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
I think it can go either way. This sort of thinking is based a lot more on your life experience than your genetics.
I think I have terrible depression and that it is genetic. It could be based on that. This is a good exercise to do because all this feedback is telling me that my lack of desire to have kids could be related to the ADHD, but that ADHD usually does not dissuade folks from parenting much of the time, so therefore something else is likely a larger factor in my attitude about motherhood.