24 Signs You Are Not Ready To Have Kids

1. You have yet to encounter a house plant that you couldn’t kill within a matter of days (including cacti, which means that you are somehow a more inhospitable environment than an actual desert).

2. You are often overwhelmed by the desire to get a pet, but then reminded that you would actually have to take care of it all the time, and suddenly want to lie down and take a nap.

3. One of the things that so attracts you to the concept of a pet is the idea that it doesn’t cry all the time and won’t talk back to you.

4. Diapers as a concept make you incredibly upset.

5. Every time you find out that someone you know is having a kid, your first thought is acute disappointment at how lame you predict they are going to become.

6. When someone goes off on a condescending tirade about how much more profound their life has become as a result of breeding, your eyes roll so hard they actually start to hurt.

7. Sometimes you just want to sleep in until noon for no reason with no one there to judge you or, worse yet, wake you up for any reason.

8. Making breakfast for yourself is often so much of a challenge as to be forgotten about, let alone having to make a balanced morning meal for multiple people.

9. You take full advantage of the ability to allow the night to take you wherever you want, not worrying about having to get home and take care of kids or pay a babysitter or be up early on a weekend morning.

10. You have yet to meet anyone with whom you have even a vague desire to procreate/be tethered to legally and emotionally for the rest of your natural lives.

11. If you are a woman, you are not interested in your body becoming a bloated thoroughfare into the conscious world any time soon.

12. Every time someone mentions the idea of having kids around you, you sort of recoil and think about how young you are.

13. When you see a kid screaming in a public place, you are overwhelmed with the desire to get down on your knees and thank whatever deity you pray to that it is not yours, while simultaneously glaring at its parents who are not doing anything about it.

14. Even when you do enjoy the company of someone else’s kids, it gets old very quickly, and you enjoy the ability to give it back when you are done.

15. You hate the sound of children’s songs.

16. Mushed-up vegetables as food makes you kind of sick to your stomach.

17. You are not ready to deal with any living being that is not fully potty trained and/or doesn’t know how to put on its own shoes.

18. Your music is always too loud for the neighbors, much less another human being who is delicately trying to sleep in the next room.

19. Your checking account is not ready to handle buying brand-name cereal, so the idea of getting a place with a nursery and all of the things it would take to stock it only makes you laugh/cry like a hyena.

20. If you are a woman, every time you get your period is like a mini-Christmas morning.

21. You know you’re just kind of in your “selfish asshole phase” and are totally cool with it.

22. Babies still look mostly ugly to you, occasionally kind of cute, and often repulsive — especially when they’re covered in food and bodily fluids.

23. You are not even sure where you’re going to be living in two years.

24. You’re hard at work in a career that requires a ton of your time, but which you know will pay off in the long run, and is something you’ve always wanted. Just because it isn’t a kid doesn’t mean it isn’t incredibly fulfilling to you, and you’re more interested in doing what is right for you than pleasing someone else.