She’s not kidding around.
Lorella Palmer, a 22-year-old influencer and style blogger from London, England said she doesn’t want kids for a variety of reasons and she’s tired of people trying to change her mind or call her decision “selfish.”
“Kids are just annoying, they annoy me, in every sense of the word. They have no common sense, they can’t drink, they have to go to bed early, they scream, they cry, they annoy me, Palmer told The Mirror this week.
“Every time I see a child, they’ve just got crust round their nose and round their mouth, there’s drool, they’ve got food everywhere and they’ve got sticky fingers.”
Palmer also had some choice words about children’s television.
“I hate kids’ TV too. Your kid is one, they don’t need to watch cartoons — pop on Vampire Diaries please, or Gossip Girl, or Friends,” she lamented.
Palmer, who recently graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a law degree, said she’d rather focus on growing her business as an agent for social media influencers than birthing a baby which she fears would change her body and empty her bank account.
“Why would I want to push something out of my hoo-ha and expand my stomach and my cherries and everything else on me that’s just going to change?,” she said.
“Kids are expensive. I know what it’s like to grow up quite poor and I’d rather go on holiday than pay for a kid.”
Palmer’s boyfriend, Callum Page, 23, said he supports Palmer’s decision to choose herself over raising a family and that he doesn’t feel ready for kids either.
“I still feel like a little kid myself, only just graduated university one year ago too. I haven’t really experienced adult life properly, only student life,” he said.
Palmer admitted that she’s still young and could still change her mind about having kids but said people shouldn’t put pressure on women to raise a family, when women take on the majority of labor in child rearing.
Palmer, who was raised by her single father, says her dad did an “incredible job” but added that many men don’t feel the same sense of responsibility and are applauded for putting in minimal effort.
“Dads are rewarded for looking after their kids but moms are just expected to do it. If I wanted to go out with my girls for a night out, and my baby daddy had to look after our child, other people will be like ‘Aww, isn’t it lovely that he’s so hands on?’” she said.
“But if he wanted to go out and I looked after the kid, nobody would say the same about me. Moms are just expected to do everything, and if the dad does his normal dad duties, he’s applauded,” she said.
Finances and extra responsibility aren’t Palmer’s only reasons for not wanting kids. The influencer said she feared her child would develop mental health issues due to the state of the world.
“The world is a really, really bad place — bullying, war, poverty, men with podcasts, a pandemic, the list goes on, “ she said. “You can’t control that. You can be the best parent ever and your child can seriously still grow up with some bad issues and bad things going on around them.”
Palmer certainly isn’t alone in her beliefs which are echoed in a documentary that came out earlier this year called, “My So Called Selfish Life,” that discusses the pressures women face to have kids.
A TikToker also spoke out in May about her reasons for not wanting kids which include potentially losing her teeth and hair during pregnancy and the threat of a future apocalypse.