Family traditions are usually carried on with pride, with each generation continuing the dreams and customs of the ones before. But what happens when the next generation doesn’t want to take on this role? This was the problem one mother faced with her daughter.
One mother shared her story online. As someone from Gen X, I’m dealing with responsibilities that millennials don’t want. I’m 42, and my 22-year-old daughter has decided she doesn’t want kids and plans to get sterilized next year.
But I still believe that our family needs to have kids for family reasons. So, I’m now raising two babies who should have been hers, but can’t be because she chose not to have children.
We joke that my 1.5-year-old daughter — her sibling — is actually hers, but it’s not just a joke. If she had been willing, I wouldn’t be raising a toddler right now.
But people couldn’t be on her side.
“I need to start using this excuse. I didn’t want to binge 15 tacos. But you didn’t do it, so I had to for our ancestral spirits. Why am I eating sausages? You know why.”
“Good grief! This is so not a Gen X position. We’re like, please don’t have kids if you are not flipping ready, even if that’s never!”
“I was mocked as a kid, so have really bad associations with children. My mother and I had a toxic relationship, and my parenting imprinting was bad. I don’t have a lifestyle that lends itself to kids. Happily married, a guy who never wanted kids either.
We rescue dogs. It would be the height of selfishness to have a child, who’d have to go through years of therapy fixing what we went wrong. So thankful I’m now over 50 and people have stopped asking and designated me as the black sheep of the family.”