NEVER have children

I spent most of the weekend with my brother and his family. He has a three-year-old son and on Saturday I spent a couple of hours babysitting him, while my brother and his wife went shopping.

He’s a cute and a funny kid, but I just still couldn’t imagine having a child of my own. A child needs so much care and attention that I could never sacrifice such a big part of my life to raising one. I like playing with my nephew (he’s also my godson) every now and then but I couldn’t handle it if I had to do it every day.

For some reason lately I’ve been thinking about whether I would make a good father or not. It seems that most kids like me and I usually learn things fast so I see no reason why I couldn’t be a good father… except for that I don’t want to.

Last week I visited my brother and played with his son (my godson) for a while. Sure it was fun and he’s a sweet kid but I couldn’t imagine having a child of my own.

I spoke with my brother a couple of days ago and some things he said made me feel even more sure about this goal. He has a daughter who’s less than a year old and he’s now on parental vacation.

He told me how he had meant to call me many times but somehow just couldn’t find a good moment for that. Basically he was saying that he hasn’t had time to do much else than take care of the child, and the only time he has for himself are the couple of hours when the girl sleeps. He wasn’t really complaining, but I kinda got the feeling that he wasn’t entirely happy either.

Getting to the point, I can safely say that I would be very unhappy in such a situation. I’d probably feel like my life was going to waste; dedicating my life to kids just doesn’t sound like a good idea. Instead of that I want to dedicate my life to myself, my girlfriend and my closest friends.

I was visiting my brother a couple of weeks ago. He is 6 years older than me and he has a 10-month-old son. We were sitting in the sauna and chatting about all kinds of things and the life in general. At some point we started talking about how many things there are to do every day and how limited time we have to spend on our hobbies.

Having thought about his situation I have to consider myself lucky, because as a student I can basically make my own schedules. But my brother, he works regular hours and he has a small child that he has to look after. Of course he has a wife who can look after the child, too, but whenever she needs to be away, my brother must take care of the little boy. Traveling abroad with such a young child is also out of the question.

However, it’s not like my brother is regretful for having a child, not at all. He really loves his son and his wife. I can see that they are a happy family. It’s just that life is about making choices; it’s all about how we want to use the precious little time we have. My choice is not to have children, because I want to spend my life doing other things than caring for my offspring.

Right now I feel like I will never want to have kids of my own. Almost everyone keeps on saying that I will change my mind when I grow older but I don’t think so. I want to live my own life and be able to do what I want. I want to experience things and see the world. And I think I could never fully commit myself to raising a child. I just feel it would restrict me too much. I would not be able to do all those things if I had a child to look after.

My brother has a son, who is about 8 months old now. I’m his godfather and I think there’s enough parenthood for me. Now please don’t get me wrong here, he is the sweetest little boy I’ve seen and I like playing with him every now and then. But I just couldn’t handle the responsibility of having to look after him all the time.