I Don’t Like Children. Even Yours.

‘When are you having children?’

I don’t know why people ask. Think about it: if the askee was to be honest with you, there are really only four answers. If you’re lucky, the answer’s ‘I don’t know, we’re not ready?’ But perhaps it’s one of these:

- We’ve been trying for a year and it’s not happening. Which is why we don’t talk about it — do you really want to hear our painful fertility dramas?

- I don’t want them, but he does. The fights are getting tense, but the silence is worse. Do you really want to hear our domestic dramas?

- I don’t want to be a parent. After careful consideration, I think my life is better without kids. (Also, I subjectively judge the quality of your life as having declined since breeding).

For me, it’s the last reason.

Babies are sleep-thieving aliens. Toddlers are noise-and-break-stuff machines. Children are precocious annoyances, and you can’t tell them bawdy jokes. And teenagers… I didn’t even like them when I was one.

Theoretically, I like some kids on a case-by-case basis. My cousin’s ones are cool: the girl is evil like I was; I dig it. The boy is cute too. But after ten minutes with them I’m shooting dust. All my ‘kid conversation’ pieces have been exhausted. I’m bored; as are they.

Everyone thinks their child is extraordinary. It’s sweet. The product of their genes and nurturing is a work of art. A friend once told me it was a biological thing — the lovey overload was to stop mothers drowning their offspring after the 63rd consecutive night of two hours’ sleep.

Parents discuss their wonderful masterpiece of a child whenever they can. Even if you don’t think you do it, you probably do. And prefixing it with, ‘you’re probably sick of hearing about Arabella, but yesterday at playgroup…’ doesn’t make it ok.

I love dogs, and my partner and I can talk about the puppies we want for hours (‘a red staffie called Gavin! Then a beagle called Dolby! Then a Rottweiler called Ziggy Von Satan!’ etc). But children? Don’t like them. Never will.

Some give the ‘it’s different when they’re yours’ speech. It’s cliché ninety-four in an ongoing series (see also: ‘once you’re a mother, THEN you’ll understand!’ Understand what? That I’m a slave to my hormones? I already know that, thanks to my monthly chocolate-wine-and-tears sessions).

I’m used to the child-bragging. What I hate is when people think their child will ‘convert’ you. The scenario is always the same:

Breeder: So when are you going to have kids?
Me: not really a ‘when’ so much as a ‘why’. The answer: no good reason. So, never.
Breeder: But [wonders of childbirth, sacrifice and tearing from V to A]
Me: Yeah, see, following careful consideration, no.
Breeder whips out wallet and smacks you across the face with their children’s photos. ‘But look at MY kids, though, see? SEE? NOW you see it, DON’T YOU.’

I was at breakfast with a few of my friends awhile back. My friend’s fiancé had bought a workmate. The talk turned to children. The workmate — who had seemed lovely until exposing her breeder-nazi doctrine — asked why we weren’t having children. I didn’t have the energy to educate her, or play mind games like bursting into tears and telling her we’re infertile (I do that sometimes, in the hopes that they’ll think twice next time before asking something that is essentially none of their fucking business).

So instead of rattling off the extremely valid reasons NOT to have a child, I just said I don’t like them. Cue ‘Oooooh, how COULD you?’ diatribe about the wonders of children.

Then she gets out her digital camera. She scrolls to a picture and whips it out with a flourish that says ‘here! Now I have the ace up my sleeve that shall win this debate!’

It was a picture of a child. From her colourings (blonde, blue eyed, pale), it probably wasn’t hers (Mediterranean, olive-skin, dark/curly hair), but I bet it was related to her in some way. A niece, perhaps.

Anyway, it was a child. Not ugly. Not a cherubic angel. Just a child, like in a random google image search for ‘child sitting with toy’. Bugger this, I thought.

‘Meh,’ I said, offering the camera back unbotheredly. ‘Oh! You pest!’ She said, snatching the camera and trying to keep it all very light, but annoyed and clearly taken aback. My partner turned around and asked what the picture was. ‘Just some generic child’ I said, to the consternation of the work mate.

She was expecting me to play the game. To say, ‘oh, you’re right, she is VERY cute, yes.’

I didn’t feel like playing the game that day. Us barren folk have a stock-standard set of responses to coo at doting parents when we see a child or baby that looks like… every other child or baby. ‘What lovely eyes!’ or ‘Wow, how cute!’ or ‘Oh! She’s very alert!’ (My mum taught me that one. I don’t know why, but it always goes down a treat). I don’t like children, and no matter how unique and special yours is, seeing a picture of it isn’t going to make my belief system come tumbling down and have me yank out my Mirena IUD and spermjack my partner as soon as we get home.

Our life choices are our own. Your choice wrecks your sleep patterns for sixteen years. Our choice guarantees that in our old age, we’ll have no one to look out for us and we’ll end up in a home where the mattress is lumpy and the orderlies steal from us. Respect that and we’ll try not to freak out next time your kid spills juice on our laptop.

Lisa-Skye Ioannidis is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian whose mother is slowly accepting never getting grandchildren from her.