Why I Refuse to Have Kids

I'm sorry, but I'msorry that we don't want kids yet. We'll have them one of these days, but for now, we're just enjoying our time learning to live with each other before we throw a little one into the mix.
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Yes, you read that correctly. My wife and I flat out refuse to have children for the time being. We are a twenty-something couple that have been married for just shy of two years, but we don't want to bear any offspring just yet. Even though we both agree on this, you would not believe how many people continue to ask us, "When are you two going to have children?"

I have quite a few problems with this question.

First of all, I view this as a slight invasion of our privacy. I fail to comprehend why complete strangers feel that it is socially acceptable to ask someone when they are going to have children. Would it be OK for me to go up to someone with five children and ask, "Hey, when are you going to stop having kids?" Of course not. That would be rude, right? What if we've been trying to have kids and can't? Or had a kid and they died or something? If you don't know the circumstances behind the decision then it's really better to just not ask.

Here's the real deal, though: we don't want kids yet because we know we aren't ready. Don't get me wrong, we would both make great -- dare I say amazing -- parents, but that is a lifestyle that we just aren't quite ready to adopt just yet. Do away with the pitchforks and axes, we both love children, but for the time being, we like them a whole helluva lot better when they have parents that we can return them to.

Nowadays, people look at you as if you are weird if you've been married for more than six months and don't have a bun in the oven yet. I don't understand this, because it's not like we need to populate our home so that we have extra hands to take care of a farm or something. It used to be common practice to immediately start having kids and then raise them to help out around the house. It also used to be a common practice to stone women for having children out of wedlock, but you don't see people asking why we don't still do that anymore, do you?

There are times when I worry about families with an overabundance of children that they can't properly care for. If you know that you can't even provide a healthy lifestyle for the kids you already have, then why on Earth would you continue to have more? I guess most people don't really think of it that way, but that's how I see it. We are doing our future children a favor by waiting until we can give them the best life that they deserve, rather than rushing into parenthood just so that we can start scheduling play dates and having extra topics of conversation to share with the other parents in the neighborhood.

I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry that we don't want kids yet. We'll have them one of these days, but for now, we're just enjoying our time learning to live with each other before we throw a little one into the mix. Plus, that gives us extra time and money to spend on doing things to enhance our life currently so that when the time does come, we'll actually have some valuable experiences and even material things to pass along.

There are enough children living with "just enough" -- we're content on waiting until we can give ours more than they could ever dream of.

Visit Derrell's blog at DerrellJamison.com and follow him on twitter!

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