I want to be but not just yet.
Is an acceptable answer for a female (hold on, hear me out!).
I'm 25 and female. My school friends are getting married and having kids at an alarming rate and it seems like this year in particular, over the summer barely a week has gone by when someone hasn't announced their engagement/pregnancy/celebrated a wedding/posted pics of the baby barely 5 mins old. Some are already married, 2 kids and divorced.
On the other hand, as I sit here having finally achieved what I've been aiming for for the last 8-9 years career wise, I feel absolutely no compulsion to have children. I have felt this way since the age of 12, possibly younger. I have never yearned for children, never felt broody, never considered that my life would be incomplete without a child. I am an only child so I've never had younger siblings to take care of that might have awoken any early motherly feelings, nor have I ever been surrounded by my extended family from whom I am mostly estranged.
Largely, with a couple of exceptions, I find children annoying. They scream, they shout, they smell, their parents walk around as sleep deprived zombies (particularly in the early years), they demand time, attention and money that I simply do not wish to give them. I am that annoyed looking woman on the train or the bus who sits there stony-faced, rubbing her temples, breathing slowly so as to prevent violence when someone else's kid screams uncontrollably in the corner. I actively avoid any hotel that boasts any form of kids' club or creche. I will ask for another table in a restaurant if I'm seating within hearing distance of a hungry baby.
This attitude frequently leaves people (OK, mostly women) aghast. I'm showered with cries of "just you wait" or "you're still too young, you'll get broody sooner or later" or "give it 5 years and you'll want a baby". Alternatively I am given pitying looks as I am assumed to be barren and uncapable of having children because of course, that could be the only other explanation for my position. On occasion, I have also been looked at as if I am some sort of psychopath because everyone loves children surely?
My other half is more broody than I am and as our relationship begins to get serious, I grow increasingly concerned that my total lack of motherly inclination and his occasionally expressed desire for future offspring is going to cause problems. He seems to think he'll talk me into it but I cannot see that happening until medical science progresses to the point at which men gestate and give birth and he openly admits to wanting to be a househusband because I'll be damned if I'm giving up my career for a kid I don't want.
And now to my rather protracted point. It seems to be OK for men not to want children. It makes them one of the lads because babies are women's work. And if they do want kids, that's OK too, because they get to be the cool Dad in front of their mates. But if I declare to a room that I wish to remain childless I am looked upon as some sort of pariah to be pitied, patted gently on the head or avoided as something deranged and unclean.
By way of explanation for the above - work xmas do last night, asked if I wanted kids, had to explain all of the above to a group of middle aged women who fell into the pitying look category and clearly now think I have no womb.
