Circumstances can arise where people who didn't necessarily want to have kids have them thrust into their life without their consent. Whether it be caring for a friend or relative's child, or not using protection, these folks are suddenly thrust into a life-changing predicament.
Below, people who didn't plan to have kids, but ended up having them, share their stories, as told on AskReddit. Check them out.
(Content has been edited for clarity)
No Simple Answer
YanLev/Shutterstock
“‘How’s your life now?’ is way too broad for a question. So much has happened, good and bad. I can answer that we are both alive, healthy and have a relatively good lifestyle. I try to be thankful for those things every day.
I had him at 19. I wanted to terminate the pregnancy but gave in to the pressure from his father and especially his family. I don’t remember much of the first three years of his life. It’s all kind of a blur with nothing in it except that it was a really, really hard time. His father left us when he was four months and three weeks old. For the first year of his life, I was deeply depressed and struggling. Nothing worked out like I thought it would, I didn’t magically connect with him. He was a difficult baby and we lived in a ridiculously small apartment. I never got to sleep, I never got to do anything, I was always alone except he was always there, always needed me, while all my friends were having the time of their lives. My mother died when he was two, and then it really was just the two of us.
It slowly got a bit better every year; he started developing a personality and growing up, he was so cute and I loved him. It started to get a bit better when he was around four, but I never ‘got over’ having him. I still struggled greatly with the feeling of a deep sense of loss and living a life that wasn’t my own, like my life had been robbed away from me and didn’t fit in the view I imagined my future back then at all. Every day was like a bad dream, life was just advancing but I wasn’t on board, only someone who watched from the side. I was trying extremely hard to be a good mom but felt like a failure all the time. I’m the daughter of a low-income single mom and always felt like I only wasn’t a failure to my own mother, but I let the girl who dreamed big when I was a child down.
Now he is 15 and life has normalized. I love him very much, but life is what it is. When we’re planning his future, I do have stings of pain knowing that all that he is going to experience is something I never got to have, but dreamed about when I was his age (university, traveling, having fun). He is a good kid but we have had our own struggles. I worry about him getting on a bad track a lot. I wish it never happens.
His father is just…trouble. Like always. He has been unreliable, not keeping his word, distant but when they do meet, overly showering him with gifts and goodies for his whole life, but he now has a wife and an 8-month-old and my son has been deeply hurt realizing how differently he treats her daughter and him, and it has resulted in him acting up. We had a good talk on Christmas about him and I think things will get better now.
I have an okay job, nothing I’m passionate about but something that has been built around his schedule. I don’t date and haven’t dated since his dad left him. Life has kind of been just surviving, from one problem to another, always struggling with money. I’m not happy but I’m not too depressed either. Just existing I guess.”
No Quiet Retirement
“My wife took legal custody of her son’s one-year-old daughter when he got sent to prison. We had been together seven years but only been married around one. She did this without discussing it with me, just kept her one day and she’s still here. Doing that without my input has really affected our relationship.
It’s been 10 years now and my wife and her granddaughter fight constantly, she was spoiled badly by all the blood relatives and now runs the roost. It has made being at home very tense.
I am 60 years old now and always thought I would have a nice quiet home to be comfortable in. So to answer the question, life now is not as good as it was before this all happened.”
Money Can’t Buy This Happiness
“It’s been strange.
I’ve had health issues since childhood and was told that I would never become a mother when I was eleven or twelve. I spent my formative years operating under the assumption that I’d never bear children, so I never even considered that I would grow up one day and have a baby.
It’s not that I didn’t want any, the choice wasn’t presented to me, so I never even spared children a passing thought. They were something that happened to other people!
Then I got pregnant with a long-time partner when I was twenty-one and decided that it was an opportunity I may never have again, so I kept the pregnancy.
What has happened in the years since?
I left my ultra-abusive partner when I realized that he was a danger to my child. I found an amazing psychologist/psychiatrist team that I’ve been seeing for nearly two years and my mental health has never been better. I went from struggling between apartment to apartment to renting a house in a great neighborhood. I’m in a healthy relationship.
Having a child gave me the hope and motivation to turn my life into something good and wonderful. My daughter gave me the strength to leave a relationship and got me away from a man who has gone on to try to victimize children in the past few years. Every abuse that I allowed to be piled on me, I threw all of it away for my child.
It shows, my effort. I’m a worthwhile person and I’d never know it if I didn’t keep my pregnancy.
My daughter is attending a fantastic school, and her teachers love her. She’s respectful and kind and fun. She’s clever and bright. Next year, she has the opportunity to attend a STEM school and I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited. She loves bao and miso soup and I’m teaching her how to use chopsticks. She knows the Time Warp and loves spooky things.
I’m not saying that kids fix everything. My life was dismantled to the foundations and I had to struggle to rebuild, but what I built was healthier, better, more wholesome than that I had.
I remember when I sat down with myself to decide what to do, sitting in the hospital, four weeks pregnant, only knowing because I had fainted on the side of the road.
I made the choice to become a parent. I decided that my life was going to change.
I didn’t enter into parenthood with the assumption that I’d still go out to the club, run off to hang out with friends whenever, or go party with unsavory folk.
I knew that I was investing years and years into another human. I’ve spent the past nearly five years cultivating friendships with people in early education, hardworking students, childhood friends who give me advice on low-risk investment accounts. Dinner parties are my main source of socialization. I cook like a professional chef, and I’ve evolved into the group Mom.
It’s a quiet, mundane life that I love more than anything. I have a lump in my throat right now, thinking about my life.
In two months, I have to plan a party for my daughter and about nineteen other four to five-year-olds for her fifth birthday and I wouldn’t trade it for all the riches in the world.”
Who Would’ve Thought?
VGStockStudio/Shutterstock
“I always said, I’d rather have a disease than have a kid. Well, I ended up with a kid from a girl that was just a friend with benefits. I begged her to get an operation, I offered to pay for the entire thing and take care of her afterward. She refused my offer and as she got further into her pregnancy she asked me if she thought we should try to be together for the baby. My father got married twice because he knocked up someone and neither marriage worked out so I said no because that’s how people end up miserable.
Fast forward eight years later, I couldn’t imagine my life without this beautiful little girl that’s going to jump into my bed and beg me for an egg sandwich any second now.”
Never Give Up
“I have spent many years working very hard to ‘do it right.’ By that, I mean better than my parents. Educational support, healthy emotional contact, life skills. There have been many challenges to all those things.
I’m very tired and as I get closer to the sort-of finish line of college graduation, I find I have far less patience and am filled with regret for the life I had imagined.
On the one hand, a lot of my dissatisfaction with how life has turned out has to do with my partner. They wanted children but then didn’t step up to fill the role of parent. On the other hand, I could have sought out a better partner if I wasn’t burdened with the job of raising kids.
I have a deep commitment to finishing. I would never be one of those walk-away parents. I really wanted to have satisfying work and travel, and that’s not how it turned out. I’ve made my kid’s life very nice, and I’m hoping there is time left to get pleasure in the next phase of my life.”
Tell Her How You Feel
Monkey Business Photos/Shutterstock
“I resented my wife for not following ‘the plan’ and aborting the pregnancy. I carried that weight for a long time. I’ve grown to love my daughter very much. We have also had two more. Only the last of which was planned. I love them all. I love my wife. The pain my resentment caused though reverberates in my marriage today. I will most likely be divorced this year.
We’ve built such a great life for the kids but along the way, I lost my wife. There is nothing I wouldn’t give to take back my poor attitude all those years ago.”
When You Get Pleasantly Surprised
svetlanaf/Shutterstock
“I got knocked up at 19, had him at 20. I was with his dad for four years at that point so it wasn’t like I got knocked up by some random dude. I went to an abortion clinic. My significant other went with me, although he was totally against it and it was a known fact that we would be breaking up when I chose to abort this child. When they started telling me details of how it worked I broke down and freaked out and left. I absolutely couldn’t do that. In retrospect, I was so against kids because my mom and dad didn’t start having kids until they were almost 30, so in some way, I felt that I had failed my parents.
Anyhow. I decided to just suck it up and have a baby. I was NOT happy about the idea of having a baby. I didn’t tell anyone until they asked and I openly would tell people that I wasn’t excited and I didn’t understand how anyone could be excited about a kid. After having my son, my mom told me that her and my sister were worried that I was going to give birth then take off and leave the baby with my significant other.
Well, I had that baby in December of 2009. And honestly life is GREAT. I did fall in love as soon as I saw him. There was no awkward stage at all. I’ve been a caring and attentive mother since he was born. It’s like this weird instinct kicked In and as soon as I started hanging out with him I was totally consumed by this amazing loving feeling. It’s like I was so worried about having to take care of another human being and how needy babies are but really when he needed stuff it was such a good feeling to be the one to give it to him. It’s weird, all of a sudden my biggest fear is anything happening to this tiny little baby. I love him. I’m happy everything worked out like it did. It made me totally open to unconditional love and I truly believe it has changed me for the better as a human. He’s the best.
I did eventually stop dating his dad but we get along great and I like my son’s stepmom and his dad likes my significant other. Everything is great.”
It’s Messy But It Gets Better
ESB Professional/Shutterstock
“I found out that I was around eight months pregnant. That’s called a pregnancy denial, I still had my period, nothing changed about my body, nothing could tell me I was pregnant. Until I went to the ER because my stomach hurt like heck and after an ultrasound, they discovered the pregnancy. They told me the baby would be born at the end of January.
Monday, I went back to the ER because my back was killing me and I almost wanted to jump in front of a train just to make the pain go away. They told me I was about to give birth (dilated at 7cm). My son was born January 1st at 11:59 pm.
Two weeks ago my boyfriend and I were two people in their mid-20’s enjoying life together and not planning on having kids. Today we are parents. Our life is a mess. We are depressed, completely lost. Our emotions are messed up and we can’t think straight and every minute of the day brings a panic attack and we want our life back so badly. But then we remember we have each other, and then our son does something funny and we feel a little better and then he randomly smiles and everything is okay. We got this. We are a mess and we didn’t ask for our life’s to change and if we knew about the pregnancy we wouldn’t have a child. But now that he’s here, even though we are going through mentally (and physically), even though we still want our life back, we can’t imagine going back to it without our son. It’s hard but we got this.”
Doing The Best With What You Got To Work With
ESB Professional/Shutterstock
“My husband and I never wanted kids. In fact, two months before we got married in 2016, I got my tubes tied. Well, things happen, and a month and a half after my wedding, my sister asked me to pick her 5-year-old up, and basically never came back for her. My husband and I went to court to get custody of her and now we have a happy, well-adjusted 7-year-old.
I still struggle with it at times. My husband and I had some pretty neat plans for our future, so now we’ve gotta try to figure out how we can make it work with a kid in the picture. I also have severe depression, so sometimes it’s hard to get up and take her to school and stuff like that, but we’ve got a lot of support, between my husband, my mom, my younger sister, and my husband’s family, so it all works out.
In the end, I’m honestly just grateful that my kid is no longer being abused or neglected, and that thought I alone really helps me in coming to terms with the fact that my life isn’t going the way I planned it.”
A Plot Twist For The Ages
“I met my, still technically wife, back in July of 2015, and it was kind of a drink, hang out, have hook up type thing. I fell for her, we started dating, and then we found out at the end of November that she was pregnant. I had a sneaking suspicion she was pregnant after a few months because we didn’t use protection the first couple times we had hooked up.
Fast forward to the birth time, everything happened, things were okay, I didn’t exactly ever want to be a parent, but this was my responsibility now, to help raise this little child. I fell in love with her. She had my heart right away.
So, the end of September 2017, things were not great between her mom and me, lots of arguing, fighting. I had my doubts about my daughter being mine, because the older she gets, the less she looks even similar to me. I took a paternity test. Results said there is a 0% chance that she is mine. It tore me up. I confronted her mom about it, and she looked surprised in the ‘Oh, I got caught’ kind of way, but her mouth kept saying ‘I had no idea, I didn’t know’.
So, she moved back in with her mom, I stayed in the apartment, and she has our daughter Monday evening through Saturday evening, because of the hours I work. I pick my daughter up Saturday when I’m off and spend my whole weekend with her, and give her back Monday night around 7-8 pm.
My house is pretty lonely most of the time, I’m not even sure what I actually do outside of work when I don’t have my daughter. It all kind of melts together.
I would do absolutely anything for my daughter. Regardless of blood relation, she is still mine, and I love her to death. Things feel fantastic when I have her. I’m happy, occupied, and constantly moving. She’ll be 2 years old in March. She’ll be waking up any time now for her banana and peanut butter toast and milk.”
It’s A Slow Burn
“I have a daughter and while she is a lot of work and the most challenging thing I have ever experienced, she has taught me what it is like to unconditionally love someone, completely changed my life for the better, and truly given me a purpose.
That said, the first couple years were ROUGH. I didn’t like being a dad at first and I didn’t have that intense feeling of love like I thought I should. I think this is an issue with the social media culture we live in these days where people post a picture of their newborn with a caption along the lines of, ‘I can’t believe how in love we are already.’ Newborns are just crying potatoes that depend on you to stay alive. I question the sanity of anyone who says they really love babies.
I had tremendous guilt for not loving my baby like I thought I should. I tried, and I tried hard but it just was rough. I feel like if I didn’t have these unrealistic expectations then it wouldn’t have been so hard. It is something I didn’t even feel like I could talk about and I think that is a huge shame because I know other people feel the same way.
As she grew up and started turning into a person I had a very defining moment where I realized, ‘I would die for this tiny human’ and my life has never been the same since. Now I don’t want more kids, I can’t even imagine doing that again but I am so glad I have the one I do. The time I get to spend with her is cherished and the time I am away from her I miss her like crazy. It has been a wild ride.”
A Long, Cold Battle
“My girl is almost 13 now, and for most of the childhood, I would have said that it was amazing, revolutionary, and helped me to grow as a person. It did all of those things, and while I really enjoyed her presence, I always had longed for her to grow her consciousness into someone I could really talk to laugh and joke with.
But as she has gotten older, it has reminded me why I was always not wanted to have a kid, which is to see them struggle in many of the ways that I had.
I guess that any person with some kind of handicap considers this, and it’s not like I was planning on having a kid, especially with that woman that I ended up hating for so long but couldn’t bring myself to leave. But when we found out she was pregnant we made the choice to commit ourselves to it, and what followed were some of the best years of my life.
I hand delivered her myself. I would sing to her daily. The love it brought to my life was tremendous. I had felt like she was going to be the one to overcome the challenges and be further along than I ever could have in life, and really showed promise.
But I still hated the mother, and we fought too much and gave up at some point, close to 2 years old and the woman turned sour and I only saw her every other weekend and sometimes during the week.
Her life with her mother during this time really scarred her, not to find out until later, but I took over full time when she was 4, and raised her with the help of my mother and put her through the same school that I struggled to endure, as much as it pained me.
She went through some really mean teachers and mean kids and started having some really bad thoughts as early as 8. She was struggling with depression even that early, and heavy fear of abandonment.
I finally got her on some anti-depressants this past spring. We tried several, but nothing worked and she was pulled off of them, but psychologists are pretty booked around here, and so it would be months before she saw one.
Then we had an emergency and then she spent time in a facility and couldn’t re-integrate to school, so now I am her learning coach and she attends an online school. Combined with therapy and some meds that are working, things are looking back up.
But she has to self-motivate, and she has been struggling.
All the while, I have started up some medication to deal with my issues, but it is a struggle.
Looking back, and knowing now that she would struggle in the same way I did, I wouldn’t have chosen this.
To see all of the neglect and need in the world out there, and the kids going without, and the kids that were going without grown up and needing so much just breaks my heart and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Of course, there are always two sides to the coin. I guess I would say things are beyond amazing, more than I could imagine, and more horrifying at the same time.
There is just so much more to it, it’s hard to paint the picture. I really love and cherish the girl, and so glad she is still with me today. She is doing well, we are both finding a way, and finding the beauty of being alive, but sometimes I think that if I could have just give free time to helping kids that already were existing, perhaps it would have been better off. I couldn’t really fathom what I was getting myself into.
I try to do better than my parents did, but find myself lacking so much, and seeing the real insides of her mom and family kind of coming out in her, while I would rather never see her mom again makes it even harder.
I love her and love being a father but the decisions are tremendous, and the feeling of hopelessness is substantial.
It Bleeds You Dry Financially
Six years later, I am financially recovering. Her bills wiped out our savings. Then we couldn’t recover since we were throwing 800 a month to daycare, diapers, formula, and other kid stuff on top of day to day life. She started school so daycare is much cheaper now. That alone is getting us out of the hole.
Finances are the reason my husband got a vasectomy. We never ever want to be that tight budget wise again. Ever.
Outside of that, she’s awesome and right now she’s playing Sonic on her tablet.