I'm new here, I've browsed plenty but never posted before, so bear with me. I feel the same as the original poster, and some others who have posted here, so I wanted to add to the conversation, as it seems like this is something rarely talked about and I've been looking for answers for a long while.

I am the same, I have never liked kids much, even when I was one. I was an only child for most of my childhood (until age 11) and always preferred hanging around adults over kids. Up until about age 4, I wasn't even AROUND kids at all. Don't get me wrong, I did play with kids if they were around in school or whatever when I was older, but I usually got annoyed with them after a while; I found them immature, petty, selfish; I was a little adult, seriously. I preferred playing by myself or maybe one other kid and that was it. I had a couple of younger cousins who I liked and a few friends, but at the end of the day, I gravitated to being alone or with adults. This got worse when my brother was born at age 11. I was angry with my parents' for having another child, when they screwed up so miserably with me. How dare they bring another life into this world? I was also resentful of probably having to take care of this child (something I hated doing, babysitting) as he got older because of my mom's mental illness and also just general babysitting. I refused to hold him until he was about 2 years old. I'm not kidding. I'm sure my resentment was felt by him, and I feel bad about it, but nothing I can do now.

[[Trigger warning for next paragraph: sexual abuse discussion]]

It wasn't until just recently I discovered that kids are in fact a trigger for me. I had to do a little soul-searching. The why of the matter is not so clear. I have no history of sexual abuse, though I knew of my mother's sexual abuse at a very young age (age 4). I believe I carry her trauma in my body, if that makes sense. I was also in frequent contact with her abuser my entire childhood. I think I had this weird cognitive dissonance associated with the whole thing. If he did this to her, why was he allowed to be around me? It made no sense to me, even as a young child. It still makes no sense to me now. It was as though they were asking for trouble, my parents. I do believe inherited trauma is a very real thing. There is a fabulous article about it from the New Republic magazine. If anyone is interested message me. There are some things that occurred with a cousin that was a bit older than me and kids of a friend of my parents' that make me wonder if that's what it is (when I was a kid) but that seems more in line with normal body exploration that kids do. So I don't know. Doesn't seem to explain it really. I think there is a real fear of seeing something untoward happen and not being able to do anything about it, or seeing something untoward happen and not being able to fully acknowledge it. This may stem from becoming hypervigilant around my mother's abuser. And not trusting myself not to do something untoward or hurtful to a kid because, I don't know, I just might do or say something stupid and screw the kid up for life? And I guess I see the childhood that I never had and I resent that as well, being cared for properly and growing up supported and feeling loved. I feel like due to my mother's trauma and mental illness, I didn't really have a childhood of my own. I always had to think about her and "take care of" her. My father was largely not around, as he was working. And he was and still is though unadmittedly an alcoholic. Regardless of the why, it's there it's permanent and it's very real.

I started a job where I was around a lot of kids all day and after 6 months found myself in the psych ward of a hospital for a week, having had a psychotic episode, the first of my life. I was 32. Other factors, major stressors in my personal life at the time played into this, but I know that being around a lot of children all day where previously I was not, was not helping matters. I am on meds now, and have learned to deal with it better, but it's still not great and I'm still in the same job, dealing with the stress day in and day out on top of other job related stressors.

My diagnosis isn't exactly complete, either. I'm stuck with psychosis NOS, I am starting to wonder if perhaps I also have PTSD. I also have generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, ADD, periods of clinical depression, bouts of paranoia and delusional thinking, and insomnia (which makes all the other stuff worse). As a teen and 20-something, I used to have panic attacks and serious digestive issues due to anxiety. That doesn't usually occur anymore. I haven't had a panic attack in years. My mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 16 but re-diagnosed 10 years ago as having PTSD. I always feared I'd inherit her mental illness, well, guess what: I did. Doesn't exactly present in the same way, I don't think she's ever suffered from psychosis, but there it is.

I am severely uncomfortable around kids, kids of all ages. Babies to age 4 or 5 are probably the worst though, I can handle the older ones a bit better. The older they get, the less problem they present. Mainly my symptoms are high anxiety, hypervigilence, shakiness, fear, itchiness, slurred talking, worrying, repetitive thoughts, etc. I have come up with some coping mechanisms, but it's still not great. My main coping mechanism is to tune them out. Largely ignore them, pretend they're not there, etc. But if one comes up to the counter at work, obviously I have to help them out. Usually it's the older ones that do that so not too bad in that instance. I don't feel like this is a good long term strategy but it's what I do when under a lot of stress. It gives me this very physical achiness, tiredness and foggy feeling after doing it all day. Sometimes I feel light-headed and dizzy, and I know I'm just struggling with the anxiety of constant stress. I don't feel present and I feel exhausted. If I'm feeling better, I can deal with them in what looks to the outside world in a "normal" way. I can fake interacting with them and enjoying it, etc.
Normally I don't feel this way very often this "feeling good" and it's usually followed by depression. I wonder if maybe I have bipolar? I don't really know. My workmate mentioned that perhaps I have bipolar, but she is no licensed professional. And my therapist is not really a psychologist, so . . .

In my personal life, this comes out as irritation when people bring their kids along to events, and again I largely ignore them because I can and it's not going to cost me my job. I try to avoid situations with a lot of kids around. Friends who become pregnant and have kids of their own (unless they're a lot older like teenagers) I tend to spend less and less time with them because I feel like I can't relate to them well anymore, and I don't want to be around their kids. I get disappointed every time a female friend gets pregnant, seriously. I feel like I've lost them as a good friend, at least for a while, at least until their kids reach age 8 or 9 and even then, not going to be able to relate to them too well.

I know that I will never have, nor do I want to have, children of my own. That is fine with my current partner as he doesn't want kids either, it wasn't so fine with my previous long term partner, however, even though he claimed not to want kids of his own, but his actions around kids spoke otherwise. But we are no longer together so I guess in one way it is fine! I am glad to see that I am not alone in this feeling. I present as female though I identify as genderqueer (non-binary), and the pressure is on for me to conform to the idea all females love and want kids of their own. But I have absolutely no regard for this. No amount of pressure would make me change.

Does anyone have any better coping mechanisms to deal with this? Does anyone else have a job where they are around kids a lot? How do you deal with it? I just read an article about a mom who has PTSD who admits her OWN kids are her triggers. I can't imagine living like that. It's bad enough dealing with it 7 hours of the day at work all week. My opinion is that if kids are a trigger for you, you definitely should not have kids of your own. That's just asking for a disaster. So to the original poster, Alice7777, I wouldn't recommend having children.

If anyone wants links to the articles I mentioned, let me know.

Sorry this post is long . . . I tend to be verbose. :^)