If you don't want children...

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I am going to become a groomer. I’m getting my license for it. I want to work with animals because I love animals. Right now I am with somebody, have been for about a year and a half. I love him very much. I really don’t know where to go from here as he told me he would like to marry me someday. He doesn’t want kids either. I would love to marry him, but neither of us are open to kids so I know that its probably not an option, and that hurts me a lot. What should I do?
Yeah I think this is a hard situation you are in. I mean some people dontl want kids but hey they are fine with being single so it works out great! Or there if your a person that wants kids and wants marriage hey easy there too! But when your in a situation like yours suddenly the choice isn;t so easy. It makes it even harder that you found someone! especially when they feel the same way about having kids as you do. I mean cause at least if he wanted kids you would be able to tell yourself well it wouldn;t work anyway we want different things. But now you have a hard choice. Do you end the relationship and perhaps end up forever regretting your choice? Wondering if you made a big mistake? Or do you continue down your current path and get married but chose to be open to life and pray that you will have a change of mind and want the kids you have? There are consequences for either action its not an easy choice I donlt envy you, It makes me glad I donlt believe in all that marriage is all about the kids stuff lol.
 
I think it was some of the reasons you put out for not wanting kids, not your feeling generally. You want to travel, you want to do this you want to do that, you don’t want the responsibility, etc. Avoiding responsibility just for the sake of not having responsibility is what seems selfish.
I take responsibility for all my actions in life. I just don’t want to have to deal with a child for the next 18+ years. Not my cup of tea. I like my freedom. However I still follow God at all times.
 
Yeah I think this is a hard situation you are in. I mean some people dontl want kids but hey they are fine with being single so it works out great! Or there if your a person that wants kids and wants marriage hey easy there too! But when your in a situation like yours suddenly the choice isn;t so easy. It makes it even harder that you found someone! especially when they feel the same way about having kids as you do. I mean cause at least if he wanted kids you would be able to tell yourself well it wouldn;t work anyway we want different things. But now you have a hard choice. Do you end the relationship and perhaps end up forever regretting your choice? Wondering if you made a big mistake? Or do you continue down your current path and get married but chose to be open to life and pray that you will have a change of mind and want the kids you have? There are consequences for either action its not an easy choice I donlt envy you, It makes me glad I donlt believe in all that marriage is all about the kids stuff lol.
I want to stay with him though. But I guess in life we all have to give up what we love because rules are rules. 🤷
 
I think it was some of the reasons you put out for not wanting kids, not your feeling generally. You want to travel, you want to do this you want to do that, you don’t want the responsibility, etc. Avoiding responsibility just for the sake of not having responsibility is what seems selfish.
Ive always wanted to get married, travel, have pets, ect. All the normal things just without kids.
 
I think it was some of the reasons you put out for not wanting kids, not your feeling generally. You want to travel, you want to do this you want to do that, you don’t want the responsibility, etc. Avoiding responsibility just for the sake of not having responsibility is what seems selfish.
Yes ^^ this!
I take responsibility for all my actions in life. I just don’t want to have to deal with a child for the next 18+ years. Not my cup of tea. I like my freedom. However I still follow God at all times.
You really are not refuting the argument here. You say you like your freedom, yet follow God at all times. Leaving children aside, what happens if you come across a situation where you have to choose between your own will and God’s law? The way you talk, you follow God only on your own terms.
 
Ive always wanted to get married, travel, have pets, ect. All the normal things just without kids.
Yeah and like I said before most people have kids for selfish reasons. I mean I am sure if you asked most people why they had kids there reasons would include alot of mes and I wanted and so on. Really I think it would be far more sinful in your case to get married and have kids that would be unwanted then it would be to get married and not have kids.
 
Ive always wanted to get married, travel, have pets, ect. All the normal things just without kids.
I think you need to study what the church actually teaches on marriage and what it is. Then you can see for yourself.

For me, I had no great desire to get married, thus having no desire for children was no big deal. It was not until I started dating that I had to actually discern whether marriage (and total responsibility to someone else) and children (the natural end of marriage) were a part of my vocation. I luckily had good formation in the area of vocations.
 
You’re right about that, unfortunately.
Nope, not true. Most married couples who decide to have children are most certainly NOT thinking only of themselves. It’s a hell of a lot easier NOT to have kids. I know when my husband and I decided to be open to life (we were lapsed and yes, had been using ABC), it was one of the most sobering and frightening times of either of our lives. Could we really do it? Could we trust God to give us a baby? If so, what would life be like? We had no idea! No one does! We had a pretty nice life before kids. We could have gone on like that happily. We took trips every weekend. We both worked. Had plenty of disposable income. We had hobbies.

Once the baby came, everything changed. Here was an entirely new soul, who had never been on earth, and we were responsible for raising him! It was both :eek: and :love::extrahappy::dancing: in turns!

In addition, the selfish person I was, but of course did not believe myself to be, DIED on the delivery table. Does that sound dramatic? Well, it was. I have never been the same. God turned me inside out. And handed me a little purple-faced munchkin who has grown into a man in the last 21 years.

No, having children is not selfish. I could tell you sooooo many stories of how our needs have been put aside for our kids over the years.
 
Yes ^^ this!

You really are not refuting the argument here. You say you like your freedom, yet follow God at all times. Leaving children aside, what happens if you come across a situation where you have to choose between your own will and God’s law? The way you talk, you follow God only on your own terms.
I choose God.

You are the person in this thread who said I was selfish for not feeling like having kids. I don’t understand how that feeling was selfish, but whatever.
 
Nope, not true. Most married couples who decide to have children are most certainly NOT thinking only of themselves. It’s a hell of a lot easier NOT to have kids. I know when my husband and I decided to be open to life (we were lapsed and yes, had been using ABC), it was one of the most sobering and frightening times of either of our lives. Could we really do it? Could we trust God to give us a baby? If so, what would life be like? We had no idea! No one does! We had a pretty nice life before kids. We could have gone on like that happily. We took trips every weekend. We both worked. Had plenty of disposable income. We had hobbies.

Once the baby came, everything changed. Here was an entirely new soul, who had never been on earth, and we were responsible for raising him! It was both eek: and :love::extrahappy::dancing: in turns!

In addition, the selfish person I was, but of course did not believe myself to be, DIED on the delivery table. Does that sound dramatic? Well, it was. I have never been the same. God turned me inside out. And handed me a little purple-faced munchkin who has grown into a man in the last 21 years.

No, having children is not selfish. I could tell you sooooo many stories of how our needs have been put aside for our kids over the years.
Juliane although it is a bit late, congrats on the baby. I think it is great to see people like you having children. You sound like a well grounded family and I respect you for it.

Its just that while there are people like you, who make good parents, there are people like me who have no interest in having kids whatsoever. I do not think I’m sinning by not wanting children.
 
I have no problem being celibate. I just don’t want to grow old being alone. I want a partner, a husband to be with me and enjoy life with. I just don’t want kids in the mix. So yea, it is a bit confusing.
 
Juliane although it is a bit late, congrats on the baby. I think it is great to see people like you having children. You sound like a well grounded family and I respect you for it.

Its just that while there are people like you, who make good parents, there are people like me who have no interest in having kids whatsoever. I do not think I’m sinning by not wanting children.
He’s a 6’2" MAN now, he will be 21 in less than 2 weeks. 😉 He has a year left in college. It’s been a wild ride, and one I wouldn’t trade for all the money in the world. NOTHING could compare with having children.

If you are not called to marriage, then you can stay single and celibate. But marriage includes children, in the Catholic faith. You don’t even know if you will be fertile, but you cannot prevent pregnancy without sin.
 
I want to stay with him though. But I guess in life we all have to give up what we love because rules are rules. 🤷
Yeah sadly this can be the case many times 😦 Really I donlt know what you should do. Like I said its not an easy choice. I mean sure you can pray and hope you change your mind about having kids. Talk to a counselor about it and so on. But you know I feel the same way about having kids as you do. Though I am already married. And I have examined my reasons for not having kids and you know it if anything it only made me go from saying I donlt want kids right now to no I never want kids ever period end of discussion. So even if you do really examine and think about your reasonings and even go to counseling it might just solidify your reasons for not wanting kids! But yeah not an easy choice and no matter what you do their are potential very negative consequences. Not just for you but others as well. I guess it just makes me glad I am not Catholic lol.
 
I have no problem being celibate. I just don’t want to grow old being alone. I want a partner, a husband to be with me and enjoy life with. I just don’t want kids in the mix. So yea, it is a bit confusing.
Marriage is not to be celibate.

You want to eat your cake and have it too. You can’t. If you are called to marriage as a vocation, that must include being open to children.

There are actually very few men who don’t want children, and if they don’t, I’m sorry, but that is not a man you really ought to trust very much.
 
What should you do? Should you stop dating completely and totally forget about marriage? I know that birth control is a sin in the church, and that you are not allowed to get married unless you have kids, so is the only option to just stop dating for the rest of your life? What would you do?
A man an woman can be married and have no desire for children. As long as the proper conditions for valid matrimony are fulfilled, then a valid marriage can be formed. And children may not result due to infertility, the use of natural family planning, or from lack of conjugal relations - not due to denial of a morally acceptable request.

The key requirements for a man and woman in the Catholic Church to be married are that it be freely chosen, perpetual, exclusive, and granting the right to morally acceptable conjugal relations when reasonably requested.

(Per canon law, infertility is not an impediment to matrimony. Also we see the object of the matrimonial covenant is given in Can. 1061 §1. “A valid marriage between the baptized is called ratum tantum if it has not been consummated; it is called ratum et consummatum if the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh.” )

If the right to conjugal relations are exercised by the spouse, then to be morally acceptable it must exclude use of a condom or artificial birth control, but medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called “indications, may exempt from the positive debt (of fecundity) for the entire period of marital life, however natural sterile periods may be utilized.”, which is given by Pope Pius XII.An Address of Pope Pius XII to the Seventh International Hematological Congress in Rome. (Friday September 12, 1958)We stated in the discourse delivered in 1951 that married couples who make use of their conjugal rights have a positive obligation; in virtue of the natural law governing their state, not to exclude procreation. The Creator, in effect, wished human beings to propagate themselves precisely by the natural exercise of the sexual function. But to this positive law We applied the principle which holds for all the others: that these positive laws are not obligatory to the extent that their fulfillment involves great disadvantages which are neither inseparable from the law itself nor inherent in its accomplishment, but which come from another source and which the law-maker did not intend to impose on men when he promulgated the law.
lifeissues.net/writers/doc/doc_32moralityeugenics.html

An in the From Address to Midwives Given by His Holiness Pope Pius XII
29 October 1951:The reason is that marriage obliges the partners to a state of life, which even as it confers certain rights so it also imposes the accomplishment of a positive work concerning the state itself. In such a case, the general principle may be applied that a positive action may be omitted if grave motives, independent of the good will of those who are obliged to perform it, show that its performance is inopportune, or prove that it may not be claimed with equal right by the petitioner—in this case, mankind.
The matrimonial contract, which confers on the married couple the right to satisfy the inclination of nature, constitutes them in a state of life, namely, the matrimonial state. Now, on married couples, who make use of the specific act of their state, nature and the Creator impose the function of providing for the preservation of mankind. This is the characteristic service which gives rise to the peculiar value of their state, the bonum prolis. The individual and society, the people and the State, the Church itself, depend for their existence, in the order established by God, on fruitful marriages. Therefore, to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of married life.
Serious motives, such as those which not rarely arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called “indications,” may exempt husband and wife from the obligatory, positive debt for a long period or even for the entire period of matrimonial life. From this it follows that the observance of the natural sterile periods may be lawful, from the moral viewpoint: and it is lawful in the conditions mentioned. If, however, according to a reasonable and equitable judgment, there are no such grave reasons either personal or deriving from exterior circumstances, the will to avoid the fecundity of their union, while continuing to satisfy to the full their sensuality, can only be the result of a false appreciation of life and of motives foreign to sound ethical principles.
fisheaters.com/addresstomidwives.html
 
He’s a 6’2" MAN now, he will be 21 in less than 2 weeks. 😉 He has a year left in college. It’s been a wild ride, and one I wouldn’t trade for all the money in the world. NOTHING could compare with having children.

If you are not called to marriage, then you can stay single and celibate. But marriage includes children, in the Catholic faith. You don’t even know if you will be fertile, but you cannot prevent pregnancy without sin.
Well there are NFP methods that are about 95% effective. I like the idea of the beads.
 
Yeah I think this is a hard situation you are in. I mean some people dontl want kids but hey they are fine with being single so it works out great! Or there if your a person that wants kids and wants marriage hey easy there too! But when your in a situation like yours suddenly the choice isn;t so easy. It makes it even harder that you found someone! especially when they feel the same way about having kids as you do. I mean cause at least if he wanted kids you would be able to tell yourself well it wouldn;t work anyway we want different things. But now you have a hard choice. Do you end the relationship and perhaps end up forever regretting your choice? Wondering if you made a big mistake? Or do you continue down your current path and get married but chose to be open to life and pray that you will have a change of mind and want the kids you have? There are consequences for either action its not an easy choice I donlt envy you, It makes me glad I donlt believe in all that marriage is all about the kids stuff lol.
Who told you that marriage is all about the kids stuff? Who believes that? Not the Catholic Church. If you’re a Christian, it is necessary in a marriage.
 
Yes ^^ this!

You really are not refuting the argument here. You say you like your freedom, yet follow God at all times. Leaving children aside, what happens if you come across a situation where you have to choose between your own will and God’s law? The way you talk, you follow God only on your own terms.
GREAT point. You hit it on the nose. 🙂
 
GREAT point. You hit it on the nose. 🙂
She hit nothing. She still hasn’t told me why not wanting kids is a sin.

Forget marriage- I am NOT talking about marriage, I am talking about NOT wanting kids.

Say I never get married, okay, well I still don’t want kids. She is trying to say that my FEELING is sinful (selfish). Well I think shes wrong. Up on her high horse I see.
 
She hit nothing. She still hasn’t told me why not wanting kids is a sin.

Forget marriage- I am NOT talking about marriage, I am talking about NOT wanting kids.

Say I never get married, okay, well I still don’t want kids. She is trying to say that my FEELING is sinful (selfish). Well I think shes wrong. Up on her high horse I see.
As we have said, it is not the feeling of not wanting kids that is sinful (unless you are married). However, the underlying reasons for not wanting kids might be indicative of a specific vice that you are susceptible to. (Namely selfishness- a vice is opposed to a virtue and may lead to sinful behaviors).

Now as you (and of course we) have not identified your underlying reasons for not wanting kids, we cannot say that it is a sin. But it might be related to a vice that you are too attached to. But that is something to be explored in prayer and confession.
 
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