{"id":16293,"date":"2024-11-11T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T10:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=16293"},"modified":"2024-11-11T10:22:56","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T10:22:56","slug":"longing-for-grandchildren-when-your-child-doesnt-want-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=16293","title":{"rendered":"Longing for Grandchildren When Your Child Doesn\u2019t Want Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A growing number of Americans are choosing not to have children. Their parents are grappling with what that means for them.<\/p>\n

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Lydia Birk, 56, has held on to her favorite copy of \u201cThe Velveteen Rabbit\u201d since her three children \u2014 now in their 20s and 30s \u2014 were young.<\/p>\n

She loved being a stay-at-home mother, and filled her family\u2019s home with books. (All of her children could read before they started school, Ms. Birk recalled with pride.) She hoped one day to be a \u201ccool\u201d grandma who would share her favorite stories with a new generation.<\/p>\n

But none of her children want to have kids. And though that decision is \u201cright for them,\u201d Ms. Birk said, it still breaks her heart. \u201cI don\u2019t have young children anymore, and now I\u2019m not going to have grandchildren,\u201d she said. \u201cSo that part of my life is just over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Ms. Birk, a growing number of Gen Xers and baby boomers are facing the sometimes painful fact that they are never going to become grandparents. A little more than half of adults 50 and older had at least one grandchild in 2021, down from nearly 60 percent in 2014. Amid falling birthrates<\/a>, more U.S. adults say they\u2019re unlikely to ever have children<\/a> for a variety of reasons, chief among them: They just don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThat is a best and worst thing about having kids,\u201d said Ms. Birk\u2019s husband, John Birk Jr., 55. \u201cYou watch them make their own decisions, different from your own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, would-be grandparents like the Birks may experience a deep sense of longing and loss when their children opt out of parenthood, even if they understand at an intellectual level that their children do not \u201cowe\u201d them a family legacy, said Claire Bidwell Smith, a therapist based in Los Angeles and the author of \u201cConscious Grieving.\u201d It doesn\u2019t help that our society tends to paint grandchildren as a reward for aging.<\/p>\n

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A growing number of Americans are choosing not to have children. Their parents are grappling with what that means for them.Lydia Birk, 56, has held on to her favorite copy of \u201cThe Velveteen Rabbit\u201d since her three children \u2014 now in their 20s and 30s \u2014 were young.She loved being a stay-at-home mother, and filled her family\u2019s home with books. (All of her children could read before they started school, Ms. Birk recalled with pride.) She hoped one day to be a \u201ccool\u201d grandma who would share her favorite stories with a new generation.But none of her children want to have kids. And though that decision is \u201cright for them,\u201d Ms. Birk said, it still breaks her heart. \u201cI don\u2019t have young children anymore, and now I\u2019m not going to have grandchildren,\u201d she said. \u201cSo that part of my life is just over.\u201dLike Ms. Birk, a growing number of Gen Xers and baby boomers are facing the sometimes painful fact that they are never going to become grandparents. A little more than half of adults 50 and older had at least one grandchild in 2021, down from nearly 60 percent in 2014. Amid falling birthrates, more U.S. adults say they\u2019re unlikely to ever have children for a variety of reasons, chief among them: They just don\u2019t want to.\u201cThat is a best and worst thing about having kids,\u201d said Ms. Birk\u2019s husband, John Birk Jr., 55. \u201cYou watch them make their own decisions, different from your own.\u201dStill, would-be grandparents like the Birks may experience a deep sense of longing and loss when their children opt out of parenthood, even if they understand at an intellectual level that their children do not \u201cowe\u201d them a family legacy, said Claire Bidwell Smith, a therapist based in Los Angeles and the author of \u201cConscious Grieving.\u201d It doesn\u2019t help that our society tends to paint grandchildren as a reward for aging.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16295,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16296,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16293\/revisions\/16296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}