"I don't like babies"

"I don't like babies".

There. It has been said. 

Trying to explain (usually to a woman) why you do not like babies is futile. Especially at my age. If only people were more logical about that whole thing.

Logic is beautiful.

I am naturally an emotional person therefore I often find logic to be annoying and frustrating. Sometimes this is because I am at a complete loss as to why people can be so absolutely devoid of the ability to reason soundly (imagine I said something here about non-medically trained, anti-vaccination fear-mongers). 

Usually it is because my overwhelmingly logical husband (see INTJ) has accepted my accidental challenge for a debate on something because sometimes I am incapable of just shutting up (this point will be discussed later), and I have found myself backed into a corner trying to shield myself from the onslaught of logic that ensues.

I myself am naturally governed by my emotions (see INFJ-T). But I value logic, and therefore I have to work really hard to employ it. Letting my (what can only be described as intense) emotions run wild without a leash has rarely ended in any good. I don't dislike being an emotional person, but sometimes I need a break from all the feels. 

Since meeting my husband and discovering the wonderful world of rational decision-making, I've become a much happier person. I am still innately prone to mood swings, but they no longer dominate my existence. 

This is probably why, unlike a great many women I know, I am enjoying my 30s and not lamenting the passing of my youth (except when I want to exercise - that is a different story). My early to mid-twenties were exceptionally awful. Even though I had not yet broken my nose 3 times when I was 20, I wouldn't want to do it again.


"INFJs indeed share a very unique combination of traits: though soft-spoken, they have very strong opinions and will fight tirelessly for an idea they believe in."

This is true. And I find that it can throw people who either have just met me or do not know me very well despite thinking that they do. For the most part, I will just smile and nod my way through a conversation as I am talked at for however long. It is what I have done most of my life. In my early 20s when I left home and entered the world of office jobs with strangers I realised that I would have to occasionally utter words back at people as this is apparently what social etiquette dictates. But generally, unless I am really trying or I know you well, I am quiet.

That is unless you hit one of the few topics that I am passionate about / know about / know more than someone saying in-factual things about, and I will find it difficult to stay silent. My heart will race with anxiety. My head will shout to shhh. My mouth will ignore all this and do as it pleases.

I will then go home and wish I had stayed quiet because I am regretting lying awake at midnight feeling bad about people not liking me. 

These days I am able to stay silent more often on why I refuse to spend $200 to watch an average brat strut arrogantly around a stage while murdering their own song, hidden by the 20 dancers, multiple backing tracks and a killer lighting show. However, I will happily spend that money to see someone like Tori Amos command an entire concert hall with naught but her red hair, playing multiple pianos simultaneously, no entourage in sight. Because after all, it is supposed to be about the music, isn't it? But I will save this rant for my music blog. 

In place of this silence, a new compulsion to comment has sprung forth:


I don't like babies.

Saying 'I don't like babies' gets the same reaction as saying such things as:

• i eat babies
• i am dead on the inside and should be exterminated like the vermin I am
• i just shit my pants

You are immediately ostracised and hence forth labelled as a pants shitting, baby eating a**hole.

I find myself discussing the topic of babies, children, families - a multitude of variations on this theme - so often these days. Most layers of my friend group either have children or want children or are planning more children. So it can be a difficult topic to get away from. And it is getting worse as I get older and the dynamics of mine and my friend's lives change. 

I am by no means saying this is a bad thing. But it is a new thing.

I also find that if I am in a social situation with someone who I have absolutely nothing in common with and I find out that they like babies or have a baby, conversation is taken care of for the rest of the engagement. Sure, it is lazy. But everyone wins.  

Being the socially inept and too often brutally honest conversationalist that I am, I will tell people that I do not care for babies. 


When I say this, I do not mean 'I hate kids, why would you want them, if you have them you can't PARTY FOREVER!'.

Using logic to back up my dislike of babies is insufficient in changing the opinion of me that is very quickly formed after such a statement.

I rarely get far into the reasons before I am drowned out by a chorus of why the women I am with; love babies; think babies are wonderful; think babies smell delicious; think babies are easier than children - you get the idea.

I can't remember the last time I got to tell anyone of the caveat I have placed on my dislike of babies. I never get that far in.

For the purpose of this article, I am defining baby as newborn up to 4 years. Once the fourth birthday rolls around, I am totally on board. Note: I am assuming your 4 year old is toilet trained. 

Let's be honest. When your classmates from high school that you haven't seen in 15 years post pictures of their freshly squeezed out baby, you mostly think to yourself 'meh' or 'what an ugly baby'. You type 'awwww so cute!' but you don't feel it. 

Likewise, this 'it looks just like you' is total BS. The baby is smooshed. It is a blob that was just squished through something a hell of a lot smaller than its head a lot of the time. 

With rare exceptions, the vast majority of babies newborn - 6 months are ugly. Simple.

Since there is a constant stream of new babies in my facebook news feed, I know this fact to be true. Even the super hot girls from school have ugly babies.

Around 6 months of age they start to develop a face. And get cute. Even if they remain ugly.

But this is trivial. My dislike of babies doesn't stem from a superficial ignorance.

Here comes the logic part.

A baby is entirely dependent on you. Your physical, emotional, psychological & financial strength. Your baby relies on you for food, protection, shelter, clothing, entertainment, love and cuddles.


Everything is you (not to be confused with everything is glue. I love Jenna, but what dis?).

There are some mornings that I wake up and I can barely muster the energy to feed my two cats. And since I am being honest, it is rare that I step outside to feed my dog since my husband takes care of that. And it is really only on the weekends that I feed the cats, since I am up first. So basically what is happening here is that I occasionally have the responsibility to feed some of our animals a handful of days a week, and that is still hard work on occasion. 

And I grew up not only surrounded by animals (no allergies were stopping me from getting my fill of furry snuggles) but also with the very real goal of being a veterinarian. So lack of experience or a desire to look after animals is not what is going on here.

It is simply sometimes exhausting to look after someone else.

Now imagine that you never get a break from that responsibility. 

Babies are tubes. Poop tubes. Food goes in. Poop comes out. Repeat. 

Most people come back with the good old tried and true "babies are easier because they aren't mobile". 

I'll agree with this. But taking this point independent of all other facts means to ignore the constant lack of sleep and exhaustion that comes from a newborn. And this makes no sense to me.

And between the age of being a tube and being a toilet trained pre-school attending little person, babies becomes mobile-tubes. Tubes that still rely on you clean them up after they poop themselves, but also have the ability to take poop from their nappy and push it through flywire.

One of my brothers actually did this. True story.

Why would I want to have to deal with this? I think I might have mentioned before that I do not have any responsibility in our house for cleaning the litter tray. Poo is awful. I don't deal in poo.

A 4 year old on the other hand* (*toilet-trained assumed), is a cool little person who can debate and discuss and ask questions, do crafts, kick a ball, help you bake cupcakes - you can see the kind of mother I imagine (probably far removed from reality) that I would be if were to happen.


So when I say that I do not like babies, I don't mean I sacrifice them to the Gods every third Friday of the month when the moon is full. 

I just mean that I find them to be a combination of boring and exhausting. 

And I do not want to be offered a cuddle under most circumstances, because I really do not want to smell like off milk or poo. I'd learn to be okay with it if it was a child of my own doing, but I have no affinity for other people's babies. The best I can do is my close friend's and my cousin's babies. And that is still mainly driven by trying not be a total a**hole, rather than an urge to snuggle the baby. It doesn't mean I hate the baby. I will be more interested in a few years time.

I did think to myself a couple of days ago that I may have a tainted perspective because the first baby I ever held was my stillborn little sister. This experience had a profound effect on the rest of my life, something I only recently realised. When I was four my first brother way born. At the hospital I was detached and had absolutely no interest in him, saying 'no, he is dead'. That was until my parents got him to make enough noise that I believed he was alive.

I just do not get the warm fuzzies from tiny helpless babies. I do not find the idea of being so needed enticing. Rather, I think it is a little terrifying. 

Sometimes I wonder if people who are in the phase of planning a baby or planning to plan a baby do not give enough attention to this. They get distracted by the cuteness factor and the drive to reproduce, giving little heed to the reality of having a newborn.

At least using logic means that I would be more likely to be pleasantly surprised by the experience of having a newborn, than shattered and broken because I had absolutely no idea what to expect or how hard the journey would really be.

This is not pessimistic. It is realistic.

Of course, there are always exceptions. I know a handful of couples who make child-rearing look like the easiest thing to do. But I know a hell of a lot more who struggle. Some incredibly hard.


I mentioned earlier that I have a caveat placed on my dislike of babies. 

Babies are fascinating in their fascination.

What I mean by that is that they are exceptionally interested in the most banal of things. My cousin and her 8 month old daughter popped by last week, making Indie only the third baby to have ever been at my house. In fact it was also the third time a baby has been at my house.

Indie was interested by everything. An invitation to an event. A glass that no longer had coffee in it. A hair elastic. Eating the power cables to my keyboard. Everything.

And this, I love.

It could be the honours degree in psychology or it could be my desire to learn. It doesn't matter. Watching a baby discover is really special thing. 

I find it so interesting. 

But that doesn't mean I want to clean up poo, be awake every 2 hours for a year or wipe milk vomit off my top thirteen times a day.

It does mean that everyone can now calm the eff down about me being a vile baby hating monster.

For the record, I probably would be okay at dealing with a baby since I managed to accidentally bop another of my cousin's babies to sleep a few weeks back. 

Level up.