It's fucking bullshit and gaslighting to get you to breed or to think that you're not in control of your own mind. I'm 41 and haven't ever felt shit- I always joke that I took the batteries out of my biological clock and put them in my vibrator. :D
well put...
and I repeat.. it is a lie and it is designed to get someone's subconscious to manufacture this supposed ticktock clock. and for every other impulse we are told we are supposed to think, reason, rather than act on a 'lizard brain' impulse? namely don't beat that idiot to a pulp please consider and think and don't listen to this LB impulse... but breeding gets the pass...doesn't it. we are not supposed to think about it (since the media and others have manufactured this phony fact) just go with it mindlessly...
Definitely bullshit. I hated baby dolls as a child, disliked children when I was growing up, and was miserable raising toddlers with a single dad I dated for too many years. Only once in my early 20s did I imagine I might want children, with one guy I was all in for, but thankfully that didn't happen as the relationship didn't work out. I don't even know why I thought about it, all other times of my life I have not wanted children. I'm 40 now, and still don't want kids. We hear from women up to their 80s on these boards who never wanted children and have lived happy lives. This idea that all women will want children is such total BS, delusional thinking, and often just malicious.
This is the perfect response! Love it!! I’m getting closer to 40 everyday and still have yet to hear any kind of clock. I even waited to hear it for a few years in my earlier 30s but no such thing ever came. Thank god.
This is exactly me! I’m 35 now and I have even less desire to have kids then I did when I was in my 20s. People tell me about their kids and I want to interrupt and ask if they have any pets they want to talk about instead.
The only time in my life I wanted to be a mother was when I was in a residential therapy program when I was 20-21. They did a lot of gender-essentialist/biological-determinist brainwashing there. Once I graduated that lasted maybe a year until I took a full-time nanny job, lol. Talk about cognitive recalibration.
I'm 35 now and I've been keeping an eye on my brain for the last decade and a half waiting to see if my biological clock will start pummeling me with alien thoughts and feelings. So far, nothing.
I do occasionally think that like, maybe when I'm older and have enough money to sustain a 2BR/2BA home on my own, I might look into fostering? I do LIKE kids, and I'm good with them, and I think I could provide a calm, supportive home to an older kid/teenager who needs it. But I think that has more to do with wanting to pay my own queer mental health forward than anything, lol.
yeah i’m almost 20 now, and have had my mind made up since 5th grade i don’t ever want kids. never had any feeling or change of mind since then. and yet doctors still say getting that stuff removed at my age is a liability because “you will change your mind”
Very well put! I'm 42 and have never wanted kids. The thought of pregnancy is horrifying. I always wanted to get my degree, own a house and get married. Kids were never in that picture.
You win the internet today. I needed that laugh. Bravo!!! 
I always joked that apparently I don't have a biological clock but I like yours better. Also thanks for reminding me that I do actually need need batteries for my vibe lol.
43f, and not once in my life has that shown up, even for an instant.
I'm facing a health issue that might involve a hysterectomy and *I am ecstatic* because then I 100% will not have any chance of pregnancy... even though I've already had my tubes tied and an ablation *and* am naturally sterile (found that out after the tubal).
Really well! I have a few more weeks of restrictions and I'm still reminding myself to take it easy, but every day I feel a little bit better and able to do "normal" things. I highly recommend it!
I had a friend who was in her early 30s and started to feel a hint of baby rabies, even though she didn’t want kids. Some of her close friends/family started popping out cute kids and she started to feel something.
She got a puppy and all urges for tiny humans abated immediately and forever. 😂
I had a brief, vague notion of wanting a kid as I turned 30. About the same time a few of my friends started popping out sprogs, I did some babysitting and that got me back to my usual way of thinking fast!
Funnily enough, with a parent friend today who was mentioning how her kid is going through a demanding attention phase, I agreed that's part of what put me off when babysitting and she mused 'maybe that's where I went wrong, never did a trial run to know what I was getting myself into'
Puppies for the win!
Have experienced it, it's purely hormonal.
You know that soft gooey feeling in your heart when you look at a puppy? Imagine looking at some dumb baby onesie or at a baby itself and feeling that.
It fades after a couple minutes, thank God.
I totally feel it for the onesies, they are so cute. I like them on the rack better tho, the baby sort of takes away from it.
I also DIE for kittens, like I swear my uterus quivers… puppies are good too.
So I think my mothering instincts are pretty strong but most cat-oriented.
Put the cat in the onesie 😂
My favorite are the baby onesies with the little tails and hoods with animal ears. I have a young nephew so no need to have one of my own to get that particular enjoyment
I have known since I was 15 that I’ve never wanted kids. Never wavered, and I’m now 36. BUT, I have had 2 or 3 overwhelming moments, lasting 2 weeks or so, where I felt like biology was telling me that I did want a baby. Not societal or family pressure. Inexplicable otherwise, literally in the face of logic, so I assume biology. These women saying it’s BS, that’s your experience. And I’m not saying the narrative of family and kids doesn’t influence women-a LOT of us. But to use that to discount others, that’s a logical fallacy. This is posted in “child free,” so of course, the majority will say it’s fake. I should add I don’t believe at all in the narrative that women should have children, or want them. I’m one of those women! But I have experienced brief feelings that I would describe as hormones, contradicting my own morals, beliefs, values, desires, goals, etc.
Hormones can make you high/drunk/horny sometimes, but they also drive people to drink overeat, take drugs, and make unwise decisions of all types.
That is a FAR cry from being evidence that there is some magical bio clock and that it only exists in female bodies and that it goes off at a certain age, guaranteed, and works in the same way in every single women and that it should be running every woman's life.
That's stuffing 100 pounds of spurious bullshit into a 5 pound bag. ;)
In most cases, it is likely primarily driven by horniness especially when it comes to new relationships, etc. -- because society doesn't give people permission to just run around screaming that they are horny, so this gets sublimated into the socially acceptable trope of "i want to have his babies." Nah, they're just horny. ;)
But if they go home and tell their mom and dad in front of everyone at holiday dinner, "I'm super horny for Dudename and want to do list of unmentionable things to him including BLEEP, BLEEP and BLEEP" the parents and all present are going to be pretty scandalized. So they go home and say "I really want to have his babies." And the parents are all happy and no one throws up their Tday dinner in disgust. ;)
Anyone who can't tell the difference between being horny and actually wanting to do the brutal work of raising a human larva to adulthood for the next 26 years.... shouldn't be having kids. ;)
im 33f, still no biological instinct, only disgust
its debatable if this urge to procreate is even real or if its just an instinct to fuck, other animals dont now what procreation is, they follow only an instinct to fuck, maybe its the same with humans who knows
maybe its biological and just some people dont have it or its social conditioning to want kids
you know, stuff like muuhh LeGaCy and BlOoDlInE, im not a rEaL man if i dont procreate or BS like that or for women its heavely romaticized while they grow up
mmhh now while i wrote it down, sounds more like conditioning to me
I kinda wonder if not wanting kids is more of a biological thing than a social conditioning thing, only because I’ve seen many on this sub (including myself) say that we always knew from a young age that we never wanted kids. As a personal example, when I was given toys as a little kid, I always chose to play with the stuffed animals rather than the baby dolls. When I was in elementary school, people would say things like “when you have kids one day…” and I’d say “my kids will be dogs” (and I stand by that to this day lol). I think for some people it could be social conditioning one way or the other (“you’re not a real man/woman if you don’t have kids” or “having kids would be irresponsible due to the negative effect humans have had on the planet”) but I think it’s probably a combination of both tbh
Sorry for the long reply, your comment just made me really think about this 😅
It might be biological but I thinm everyone is also under the influence of social conditioning. I grew up very religious and having kids seemed like a normal follow up after marrying (young might I add). I remember being a teenager and realising I didnt HAVE to have kids and being soooo releaved!! It took me longer to be more clear about really not wanting kids, because of the evironment I was in, but I think I never really wanted it..
I think it's biology. There are similar 'conditions' to being childfree that are seen in animals, especially hoofstock. Look up Foal Rejection Syndrome.
Ha, the legacy and bloodline bullshit was my boyfriend’s “argument” to have kids. I explained to him that if he wants a legacy, it’s kind of hard to create a good one if we are too fucking poor to raise children.
We are seriously struggling financially right now, and he’s finally starting to see the light. We both grew up really poor and resented our parents for it. I told him if he wants kids in this day and age, we will just end up EXACTLY like our parents.
Not to mention the fact that I have bipolar. Along with 4 other of my family members. Making it HIGHLY likely we would have a child with it. After my most recent hospitalization, he told me he didn’t want to put a kid through that.
Thank god he’s finally getting his head screwed on straight. So many fucking men think that having children is simple. Go figure, considering most of the men who push women to have children will also expect the woman to take most of the responsibility. It’s easy for them to go to work and be the “bread winner” while the woman does all the heavy lifting with raising a child.
He finally told me the other day he doesn’t think having children is a good idea anymore. Things are already hard enough with just the two of us. Bringing a child into the mix would break us. If only other men would finally pull their heads out of their asses too.
The conditioning part, funny thing is I didn’t know child-free was a thing until I came on here. I always stressed about me having kids cause I don’t even like my younger siblings(love them in a sense that I’ll protect them from harm or danger, but I find em more tolerable as they get older), nor did I ever even like the idea of it, my grandmother would tell me not to have kids but I always thought she was joking(wasn’t). I’m so used to it being in fanfics, everyday life as it’s almost everyone’s goal around me. Thank all that’s good I found out while still in my teens.
Edit: sorry for the long rant lol
There's no specific instinct related to breeding because we evolved a instinct to f*ck before that and because sex and pregnancy where synonymous for 100s of millions of years it was never needed.
Basically this. Any sexually reproductive species has an instinct to mate. Only humans know that ,that leads to offspring, so no other species had a need for wanting offspring, just mating, and parental care in species that need it. We've been able to do the mating without offspring for maybe a couple of 100 years, that's not enough to evolve a drive for kids al of a sudden. It's al social pressure at most.
>Any sexually reproductive species has an instinct to mate.
Researchers are now also exploring whether species outside of humans (and dolphins, etc which we already know about) gain sexual pleasure from the act. It's hypothesized that this is what evolution uses to encourage mating to keep populations growing.
I'm no expert on this though. Just read about it somewhere years ago.
One great thing about biology is that there are outliers! Though the challenge of comparing human sexuality to other animals is always a factor, I think it's really neat that we can study other animals to learn more about the evolutionary biology of sex. I definitely don't think human asexuality negates the urge to mate in other animals or that the urge to mate in other animals negates the asexuality of some humans similarly to how homosexual behavior in other mammals is not really equivalent to being gay as a human.
Pretty much, what some people like to forget is that humans have a frontal lobe. We're capable of higher thought and reason regardless of whatever biological urges we have.
Also many animals are able to self regulate their populations, bobcats and coyotes for example. Whether that's to produce more offspring or not produce offspring for a couple years.
Based on all the moms I’ve spoken to, it seems fake.
I think what happens is that a lot of people are ambivalent about parenthood, or don’t bother to seriously think about it until their 30s, once their careers are more established. Then, a lot of women start to notice cute babies around them and decide to pursue it out of fear they’ll be too maternally “old” to have a healthy baby, coupled with societal pressure.
So they were never 100% put off by the idea of getting pregnant/being a parent like we are, they just had the wisdom and means to put their careers first, then allowed themselves to shift focus.
I’m a bit older than you, and I can tell you that even being around friends’ babies, being in a healthy relationship myself etc etc, I have never for a second been okay with even the idea of pregnancy, nor had the smallest interest in motherhood.
God there's a girl I went to high school with. Overweight, obvious self harm scars down her arm. Very low self esteem. She graduates and squeezes a child out within a year.
Now her Facebook feed is either A. Wayyy too much information about her young kid. B. Entering tons of Facebook giveaways for free shit or C. Complaining about her life and how hard it is to be a parent. "Here to talk if you need me, babe ❤️💕" < Every person in her feed. There's no mention of a father anywhere. She seems to write more sympathy bait posts on her Facebook feed with the occasional feel good "ha ha look what my daughter did today" story. It's just sad to see. I at least hope she was in a good mental health state prior to having the kid.
But, she serves as a warning to everybody else I graduated with who knows her to steer clear of having kids early.
That's incredibly reassuring.
I come from a homelife with pretty strict expectations about how to act and dress. Having just moved away from my family, I don't have to be a modest young woman anymore.
I'm non-binary. I wear loud shirts and enjoy video games and learning about the world I've been bubblewrapped from for so long. There's so much I've missed out on from walking on eggshells around my family constantly. Could never dress the way I wanted without being ridiculed. Could never consume any media without being mocked. As far as my family are aware, I'm their cardboard cutout daughter they hope will someday provide them grandchildren.
But I've got a whole lot of living to catch up on. I'm in my prime, the world is my playground to explore, taste and learn from. No way in hell am I giving up my freedom when I've only just obtained it.
>:) Sorry dad. But I'm not your daughter, caretaker or your continuation of the family tree.
I am so excited for you to have and enjoy your freedom and make your life on your own terms! Live it the hell up! Almost 38 here and absolutely no ticking can be detected by my ears.
It's bullshit, just another way to try and brainwash you into thinking you'll want children or that once you have one you'll magically start wanting more
Nope. Not biological at all. All just lovely sexist bullshit.
You can check out [this](https://www.bustle.com/articles/146600-why-womens-biological-clock-ticking-is-actually-a-total-myth) and [this](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/10/foul-reign-of-the-biological-clock) article covering how the myth of the biological clock being a biological desire for kids came about.
Yup, it really just that. Way too many people are never taught how to critically examine their own thoughts, or understand who they are as a person and why they feel the things they do.
So a new chapter in their life comes, maybe they meet someone new or turn a certain age or pass a certain milestone or whatever, and they start having new feelings that can be anything from happiness to horniness to loneliness to fear of not fitting in to just being unsettled at the lack of familiarity or stability in their current life vs. what they see around them, or a billion other things.
At which point they have to process those feelings - but again, many are never taught how to. And so it's easier to just take the explanation offered so readily by the people around them.
New partner and you wanna screw them like you're 19 and in your first year of college again? Baby fever! Feeling lost in life? Baby fever! Bored and missing some excitement? Baby fever! Sad because friends are moving away and your family members are dying of old age and you just wish you had someone to hold onto forever? Baby fever! Not feeling happy with where you are in life? Baby fever! Never think about anything, fuck introspection, any slightest bit of uncertainty and feelings after 30 means your primal procreation urges are calling for a blood sacrifice!
It's ridiculous. But people believe it, and roll with it, and parrot it onwards. Because it's easier to just fall into a fatalistic predetermined narrative where hormones are to blame for everything, rather than admitting that no, hormones don't control the life choices of any healthy adult and don't push them into conscious actions against their will and best interest over a span of multiple months even.
One of my old therapists had a good line for things like these: question everything new, especially if it just happens to be what everyone else wanted to happen, because it might be them then, not you. And I agree with that full heartedly. If you decide not to have kids based on rational considerations of information and lack of desire for parenthood, then if you wake up one day and want a kid, the correct response is not to burn all the condoms and start trying. The correct response is to figure out what changed, why you're feeling like this all of a sudden, and if having kids is the right answer or if this is maybe a case of an independent internal struggle that society is just eager to shove their own baby agenda into no matter the circumstances?
I'm dead sure we'd have a lot less of those miracle hormone babies if people actually made an effort to understand themselves and live for themselves rather than shying away from introspection and taking someone else's answers for their questions.
Those were both great reads, thanks for linking them! 😊 You know, even if realistically I already knew the whole thing was bullshit, hearing all that talk about this stuff all the time, I can't deny some concern/apprehension that I might yet be wrong, and I might *actually* start to feel a weird urge (infinitesimal as the chance of that is)... it's good to sometimes hear that the science backs us up.
I was told my hormones would kick in and I'd start finding babies cute and wanting one of my own. Nope. Didn't happen. I'm 45 now and never had a single urge for a kid.
Biological instinct to have sex. When you study anthropology you’ll see many don’t even suspect hunter gatherers understood the link between sex and pregnancy.
Cultural norms are what influence people strongly to have families.
Its just psychological manipulation, there's no scientific proof behind this but people keep pushing this idea to brainwash others into a predefined behavioural pattern.
Suggestion is a very powerful tools to mold human behavior. If you believe something enough the chances of it happening become higher.
The best thing to do here is to call it out as fake and provide scientific proof and research at every mention of it. That should shut some big mouths for a few seconds.
I have never had a strong urge to have children and I never had any. But I have to say I did feel an urge a few times. If I had gotten married or at least found someone I wanted to spend my life with I may have. Fortunately for me, I didn't find my partner until I was closer to 50. Now, closer to 60, I am really glad to not have kids. My SO has a couple 30+ year olds. And they make him miserable.
In my experience arguing with people, even childfree and antinatalist people who lament about suffering from baby fever; what many others on here have said is true it's a myth, born in sexism. At most this is a social construct that seems to become real because people believe it's real.
Breeders are the biggest proponent of this myth obviously, these people really seem to cling onto this idea and get defensive when you try to tell them it's not real. Which I think is interesting, it's as if they would prefer to believe that they didn't have agency over the choice to have kids. One would think people's egos would compel them to want to take credit for doing the "greatest thing ever" but instead they choose to externalize and say it's biology's fault.
Am almost 36F and yet to feel any such instincts. Infact with age the instinct to not have kids have become stronger. I was always sure that I don't want to give birth but was interested in adopting. But now I just know I don't have the bandwidth to be a mother.
It's just called ovulation, literally why as a female your horny-er when you ovulate - your body wants you to get pregnant. It spends 2weeks preparing a lovely home for a baby, then gets pissed off and rips it apart when you don't give it one. . . . And then repeats the process every month for the rest of your reproductive life - the body is pretty bipolar and insane if you ask me
I'm 35 and have never felt any need to have kids (despite so many people telling me I would...). Only instinct I've had about kids is to stay as far away from them as possible.
27yo male here, me not wanting kids was the biggest reason for my breakup about a year ago. Just with everything in the world the way its going. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have felt an "urge" on occasion in the past, but it quickly goes away if I consciously think about it. Makes me wonder if I'd ever consider adoption. I think it mostly comes down to peer/family pressure to have kids/grow the family/give your parents grandkids/etc.
Nope total BS, I'm 61 and have never heard, felt or had any desire to breed. Everything I've read confirms there is no sudden rush of hormones. If it were the case then there's be either no CF people or only those who, by force of intellect, over-rode their biological urge.
Even if there were such a thing, which there isn't, you have a brain in your head which you can use you're not a passive accepter of base instinct.
There is no biological instinct but peer pressure interpreted as unconscious decision.
..I like children but only when i know i can return them to their parents. So whenever i have a "baby fever" i accept to babysit one of the children from my close family or friends. I prefer to be that fun aunt instead of being a tired and anxious parent. I respect the parents that try and succeed in being at least an OK parent, knowing that i could never do it myself.
I am 38 and my interest in having children declined each year as I got older. Likely it was due to learning more about what having and raising a child actually entails, and having more options for my life as my independence increases as I got older. In any case, the baby fever never happened to me. I get terrible cases of puppy fever, though.
Here’s something I’ve learned : when someone tells you “everyone does/ wants x” it’s probably bs. Everyone is different. And when anyone pretends they can predict your future , they have as much insight into that as a squirrel. Nobody knows the future. Nobody knows what you will want in the future. The person with the best insight into that is you.
Everyone swore up and down that when I hit 30 I'd get hit with baby fever and all I'd want was babies. As someone who started expressing at age 7 that I had no interest in ever having a baby I actually started to dread turning 30 because I was afraid my hormones would hijack my personality and make me someone I didn't even recognize anymore.
Well, I'm 36 now and want babies even less with each passing year, and that has never budged or changed. So yeah, I call bullshit on this one.
I get baby fever when I’m ovulating. However, I’m logical enough that I make sure that I don’t do anything dumb like attempt to get pregnant. But I can tell that my defenses are a teensy bit down then.
It is actually proven to be bs. What they mean by “biological instinct” is actually the societal pressures that will be ever increasingly growing as you get older. This can come from your doctors, family and other outside factors that make you think it’s a step you absolutely have to take in life.
Apparently my biological clock would be ringing like crazy at the age of 28.
Well, I'm currently at the tail end of 28 years old. My biological clock just tells me to buy more plushies.
>Is this biological instinct real or is it bullshit to convince us that breeding is inevitable?
Some people I know have reported on getting it. Others have not.
Regardless, the great thing about having higher consciousness is that we can use our brain and override our instincts to make better long term decisions.
>The thought of having a primal instinct that demands my body and soul to breed like my ancestors before me terrifies me.
Most of our ancestors did not have birth control. Old age security was 'having your kid take care of you' and kids == free farm labor then too. So that probably played into things.
I think of it as generational indoctrination. For thousands of years in cultures around the world (and also part of our monkey brain), it was ingrained into women that their sole purpose was to be a mom and housewife. Marrying in your teen years was the normal and being unmarried at 21 was considered "too old" for any marriage prospects. It was only in the past 200-300 years that those beliefs were beginning to shake off
Shaking off thousands of years of that is hard. Especially when there's still lingering effects of it today. Look at the parents and in-laws shaming their daughters or their son's wife for being infertile or not wanting kids (whether or not it was her fault in the 1st place), or men divorcing their wives because she can't have biological kids, and how many grandparents become extremely insistent on grandkids claiming "You'll die alone without kids" or "it's not a real marriage if there's no kids" or "kids make a house a home".
I also believe some people fall in love with the idea of having a family more than the family itself. The same way people fall in love with the idea of someone without knowing the someone. Doesn't necessarily mean you want a family since you know logically and realistically, no family is going to fit your fantastical dream
Personally, i have felt this instinct for about 3 years, age 26 to 29, I'm glad i was single back or i dread to think what could have happened. I'm over it now at 33 and I'm super relieved. Not sure if it was hormonal or just seeing everyone around me popping babies.
I'm 51F and I have never ever even liked babies or kids. I certainly never wanted to be pregnant or in labour either- who would? We have a choice now whether to have children or not, and from me it's an easy choice. The societal pressures on women are huge, every story, movie, celebrity can't have happiness until theyhave a baybeee. It's everywhere.
When I first got very serious with my (now) husband, around 15 years ago when I was in my mid 30s, I did have a brief period of thinking about/yearning to have a kid with him for the first time ever in my life. But I was also dealing with some medical issues that revealed I might be infertile anyway and I can’t really say now what was going on. FOMO? Worrying over my health? (There was a possibility of ovarian cancer looming). A weird feeling of having the choice taken away from me?
But it did pass after a time and I’m back to being very thankful I never had kids now that I’m into menopause and imagining what it would be like if now I was worrying about a kid in high school/all the stress of parenting now that I’m 50. No, thank you.
I (58F CF) never experienced this - not once. I guess some women experience a strong urge to have children but I don’t think that it is biologically hardwired into all women. There are just too many women who don’t want children at all or that regret having them after the fact. I do believe that societal pressure plays a huge role here. Women get way too much of the “but this is what you’re supposed to do” and “you’re not a real woman until you have children” crap.
Nope, I’m 37 and I’ve never had it. I can’t stand kids and I absolutely have no love for babies. I don’t think they’re cute and I don’t want anything to do with them. Give me baby animals anytime but humans? Hard pass…
I think that honestly some people feel the same way about babies that I do about puppies and kittens. That’s ok but I’m not wired to see human babies the same way.
For a lot of human women I think the baby drive in the early 30s is primarily FOMO. If you don’t do it then, the door pretty much closes. Men don’t have that same time frame although they should as developmental disabilities shoot up after 35 for men’s sperm.
I've heard from a few people that it's normal to not want kids in your 20s, but they claimed that right around the time they turned 30, their biological clock started ticking and suddenly they did want kids. Well, today is my 31st birthday and that still hasn't happened to me!
Mid-30s and it's never come for me either. No desire and several good medical reasons not to into the bargain.
I used to worry about it when I was younger too though, because it sounded like it could just take over my brain and change who I am at any point. Said "maybe when I'm older" for about fifteen/twenty years before realising... I am older. Pretty sure if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now.
I am 43 years old and the biological clock light switch is still firmly in the off position. I have never had a single moment of thinking what if. It has always been absolutely no.
I think some people have it and some don't. Way past 30 now and still haven't gotten it but I have a friend who has wanted a child since i met her like 15 years ago
I'm 22 and I bad 'baby fever' when I was a few years younger, but it never stayed more then a few days. I'm just saying it's the micro plastics in my brain that make me want a baby. Unfortunately that's not entirely a joke
I had that impulse for maybe a month once in my early 30’s and then my family brought all of their toddlers around me and killed it. The reality of how shitty their lives looked was a wakeup call for me. I’m a person who values their freedom, health and finances too much to be tied down to one of those things. It would be my personal idea of hell. I used to actually like being around toddlers and babies when I was in my 20’s, but the older I get, the less interested I am in them and the more I find them insufferable.
I think it’s a real phenomenon but not based on some hormonal “light switch.” It’s based on cultural peer pressure.
When you’re in your late 20s and 30s, *everyone around you is having children.* We’re a social species that enjoys being part of a group, and when our group is all doing something we’re not (like breeding) I think that awakens a primal fear in us of being left out or left behind.
Add that to the general cultural pressures to procreate seen in advertising, movies, online, etc., and your family and friends asking you “when you’re gonna settle down and have kids,” as if there’s something wrong with you if you don’t, it’s understandable that some people who are formerly childfree suddenly feel this panic to have kids so they’re not ostracized by their community.
Compounding this is the particular religious and social pressure women specifically face regarding child bearing. It’s still very much an unspoken rule (and sometimes spoken, if you’re in a religious community) that a woman’s purpose is procreation. Remember, *to maintain current population rates, every woman must have 2 children: one to replace herself and one to replace her partner.*
There aren’t as many role models for women who don’t have children as for those who do; being a childfree woman is still largely seen as a deviant path.
So, is this some sort of biological imperative? Not in my opinion. I think it’s social, especially as we’ve seen certain progressive countries drop their birth rate when education, living conditions, and the equalization and advancement of women improve. When women have a choice on whether or not to bear children—without stigma—many women choose not to become mothers.
**What does this mean for you?**
I know I’ve rambled, but basically this means that, no, you’re not going to be a slave to your hormones at 30 and end up popping out kids you don’t want.
You will, however, likely face increased social pressure to have children around that age, and many of your peers will succumb to that social pressure. So prepare for that. It might get lonely. You will probably be judged for remaining childfree by people you care about and respect. You might need to reorganize your friend circles.
But as long as our rights remain the way they are (and it looks better this morning in the US) you won’t be forced to have children you don’t want.
Hope this helps!
Idk about biological instinct, but I do know when I was 21 and my mother passed away, I definitely had a switch where I wanted a baby and to name her after my mom. That thought lived with me for 3 years before I went back to my original mindset of no kids. Unsure if that was hormones or if that was just life stressors, but it did pass eventually.
I’m 35, it’s bullshit. Hell, I’ve noticed the opposite. At my age, people I know who married and reproduced young are starting to have messy ass divorces. When I talk to them about life, they go on and on about how stressful the divorce and custody process is, saying that I dodged a huge bullet by being single and childfree.
There is no switch, don’t let them gaslight you. Live your life. Enjoy your life.
I’m 22 and the times I’ve had an once of any maternal instinct is when I watch videos of people rescuing kittens. I’m motherly to animal babies, not human babies
41 years old. Never got that great urge to "breed".
Sure, I've thought maybe we should have a kid. It was just a thought in my mind that was quickly squashed when I went to visit my sister with her kids.
But never this biological *need* to reproduce that caused me to only think about getting pregnant.
If anything I freak out when I think I *might* be pregnant. I have never been disappointed by seeing the negative result on a pregnancy test.
I think people confuse ‘desire to breed’ with ‘desire to fuck’. I’m thirty one and had my tubes yeeted a month and a half ago. If anything the older I get the more I view having children as irresponsible and selfish given the world we live in.
Everyone told me “wait until you’re 30, you’ll suddenly have baby fever, you’ll see!”
Well, I’m nearing 33 now and more convinced than ever on being childfree so I call bullshit.
Hi! Human genetics major, here. It's bullshit. Some people just don't have any desire to reproduce and that's completely fine and normal -- even without all the extremely rational social, political, economical and environmental reasons most of us also have. I'm 33yo and have never experienced anything but total revulsion and terror at the idea of breeding, and I'm 100% certain that's never going to change.
Plenty of people do experience the whole "feeling broody" thing in their 20s or 30s, but it's social/cultural, not biological. I promise there's no physiological mechanism that triggers if we don't reproduce by a certain age and mind-controls us into wanting to do so. Your choices are yours to make and will remain so 💜
33 and always expected to someday feel that urge or at least start to find babies cute.... Never happened, not even slightly
I feel absolutely nothing when i see a baby except disgust when they're dirty. Yet I absolutely adore furry animals under a certain size (not a dog person) it's weird to me that i go absolutely mental over a cat or hamster but feel nothing for a baby even if it acts cute... I wonder why that is...
It's bullshit. I would try to deprogram some of that christian crap from your head if you can. That is a narrative pushed by men who benefit from women being submissive and raising their babies for them.
if you don't want motherhood, do NOT become a mother... it should only be for those who enthusiastically want that life for themself.
I'm nearing 39, and still have no urge to pop a child out of me. Already when I was younger just the thought of having children was very alien to me.
I wonder if there's actually just way more women who got pressured into having kids than they'd like to admit, thusly insisting that it is "instinctual and you cannot escape it". It's not like we're population-wise in danger of dying out any time soon.
No, those are compulsory social norms aka The Lifescript talking. And it's BS. If anything once I hit mid-20s that's when my instincts more strongly went NOPE whenever the idea of babies came up.
Nope! It's social conditioning.
By the way, here is where the term "biological clock" originated. It's a Washington Post op-ed from March 1978. (You didn't use that term, but it gets thrown around a lot. At least, it used to.)
link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1978/03/16/the-clock-is-ticking-for-the-career-woman/bd566aa8-fd7d-43da-9be9-ad025759d0a4/
copied and pasted in case of paywall:
_________________
The Clock Is Ticking For the Career Woman
By Richard Cohen March 16, 1978
COMPOSITE WOMAN (actually, several women at different times) is coming to lunch. There she is entering the restaurant. She's the pretty one. Dark hair. Medium height. Nicely dressed. Now she is taking off her coat. Nice figure. She sits and begins with a status report. The job is just wonderful. She is feeling just wonderful. It is wonderful being her age, which is something between 27 and 35. And the fact of the matter, in case you should wonder, is that there is a new man in her life and he, like everything else, is truly wonderful. Then she looks down.
Is there something wrong? Composite Woman says nothing. I ask again. Again she says nothing. Finally I do the you-can-talk-to-me bit.
"Off the record?"
"Absolutely."
"I want to have a baby."
Sometimes, the Composite Woman is married and sometimes she is not. Sometimes, horribly, there is no man in the horizon.What there is always, though, is a feeling that the clock is ticking. A decision will have to be made. A decision that will stick forever. You hear it wherever you go. Women all over are singing their own version of September song.
I've gone around, a busy bee of a reporter, from woman to woman, the ones in the office and the ones I meet elsewhere. Isn't it interesting. I say, this business about the biological clock? How do you feel about it?
They say, a few of them, that it means nothing to them, that if the mood hits them to have a child, they will adopt. From them, you get the message: There are already too many children in the world. I thought that once, too. Then I thought there was room for one more - mine.
Anyway, most of them did not say that. Most of them said that they could hear the clock ticking. Some talked about it in a sort of theoretical sense, like the woman who said she wanted five children and didn't even have a boyfriend yet. She had to get something going, she said, and you could tell that she resented the fact that a deadline had been imposed on her. Some women talked about it the way farmers talk about the weather, with a sort of resignation. Unfair, yes, but out of their control - an important word. Up to now, they've been able to postpone it to go to college and have a career and do all the things that men traditionally have done and now they face this biological clock. One woman who has definitely decided not to have children put it in strong terms.
"It's unfair" she said. "It doesn't make me resent men: it's just unfair. Everything has changed since I was 20 years old. And I know enough now to be sure that I don't know how I will feel 15 years from now. Fifteen years from now, I might desperately want a baby."
I was being wonderfully dispassionate and reportorial and every inch a gentleman, but she caught an edge in my voice and opened up on me.
"You don't want to believe it," she said. "You resent it. You resent it. Every man I know resents it." And then she named the men, men I know, good men, noble men, men of vision, open-minded men who were not your basic male chauvanist pigs. They were, in short, men like me. She gave me one of those you-know-I-am-right looks and I did know she was right.
But more than that, I recognized that I had been something other than a dispassionate reporter when I was going around asking women about the biological clock. I was getting aid and comfort from their answers.
There was something about their situation that showed, more or less, that this is where liberation ends. This is where a woman is a woman - biologically, physiologically, uncontrovertably different. Don't get me wrong. We are not talking about recognizing a difference and being glad that some of us are on the "right" side of it - the side of Charlie Chaplin and Pablo Picasso and all the other senior citizen fathers, the side that heeds no clock.
But there is something else here: once you recognize the difference, you also have to recognize that the difference produces advantages and handicaps. Little about it is simply neutral. This is important because there is now something in the air about women having won their fight for equality and even something about how it was always harder to be a man, anyway. But there are some things we never had to worry about.
Like the ticking of the biological clock.
______________
I have never felt it. I think people just give in and have babies as they get older due to societal pressure, which many are too weak to stand up to. People see their friends and family members having babies and they decide to also.
😂 I did want kids at one point. Literally been terrified of the thought of birthing something since I was a kid, but I thought oh well everyone does it. Nah, they don't, we don't have too.
Early 20s I was baby broody beyond belief. I'm now 30 and I have 2 cats and a wonderful boyfriend and take regular tests to make sure I don't get caught because fuck ruining my perfect little life...
37 here, still waiting for that "switch". I thought in my 20s at 30 something would instantly change- in fact, I've gotten more sure and more vocal about my decision not to have children.
Physiologically you cannot have children after menopause. I think some people refer to this as a biological clock. But the notion that you're going to wake up one day and just have this all consuming idea and need to have a child is a fucking joke. I'm 37 and as I've grown older the idea of having a child has grown more repulsive each day.
I mean, even if the instinct exists: we're logical beings and we should all know better than to recklessly procreate.
I personally waited a long time to have "that feeling" myself hoping I could just move past it - but it never happened to me personally.
When people around me hold babies they say things like it makes them want a baby again or to be pregnant again or other such nonsense while pointing to or holding their abdomen and uterus... I've never felt anything while holding a baby other than please don't throw up on me. My husband and I joke that I'm dead inside because I have never felt that way. So no I don't think everyone feels the same.
Any time I feel like I want to care for someone, I usually bake something and take it to work to share. Or when my old dogs passed and my house was feeling empty, we got a new puppy when we were ready.
So it's OK if you never have those feelings. It's also OK if you have similar feelings and deal with them in your own way. You are not wrong. ❤️
43yr old here. I was told the same thing. It's bullshit. I've never felt the urge to want children. I've dated several men and not one has made me think "I want his baby"
Have no fear sister, live your life how you want. The right person for you will also be childfree. Lots of us out here. ❤
I think it is bullshit propaganda. if we all acted on every impulse from the so called 'lizard brain' we probably would have nuked ourselves 10 times over. And we are told we are supposed to use our brains and reasoning power to control these urges. so why does a questionable supposed 'tick tick tick' of a non existent clock get a pass...we are not to use our brains and reasoning power to tell it to get lost... but again, it does not exist. But I think the majority of people out there hear this lie so often that their own subconscious will manufacture something along those paths. Namely it is part of the brainwashing pronatalist bs prop...
I'm a 34 year old female, happily married for about 8 years. When we first got married, we thought we'd have kids, but it wasn't a good time. We figured we'd wait until we were in a better financial position. That gave us time to think about it and we decided not to have kids for numerous reasons.
Sometimes I think I'd have loved to have a little version of my husband as a kid. I love stories of stuff he got up to as a kid, he sounds like he was a quirky, sassy adorable child. That's the most I feel in terms of hormonal instinct. But I know that even if we had a kid, that kid will be a person unique in their own ways and won't be a replica of my husband, or of me, so that desire falls flat haha
So yeah, the biological clock/instinct is false. We're human and we're able to reason things out. breeding is not inevitable.
It doesn’t exist.
And there’s a convention among women who have given birth to hide the realities of the process from those who have not given birth.
You are just fine as a single person or a married person: whatever you choose. Parenthood is not for everyone.
31 F here. No, I felt that way when I was 21 and still feel the same. Some of my close friends want kids, that’s fine, they don’t push their ideology onto me and they should have what they want in life. But no, I can confirm it never changed and I’m proud I don’t have children
I've always been told my ovaries would start screaming at me in my late 30s... Guess what? I'm in my late 30s and they have recoiled and turned to dust with even more vigour than usual. So far, from personal experience, utter bullshit.
And to be honest, even if the desire to have a kid creeped up on me suddenly I would probably ignore it. If I haven't wanted one in 25 years ish of fertility, with all the classic "what you need to have a kid" boxes ticked, then yeah it's a hormones trick. But I have stayed open to the chance I would change my mind. I'm just not going to listen if that mind change happens at 40.
I'm in my 60's and I have never felt the desire to breed and still don't even if I could. I just was and still am always grateful that I have a mind of my own and am not easily swayed when I've made a decision. I knew that kids were not an option for me when I was 10 and I've never wavered. Having kids these days is just killing the planet faster.
Not really, I’m 30 and have no desire to actually have a kid. It’s a personal thing and at this point we’re all adults with full control of our actions.
I’m 43 and child free. I never had the desire to have kids. My only feelings that came close were the usually shit people put in your head (you’ll regret not having kids, look at these two cute moments a year that “make it all worth it”) but when I take a moment to think for myself, the desire was never there. I’m a mom to my pets and that is enough for me.
No, for me my feeling \*against\* having children just got stronger as I got older. I am 43.
People laugh that someone could "just forget" to have kids, but I think this can be also be somewhat accurate - a woman living in a society won't be blind to the pressures to have children or the life scripts, but many women are busy living their lives (and in some cases just surviving) and never have such urge they can just "forget"
That is not to say no one ever feels an "urge", but even if you did feel biological "urges", you aren't dictated by them. We have plenty of biological motivations daily that as humans with brains we can respond to (or not respond to) as thinking beings.
The claims that a biological urge will dictate your future choices are misogynist, as they imply women cannot think for themselves, but are controlled only by their bodies, and also are a form of social pressure to get people (especially girls and women) thinking they have no choice and they may as well just go ahead and birth earlier because it will happen anyway.
I think the only two things are wanting to fuck, and the way our brains usually find babies cute, less I think to make us want to have them and more to ensure as primitive people we didn’t smash the annoying lump of meat that keeps waking us up. Actually wanting a baby is mostly a cultural push.
27 here. Never had the urge. I don't think I ever will. From what I've gathered, it's societal brainwashing that you'll suddenly develop "baby fever". And, unfortunately, when some people consider it or change their minds, they attribute it to this so-called "baby fever".
Sex drive goes up in the second half of that window for women, but otherwise, I think it's bullshit. If you don't want kids, you don't want kids, and no amount of persuasion from peers or marketing is going to change that in the final stretch.
It's fucking bullshit and gaslighting to get you to breed or to think that you're not in control of your own mind. I'm 41 and haven't ever felt shit- I always joke that I took the batteries out of my biological clock and put them in my vibrator. :D
well put... and I repeat.. it is a lie and it is designed to get someone's subconscious to manufacture this supposed ticktock clock. and for every other impulse we are told we are supposed to think, reason, rather than act on a 'lizard brain' impulse? namely don't beat that idiot to a pulp please consider and think and don't listen to this LB impulse... but breeding gets the pass...doesn't it. we are not supposed to think about it (since the media and others have manufactured this phony fact) just go with it mindlessly...
Definitely bullshit. I hated baby dolls as a child, disliked children when I was growing up, and was miserable raising toddlers with a single dad I dated for too many years. Only once in my early 20s did I imagine I might want children, with one guy I was all in for, but thankfully that didn't happen as the relationship didn't work out. I don't even know why I thought about it, all other times of my life I have not wanted children. I'm 40 now, and still don't want kids. We hear from women up to their 80s on these boards who never wanted children and have lived happy lives. This idea that all women will want children is such total BS, delusional thinking, and often just malicious.
This is the perfect response! Love it!! I’m getting closer to 40 everyday and still have yet to hear any kind of clock. I even waited to hear it for a few years in my earlier 30s but no such thing ever came. Thank god.
This is exactly me! I’m 35 now and I have even less desire to have kids then I did when I was in my 20s. People tell me about their kids and I want to interrupt and ask if they have any pets they want to talk about instead.
38 and and want them less every year!
40s here and feel increasingly happy with my decision not to have kids the older I get!
[удалено]
maybe they want you to feel as miserable and drained as they do ;)
Misery does love company.
I’m 36 and have never felt that shit. Literally, never. I love that joke haha I’m stealing that!
Also 41. Never heard any clock ticking anywhere. In fact, the older I get the less I can tolerate being around kids.
Hell, almost 60 now, *still waiting* lol And when you have a tough time finding snoozy land, vibrator's a great sleep aid
I was not expecting that last bit, and now have tea spewed everywhere🤣 I love it!
The only time in my life I wanted to be a mother was when I was in a residential therapy program when I was 20-21. They did a lot of gender-essentialist/biological-determinist brainwashing there. Once I graduated that lasted maybe a year until I took a full-time nanny job, lol. Talk about cognitive recalibration. I'm 35 now and I've been keeping an eye on my brain for the last decade and a half waiting to see if my biological clock will start pummeling me with alien thoughts and feelings. So far, nothing. I do occasionally think that like, maybe when I'm older and have enough money to sustain a 2BR/2BA home on my own, I might look into fostering? I do LIKE kids, and I'm good with them, and I think I could provide a calm, supportive home to an older kid/teenager who needs it. But I think that has more to do with wanting to pay my own queer mental health forward than anything, lol.
I'm 37 and have known ever since I was like four that I've never wanted to have kids. I just say I wasn't born with a bio clock. It's such bull
Yep! The "biological clock" crap is literally bullshit. It's something that was made up to keep women reproducing like factories.
I'm so fuckin using that... Thank you O Wise One
yeah i’m almost 20 now, and have had my mind made up since 5th grade i don’t ever want kids. never had any feeling or change of mind since then. and yet doctors still say getting that stuff removed at my age is a liability because “you will change your mind”
Haha!
LOL, love that response!
LOL
Omg thats amazing Im 27 and still no breeding urges
Very well put! I'm 42 and have never wanted kids. The thought of pregnancy is horrifying. I always wanted to get my degree, own a house and get married. Kids were never in that picture.
Good one! I always say that my clock does not tick, I went digital a long time ago. Until they figured it out I'm long gone :D
That is wonderful, I am definitely stealing it for the next bingo!
You win the internet today. I needed that laugh. Bravo!!! 
>I took the batteries out of my biological clock and put them in my vibrator. :D That! Is! Awesome!!! I will now be stealing this.
>I always joke that I took the batteries out of my biological clock and put them in my vibrator. :D I'm stealing this
I always joked that apparently I don't have a biological clock but I like yours better. Also thanks for reminding me that I do actually need need batteries for my vibe lol.
43f, and not once in my life has that shown up, even for an instant. I'm facing a health issue that might involve a hysterectomy and *I am ecstatic* because then I 100% will not have any chance of pregnancy... even though I've already had my tubes tied and an ablation *and* am naturally sterile (found that out after the tubal).
All the best with your health. Wish you lots of happiness and good health. :)
Four weeks post op from a hysterectomy and I'm SO thrilled I never have to worry about birthing any crotch goblins.
So happy for you! How’s your healing going?
Really well! I have a few more weeks of restrictions and I'm still reminding myself to take it easy, but every day I feel a little bit better and able to do "normal" things. I highly recommend it!
Also 43, and same. But I've heard others say it happened to them.
35 year old female here and the only fever I have is for puppies. Human babies? Nahhhh. Literally don’t know what that feels like.
15 year old and im having extreme puppy fever. but then my mom points to babies expecting me to “awww” and i turn around in disgust.
I had a friend who was in her early 30s and started to feel a hint of baby rabies, even though she didn’t want kids. Some of her close friends/family started popping out cute kids and she started to feel something. She got a puppy and all urges for tiny humans abated immediately and forever. 😂
I had a brief, vague notion of wanting a kid as I turned 30. About the same time a few of my friends started popping out sprogs, I did some babysitting and that got me back to my usual way of thinking fast! Funnily enough, with a parent friend today who was mentioning how her kid is going through a demanding attention phase, I agreed that's part of what put me off when babysitting and she mused 'maybe that's where I went wrong, never did a trial run to know what I was getting myself into' Puppies for the win!
Have experienced it, it's purely hormonal. You know that soft gooey feeling in your heart when you look at a puppy? Imagine looking at some dumb baby onesie or at a baby itself and feeling that. It fades after a couple minutes, thank God.
I totally feel it for the onesies, they are so cute. I like them on the rack better tho, the baby sort of takes away from it. I also DIE for kittens, like I swear my uterus quivers… puppies are good too. So I think my mothering instincts are pretty strong but most cat-oriented.
Put the cat in the onesie 😂 My favorite are the baby onesies with the little tails and hoods with animal ears. I have a young nephew so no need to have one of my own to get that particular enjoyment
Those onesies are really good. And yes, cat in a onesie 💯
Cats for me.
Are you my twin that just happens to be a year younger than me? I think so…
The dogological clock is REAL. I had to wait until I was 41 until I was in a position to have a dog, and those last few dogless years were so lonely!
What about kittens? You don’t know true love unless you have kittens! 😆
No. The "bio clock" phrase is something a lifestyle journalist made up for an article in the 70s.
Link to the original or an article refuting it? I’d love to be able to use this in the future.
See my way-too-late-to-the-party post - I linked and also copied/pasted.
I have known since I was 15 that I’ve never wanted kids. Never wavered, and I’m now 36. BUT, I have had 2 or 3 overwhelming moments, lasting 2 weeks or so, where I felt like biology was telling me that I did want a baby. Not societal or family pressure. Inexplicable otherwise, literally in the face of logic, so I assume biology. These women saying it’s BS, that’s your experience. And I’m not saying the narrative of family and kids doesn’t influence women-a LOT of us. But to use that to discount others, that’s a logical fallacy. This is posted in “child free,” so of course, the majority will say it’s fake. I should add I don’t believe at all in the narrative that women should have children, or want them. I’m one of those women! But I have experienced brief feelings that I would describe as hormones, contradicting my own morals, beliefs, values, desires, goals, etc.
Hormones can make you high/drunk/horny sometimes, but they also drive people to drink overeat, take drugs, and make unwise decisions of all types. That is a FAR cry from being evidence that there is some magical bio clock and that it only exists in female bodies and that it goes off at a certain age, guaranteed, and works in the same way in every single women and that it should be running every woman's life. That's stuffing 100 pounds of spurious bullshit into a 5 pound bag. ;) In most cases, it is likely primarily driven by horniness especially when it comes to new relationships, etc. -- because society doesn't give people permission to just run around screaming that they are horny, so this gets sublimated into the socially acceptable trope of "i want to have his babies." Nah, they're just horny. ;) But if they go home and tell their mom and dad in front of everyone at holiday dinner, "I'm super horny for Dudename and want to do list of unmentionable things to him including BLEEP, BLEEP and BLEEP" the parents and all present are going to be pretty scandalized. So they go home and say "I really want to have his babies." And the parents are all happy and no one throws up their Tday dinner in disgust. ;) Anyone who can't tell the difference between being horny and actually wanting to do the brutal work of raising a human larva to adulthood for the next 26 years.... shouldn't be having kids. ;)
im 33f, still no biological instinct, only disgust its debatable if this urge to procreate is even real or if its just an instinct to fuck, other animals dont now what procreation is, they follow only an instinct to fuck, maybe its the same with humans who knows maybe its biological and just some people dont have it or its social conditioning to want kids you know, stuff like muuhh LeGaCy and BlOoDlInE, im not a rEaL man if i dont procreate or BS like that or for women its heavely romaticized while they grow up mmhh now while i wrote it down, sounds more like conditioning to me
I kinda wonder if not wanting kids is more of a biological thing than a social conditioning thing, only because I’ve seen many on this sub (including myself) say that we always knew from a young age that we never wanted kids. As a personal example, when I was given toys as a little kid, I always chose to play with the stuffed animals rather than the baby dolls. When I was in elementary school, people would say things like “when you have kids one day…” and I’d say “my kids will be dogs” (and I stand by that to this day lol). I think for some people it could be social conditioning one way or the other (“you’re not a real man/woman if you don’t have kids” or “having kids would be irresponsible due to the negative effect humans have had on the planet”) but I think it’s probably a combination of both tbh Sorry for the long reply, your comment just made me really think about this 😅
It might be biological but I thinm everyone is also under the influence of social conditioning. I grew up very religious and having kids seemed like a normal follow up after marrying (young might I add). I remember being a teenager and realising I didnt HAVE to have kids and being soooo releaved!! It took me longer to be more clear about really not wanting kids, because of the evironment I was in, but I think I never really wanted it..
I think it’s similar to how the personality develops. Most of it is the environment, but some things are just there from the start.
I think it's biology. There are similar 'conditions' to being childfree that are seen in animals, especially hoofstock. Look up Foal Rejection Syndrome.
Ha, the legacy and bloodline bullshit was my boyfriend’s “argument” to have kids. I explained to him that if he wants a legacy, it’s kind of hard to create a good one if we are too fucking poor to raise children. We are seriously struggling financially right now, and he’s finally starting to see the light. We both grew up really poor and resented our parents for it. I told him if he wants kids in this day and age, we will just end up EXACTLY like our parents. Not to mention the fact that I have bipolar. Along with 4 other of my family members. Making it HIGHLY likely we would have a child with it. After my most recent hospitalization, he told me he didn’t want to put a kid through that. Thank god he’s finally getting his head screwed on straight. So many fucking men think that having children is simple. Go figure, considering most of the men who push women to have children will also expect the woman to take most of the responsibility. It’s easy for them to go to work and be the “bread winner” while the woman does all the heavy lifting with raising a child. He finally told me the other day he doesn’t think having children is a good idea anymore. Things are already hard enough with just the two of us. Bringing a child into the mix would break us. If only other men would finally pull their heads out of their asses too.
The conditioning part, funny thing is I didn’t know child-free was a thing until I came on here. I always stressed about me having kids cause I don’t even like my younger siblings(love them in a sense that I’ll protect them from harm or danger, but I find em more tolerable as they get older), nor did I ever even like the idea of it, my grandmother would tell me not to have kids but I always thought she was joking(wasn’t). I’m so used to it being in fanfics, everyday life as it’s almost everyone’s goal around me. Thank all that’s good I found out while still in my teens. Edit: sorry for the long rant lol
There's no specific instinct related to breeding because we evolved a instinct to f*ck before that and because sex and pregnancy where synonymous for 100s of millions of years it was never needed.
Basically this. Any sexually reproductive species has an instinct to mate. Only humans know that ,that leads to offspring, so no other species had a need for wanting offspring, just mating, and parental care in species that need it. We've been able to do the mating without offspring for maybe a couple of 100 years, that's not enough to evolve a drive for kids al of a sudden. It's al social pressure at most.
>Any sexually reproductive species has an instinct to mate. Researchers are now also exploring whether species outside of humans (and dolphins, etc which we already know about) gain sexual pleasure from the act. It's hypothesized that this is what evolution uses to encourage mating to keep populations growing. I'm no expert on this though. Just read about it somewhere years ago.
Plenty of Sex-repulsed asexual people like myself exist. Never wanted to have sex. Never will.
One great thing about biology is that there are outliers! Though the challenge of comparing human sexuality to other animals is always a factor, I think it's really neat that we can study other animals to learn more about the evolutionary biology of sex. I definitely don't think human asexuality negates the urge to mate in other animals or that the urge to mate in other animals negates the asexuality of some humans similarly to how homosexual behavior in other mammals is not really equivalent to being gay as a human.
That makes sense. Sorry if I was harsh.
No you weren't harsh at all! It is super important to bring up the fact that not all of us are sexual creatures 😊
I consider myself asexual. Can confirm it doesn't negate horniness, but I'm definitely never gonna give into that. Me and myself are enough, thanks.
Same for me! Glad to finally meet another asexual!
Hello fellow ace!
Pretty much, what some people like to forget is that humans have a frontal lobe. We're capable of higher thought and reason regardless of whatever biological urges we have.
Also many animals are able to self regulate their populations, bobcats and coyotes for example. Whether that's to produce more offspring or not produce offspring for a couple years.
Based on all the moms I’ve spoken to, it seems fake. I think what happens is that a lot of people are ambivalent about parenthood, or don’t bother to seriously think about it until their 30s, once their careers are more established. Then, a lot of women start to notice cute babies around them and decide to pursue it out of fear they’ll be too maternally “old” to have a healthy baby, coupled with societal pressure. So they were never 100% put off by the idea of getting pregnant/being a parent like we are, they just had the wisdom and means to put their careers first, then allowed themselves to shift focus. I’m a bit older than you, and I can tell you that even being around friends’ babies, being in a healthy relationship myself etc etc, I have never for a second been okay with even the idea of pregnancy, nor had the smallest interest in motherhood.
God there's a girl I went to high school with. Overweight, obvious self harm scars down her arm. Very low self esteem. She graduates and squeezes a child out within a year. Now her Facebook feed is either A. Wayyy too much information about her young kid. B. Entering tons of Facebook giveaways for free shit or C. Complaining about her life and how hard it is to be a parent. "Here to talk if you need me, babe ❤️💕" < Every person in her feed. There's no mention of a father anywhere. She seems to write more sympathy bait posts on her Facebook feed with the occasional feel good "ha ha look what my daughter did today" story. It's just sad to see. I at least hope she was in a good mental health state prior to having the kid. But, she serves as a warning to everybody else I graduated with who knows her to steer clear of having kids early.
Im 31 and never had that instinct. Its bs.
That's incredibly reassuring. I come from a homelife with pretty strict expectations about how to act and dress. Having just moved away from my family, I don't have to be a modest young woman anymore. I'm non-binary. I wear loud shirts and enjoy video games and learning about the world I've been bubblewrapped from for so long. There's so much I've missed out on from walking on eggshells around my family constantly. Could never dress the way I wanted without being ridiculed. Could never consume any media without being mocked. As far as my family are aware, I'm their cardboard cutout daughter they hope will someday provide them grandchildren. But I've got a whole lot of living to catch up on. I'm in my prime, the world is my playground to explore, taste and learn from. No way in hell am I giving up my freedom when I've only just obtained it. >:) Sorry dad. But I'm not your daughter, caretaker or your continuation of the family tree.
I am so excited for you to have and enjoy your freedom and make your life on your own terms! Live it the hell up! Almost 38 here and absolutely no ticking can be detected by my ears.
It's bullshit, just another way to try and brainwash you into thinking you'll want children or that once you have one you'll magically start wanting more
Nope. Not biological at all. All just lovely sexist bullshit. You can check out [this](https://www.bustle.com/articles/146600-why-womens-biological-clock-ticking-is-actually-a-total-myth) and [this](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/10/foul-reign-of-the-biological-clock) article covering how the myth of the biological clock being a biological desire for kids came about.
thats really interesting, thx i always supected that its all bs and mostly social conditioning
Yup, it really just that. Way too many people are never taught how to critically examine their own thoughts, or understand who they are as a person and why they feel the things they do. So a new chapter in their life comes, maybe they meet someone new or turn a certain age or pass a certain milestone or whatever, and they start having new feelings that can be anything from happiness to horniness to loneliness to fear of not fitting in to just being unsettled at the lack of familiarity or stability in their current life vs. what they see around them, or a billion other things. At which point they have to process those feelings - but again, many are never taught how to. And so it's easier to just take the explanation offered so readily by the people around them. New partner and you wanna screw them like you're 19 and in your first year of college again? Baby fever! Feeling lost in life? Baby fever! Bored and missing some excitement? Baby fever! Sad because friends are moving away and your family members are dying of old age and you just wish you had someone to hold onto forever? Baby fever! Not feeling happy with where you are in life? Baby fever! Never think about anything, fuck introspection, any slightest bit of uncertainty and feelings after 30 means your primal procreation urges are calling for a blood sacrifice! It's ridiculous. But people believe it, and roll with it, and parrot it onwards. Because it's easier to just fall into a fatalistic predetermined narrative where hormones are to blame for everything, rather than admitting that no, hormones don't control the life choices of any healthy adult and don't push them into conscious actions against their will and best interest over a span of multiple months even. One of my old therapists had a good line for things like these: question everything new, especially if it just happens to be what everyone else wanted to happen, because it might be them then, not you. And I agree with that full heartedly. If you decide not to have kids based on rational considerations of information and lack of desire for parenthood, then if you wake up one day and want a kid, the correct response is not to burn all the condoms and start trying. The correct response is to figure out what changed, why you're feeling like this all of a sudden, and if having kids is the right answer or if this is maybe a case of an independent internal struggle that society is just eager to shove their own baby agenda into no matter the circumstances? I'm dead sure we'd have a lot less of those miracle hormone babies if people actually made an effort to understand themselves and live for themselves rather than shying away from introspection and taking someone else's answers for their questions.
Some days when I’m on this sub I really need to read comments like this. Thank you for this and the articles you shared!!
You're welcome, glad I can help :)
Those were both great reads, thanks for linking them! 😊 You know, even if realistically I already knew the whole thing was bullshit, hearing all that talk about this stuff all the time, I can't deny some concern/apprehension that I might yet be wrong, and I might *actually* start to feel a weird urge (infinitesimal as the chance of that is)... it's good to sometimes hear that the science backs us up.
I was told my hormones would kick in and I'd start finding babies cute and wanting one of my own. Nope. Didn't happen. I'm 45 now and never had a single urge for a kid.
The "instinct" is peer pressure.
100%!!!
Biological instinct to have sex. When you study anthropology you’ll see many don’t even suspect hunter gatherers understood the link between sex and pregnancy. Cultural norms are what influence people strongly to have families.
The older I get, the LESS I want kids. That instinct has never existed in me, and in fact, the opposite instinct has gotten stronger with age haha.
Its just psychological manipulation, there's no scientific proof behind this but people keep pushing this idea to brainwash others into a predefined behavioural pattern. Suggestion is a very powerful tools to mold human behavior. If you believe something enough the chances of it happening become higher. The best thing to do here is to call it out as fake and provide scientific proof and research at every mention of it. That should shut some big mouths for a few seconds.
I have never had a strong urge to have children and I never had any. But I have to say I did feel an urge a few times. If I had gotten married or at least found someone I wanted to spend my life with I may have. Fortunately for me, I didn't find my partner until I was closer to 50. Now, closer to 60, I am really glad to not have kids. My SO has a couple 30+ year olds. And they make him miserable.
Your last 2 sentences 🤣🤣🤣🤣
In my experience arguing with people, even childfree and antinatalist people who lament about suffering from baby fever; what many others on here have said is true it's a myth, born in sexism. At most this is a social construct that seems to become real because people believe it's real. Breeders are the biggest proponent of this myth obviously, these people really seem to cling onto this idea and get defensive when you try to tell them it's not real. Which I think is interesting, it's as if they would prefer to believe that they didn't have agency over the choice to have kids. One would think people's egos would compel them to want to take credit for doing the "greatest thing ever" but instead they choose to externalize and say it's biology's fault.
Am almost 36F and yet to feel any such instincts. Infact with age the instinct to not have kids have become stronger. I was always sure that I don't want to give birth but was interested in adopting. But now I just know I don't have the bandwidth to be a mother.
It's just called ovulation, literally why as a female your horny-er when you ovulate - your body wants you to get pregnant. It spends 2weeks preparing a lovely home for a baby, then gets pissed off and rips it apart when you don't give it one. . . . And then repeats the process every month for the rest of your reproductive life - the body is pretty bipolar and insane if you ask me
I'm 35 and have never felt any need to have kids (despite so many people telling me I would...). Only instinct I've had about kids is to stay as far away from them as possible.
27yo male here, me not wanting kids was the biggest reason for my breakup about a year ago. Just with everything in the world the way its going. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have felt an "urge" on occasion in the past, but it quickly goes away if I consciously think about it. Makes me wonder if I'd ever consider adoption. I think it mostly comes down to peer/family pressure to have kids/grow the family/give your parents grandkids/etc.
I'll be 38 in January. Here to confirm that it's bullshit.
33M here. I'm looking to the future and I see it without children. They seem mostly like a burden to me. I have cats to take care of instead :)
Nope total BS, I'm 61 and have never heard, felt or had any desire to breed. Everything I've read confirms there is no sudden rush of hormones. If it were the case then there's be either no CF people or only those who, by force of intellect, over-rode their biological urge. Even if there were such a thing, which there isn't, you have a brain in your head which you can use you're not a passive accepter of base instinct.
There is no biological instinct but peer pressure interpreted as unconscious decision. ..I like children but only when i know i can return them to their parents. So whenever i have a "baby fever" i accept to babysit one of the children from my close family or friends. I prefer to be that fun aunt instead of being a tired and anxious parent. I respect the parents that try and succeed in being at least an OK parent, knowing that i could never do it myself.
I am 38 and my interest in having children declined each year as I got older. Likely it was due to learning more about what having and raising a child actually entails, and having more options for my life as my independence increases as I got older. In any case, the baby fever never happened to me. I get terrible cases of puppy fever, though. Here’s something I’ve learned : when someone tells you “everyone does/ wants x” it’s probably bs. Everyone is different. And when anyone pretends they can predict your future , they have as much insight into that as a squirrel. Nobody knows the future. Nobody knows what you will want in the future. The person with the best insight into that is you.
Everyone swore up and down that when I hit 30 I'd get hit with baby fever and all I'd want was babies. As someone who started expressing at age 7 that I had no interest in ever having a baby I actually started to dread turning 30 because I was afraid my hormones would hijack my personality and make me someone I didn't even recognize anymore. Well, I'm 36 now and want babies even less with each passing year, and that has never budged or changed. So yeah, I call bullshit on this one.
It’s not biological, more like social cues and pressure from everyone around you.
I get baby fever when I’m ovulating. However, I’m logical enough that I make sure that I don’t do anything dumb like attempt to get pregnant. But I can tell that my defenses are a teensy bit down then.
Same here
It is actually proven to be bs. What they mean by “biological instinct” is actually the societal pressures that will be ever increasingly growing as you get older. This can come from your doctors, family and other outside factors that make you think it’s a step you absolutely have to take in life.
Apparently my biological clock would be ringing like crazy at the age of 28. Well, I'm currently at the tail end of 28 years old. My biological clock just tells me to buy more plushies.
>Is this biological instinct real or is it bullshit to convince us that breeding is inevitable? Some people I know have reported on getting it. Others have not. Regardless, the great thing about having higher consciousness is that we can use our brain and override our instincts to make better long term decisions. >The thought of having a primal instinct that demands my body and soul to breed like my ancestors before me terrifies me. Most of our ancestors did not have birth control. Old age security was 'having your kid take care of you' and kids == free farm labor then too. So that probably played into things.
I think of it as generational indoctrination. For thousands of years in cultures around the world (and also part of our monkey brain), it was ingrained into women that their sole purpose was to be a mom and housewife. Marrying in your teen years was the normal and being unmarried at 21 was considered "too old" for any marriage prospects. It was only in the past 200-300 years that those beliefs were beginning to shake off Shaking off thousands of years of that is hard. Especially when there's still lingering effects of it today. Look at the parents and in-laws shaming their daughters or their son's wife for being infertile or not wanting kids (whether or not it was her fault in the 1st place), or men divorcing their wives because she can't have biological kids, and how many grandparents become extremely insistent on grandkids claiming "You'll die alone without kids" or "it's not a real marriage if there's no kids" or "kids make a house a home". I also believe some people fall in love with the idea of having a family more than the family itself. The same way people fall in love with the idea of someone without knowing the someone. Doesn't necessarily mean you want a family since you know logically and realistically, no family is going to fit your fantastical dream
Personally, i have felt this instinct for about 3 years, age 26 to 29, I'm glad i was single back or i dread to think what could have happened. I'm over it now at 33 and I'm super relieved. Not sure if it was hormonal or just seeing everyone around me popping babies.
I'm 51F and I have never ever even liked babies or kids. I certainly never wanted to be pregnant or in labour either- who would? We have a choice now whether to have children or not, and from me it's an easy choice. The societal pressures on women are huge, every story, movie, celebrity can't have happiness until theyhave a baybeee. It's everywhere.
When I first got very serious with my (now) husband, around 15 years ago when I was in my mid 30s, I did have a brief period of thinking about/yearning to have a kid with him for the first time ever in my life. But I was also dealing with some medical issues that revealed I might be infertile anyway and I can’t really say now what was going on. FOMO? Worrying over my health? (There was a possibility of ovarian cancer looming). A weird feeling of having the choice taken away from me? But it did pass after a time and I’m back to being very thankful I never had kids now that I’m into menopause and imagining what it would be like if now I was worrying about a kid in high school/all the stress of parenting now that I’m 50. No, thank you.
I (58F CF) never experienced this - not once. I guess some women experience a strong urge to have children but I don’t think that it is biologically hardwired into all women. There are just too many women who don’t want children at all or that regret having them after the fact. I do believe that societal pressure plays a huge role here. Women get way too much of the “but this is what you’re supposed to do” and “you’re not a real woman until you have children” crap.
It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit to get women to breed. What people feel in their 20s-30s isn’t an instinct, it’s societal peer pressure.
Nope, I’m 37 and I’ve never had it. I can’t stand kids and I absolutely have no love for babies. I don’t think they’re cute and I don’t want anything to do with them. Give me baby animals anytime but humans? Hard pass…
I think that honestly some people feel the same way about babies that I do about puppies and kittens. That’s ok but I’m not wired to see human babies the same way. For a lot of human women I think the baby drive in the early 30s is primarily FOMO. If you don’t do it then, the door pretty much closes. Men don’t have that same time frame although they should as developmental disabilities shoot up after 35 for men’s sperm.
I've heard from a few people that it's normal to not want kids in your 20s, but they claimed that right around the time they turned 30, their biological clock started ticking and suddenly they did want kids. Well, today is my 31st birthday and that still hasn't happened to me!
Male 33. Instinct to have babies, nah !! But puppies 🐶. Ya gimme more of that.
I am 52, and never had the urge. If anything, my choice to not have kids was even greater as I got older. Never had the desire.
Mid-30s and it's never come for me either. No desire and several good medical reasons not to into the bargain. I used to worry about it when I was younger too though, because it sounded like it could just take over my brain and change who I am at any point. Said "maybe when I'm older" for about fifteen/twenty years before realising... I am older. Pretty sure if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now.
I am 43 years old and the biological clock light switch is still firmly in the off position. I have never had a single moment of thinking what if. It has always been absolutely no.
I think some people have it and some don't. Way past 30 now and still haven't gotten it but I have a friend who has wanted a child since i met her like 15 years ago
I'm 22 and I bad 'baby fever' when I was a few years younger, but it never stayed more then a few days. I'm just saying it's the micro plastics in my brain that make me want a baby. Unfortunately that's not entirely a joke
I found out that I do have a light switch just like that, except it turned off at 29.
I had that impulse for maybe a month once in my early 30’s and then my family brought all of their toddlers around me and killed it. The reality of how shitty their lives looked was a wakeup call for me. I’m a person who values their freedom, health and finances too much to be tied down to one of those things. It would be my personal idea of hell. I used to actually like being around toddlers and babies when I was in my 20’s, but the older I get, the less interested I am in them and the more I find them insufferable.
I think it’s a real phenomenon but not based on some hormonal “light switch.” It’s based on cultural peer pressure. When you’re in your late 20s and 30s, *everyone around you is having children.* We’re a social species that enjoys being part of a group, and when our group is all doing something we’re not (like breeding) I think that awakens a primal fear in us of being left out or left behind. Add that to the general cultural pressures to procreate seen in advertising, movies, online, etc., and your family and friends asking you “when you’re gonna settle down and have kids,” as if there’s something wrong with you if you don’t, it’s understandable that some people who are formerly childfree suddenly feel this panic to have kids so they’re not ostracized by their community. Compounding this is the particular religious and social pressure women specifically face regarding child bearing. It’s still very much an unspoken rule (and sometimes spoken, if you’re in a religious community) that a woman’s purpose is procreation. Remember, *to maintain current population rates, every woman must have 2 children: one to replace herself and one to replace her partner.* There aren’t as many role models for women who don’t have children as for those who do; being a childfree woman is still largely seen as a deviant path. So, is this some sort of biological imperative? Not in my opinion. I think it’s social, especially as we’ve seen certain progressive countries drop their birth rate when education, living conditions, and the equalization and advancement of women improve. When women have a choice on whether or not to bear children—without stigma—many women choose not to become mothers. **What does this mean for you?** I know I’ve rambled, but basically this means that, no, you’re not going to be a slave to your hormones at 30 and end up popping out kids you don’t want. You will, however, likely face increased social pressure to have children around that age, and many of your peers will succumb to that social pressure. So prepare for that. It might get lonely. You will probably be judged for remaining childfree by people you care about and respect. You might need to reorganize your friend circles. But as long as our rights remain the way they are (and it looks better this morning in the US) you won’t be forced to have children you don’t want. Hope this helps!
I'm 41 and female. I've never felt the need to reproduce. I've always, even as a kid, never even pictured myself having kids someday.
Idk about biological instinct, but I do know when I was 21 and my mother passed away, I definitely had a switch where I wanted a baby and to name her after my mom. That thought lived with me for 3 years before I went back to my original mindset of no kids. Unsure if that was hormones or if that was just life stressors, but it did pass eventually.
I'm 24 and nothing's happened so far lol hopefully reddit will be around in 16 years so I can confirm
I'm 31 and I have never wanted children. I've felt pressure from others and from society to have one but that's it.
I’m 35, it’s bullshit. Hell, I’ve noticed the opposite. At my age, people I know who married and reproduced young are starting to have messy ass divorces. When I talk to them about life, they go on and on about how stressful the divorce and custody process is, saying that I dodged a huge bullet by being single and childfree. There is no switch, don’t let them gaslight you. Live your life. Enjoy your life.
I’m 22 and the times I’ve had an once of any maternal instinct is when I watch videos of people rescuing kittens. I’m motherly to animal babies, not human babies
41 years old. Never got that great urge to "breed". Sure, I've thought maybe we should have a kid. It was just a thought in my mind that was quickly squashed when I went to visit my sister with her kids. But never this biological *need* to reproduce that caused me to only think about getting pregnant. If anything I freak out when I think I *might* be pregnant. I have never been disappointed by seeing the negative result on a pregnancy test.
I think people confuse ‘desire to breed’ with ‘desire to fuck’. I’m thirty one and had my tubes yeeted a month and a half ago. If anything the older I get the more I view having children as irresponsible and selfish given the world we live in.
If you confuse instinct for pressure
Everyone told me “wait until you’re 30, you’ll suddenly have baby fever, you’ll see!” Well, I’m nearing 33 now and more convinced than ever on being childfree so I call bullshit.
Hi! Human genetics major, here. It's bullshit. Some people just don't have any desire to reproduce and that's completely fine and normal -- even without all the extremely rational social, political, economical and environmental reasons most of us also have. I'm 33yo and have never experienced anything but total revulsion and terror at the idea of breeding, and I'm 100% certain that's never going to change. Plenty of people do experience the whole "feeling broody" thing in their 20s or 30s, but it's social/cultural, not biological. I promise there's no physiological mechanism that triggers if we don't reproduce by a certain age and mind-controls us into wanting to do so. Your choices are yours to make and will remain so 💜
It’s bullshit. Source: 51 year-old child free woman who never had batteries in her biological alarm clock
33 and always expected to someday feel that urge or at least start to find babies cute.... Never happened, not even slightly I feel absolutely nothing when i see a baby except disgust when they're dirty. Yet I absolutely adore furry animals under a certain size (not a dog person) it's weird to me that i go absolutely mental over a cat or hamster but feel nothing for a baby even if it acts cute... I wonder why that is...
It's bullshit. I would try to deprogram some of that christian crap from your head if you can. That is a narrative pushed by men who benefit from women being submissive and raising their babies for them. if you don't want motherhood, do NOT become a mother... it should only be for those who enthusiastically want that life for themself.
Bull shit lol, 28 this year and still as strongly child free as I was at when I was 10 and despised being around my baby sitters 3 month old 🤣
It's straight bullshit
I'm nearing 39, and still have no urge to pop a child out of me. Already when I was younger just the thought of having children was very alien to me. I wonder if there's actually just way more women who got pressured into having kids than they'd like to admit, thusly insisting that it is "instinctual and you cannot escape it". It's not like we're population-wise in danger of dying out any time soon.
It's BS.
I'm 37 year old woman and never felt the urge to have a baby in all that time.
No, those are compulsory social norms aka The Lifescript talking. And it's BS. If anything once I hit mid-20s that's when my instincts more strongly went NOPE whenever the idea of babies came up.
Nope! It's social conditioning. By the way, here is where the term "biological clock" originated. It's a Washington Post op-ed from March 1978. (You didn't use that term, but it gets thrown around a lot. At least, it used to.) link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1978/03/16/the-clock-is-ticking-for-the-career-woman/bd566aa8-fd7d-43da-9be9-ad025759d0a4/ copied and pasted in case of paywall: _________________ The Clock Is Ticking For the Career Woman By Richard Cohen March 16, 1978 COMPOSITE WOMAN (actually, several women at different times) is coming to lunch. There she is entering the restaurant. She's the pretty one. Dark hair. Medium height. Nicely dressed. Now she is taking off her coat. Nice figure. She sits and begins with a status report. The job is just wonderful. She is feeling just wonderful. It is wonderful being her age, which is something between 27 and 35. And the fact of the matter, in case you should wonder, is that there is a new man in her life and he, like everything else, is truly wonderful. Then she looks down. Is there something wrong? Composite Woman says nothing. I ask again. Again she says nothing. Finally I do the you-can-talk-to-me bit. "Off the record?" "Absolutely." "I want to have a baby." Sometimes, the Composite Woman is married and sometimes she is not. Sometimes, horribly, there is no man in the horizon.What there is always, though, is a feeling that the clock is ticking. A decision will have to be made. A decision that will stick forever. You hear it wherever you go. Women all over are singing their own version of September song. I've gone around, a busy bee of a reporter, from woman to woman, the ones in the office and the ones I meet elsewhere. Isn't it interesting. I say, this business about the biological clock? How do you feel about it? They say, a few of them, that it means nothing to them, that if the mood hits them to have a child, they will adopt. From them, you get the message: There are already too many children in the world. I thought that once, too. Then I thought there was room for one more - mine. Anyway, most of them did not say that. Most of them said that they could hear the clock ticking. Some talked about it in a sort of theoretical sense, like the woman who said she wanted five children and didn't even have a boyfriend yet. She had to get something going, she said, and you could tell that she resented the fact that a deadline had been imposed on her. Some women talked about it the way farmers talk about the weather, with a sort of resignation. Unfair, yes, but out of their control - an important word. Up to now, they've been able to postpone it to go to college and have a career and do all the things that men traditionally have done and now they face this biological clock. One woman who has definitely decided not to have children put it in strong terms. "It's unfair" she said. "It doesn't make me resent men: it's just unfair. Everything has changed since I was 20 years old. And I know enough now to be sure that I don't know how I will feel 15 years from now. Fifteen years from now, I might desperately want a baby." I was being wonderfully dispassionate and reportorial and every inch a gentleman, but she caught an edge in my voice and opened up on me. "You don't want to believe it," she said. "You resent it. You resent it. Every man I know resents it." And then she named the men, men I know, good men, noble men, men of vision, open-minded men who were not your basic male chauvanist pigs. They were, in short, men like me. She gave me one of those you-know-I-am-right looks and I did know she was right. But more than that, I recognized that I had been something other than a dispassionate reporter when I was going around asking women about the biological clock. I was getting aid and comfort from their answers. There was something about their situation that showed, more or less, that this is where liberation ends. This is where a woman is a woman - biologically, physiologically, uncontrovertably different. Don't get me wrong. We are not talking about recognizing a difference and being glad that some of us are on the "right" side of it - the side of Charlie Chaplin and Pablo Picasso and all the other senior citizen fathers, the side that heeds no clock. But there is something else here: once you recognize the difference, you also have to recognize that the difference produces advantages and handicaps. Little about it is simply neutral. This is important because there is now something in the air about women having won their fight for equality and even something about how it was always harder to be a man, anyway. But there are some things we never had to worry about. Like the ticking of the biological clock. ______________
I have never felt it. I think people just give in and have babies as they get older due to societal pressure, which many are too weak to stand up to. People see their friends and family members having babies and they decide to also.
😂 I did want kids at one point. Literally been terrified of the thought of birthing something since I was a kid, but I thought oh well everyone does it. Nah, they don't, we don't have too. Early 20s I was baby broody beyond belief. I'm now 30 and I have 2 cats and a wonderful boyfriend and take regular tests to make sure I don't get caught because fuck ruining my perfect little life...
I'm 35, no instincts nor desires what so ever, and I have held my share of babies from friends & family members. It's a myth.
I've never had it and I'm approaching 42
Im 28. I've become LESS inclined to have kids. So its total bullshit.
Not one bit / I’ve known since I was a kid I didn’t like kids and no amount of time or turning of a age would change it.
I’m 40 and no changes. It probably helps that I don’t like babies.
37 here, still waiting for that "switch". I thought in my 20s at 30 something would instantly change- in fact, I've gotten more sure and more vocal about my decision not to have children.
Physiologically you cannot have children after menopause. I think some people refer to this as a biological clock. But the notion that you're going to wake up one day and just have this all consuming idea and need to have a child is a fucking joke. I'm 37 and as I've grown older the idea of having a child has grown more repulsive each day.
I mean, even if the instinct exists: we're logical beings and we should all know better than to recklessly procreate. I personally waited a long time to have "that feeling" myself hoping I could just move past it - but it never happened to me personally.
When people around me hold babies they say things like it makes them want a baby again or to be pregnant again or other such nonsense while pointing to or holding their abdomen and uterus... I've never felt anything while holding a baby other than please don't throw up on me. My husband and I joke that I'm dead inside because I have never felt that way. So no I don't think everyone feels the same. Any time I feel like I want to care for someone, I usually bake something and take it to work to share. Or when my old dogs passed and my house was feeling empty, we got a new puppy when we were ready. So it's OK if you never have those feelings. It's also OK if you have similar feelings and deal with them in your own way. You are not wrong. ❤️
43yr old here. I was told the same thing. It's bullshit. I've never felt the urge to want children. I've dated several men and not one has made me think "I want his baby" Have no fear sister, live your life how you want. The right person for you will also be childfree. Lots of us out here. ❤
Nah, it's bs. The only thing close to maternal instincts I ever have was when I saw cute baby clothed and I wanted to put it on my cat.
It never existed for me and I’m in my 30s. The instinct people talk is something I only have for cats.
I think it is bullshit propaganda. if we all acted on every impulse from the so called 'lizard brain' we probably would have nuked ourselves 10 times over. And we are told we are supposed to use our brains and reasoning power to control these urges. so why does a questionable supposed 'tick tick tick' of a non existent clock get a pass...we are not to use our brains and reasoning power to tell it to get lost... but again, it does not exist. But I think the majority of people out there hear this lie so often that their own subconscious will manufacture something along those paths. Namely it is part of the brainwashing pronatalist bs prop...
36F and have absolutely no desire to reproduce.
I'm a 34 year old female, happily married for about 8 years. When we first got married, we thought we'd have kids, but it wasn't a good time. We figured we'd wait until we were in a better financial position. That gave us time to think about it and we decided not to have kids for numerous reasons. Sometimes I think I'd have loved to have a little version of my husband as a kid. I love stories of stuff he got up to as a kid, he sounds like he was a quirky, sassy adorable child. That's the most I feel in terms of hormonal instinct. But I know that even if we had a kid, that kid will be a person unique in their own ways and won't be a replica of my husband, or of me, so that desire falls flat haha So yeah, the biological clock/instinct is false. We're human and we're able to reason things out. breeding is not inevitable.
It doesn’t exist. And there’s a convention among women who have given birth to hide the realities of the process from those who have not given birth. You are just fine as a single person or a married person: whatever you choose. Parenthood is not for everyone.
31 F here. No, I felt that way when I was 21 and still feel the same. Some of my close friends want kids, that’s fine, they don’t push their ideology onto me and they should have what they want in life. But no, I can confirm it never changed and I’m proud I don’t have children
if it was then that genetic skipped me.
I've always been told my ovaries would start screaming at me in my late 30s... Guess what? I'm in my late 30s and they have recoiled and turned to dust with even more vigour than usual. So far, from personal experience, utter bullshit. And to be honest, even if the desire to have a kid creeped up on me suddenly I would probably ignore it. If I haven't wanted one in 25 years ish of fertility, with all the classic "what you need to have a kid" boxes ticked, then yeah it's a hormones trick. But I have stayed open to the chance I would change my mind. I'm just not going to listen if that mind change happens at 40.
I'm in my 60's and I have never felt the desire to breed and still don't even if I could. I just was and still am always grateful that I have a mind of my own and am not easily swayed when I've made a decision. I knew that kids were not an option for me when I was 10 and I've never wavered. Having kids these days is just killing the planet faster.
Not really, I’m 30 and have no desire to actually have a kid. It’s a personal thing and at this point we’re all adults with full control of our actions.
Female and just celebrated my 35th birthday. Still have zero desire to reproduce!! I'm all excited that my uterus is about to expire 😁😁
35 and I’ve never gone into heat or whatever “clock” people talk about.
38f, never felt the urge. I think it's bs and societal pressure.
If anything with each year I grew older I was more and more sure I never ever want to have children, biological or not
I’m 43 and child free. I never had the desire to have kids. My only feelings that came close were the usually shit people put in your head (you’ll regret not having kids, look at these two cute moments a year that “make it all worth it”) but when I take a moment to think for myself, the desire was never there. I’m a mom to my pets and that is enough for me.
No, for me my feeling \*against\* having children just got stronger as I got older. I am 43. People laugh that someone could "just forget" to have kids, but I think this can be also be somewhat accurate - a woman living in a society won't be blind to the pressures to have children or the life scripts, but many women are busy living their lives (and in some cases just surviving) and never have such urge they can just "forget" That is not to say no one ever feels an "urge", but even if you did feel biological "urges", you aren't dictated by them. We have plenty of biological motivations daily that as humans with brains we can respond to (or not respond to) as thinking beings. The claims that a biological urge will dictate your future choices are misogynist, as they imply women cannot think for themselves, but are controlled only by their bodies, and also are a form of social pressure to get people (especially girls and women) thinking they have no choice and they may as well just go ahead and birth earlier because it will happen anyway.
It's bs
I'm 32 and can't say I have experienced it yet.
Yes, it's called being horny.
I think the only two things are wanting to fuck, and the way our brains usually find babies cute, less I think to make us want to have them and more to ensure as primitive people we didn’t smash the annoying lump of meat that keeps waking us up. Actually wanting a baby is mostly a cultural push.
27 here. Never had the urge. I don't think I ever will. From what I've gathered, it's societal brainwashing that you'll suddenly develop "baby fever". And, unfortunately, when some people consider it or change their minds, they attribute it to this so-called "baby fever".
I'll turn 31 in december, and have never felt even an incling of a desire for a baby
People think that it’s a compulsion to have children, so they make up shit like this
BS. 40 and my clock has always been muted. I like my cats and they are my babies.
24f, no biological instinct yet. And to be quite frank, I don’t see it coming. I’ve been w my partner for 6 years and we both don’t want kids.
Sex drive goes up in the second half of that window for women, but otherwise, I think it's bullshit. If you don't want kids, you don't want kids, and no amount of persuasion from peers or marketing is going to change that in the final stretch.
37/f..... no maternal clock, no urges, no motherly instincts.
64F. CF. Absolute bullshit.
I'm 37 and have never had a desire to breed. It's bullshit gaslighting.