When I was a kid, I was punished excessively. My diagnosis occurred when I was 25. In the 1980s, I got paddled every day at school and was punished constantly. It made me feel rejected, leading to rejection sensitivity dysphoria. By the time I was 9, I decided life was not worth living and have not changed my mind at 45 years old. I would never have a child to suffer the way I did. I still feel like nobody wants me around. My mental health issues have severely impacted my quality of life. I’m just now figuring out that this might be why I have never felt my clock tick, or thought for even a second of my life that I wanted kids.
Has this happened to anyone else? I wonder how many in this forum might have decided against parenthood due to ADHD effects without realizing it.
Update: Here are the results as of June 12, 2025 ( or at least I think I counted decently):
- 7 people do not want kids
- 9 said they have and/or want kids
- 3 responses did not conclude one way or another
Hope this was helpful, even with small sample sizes. This seems to be close to current statistics. Out of 16 who responded definitively, 7 did not want kids, which is 44%, compared to 47% shown in the statistics. This concludes that no evidence has been found from this post to suggest that ADHD has a significant impact on parenting desires. Further research could better validate the results.
And the share of U.S. adults younger than 50 without children who say they are unlikely to ever have kids rose 10 percentage points between 2018 and 2023 (from 37% to 47%), according to a Pew Research Center survey
We live in a crazy society with every moment regimented. Every inch of land “belongs” to someone, you have to do endless paperwork just to be allowed to live. You almost can’t even have hobbies unless someone is making money off it
The way I see it, if we fix the world then technology will continue to leap forward. Then in 70 years or so I’ll take a couple decades to completely dedicate myself to raising children, hopefully in a healthy world full of life
If not, I’m not dragging anyone else into this mess.
well said!
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.
Do you feel that your early diagnosis and subsequent treatment adjusted your behaviors at a young enough age such that you escaped the rejection sensitivity dysphoria effect?
Edit: Congrats, btw!
Some of us have shit genetics. Yeah I’m 6 feet tall, strong as an ox, etc, but the mental issues that were handed to me I would never want to pass on. Both my parents died in their early 60s.
With the executive dysfunction I have combined with clinical depression and being short on work, most days I don’t even bother to take a shower.
As the father of a recently-diagnosed ADHD daughter… Stay strong 😅 it’s still rewarding but there may be times where you’re tempted to question your resolve
I was rarely if ever punished, at most they took away my PS2 for an hour or so despite my fledgling shit grades at best, and me stopping all homework from grade 5. I had a pretty happy childhood as a single child of a happy, loving, married family, my parents were relatively well off. The only dark note was being beaten frequently in primary school, but I made up with the bullies later.
I have no mental health issues and have never really had any, despite suffering plenty in my mid to late teens from gender dysphoria and being thus rejected by those parents later and suffering to stay afloat in a foreign country, including a brief stint as a poly-drug addict to fight panic attacks over being fired by a bigoted boss on whom my visa depended after she tried to fire me on my day off for having a migraine.
I still don’t want kids.
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’re going to do great! Good luck with escaping the father! Yikes!
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.
Good for you! This is also how I deal with my family.
Well I didn’t get diagnosed until after I had kids and they started to get diagnosed, then my wife finally got diagnosed… So yeah it’s all 5 of us. But I was diagnosed with dyslexia as a kid. So my wife jumped on it early. With each kid she used a program called “Children Learn Reading” to teach them to read before kindergarten. Then she got them in a program called “Let’s Make Music” and had them playing piano by 5 or 6. Those combined with meds, has made my kids lives so much better than what I had. I was the lazy or dumb kid that wouldn’t apply himself. My kids are seen as bored geniuses, that aren’t challenged enough. The same behavior that got me yelled at and kept in from all the recesses, gets them self directed study and more interesting courses.
Everything is about optics.
That’s an incredible difference. Makes you wonder just how many of us could have done much more if people were educated properly.
Yeah, I lucked out and got my dad’s “who the fuck are you to tell me who I am?” genes. So I rebelled by succeeding. And then scored another huge lucky win by bumping into my wife at a party and then working on her for 3 years to finally admit that she loved me. Those kids are going to have amazing lives and it’s 99 percent their mom being fantastic.
I rebelled by succeeding, too. It worked out for me.
Honestly: Good job!
You might have CPTSD in addition to ADHD
I’ve thought about that, but the definitions online seem to only include serious traumas that I have not been through.
complex trauma is due to many smaller events occurring over a long period of time, usually during childhood but also during a relationship. “serious” traumas are not necessary
Okay, well that is good to know. If that’s the case, I almost certainly have it from another aspect of life.
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.
So you still wanted the kids? It didn’t cause you to hesitate? I knew very early that I wouldn’t have kids. Could be because my mother told us that kids ruin your life, though.
Yeah. They’re great… but it feels like we’re doing way more work than most parents. I feel that school bullying has had a 90% reduction since I was a kid and that’s with my kids going to the same school I did.
The doctors told my wife that her biological clock was ticking way faster than most, so I had 3 kids by age 30. The doctors were a bit reluctant to give me the snip at 31 before they realised I was 3 kids deep already.
