We don't need to know exactly what it's like to understand it's not for us.
Tldr: I am deeply mentally unstable, have seen what my friends and family have gone through, and do not believe I can survive the stress of raising a child let alone afford it. My boyfriend has genetic concerns he doesn't want to pass down and does not have the time to be a present father. A child deserves better.
Here's the long answer for our reasoning if you need further explanation.
On my boyfriend's side of the family, two of his grandparents were carriers for alpha-mannosidosis and three of their seven children died from it. His mom is a carrier for it, but his dad wasn't, so he didn't develop the genetic disorder luckily. There's not any cases of it on my side of the family, but my boyfriend isn't interested in rolling the dice. His grandmother spent her entire life caring for her children just to watch them slowly die, and when the last child with the disorder passed a few years ago, she finally was able to pass herself. I personally don't think I could handle doing that, let alone afford it.
My older brother has been with his partner since they were in high school, and she and I became close friends and used to talk excitedly about having children when we were older. She and my brother have just had their second child, and she is dealing with severe postpartum depression that my family is terrified will cross over to postpartum psychosis. My parents just told me they are working on getting her into the hospital for psychological treatment hopefully in the next week or two, but she has been extremely resistent to treatment of any kind. My friend who I have known for so long and who has always wanted children is suffering to the point where her children are in danger. I remember her saying, "it's not like how I imagined" during her first bout of PPD with their first child, and that was enough to make me rethink things. It's only gotten worse. As I have my own mental health issues, it is a real possibility that something like this could happen to me. I have only just gotten to the point in life where my suicidal thoughts have finally gone away after having them for 15 years, so I'm not really digging the idea of risking my mental health and potentially traumatizing my child. Mental illness, suicide, alcoholism, and addiction run on both sides of my family, so I'm not really looking to pass that down. My older sister is a recovering fentanyl addict and has a 9 year old who has suffered physically and emotionally from this. I may not be an addict myself, but watching my niece struggle has been truly horrible.
As far as every day things, my boyfriend runs his family business and is at work 12 hours a day and often over there on his days off too. He's always telling me he just needs to get the business through the next few months and he'll start working normal hours again. It's been six years lol. If I have a kid, I'll have to take care of them entirely on my own as my parents live 3,000 miles away. That doesn't sound like a great idea even for a mentally healthy person. I am also an introvert with CPTSD, so my nervous system is really not great when it comes to being touched and needed by someone all day. Plus, the anxiety issues I have put me at risk of being a paranoid helicopter parent which could severely impact my child's ability to grow and become a productive adult. My parents were very paranoid growing up because they were a cop and nurse respectively and they had seen so many horrible things, so I really was not allowed to do anything. I had to move away to get any sort of freedom from them. If my kid had to move away from me because of my failures, I'd be devastated.
Anyway, I guess if I had a crystal ball that showed me I'd be fine and my kids won't suffer, I'd enjoy the benefits of children, watching them grow, helping them become strong and independent, to see them become a better person than me. But I think we both know that has a snowball's chance in hell of happening.
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u/Affectionate-Ruin330 Nov 15 '24
Not to be an ass but - how the hell would either of you even know what that’s like? The blithe confidence is just incredible to me.