Bride-to-Be Sparks Debates for Not Wanting Therapy for Her 'Child Hating' Problem

A disillusioned bride-to-be’s recent social media post turned the attention to a larger issue where more and more women choose to live a “child-free” life.

Posting anonymously, the woman asked for advice after her fiance dropped a bombshell a few months before their wedding that he would like to have children.

“From the start, I made it clear to my fiancé I did not want children. I have made this clear with every person I have dated. He did not have any issues with it whatsoever and said he liked the pros of a child-free life,” she wrote on Reddit.

With the couple at an impasse, her fiance suggested that she should go for therapy to fix her “child hating” problem, but she refused.

But she is not alone in her decision to not have children. In 2018, Morning Consult did a poll for the New York Times with surprising results.

About 2,000 people participated and ranged in ages from 20 to 45. Thirty-six percent of respondents who opted out of having children wanted more leisure time or felt unsure about becoming parents. A further 34% said they hadn’t found a spouse to raise children with, while another 31% said they couldn’t afford childcare.

The results show that many women consider various factors before they decide on having children, or not. But for some women, like Marianne Miller, there has never been a desire to become a parent, as she told USA Today.

"I could always see child rearing was a choice, and I knew immediately it was a choice I wanted to opt out of," Marianne said.

The realization first came to Marianne during her childhood while she watched other girls play with dolls. She never wanted children of her own.

America’s fertility rate has been at a steady decline since 2014, while 2017 marked the lowest rate in more than 30 years. According to the CDC, the most recent data shows 60.3 births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15-44.

On the other hand, statistics show that the women who do want children are choosing higher education and career opportunities to keep up with the costs of raising a child, according to a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics, Brady Hamilton.

"There's a lot of factors that go into the choice of whether or not to start a family. People are asking themselves, 'Is this really a good time to have children?'" he said.

According to a 2018 estimate done by the Department of Agriculture, it costs an estimated $233,610 to raise a child, excluding college tuition.

On a related note, while one bride-to-be and her fiance are at odds over having children, another bride became outraged about her fiance’s opinion over what happens after they have children.

He had drawn up a prenuptial contract, and it's contents raised some alarms. Among the usual clauses, it also included one that pertained to the amount of weight she had to lose after childbirth and the timeframe involved.