How do you know if you want children in the future?

Maisy

Not sure if this is entirely applicable to this forum as I realise many users may be too young to be considering such a question

But how do you know if you want children in the future?

As a teenager, I just thought I would date and have children, as you do, like many people do. However, I stayed away from relationships, after I felt I was too clingy in my last relationship (at 16) and wanted to avoid being in a relationship and falling into bad habits. I thought I was fine not dating and just sticking with friends. I've mostly been single and not regretted it.

However, I've had a few life changing moments over the last 2 years (I'm 27 now) and have learnt so much and have changed my perspective. It's early days so I won't be jumping into anything now but it just got me thinking about my future and where I'll be, say when I'm 35.

I'm not good at imagining or planning things but it hit me recently that, obviously, if I wanted children of my own then I've only got a limited time to do that. Normally, my approach would be whatever happens, happens so I'd be okay if I was still single or had no children. But for some reason, I've changed my mind and started actually thinking of life with or without children. And I just can't decide. When I think of life with children, I'm thinking of loads of happy scenarios. But I know it's far more stressful than that. When I think of life without children...it seems boring to me but that's only because I'm thinking of my life now as I don't have much going on. 

I wish I knew whether I wanted children or not, because then I could figure out if I wanted to date or not, or how to express what I'm thinking regarding where a relationship could go. I would be concerned that if I dated or met someone, eventually the question of children would come up and I wouldn't want to be undecided if I hadn't thought about it. 

Sorry, I have problems with black and white thinking

Riley

No worries about posting this here @Maisy I think it's an important topic to talk about regardless of what age you are, after all as you said yourself a lot of people tend to think of having children as just a regular part of life while they're growing up. You definitely raised a lot of interesting points about this and I wish I could just give you a definitive answer of what you should do. Of course it's not that simple and it's very much something that you have to decide for yourself.

For me personally I decided at a fairly young age that I didn't want to have children, and I can't imagine that changing very much at this point. I won't get too much into the details but it's something I've put a lot of thought into even though my answer has never changed. Basically what I'm saying is it's not an easy decision and I don't think you should be too hard on yourself for not having a definite answer. It's also entirely likely that it'll be something you want to discuss with your future partner and come to a decision together, you never know!

I'd also say you shouldn't think of 35 as a hard cut-off for having kids, I know it varies a lot from person to person but a lot of people have had perfectly healthy children at an older age than that.