Why did they have children?

[easterncappy]

Something that has puzzled me for as long as I've been aware of my family's dysfunction... why??? If you say you hate kids like my mom always said (I was supposed to be the exception but clearly wasn't), if you feel bothered by a child's needs, if you treat them poorly, why have them?

Some reasons I've found on various websites online include:

- They want to look normal, and normal people usually get married and/or have children.

- They want to live through someone else.

- They think a child is going to obey and worship them.

- They underestimate how much work it is to have a baby. (I now understand why my mom got so silent and resentful any time my baby years were mentioned)

- They want praise for being a good parent or having a cute kid.

- They view the child as an accessory, example: "I want a daughter" actually means a living doll you dress up in cute clothes for your enjoyment, not a complex and unique human being who won't always be cute.

- Accident.

- They don't realize that they'll hate their children until it's far too late. The idea going in is "this is going to be a human robot who loves me forever", then they develop their own personality, and there begins the PD rage.

- They want the human robot who loves them forever, like I said above... they believe that if they "raise" you just right, isolate you from others and shame you for realizing the truth, you'll be theirs until they die.

- They want a retirement plan.

Can you think of anything else? It's really tough thinking that my existence was just a way to fulfill some of these goals. But it keeps me from giving into my "I miss my mom" feelings and contacting her. I'm just a pawn on a chess board to her.

[Srcyu]

Ownership.
My mother told me once that having a baby makes you feel like dancing while saying, 'That's mine, that's mine.'

[Pepin]

All of this.  Both sides of the family.  The cherry on top of all of this truly was that they wanted a retirement plan.  Didn't think to plan ahead for themselves after decades of time.  It was suddenly: now it is your turn to take care of me.  Well.  That obviously means that their intent to have children was never there in the first place.  Selfish, immature, manipulative...too many adjectives to list. 

[Liketheducks]

I was an accident if you ask one parent.   And, the product of date rape if you ask the other.   At that time in history, they didn't feel as though they had a choice on whether to abort the pregnancy or give me up for adoption.     I wish they had made other choices.   It would have saved me and my siblings a lot of money in therapy.   And, definitely a retirement plan.   Neither parent planned.   

My mother is so entitled she won't even call her children.   The expectation is that we must call her.   But, she'll complain to anyone who'll listen that her children don't give her enough time or attention.   

Recently, I was in a counseling session.   My new counselor asked if my father or mother had any specific PD diagnosis.    When I said no, and asked why....she stated that I have a very specific set of symptoms.   Textbook common to children brought up with a Narc father and/or Narc mother or BPD mother.   Weirdly validating,    I finally felt like SOMEONE understood outside this forum.   

[Jolie40]

I was an accident. PD parent got married very young & certainly wasn't ready to be a parent. My grandma, who lived out of state, came & stayed with my parents for 8 mos to help out.
Out of several siblings, two others were also accidents!  I don't think they knew how to use birth control effectively.

[Cat of the Canals]

My dad once informed me that when he and PDmom got married, they were in the "no kids" camp. It was only after they bought a house, and my mom fell in love with the next door neighbor's 2-year-old daughter that she decided she desperately wanted kids.

I was very much a living doll to my mother. Still am, really. Watching a home movie of my second birthday, I get the sense that she was already "over it." I was individuating by then and not the perfect little doll she could project all of her needs/wants onto the way she could when I was an infant. Not that she stopped trying, but the ideal version of her fantasy already had cracks in it. Once I was old enough to follow orders, I became a set piece for her to move about so she could "impress" outsiders. She's not quite a pure narcissist enough to explicitly demand attention for herself, but she has NO problem using her children (and now grandchildren) as proxies to get attention instead.

[feralcat]

My mother is 89 . I was born in 1955, only 10 months after she married . The contraceptive pill wasn't a thing then. She's told me I was an unexpected ,and unwanted, shock. Plus a girl. When my brother was born a couple of years later he was welcomed. Because he's a male. Something to wave at her father. The first male grandchild ! ( bearing in mind that her own mother was rewarded , in nazi Germany, for having 5 children) .
So it must have been a very mixed blessing. I tied her down ( and was punished for that), just when she was finding her feet after WW2...but at the same time she was producing the desired grandchildren. 7 of them. Ta daaa !
Culture is a powerful driver. My father didn't have much of a say in it.

( I did ask why she continued to produce children, but it's very garbled. I think that, as they continued to arrive, she came to see the younger ones as 'friends' . Also to realise that children are useful. She still ranks hers in terms of their usefulness. And if you have a lot, when one or more start to 'malfunction', there are always others to step in. Including the following generations. If trained properly ).
Yahoo.

[olivegirl]

My authoritarian parents have openly said they had children in order for the children to serve them and be their retirement plan.   

I overheard my sociopath mother exclaim, "why should I save and live frugally all so that our children can send us off to a retirement home with our hard-earned money and get an inheritance too?  All so they can have fun?"

The  continued: "By living it up, I'm going on vacations and dining out so that there is not a dime left when I am old.  This way they can not send me to a nursing home.  My daughter has to take care of me.  That's her job.  And I won't leave her a cent either."

I legit thought she was joking when I overheard share this plan.  Who would be this irresponsible?   

  My aging parents (who I am NC with btw) are certifiably delusional and crazzzzzzy if they think they are gonna call the shots in my life!

  Last I check this is a free country and her predatory plan to play the victim    will not work on me.

  My entitled parents have been smearing me my entire life!      I can take it. 

[easterncappy]

My deeper thoughts about my own mom: I think she had me because on a subconscious level, she wanted to be truly loved for the first time in her life. I think that deep down inside, she knows that her parents didn't truly love her, and her husband doesn't either. In her mind, I think a baby was the solution. She'd get very upset if I ever mentioned being a baby/little kid - I suspect she realized I was a lot of work then and gave up on her idea of having a perfect love robot because the same woman who was too selfish to take me to the ER with a broken ankle was certain too selfish to put up with feeding a newborn every 2 hours. I think she resents me for how much work I've been compared to how little she was able to milk me for.

My dad? Weirdly enough, despite being the bigger narcissist, he just did whatever my mom wanted him to in a lot of cases. This was one of them. I suspect a bit of "save the marriage baby" on his part. He's always full of promises of how he'll change if X milestone is achieved - he was supposed to "stop drinking" when we moved into a bigger apartment when I was 17 is one example, apparently it was the small apartment before that which was forcing him to drink, and guess what he never stopped anyway, lol. I think he implied he'd stop doing things that clearly made my mom unhappy if they had a baby. They have a very "co-narcissist" dynamic - they're both narcissists, but loyal to each other, and have each other on a leash, both somehow buying into manipulation they'd never buy from other people.

[Call Me Cordelia]

My parents and in-laws were similar to a lot of things on this thread. Co-narcissistic, my dad deliberately lives paycheck to paycheck in order to control my mom. I doubt they have retirement plans, but I have been NC for five years. I was certainly groomed to take on the caretaker role. Explicitly have said, "That's why we have children!" for all sorts of things like replacing their dishwasher. And they weren't joking.

I've been struggling with whether or not I'm a "good enough" mother lately. I have a bunch of kids. Why? Did I also want to fill that bottomless empty pit with baby snuggles? Am I merely a religious automaton who is scared of birth control? I know I am still messing up and sometimes look to them for validation. (Do well at your homeschool work so I don't feel like a failure, please!) That's a hard question to ask, and even harder to answer.

So yeah, my husband and I are saving for retirement because old age is coming, if we're fortunate, and we pay for life insurance in case old age is not coming. I hope I will not try to micromanage my children's choice of career with a eye toward my own future convenience. I don't have the more egregious mindsets described here.

But yes, I did want more love. I still do. I don't think I expected my kids to provide the mommy and daddy love, but I guess part of why I embraced having a family was for a chance and a hope of doing better. Of creating a GOOD family. For the sake of everyone: parents, children, future generations, and the world at large. Love doesn't just stay put, it's going to spread.

[escapingman]

I genuinely don't think my dad understood that if you do the things you do 9 months later a child is born, my mum would have done it to hook him to stay. They were both very young and I am sure my mother knew exactly what she was doing. My dad could never have wanted me as all he did during my childhood was work work and work. Any spare time he had he spend doing various sports with his friends or spend time with his dad. My mother was always busy doing things, cleaning, baking, cooking, laundry etc so she never had any time for me either. It's no wonder looking back at it that I was roaming the neighbour hood from the age of 6 finding my own way.

[Fiasco]

I'm adopted by my BPDm and it was ALL about her. I can hardly pick a primary reason so I'll just list all the ones I feel strongly about. She would have preferred to get the attention/adulation that comes with being a pregnant woman but adopting offers the bonus of the savior complex for "saving a little baby from underprivilege". UGH.

She wanted someone who she could have total control over plus get adoration from. Also being an elementary school teacher she wanted to show how much BETTER she would be at parenting than all those dumb parents of her students. She lost interest in me the minute I got older than her students. She carried that prejudice onto my kids, started "warning me" how awful kids are when they get a grade or two away from her supposed expertise. And I'm not even talking teenagers, who I happen to enjoy parenting. Little ones.

Basically she wanted to be seen as a mother, she didn't actually want to parent or be bothered with a kid. In fact her favorite little saying is "we all wanted babies but none of us wanted kids!" She repeated that little gem my whole life and when I had my kids she started saying it like now we could AGREE. I was like hell no, I actually want my kids. She didn't have an answer for that.

[JustKathy]

Basically she wanted to be seen as a mother, she didn't actually want to parent or be bothered with a kid.

That was pretty much the case with me, in addition to financial reasons.

My mother was one of six children. She got pregnant with me immediately after getting married and named me after my Grandmother (her mother). One of my earliest memories was her telling me that the first grandchild would be the favorite and that she (Nmother) would inherit more. She saw it as some kind of competition between her and her siblings.

My mother also needed to be seen as having a perfect life. To her, that meant a perfect marriage, a house in the suburbs, and a beautiful family. She didn't want to actually be a mother, but needed to be seen as one.

[Pepin]

She saw it as some kind of competition between her and her siblings.

  I am reminded of this by DH's sister.  She truly thought that getting married quickly, having the most kids and living near her parents would earn her an inheritance.  Uh....nope.  Didn't work like that.  And she sadly married another abuser worse than herself....  I wonder where she learned all this from?   

[sandpiper]

My uBPDsis hated kids and would say horrible things about our little nephews and would complain every time she visited them. They were actually really good, sweet, gentle little boys but she called them 'Rip and Tear' and found spending time with them was exhausting. Her first marriage broke up because she decided she wanted to have children when her friends were doing it - I think it was a sense of wanting to be doing what her friends were doing and worrying about being left out. Her husband thought she was too emotionally volatile and traumatised by her childhood to be a good mother and as he'd been emotionally abused by his parents - who, later in life, went to T and got their act together - he just said no, and she refused to go to therapy and the marriage ended. She then spent the next two years in a spiral of self-destruction, having unprotected sex until she got pregnant to an absolute sociopath. If anyone has seen 'Bad Sisters' on Apple TV, even my partner has said 'Wow, that character is a lot like SIL's husband.' Staggering nastiness. He was really wealthy so she managed to have a lot of staff, including a nanny, and I hope that helped the kids. I was sidelined early on so there was really not much I could do except watch from a distance and feel dismay.
I asked her why she wanted children and she said she wanted someone to look after her when she gets old.
My mother's parents had the same idea and they actively tried to sabotage the relationships their daughters had when they reached marriagable age. They made my aunt wait for 5 years before they allowed her to marry her husband - he had to have a certain amount of money in the bank and save up before they gave permission, and I'm sure it was because they hoped she'd get sick of it and find someone richer and higher up the social ladder. She didn't and the moment they were married her husband moved her to the opposite end of the country (sucked in, mean grandparents). My mother didn't marry till she was in her 30s because they kept telling her they didn't like any of the boyfriends she brought home. One of them became a leading eye surgeon in our home town. He was a lovely man.
The damage that toxic parents do just rolls down through the generations.
My ubpd sister's behaviour became so horrible when she had children of her own that I was just stunned...it was like she wanted to re-enact all of the worst stuff that had happened to us, while still complaining about the treatment that we'd had. She honestly had a lot more empathy and insight and more of a filter before she had children and I've often wondered if there was something about the chemical make-up of her brain that changed during the pregnancy.
It's almost like there's some chemical that shifted her into the worst version of herself after she had kids.
I just hope they find their way to these boards someday.
My sister treated her kids like hostages, some days. If I tried to be a nice aunt she was jealous and resentful and if I spent time with my friends' kids then she'd go into a rage about that. Nothing I did was right.
I honestly don't know what was going on in her head, other than emotionally she had never stopped being a child herself and I think she had this idea that if she had kids, they would look after her. She wasn't happy with the reality. I think it's just what PDs do - they lack the capacity to anticipate consequences and they lack the emotional wherewithal to meet a child's needs.

[monamurre]

I think it was to have an ally.

My mom is a pretty classic presentation of the hermit/waif type of BPD. Her view is that the world is an ordeal to be endured until you die. By having a child she probably thought she would have a built-in ally to validate her world view and a guarantee that someone would always be on "her side" of the millions of little battles she saw in every situation. I told a therapist early on that I felt her motto was, "its you and me against the world". (Oh, how I wish that therapist 20 years ago had raised the idea of BPD!)

Her stories of my early childhood are mostly about how hard it was for her and I grew up hearing that I was a very difficult baby (and that no one helped her). I am beginning to wonder if, in her desire to create a perfect ally, she didn't really think through how much work it was to have and raise a child. And I am beginning to really reject that "problem child" label she has promoted for decades (yea!) because I think it was partly just her negative perspective on the situation.

My mom was pretty covert and not nearly as overtly abusive as many of the stories I read here. However, one of the most insidious things I am grappling with is the very strong implication that it was my duty to confirm her perspective partly by living the same experience.  It still feels like my having success or happiness is a betrayal of some secret pact between us. Like I said, its pretty covert, but she rarely acknowledges my success and seems comfortable being directly derogatory about my marriage, my job, my parenting, etc. (all of which I think are going pretty well). If she can't be derogatory (e.g., someone else is around and she realizes they would probably call her bad behavior out) then she just won't comment. Kind of a reverse adage: "if you don't have anything negative to say, don't say anything at all"