ours came day before <| sep |> I am CF , meaning I have no interest in being a parent in any capacity , so I haven ' t faced the same challenges that you have . But I think you will find people speaking or writing about this from the 70 s onward , and maybe some of these people will have the right words for you . I have never felt this instinctual urge that you speak of , which leads to the question is it really instinctual , or is it largely culturalsocial ? Given how often we ' re told about ' biological clocks ' a nonscientific concept that only appeared in print after contraceptives became widely available and otherwise encouraged to breed in the face of declining birth rates , I am inclined to see it as largely conditioned . If you accept that , you don ' t have to leave it at your desire , you can start to look for the reason for your desire and determine if those reasons make sense in light of your other beliefs . For instance many people cite wanting to carry on the family name , wanting to carry on my genes , wanting to be remembered after death , or wanting the experience of having children . Many of those can be satisfied directly with adoption , while others appear rather unsubstantial in light of what you know about the world what the future likely holds , how closely related you are to other humans , and what proportion of your unique genetic contribution would persist after just a few generations . As to what you tell your family members and others , it is none of their business . You can give them a simple , palatablepositive response We wanted to offer a loving home to children who lacked one and cut off further discussion . You do not owe an explanation , no matter how much they may try to guilt you into one . Obviously you do need to talk it over with your spouse . You have to be on the same page on this . Since I ' ve known my views on parenthood for some time , I ' ve introduced them early in relationships and considered it a dealbreaker . In your situation you appear to have come to this opinion relatively recently , and already have a partner . Unfortunately I don ' t have any advice on this other than to note that most people are more receptive to having the evidence presented to them and drawing their own conclusions than to having conclusions presented to them . If , say , you talk about current events or philosophy during an evening walk , you could bring up some of the topics which lead you to your current thinking to see if she comes to similar conclusions .