What are the benefits/positive advantages of not getting...?

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What are the benefits/positive advantages of not getting married and never having kids?

Freedom, mainly. You can do other things.

Single life, which it has its benefits.

You only have to worry about taking care of yourself

Cheaper costs for almost everything and a smaller carbon footprint.

If you don't have kids but two people can usually live together for cheaper than they each could individually & the carbon foot-print tends so be smaller as well because electricity is only powering one place instead of two

You can plan your financial life without a second opinion. Which is to say you can save and spend your money at your discretion without worrying about what someone else thinks and without worrying about how it might affect the.(assuming your not doing anything illegal)

Share a house/flat with family or friends or random people you may meet.

That wouldn't be much different from marriage. In both cases, you're still sharing space and bills.

When you buy a pint of your favorite ice cream for when you want it, it will be there when you actually do want it. It can sit there as long as you don't want it until the moment you want it. You won't decide to have your ice cream, get all ready to have some of your favorite ice cream, only to discover that it's not there because SOMEBODY decided they wanted something sweet and ate it at 2am while they were having insomnia.

... Not that such a thing has ever happened to me or anything.

Well, let's here... I have a husband and four kids. My kids are expensive and my husband is expensive. Even though we have the ability to have a dual income household, he's more of a clothes horse than I am so he costs more money to maintain than I do. If you are unmarried and childfree, you will just have to worry about feeding and clothing yourself. You'll never say the phrases, "Why is every light in the house on?" and "I'm not paying the heat the neighborhood!" There would not be tuition to consider and emergency savings would not have to be large as a requirement, but rather a preference. Life insurance wouldn't be as pressing of a thing to have. You won't have as many birthdays to buy for.

There's also less mess. If you're single and childfree, you will never have to change anyone's diaper. You will lack of a partner who may age and develop incontinence issues. You won't have an infant to care for if you're childfree. So your life will be fecal-free with exception of whatever you wish to do with your own. Any sickness that happens will be your own. Not only in matters of incontinence but with any condition (eg. dementia, diabetes, arthritis, etc) you will not be responsible for another person.

You will only be accountable to yourself. Want to waste $5500 on the best television in the whole world? Do it. It's your money. Who's going to tell you "No"? Who is it really going to hurt if you max out your credit card and take five years to pay off the balance? When you decide to go to London for the weekend, there'll be nothing to stop you. Spend $2000 on a weekend trip to Europe. No one can tell you that you can't go. If you don't mind not having anyone to share it with, the world is your oyster!

Your path is the only path. Along with the previous point is this related one. You won't ever have to accommodate someone else's dream and decision. Everything that you decide to do will be yours. At no time will you have to delay going to law school because the love of your life has decided to attend the most prestigious circus college in Belgium.

Less intrusive, rude, annoying people that you have to pretend to enjoy and love because they are Family. Almost always with marriage comes in-laws, which is another group of annoying people who have opinions about how you live your life, too many inappropriate questions, and an infinite number of jokes that aren't funny. Have children and those in-laws become even more glued into your life because they always have to see the baby and know everything about the baby, and share their opinions about how you're parenting, inappropriate questions about your life as a parent, and jokes and stories about your partner as a baby that you really didn't want to know.

It's only your stuff. When you are married, you have your stuff with someone else's stuff. After a while, there's new stuff and that's considered "our" stuff, but with new stuff, old stuff has to leave and some of that old stuff will be your stuff. I live with a shot glass collection and ceramic statues of birds. I wish you could feel how painful that is for me. I don't like tacky things. It could be worse. With my ex-husband, I lived with an exhaustive pink anime collection and japanese swords. When I was single, it was just my stuff. My tasteful, sophisticated, clean-lined stuff. Mind you, when you have kids, that's more stuff. And their stuff ends up all over the place, especially where it does not belong.

Most of the time, the stimulation within your living space will be caused by only you. You decide when the television is on and what volume. You choose the music. There is no yelling, no loud noises or bangs. If you want things quiet, you can have them quiet. When you are married and/or have children, there are individual people who are separate from you in the same living space. They will make noise and want to engage in activities that make noise, regardless of how you feel about it.

That's off the top of my head.

Mind you, I wouldn't trade my kids and husband for the world. I love quiet but I hate when they're not here disturbing that quiet. I'm too used to them being a part of my life that I can't function well when they're not here. But you didn't ask people to list all the positive qualities of being married and having children. You wanted the opposite. So there you go.

Yes, that's the point I was making.

Well, I don't consider either of those things to be preferential to marriage, since they set up a similar situation. It sounds a little too much like marriage to be an alternative.

Ok, but the OP didn't stipulate that that was an issue, and I was only refuting Nicks point... you don't necessarily need to be in a marriage to share a space.

I know. But it seems like not having to share space would be one of the biggest benefits.

Uncle Sam likes to take a bite out of the single people in America, but thats about it. The majority of people need someone else to make them stronger. But the strongest are those that can stand by themselves. That alone is just reward. Atleast to me it is anyways.

wefunction: great blow by blow. Its a perspective that likely doesn't get shared often enough.

My best guess - single with no kids, as you get older and as you get to know life and yourself better it will go uphill. I mean it like this; lots of gained wisdom about life, people, etc. that would be sidelined if you had a family to maintain. Meaning - I think the blues get lighter and lighter, perhaps as your understanding of the reality we're all in gets darker. That said altruism grows, so do talents. I consider myself lucky also in the sense that I may be able to get a black belt in some really amazing arts, continue in artistic endeavors, have my music age like wine and become sharper and clearer in vision.

Chances are as I become more relaxed with life things will change, I likely will end up married one of these days, but at this point I'm really looking for a solo drifter who's looking to join at the side with someone of the same ilk - really more of a life mate in that sense, perhaps kids but I think the main thrust being us keeping each other company and having someone to share our experiences with until we're gone.

When you really think about it though, on one side this world and this life are a joke - ie. no free will, being strapped so tightly to our genetic limits that we can't move a muscle, everything else is chance. Still though, when you realize that there's no point you also realize that there's really no such thing as the 'wrong' path. Stigmas seem to be build in order to keep those who are fit to be somewhere from diverging. Once society is confident that they've been herded where they're needed they tend to let off.