his daughter to go on their vacation with them. It was quite awkward.
She’s very angry about it, the daughter bought a home and asked her parents to contribute to the down payment but they declined. The daughter has a very good job and can definitely afford the house and she had a live in boyfriend who was paying some of the house expenses.
I will say this, my daughter’s friend is one my daughter’s closest and has been very helpful to her. But she doesn’t interact with my daughter’s other friends. I know there are some other issues and finally my daughter has talked her friend into counseling. I really hope it helps because her friend is isolating herself from most of her relationships. Friends, romantic and family.
It is not like the parents handed the married daughters $50k and said do with it what you want. They hosted a party that the bride was the star of, but the parents got to invite a lot of their friends and relatives, neighbors, business associates (and I assume the unwed daughter). It may have included some money that normally would have been spent entertaining that year but instead went to the party for the wedding.
If the daughter decided to get married but not have the big wedding, maybe the parents could give a gift that was larger than the sisters received, but that’s the parents’ choice.
I would a) respect my kid’s choice; b) feel somewhat sad because they would be missing what at least for me have been somewhat fulfilling parts of my life. In addition, depending upon the kid, I might fear that they were making that decision based upon incomplete information.
It would have been very hard for me to know, before having kids, what I would have been missing by not having kids. I used to say that if the choice was between waking up in middle of the night, dealing with poop and vomit, etc. or waiting a year, the choice would almost always be waiting a year. But, that after having a kid and the joy it brings, I would have said, “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
I don’t want to project my way of processing the world on others, but the same may well be true for many people. I have a former employee who is a bright, analytical, sharp-elbowed MBA who said she was never going to have kids and seemed particularly un-maternal. But, she became pregnant accidentally (with a guy who was not likely to have been a lifetime partner), she decided to keep the child despite the guy’s urging to abort and is extremely happy she has a child in her life.
In our case, both our children want to get married and have kids. Shawson just got married and his wife said that she wants nine kids just like him (though ShawWife pointed out that he didn’t sleep through the night until he was 12 so she might want to reconsider the number), until recently, it looked like the other had found her lifetime partner. When he started to say that he didn’t think about having kids (after having been positive for several years), she gave him six months to sort his thoughts out. When he remained indecisive, she broke up with him. They are still friends and care for each other but she does not intend to give up that part of her vision of her life.
People who are so stringent like that in terms of being “equal” with $$$ ( SO equal) or won’t veer off the path of unconventional choices of others (like the daughter who chooses to not have children) and even to the point of NOT approving of her vegetarianism… (!!!) well, I think they have their own issues from their own growing up and young adulthood. Only their way is right!
It takes a measure of wisdom and a big dollop of communications skills for a parent to explain the difference between equal and fair. Maybe the best way it is start years in advance and not use words, but when these problems do arise they’re not often easy to resolve. Even the bible has the prodigal son story to vex children’s notions of equity.
I guess in our household we often talked about “fair” but not about equal. Even now, I have to say, my kids - all young adults - often use the word “fair” (as opposed to “not fair”!). It was natural parenting for us to discuss a situation and what circumstances would create a fair situation.
Equal is more stringent and inflexible for many situations.
Good point. And this sentiment is also an excellent corollary to the book I originally referenced. I’ll include a couple of excerpts to show what I mean.
“You will regret it! You! Will! Regret not having children!”
This is in the introduction of the book Regretting Motherhood. The author, Orna Donath, has chosen to look at the flip-side. She states this type of messaging “uses regret as a weapon to threaten women who do not want to be mothers……it simply excludes any possibility that women might also regret becoming mothers, that they might wish to return to being nobody’s mom.”
I found that viewpoint fascinating as I had never seriously thought of it from that perspective.
Maybe, but I don’t think that’s the case. My sister and BIL don’t have kids and they made their decision to not have kids long before social media ever existed. I’d like to think that most people who decide not to have kids, if they’re intelligent, don’t base their choices off of some social media fad. And I’d like to think that people who want to have kids, if they’re intelligent enough, don’t make their choice based on social media either.
It sounds like their could be deeper issues at play here in that family.
When we got married both H and I really didn’t know if we wanted kids. It’s such a huge unknown that there isn’t a way to back out of (or a lot of us wouldn’t get through some teen years…). At some point after a few years it was “yes. we want kids. Or at least one kid. I think. maybe.”
When I did have the first I was so in love that I couldn’t imagine having another. Someone convinced me that your heart just expands and there is room for more if you want them.
Guess my point is that I went from one time in my life of saying “no way”, to “maybe” and then a definite “yes”. At each point I was sure about the decision. I think my H followed the same pattern (luckily for us we were always on the same page.)
Now both my kids want kids so I cross fingers for them.
But I read of so many kids making permanent decisions at young ages. There are young men getting vasectomies thinking that’s the solution since they don’t want kids. They think a vasectomy is easily reversible. Young women want tubals and think doctors should just give them what they want. It is very hard to say “you don’t know what you want right now–give yourself time–keep your options open.”
I strongly support people’s right to make their own decisions even if they might someday regret them. That’s just the risk of making choices and it’s their risk and no one else’s.
I know many childless by choice my age who had made that decision long before the internet and social media were around.
Some people don’t want kids. It’s okay, really.
And FWIW I have never heard one of my childless by choice friends expressing regret about that choice. Maybe they have some private regrets, but none that have been shared with me.
I’m going to count in my head the over 50s I know that could have had kids and chose not to (not including folks that had infertility problems). I got around 20 just off the top of my head.
