I definitely feel like kids would be too much for me to handle, and grew up with untreated undiagnosed ADHD till 34. Am 39 now.

I’ve thought of having kids occasionally, and have largely decided it is not a good idea. However, I decided that if I ever did have kids, I would need to meet a number of requirements first.

Beyond providing basic necessities like food and shelter, the most important thing a parent can do for their child’s happiness and well being is be happy. The parent needs to show their child, through their everyday actions, how to deal with adversity with grace and how to enjoy normal days with happiness and gratitude. While these things may be achieved via sufficient mental training - like hours of meditating per day - likely the more efficient path is to ensure their own higher-level needs are met.

The parent should feel secure in their ability to provide for themselves and their family, even in times of economic turmoil. They should feel their work is not just tolerable, but generally enjoyable and meaningful. They should have a large support network of friends and family with whom they can interact regularly. They should be be generally physically strong and healthy, and able to maintain that level of health easily - barring outside sickness or physical trauma. They should have the time and resources to engage in enjoyable and meaningful hobbies. They should have the time and resources to participate in their larger social communities’ gatherings such as festivals, time spent in the bar meeting strangers, or town hall meetings.

And then the child needs to be cared for. The child needs to be fed healthy food; be given stimulating activities to engage in; be provided with ample opportunities to interact with peers; and be given support and guidance not only with object-level tasks like homework, but with emotional issues around navigating social interactions, learning to appreciate necessary rote tasks, maintaining a regular routine, and finding what is personally meaningful to them. And the child also must be given ample unsupervised time where they can be alone or interact with peers (while not staring at a screen), so they can learn to be independent and self-motivated.

So basically my requirement is to form a commune of like-minded people that is walking distance from a small city’s walkable downtown, which has a transit line to a large city’s downtown, where everyone involved has a common understanding of the responsibilities of shared childcare, and also everyone is financially secure enough such that they don’t need to work full time. Further benefits of community organization would include reduced food costs via economies of scale, reduced labor burden of chores like cooking and cleaning, and social support for shared activities like exercise, sleep, and focusing on mental health.

But I have to say, this seems quite unlikely, so I almost certainly just won’t have kids.

I’d rather adopt instead of pass on this tarnished gene (assuming it’s heredity).
It’s not like it’s all bad, but anyone with a bad enough case can apply to be classified a disabled person in my country.
Why would I want my child to have that?
Adoption get’s a kid out of the system and maybe even flourish in the society (more than me lol)

Ps: Except for standing out in the school hall, some bullying (bad enough) and a bit of physical punishment early in my childhood (worst offense. Else my parents werent one to hurt me) I had a very nice childhood.
That is just what I think of my personal case. If you want to have children: I wish you all the best in this increasingly bleak future! And I hope it get’s better.

I’m opposed to human reproduction. There are so many bad reasons to have a child, but I’m not sure there are any good ones.

I didn’t figure out I had ADHD until my kids started getting diagnosed with it. All 3 have it, and I swear they got it worse than I did.

But growing up was fucked. Getting punished and beaten on the daily while everyone around me was getting away with murder was frustrating to say the least.

Remember. It’s a spectrum. You can be diagnosed with ADHD and feel strongly either way. It might not have anything to do with ADHD.

Ya, I have PTSD from all the verbal abuse suffered from my parents and sister, which still continues to this day, even after I have been diagnosed, explained extensively what they did wrong (which my parents acknowledged), and demonstrated how with treatment I can now absolutely kill it at life. They just don’t get it, or have any idea how to stop their horrible behavior, despite numerous lengthy very specific instructional talks, and I’m pretty sure just don’t think they are doing anything wrong. My father definitely doesn’t, because he is a malignant narcissist with his own horrible ADHD, about which he has asked for behaviors to help correct himself, but which he simply cannot implement because he is SO far gone with crazy strong mental blocks, and even on 75mg of Vyvanse he is useless and horrible. I have been living with them for the last 15 months, and am losing my mind, and am closing on my first house in 2 weeks, which is VERY far away from them, and I have refused to disclose its location.

All that said, I would like to have a kid, because I feel that with the right support that I could provide, a kid with gifts like mine would excel immeasurably, and it would make me very happy to help someone to do that.

You might have CPTSD in addition to ADHD

I don’t have some unique perspective, but I have ADHD and kids.

I struggled with ADHD my whole life, thought I was just lazy and incompetent, and then I got diagnosed as an adult. I got on meds, worked through some of my issues a little I guess, and mostly got my life together. Standard ADHD story.

Twelve years later my wife and I had our first kid. Seven months from now, we’ll be welcoming our third.

I always wanted kids, but in a vague sort of way. I thought maybe later in life it would be an answer to my cosmic dread and fear of death. I didn’t have strong personal feelings about it, but I always figured I’d have them.

I love them so much. I’m stressed and frustrated a lot of the time, but overall I’m happy.

By the time I was 9, I decided life was not worth living and have not changed my mind at 45 years old. […] I still feel like no one wants me around.

While this is a side effect of the trauma precipitated by people treating you badly due to your ADHD, and depression is common with ADHD… this level of depression is not inherent to ADHD, and I’d posit that the depression type stuff has more to do with your feelings on children than your ADHD directly does.

I think there’s a lot of people choosing not to have children due to depression and other issues of mental health leading them to feel like bringing a child into this world would be cruel.

Mid 30s, ADHD diagnosis when I was six, been on the same meds for it since 18. Medicated for depression starting around a decade ago. Medicated for anxiety for around five years. Narcisist ADHD mother, neglectful ADHD father (both undiagnosed). Grandfather was highly likely autistic.

Two year old daughter and another on the way. Determined not to repeat my parent’s mistakes and abuse. Daughter is the light of my life, best decision I’ve ever made.

Too late.

And I’m bloody proud of em.

Yeah, I grew up with parents that didn’t believe in adhd despite my diagnosis and they were pretty harsh. I got bullied at school too, but my school was really big so I just got exiled to the group of other adhd kids and still had plenty of friends. Im definitely fucked up from it all, but I think I’ve grown a lot and learned about managing it and have become way better at giving emotional support than my parents.

So, I think I still want to have kids. My main hesitation is just my current financial situation as well as the generally bleak outlook of the world. Hopefully by the time I decide I’m stable enough to have kids, things will be better.

As awful as yours and other may have experienced, I have trust that society and my own opinions of ADHD have progressed. I’m sorry for your experience and what you went through. I also was diagnosed in adulthood but I had little to no issues growing up. The education system isn’t nearly as regimented or abusive as it was back then. Paddling and hurting children physically doesn’t happen at public schools anymore. I grew up in the late 90s and early 00s and it was certainly a topic for little kids to talk about who or who didn’t have ADHD and how their medicine affected them. Maybe is still wasn’t fair and some parents or teachers mishandled it but at least it was an open conversation for most. The support system and way I will parent my child will come from a place of support and understanding. There are many more studies and books, etc to help now. I try and hope for future or else I would just crumble into lazily making the planet worse through apathy.

I relate to the excessive punishment sho, I was kicked out of multiple schools, even though I didn’t do too bad academically. But my thoughts on having children, as much as I’ve thought about it as an idea, not ever seriously, it’s something that obviously requires all of your time, effort and a huge commitment, and I worry about whether I am actually able to raise my yute the way I would want myself to, as much as we’d all want to raise our kids to achieve the things we weren’t able to.

I understand how me having ADHD makes my future kids more genetically predisposed to having it as well, but I personally worry less about that than how I myself am able to raise them, since having ADHD myself I’d be able to pick up symptoms much earlier and try my hardest give them the support I never got for most of my childhood.

No, I just don’t punish my kids excessively.

And if someone paddled them I’d smack seven shades of shite out of them.