When I come and read a forum like this one it makes me so glad that I am not having to deal with this whilst raising a child. The pain and suffering that it must cause a poor innocent child must be very damaging.

Maybe in the future I will be strong enough to consider a family. Right now I am glad that I haven't hurt a dependant.

olivia said: When I come and read a forum like this one it makes me so glad that I am not having to deal with this whilst raising a child. The pain and suffering that it must cause a poor innocent child must be very damaging.

Maybe in the future I will be strong enough to consider a family. Right now I am glad that I haven't hurt a dependant.

I really wish more people had this attitude as well. It would save a lot of heartbreaks of children that have to live with the madness of addicted parents.

I think a parent must make sure that they are sober, responsible and fit to care for a child. It's a human being and the smallest things could ruin their lives. Why inflict big bad things upon them when we could prevent it.

I know that right now, my dad regrets being an alcoholic and ruining our family, and he'll even call and tell us how sorry he is.  But I know back then, he was such an alcoholic, he couldn't realize how bad he was hurting his wife and kids.  It is a really sad and selfish thing to become addicted, but I don't hold him accountable anymore, I guess I sort of just got used to his disease.  There were times tho that I absolutely hated him for it.  Some kids weren't allowed to hang out with me because of his drinking and I lost friends because of it, almost everyone knew about it.  But it's part of who I am today and I now have more motivation to not drink.

I must say you are a true woman! It takes courage and stregnth to know when it isn't right to have a child. If so many could have the perspective you do, this would be a much better world than the one we are so accustomed to.

My best friend has parents that have caused her to lose so much in her life and she's only 19 years old.  They've ruined her credit because they used her name on their PG&E and phone bills and wouldn't pay the bills, and they would just take all of her money when she got paid.  They're both addicted to meth and divorced and they have a weird situation with boyfriends/girlfriends.  I hate watching her go through all of this because her family has done absolutely nothing for her and whenever she does something, her whole family will gossip about her and basically ruined her whole reputation.  I wonder why the heck they decided to bring kids into their hectic world.