Babies Are Awful: 50+ Reasons Not To Have One

Babies are awful.

They are.

More and more, people are choose voluntary childlessness, not from infertility but because they just DON’T WANT CHILDREN. In this day and age, announcing to your parents or friends that you don’t want children of your can can be met with varying degrees of shock and skepticism.

They don’t believe that you are telling them the truth.

They also tell you that you are wrong, and that you’ll regret your decision not to have kids.

Take it from me, as a parent of three children (who would not give them up for the world) that babies are $*Y*$5&&$ awful. Yes, I chose to have them, and yes, I love them.

But they are really hard to raise, much harder than you would be led to believe by all of your well-meaning relatives.

In this article, you’ll find more than 50 reasons why it is better to not have children.

You can use all of these ideas to respond to your friends and family when they give you a hard time about not having children.

And these are the ideas/reasons coming FROM A PARENT who knows, and has the experience. Not from a non-parent who is just repeating what he/she has heard other people say.

• Pregnancy SUCKS (nine months of torture, and no one really enjoys it no matter what they tell you)
• Pregnancy can be risky–there are several conditions that can develop that could kill you, even with modern medicine

I have heard many a horror story from mothers who went through hair raising surgeries, down to the minute c-sections, losing blood and other organs. That stuff is no joke, it NO ONE talks about the risks of pregnancy upon the mother’s health before trying to have a baby unless the mother’s health is already an issue. Healthy people can become very, very sick during pregnancy, to a level that could have a lasting/permanent impact upon the woman.

• Stretch marks (stomach, hips, butt, thighs, breasts) that never go away
• Weight gain (during pregnancy and then never goes away ever)
• Mom tummy/Muffin top, that no matter of crossfit will fix
• Swollen painful breasts, followed by saggy deflated pancake breasts

Seriously. My old body is GONE. G-O-N-E. And I miss it every day. I do everything I can to try and put my body back together, but I’m just old now, and the skin is not as elastic as it was before, and not as attractive as it was before.

• Relationship death (you and he/she will never be the same), no matter how dedicated you are to trying to remain the same people you were before the kids came
• Intimate relations bite the dust (say goodbye), not to mention the actual feelings you used to have down there (still a little numb sadly)

• Cankles/Swollen feet and ankles, plus your shoes don’t fit anymore, even when you are no longer pregnant
• Incontinence (you’ll never run or jump again without peeing yourself a little, or a lot), even when you are no longer pregnant
• Hemorrhoids (during pregnancy and after)

• Breastfeeding (hello cracked, bleeding nipples, mastitis, thrush, plugged ducts, bitten nipples)
• Labor and delivery (this alone is a good reason to never have children, think hours of pain, pooping on yourself in front of your medical team, throwing up uncontrollably, crying, wanting to die)
• Breast Pumps (milking yourself in a closet in your office….mooooooo)
• Total identity loss (who am I?)
• Sleep deprivation (for YEARS)

• Anxiety (is the baby alive, asleep, going to fall down, get kidnapped, ready to cry)
• Colic (hours of baby screaming)
• Meltdowns/Tantrums
• Nap Trap (so you wanted to go do what during baby’s nap time….think again)
• Installing car seats (once and never again)

• Constipation (baby doesn’t poop, guess who gets to fix that)
• Rectal thermometers
• Explosive diarrhea (all over the bed, the floor, blankets, the car, you, their backs and legs, couches, you name it)
• Changing diapers for years
• Bedwetting

• Crib sheets (level of horror all on their own)
• Washing the sheets and blankets on the bed daily (because of pee, poop, vomit, spit up)
• Child crawling into bed with you and then peeing in it
• Buying a bed that child never sleeps in
• Childcare (nanny, daycare, babysitters)

• Babies are boring (scream, cry, eat, and then what)
• Babies are fragile (easily broken)
• They smell like poop
• Babies look more like raisins than anything else
• You can’t do hardly anything when you have a baby

• Children are just expensive. It costs more than $300,000 to raise a child
• There are hundreds of millions of orphans out there in the world who need a home
• Having children creates a large carbon footprint (think of all the plastic, clothing, wasted food, gasoline, vehicles, junk, electronics that are involved in raising a child), and is actually a contributor to global warming
• Workplace bias against mothers (when they find out you are a mom, you are less likely to get hired, and are considered less competent)
• Loss of earnings due to parenting requirements (kids get sick all the time)

• Carefree and easy plane rides are over
• Control over the television–kids can’t watch the shows you do, and studies show that too much screen time turns them into gremlins anyway, so you are basically abusing them by letting them watch television
• You can have nice things when you don’t have kids, otherwise they destroy everything
• Swearing/Language (say what you want, when you want)
• Pooping with the door closed

• Disneyland (and other theme parks, Chucky Cheese, et al) is torture and a money pit
• Say goodbye to your own friends, and say hello to the parents of your children’s friends
• Chaotic and loud home (versus the quiet, peaceful one)
• Complete and total loss of understanding of global events, politics, current issues
• Time for self-care and the energy to do so

• No free to travel when you want, where you want
• Forget eating a real meal in peace
• More trips to the grocery store (I’m always out of milk)
• Wrinkles and gray hair
• Housework (cleaning, laundry, home repair)

• Misery
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Loneliness
• Chronic Fatigue

I’m not saying that every second of having a baby is all of these things. But I am speaking as a person who has children, not as a person who doesn’t want to have kids. I can attest that much of the time spent raising kids, especially newborns and young babies, is very, very hard work. Very little of what we do is suitable for Instagram.

Don’t get me started on illnesses. My god, the germs! I have never been so sick in my LIFE, since my babies arrived. They touch everything, they lick everything, and then everything they acquire and pick up, they give to YOU. Seriously, I’ve never had the stomach flu so bad as I did when I contracted it from my son. I am not sure if I was able to keep food or drink down for more than a few minutes for close to a full week.

Do you have a baby and hate him? You are not alone.

The article above was mostly about how challenging it is to have a baby, written for people who don’t have one. But what if you are a woman who already has a baby, and is hating every minute of it? Please don’t get down on yourself, if this is you. It is very common for women (and fathers too) to experience negative feelings about and towards their babies.

There are many reasons for this. You are probably sleep deprived, and lacking in good food and self-care. It is likely that you are overwhelmed, and still rushed with hormones. Or maybe postpartum depression, postpartum rage, or postpartum anxiety are at fault.

I don’t say this to minimize how you feel, because I have been there. Instead, I want to point out that there can be innumerable reasons for why you feel the way you do, and while you feel very negatively towards your child at this moment, you may not always feel this way.

As the fog of new parenthood lifts as the baby gets older, I won’t tell you that things get easier. Sometimes they do, but sometimes it doesn’t. But you learn how to cope with the challenges over time, or you find ways to get through it. In turn, you feelings towards your baby tend to change as well.

As the child learns to do more for himself, you may resent him less, especially as you find a way back to some of the bits and pieces of yourself that you thought you lost.

Thanks for reading! If you like this article, you should check out another article you might enjoy:

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• How To Get Your Groove Back
• How to Dry Fresh Herbs In The Oven
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