This is Howard, he wants to have a baby with his wife, Betty.


This is Betty's mother, Jessica- she wants a grandchild, and Betty is her only child:


This is Betty's father, Bryan- he also wants his only daughter to give him a grandchild:


And this is Betty:


She just wants to buy fun things!

I've tried taking her on dates, fulfilling wants, not fulfilling wants, taking her to community lots, having Howard romance her, having Howard not romance her... she never rolls a want to have a baby!

Am I out of luck, do pleasure sims never wish for a family (I don't usually take much notice of this kind of thing, but am trying to play wants more in this hood)? She and howard had an engagement and wedding, but still no baby wish.

Is there any gameplay way that I can nudge her into wanting this, without installing any radical wants to override game behaviour or anything? I'm not giving sims secondary aspirations in this game, but I fear that may be the only way- unless anyone knows of some way to 'influence the wants tree', so to speak. She has some time, she's still young! Is there a chance, or am I doomed? I really wanted this family to persist as Bryan was the first sim I made in this neighbourhood. :lovestruc

It's funny, but somewhat realistic since Pleasure Sims' wants are more targeted to the present instead of the future like the other aspirations. And are probably the most child at heart with their attachment to games and jumping on the sofa. Pleasure Sims know it takes time to have a baby and they want stuff NOW! Not tomorrow or if it has to be tomorrow, you better remember to get it. I only recall having the Family Sim secondary aspiration before seeing Baby wants for them.

But one thing I did notice with Pleasure sims, if you keep having them jump on the sofa or play video games the wants will cycle and you'll have that same want again later on. It took fulfilling the wants of buying stuff or interacting with family members before other variations of wants came in. At least that was with the secondary aspiration without having a mod installed for it.

What is her secondary aspiration? If she doesn't have one you can try setting it to family. I always give Pleasure sims a secondary as I feel they are unfinished aspirations. I'm all about families so just the one want from her husband would be enough for me.

Sorry I can't help you.

But I do have a question. What is that want, is that a want to get a butler or something? It is the first want displayed, to the left.

This is what I feared; in my last game I was playing with secondary aspirations (all randomly rolled), and it seemed that everyone wanted babies! But I was playing story driven then, I had an idea where I wanted the sims to go. But this game I was trying out just having primary aspirations whilst following what sims wanted, to see where that went. I'll try buying her some toys (although she already had a bubble blower and sauna, and no baby wants came up when those wishes were fulfilled! )


I was wanting to play this neighbourhood without secondary aspirations, as in my previous game, where all had secondaries, I felt I wasn't seeing much diverse behaviour. Also I have the rule in this neighbourhood that both sims must have the want for a baby (last hood was very overpopulated! ). So I'll have to consider whether I want to 'cheat' (fulfill her husband's wish or give her a secondary), or just let her play true to aspiration, if there's no chance of the baby want.


Yes! He wants to hire a butler. Maybe I will, I don't have one generated yet for this hood. Got any good butler names?


Edit: Now she has a want for a $5500 game- are there actually any items that count as games that cost that much in the vanilla game? I can't find any!

Seems true to aspiration lol. Babies aren't much fun. She's the one who'll have to get pregnant, not the ones who want the baby.

@Charity You're right! I'll play her for a while longer to see what happens, but I can see that I may have to unlock those wants and forget it!

Her husband can adopt. Her mom can get over it. I’ve never known a pleasure sim who rolled a baby want, or one who wasn’t great with kids once they were around. Non-volunteers should not have to get pregnant without a compelling in-game reason!

Ooh now there's an idea @Peni Griffin . I noticed that if you don't fulfill family sims' wants for kids, they'll start having wants to adopt when they are approaching elderhood. So maybe I'll play them through adulthood a while longer, and see what pops up. I agree, my feeling is that she shouldn't have to bear a baby without the desire! Also, I do have Kestrellyn's surrogacy mod, already used once in my hood...

Since I play with secondary aspirations I'm not sure if this will work for you, but for my sims it seems that if someone they know or are close to have a baby it can nudge out the baby wants. I have had it happen that once one sim has a baby, I get a sudden rise in baby wants across the hood, even in sims that had (up to that point) been stubbornly refusing to roll one.

Of course if you want to be mean there's always risky woohoo. XD

Pleasure sims make good parents!

they go:

want to play with baby
want to play hide and seek with toddler
want to play red hands with child/teen/uni and adult kid
etc. etc. etc.

My late pleasure sim, Faith Hamilton spent hours playing kicky bag with her kids when the late knowledge sim, Stirling, was not sharing knowledge with them. They raised 5 kids, including a set of twins

Pleasure Sims can have wants to buy a toy, and, since, in an unmodded game, only children and toddlers can play with toys, I think you could take that as an indirect want to have a child. I remember teen Gerry McBain wanting to buy a toy, and, if I remember rightly, it was at a time when his mother (Jenny) was pregnant, so I took it as a delightful wish to buy a present for his, as yet, unborn sibling. (In the event Jenny had twins, and, as soon as they were born, Gerry, who is indeed rather childlike, was immediately into making friends with them. His sister Glenda [Romance, and also rather childlike] took a bit longer to come round.)

It's maybe a pity that Pleasure Sims are reluctant to have children, as, from what I've heard from other players, they can be quite good with them. Perhaps, being somewhat childlike themselves, they find it easy to empathise with children. I never thought of myself as a Pleasure Sim, but once, in real life, a child said of me that, when I played with him and his sister, I didn't play like an adult; I played like another child. I took this as an enormous compliment. I think I just immersed myself so much in the game that I made believe it was all real. (That probably helps to explain how I play with my Sims -- I make believe that they're real people, and so for me, they become real people.)

Thinking about myself leads me to think about the old alternative to procreation. I know I would never want to father a genetic child. I just wouldn't want to bring a new child into our troublous and over-populated world. (Veronaville is different -- it's not over-populated.) But if, by some miraculous chance, in the ages of ages to come, I should find myself in a romantic relationship, and if my spouse or partner (Chester Gieke??) should really want to have a child, I think I might be persuaded to consider adoption. A couple of Sims in my game have gone down this route. By adopting an older child or (with the help of a Squinge mod) a teen, you completely bypass the whole messy business of nappy changing, and you don't have worry about breast- of bottle-feeding either. Even if you're asexual, the whole messiness of woohoo is avoided. Of course in Real Life you are likely to end up with a young person from a troubled background, who might cause you more tears than any toddler, but I have to say that all my Sims, that have gone down the adoption route, have good relationships with their adopted children. The first Sims to adopt in my game were a black gay couple in Baldrair Bluffs. They adopted a little white girl called Alyssa, brought by the social worker. That worked out so well that when they came across a really troubled teenager -- their runaway papergirl Eve Marsden -- they took her in and adopted her too.
It's unlikely that your reluctant Pleasure Sim will actually get a want to adopt, but adoption does seem to answer most of the legitimate objections he might raise to having a child. The social worker can bring you school age child tomorrow, so you don't have wait, and you don't have get dirty changing nappies. Instead the child is there tomorrow, at an age ready to befriend and play with. May you have much fun jumping on the sofas together!

Got any good butler names? Jeeves? I know he was more of a Gentleman's Gentleman, but I'm sure he could turn his hand to butlering when needed. And he had the right mannerisms too!

Finally (provided you have Nightlife) there is a game that costs §5,500. It's the bowling alley. Years ago, Consort Capp (as he was then -- he's now Consort Capp-Hutchins) had this want. He bought one and installed it where the old private family cemetery used to be. It still has the fancy wrought iron fencing round it. At the time he did it, I thought only the Capps would have the bad taste to do such a thing!

P.S. I see I've got it the wrong way round. He wants a baby; she doesn't. But the principle still applies. Pregnancy for a female Sim who doesn't want it is no joke. The only thing she can be thankful for is that it's only three days, not nine months! (I think if I were female my wish never to new life into our world would be even stronger.) But again adoption gets round all the objections: no pregnancy, no nappies, no waiting, no problem -- except perhaps wanting your child to look like yourself!

Wow, I've never specifically noted that myself, but I'll test it out for sure! Betty is friendly with Mama Hick, and she has a new baby grandson.


That's a good point, i don't have that in-game currently, but...


If only I could get Betty to want one... she has such a quirky face too (inherited from her father) and I'd love to see that passed on! :lovestruc

I don't think Faith ever wanted one - nor 5
She was happy to be parent, though, and was in platinum when she died, getting the hula zombies and all!

P.P.S. Since I don't have FreeTime, none of my Sims have secondary aspirations.

Sorry @AndrewGloria I was replying when you posted so missed yours!

Trouble is, her wants are for very expensive toys, so I don't think I could stretch that!


My nephew said that to me once too- us simmers really know how to imagine!


Adopting is a great idea too, but the rules I'm playing are that both sims in a relationship have to want to have a child to fulfill it. I have had so far in my new neighbourhood- 4 births from male/female relationships; one birth via female surrogate to a male/male couple; one adoption (child) of a female/female couple. The couple who had the surrogate child both wanted to adopt, and I bent the rules by trying out Kestrellyn's surrogacy hack. BUT- I want to play this hood long term so conserve the character count somewhat, as the old neighbourhood- though it had all the usual no-respawn mods- had a lot of characters, due to excessive fulfillment of baby wants and adoption and story telling and my whims. Keeping strictly to wants for babies seemed to me a good way of keeping the hood smaller.


Now that's a good idea- all of the butlers in my previous hoods were named after butler-like characters in TV programmes or books, but I didn't have a Jeeves!


Oooooooooh, of course- it only costs $4950 in my sims' household catalogue but I remember that one of them had one of those networking rewards- "I know the boss of the warehouse and I'm going to see that you get things cheaply!" So that might explain it. Question remains, will buying that for Betty fulfill her want for a $5500 game? Although she has a want for a $3000 game too (she really, really wants a game! ) so I'll give it a try. Now where to fit a bowling alley in their garden?

I think there is a simple solution, and that is to buy the husband an expensive telescope. I do this for all my male Sims who want a baby but their partner/wife can't/won't have one. Now since I don't have secondary aspirations or mod abductions, whether this will actually result in a baby is a bit of a roll of the dice, but it is nice that The Sims gives us this handy alternative.

Now that may not fulfill the grandchild wish, but once the baby is born, Betty can adopt it, and maybe that will fulfill the wish. I have the mod that the want to have a baby is fulfilled by adoption and vice versa, but I'm not sure if that extends to the want for grandbabies. Of course, it doesn't matter because once you fulfill that grandbaby want, they just want another one right away!

If I think my Sim has fulfilled a want, but, on some technicality the game says it hasn't been fulfilled, I just fulfil it manually. (I think you have to turn Testing Cheats Enabled on for that to work.) I do that all the time with teens' "Go out with" wants. I send them on an outing together (usually to a sleazy nightclub) and manually fulfil the want. Because they have gone out together. And what's more they've enjoyed themselves, and so have I!

Our way with rules is even more cavalier. If a rule is stopping my Sims and me from enjoying ourselves, then it's too bad for the rule -- we ditch it!! In fact we always maintain that there are no rules in our game. We think we're free spirits who aren't bound by rules. Rules only exist to be broken.

I generally do try to fulfil Sims' wants. To keep them happy, I fulfil most of their reasonable wants, and even few unreasonable ones, like Consort's bowling alley. But I refuse to be bound by them.

Now that is cunning! I love it. But I'll have to think carefully about it because, my reason for playing strictly to wants on the baby thing was primarily to keep the character count low. And, my dilemma regarding Betty is that I want to preserve Bryan's genetic line. Alien baby would achieve neither of those! But, aliens are my favourite thing in Sims 2, so this makes it doubly difficult. Oh, such a difficult decision!


I like the way you're thinking! I was considering things along the same lines too. But, that's what got me into trouble in Lacuna Delta- so many sims, so little space left for houses...

Well, one thing I could do is to just delay the decision- after all Betty has 22 days until she becomes an elder. Bryan has already been resurrected once so has some days left, and Jessica used the Elixir to give her more time with Bryan... so I could keep the wants locked for all of them and carry on for a bit. Is that called prevaricating?

I've had my Jankowskys get lifetime wants I couldn't ever fulfill in my Pleasantview game when they arrived on their homestead and used a lifetime wish changer Mod from here uploaded recently to fix that.It might help to solve your issue and I would even change the asppiration or assign a second one manually.

One thing to note is that I'm notoriously bad at taking my sims off their home lot. It may work best to go straight from one household to the other, maybe after a bit of a meet and/or chat between the two. It's possible that if your sim shows up on a community lot as a spawned visitor that might roll away any baby wants they might have gained. (I don't know any of this for certain, I'm just speculating about something I've noticed that happens in my own game.)

Good luck on your game! Although, if you get the baby ball rolling, you might find your sims have other ideas on keeping the population low

Pleasure sims are a special category though. Very few of my other aspirations have secondaries until they turn elder. Just to give elders something unique I roll for it.




Unless you use risky woohoo you may find waiting on both sims outside of family sim pairings leads to under population. So long as the couple have a good relationship and nobody has a baby fear I would go ahead and have a baby. That's just me though.


I don't think pure pleasure sims will ever roll a want for a baby or if they do it must be very rare. You could try having her visit other families with a baby, seeing if that triggers it.


A lot of people don't play pleasure sims due to their annoying wants. This is why I give them a secondary because without a secondary they tend to roll wants that don't push the story forward. Yes they can be kept happy by jumping on the couch, bubble baths and dates, but what do they want from life? I don't think they will want anything of substance unless they have a secondary. Same for romance sims, which i have few of, but also tend to give secondaries to. Apart from sims like Don, he is pure romance.

The wants to buy an item of a certain price are fulfilled based on the original price. I've noticed the same thing in my game recently, where a want seemed like it was impossible to fulfill because the networking discount pushed the most expensive item in the category below the price somebody wanted, but it still satisfied the want when I bought it. It makes sense, I guess, the Sim cares more about the prestige of getting the expensive item and doesn't actually mind that they didn't pay the full sticker price.

As for the main topic... Primary Pleasure sims tend towards a lot of small, shallower wants IME and I can't remember if I've seen one want a baby so I'm afraid that if you're going to be really strict about the person who would get pregnant having to roll the want, maybe her partner should invest in the telescope...
Although, are the couple married or just together? If they're not married yet, I feel like sims of all aspirations often roll wants to have a baby shortly after marriage.
EDIT: Nvm I missed that you said "his wife" in the original post. Oh well. I second the suggestions for adoption or risky woohoo, too.

It's not the lifetime wants, @Tadolson - it's a problem with her aspiration. I randomly roll the aspirations on purpose so that I don't get a bias toward any one type. I'm not keen on adding a secondary aspiration as my two rules for this neighbourhood are; 1) Both parents have to want to reproduce, and 2) No touching the Lifetime Aspiration Benefits panel!


Betty is a frequent walkby at the Hick lot (I have the game modded to make a lot of walkbys), so she should visit next time I play the Hicks. If not, I'll have Mama invite her over! She often turns up on community lots as well.


I have a healthy amount of Townies and Downtownies that I generated (I don't have any subhoods, but I have a mod to allow Downtownie walkbys in the main hood). Also I have NPCs, so I don't think I'll ever risk underpopulation.


Yes, that's what Devon Aster suggested. I will keep trying different things to see if I can trigger the want (assuming that it is possible) for a while.


I don't really find those wants annoying- they are fun (I like building, so fitting in a bowling alley is a nice challenge! ). I wanted this game to be different from my last, which was all about keeping the founders' lines going, and pushing forward with the ideas I had for the world. This one is going to be more 'wait and see'; I'm playing mostly freewill this time, just watching the sims to see what they do, and only buying them things they ask for or need to achieve another want. I try to only direct them to do things when I'm fulfilling a want for them whereas I micromanaged last time. Also, I decided I didn't want to touch the secondary aspirations- or the lifetime aspiration benefits panel as a whole- for this world. In the last one, all sims had secondaries, and all playables used the benefits. It ended up with a world where all sims were platinum all the time, and all of them had similar wants and behaviours and very slow motive decay. It got a little predictable! I thought this time I'd like to try it differently, and not have secondary aspirations. It's working- I'm seeing fortune sims with an empty fridge but excellent sofa; I'm seeing sims actually getting tired because not all of them have great beds; I'm seeing sims interact more because their social and fun is decaying faster. And I'm having fun observing this! There's not so much fighting either, because the mean sims have to stop picking on each other to eat, shower and sleep! And I've seen wants I seldom saw in the old hood. I don't have a 'story' as such to drive forward, it's more like a sim ant farm that I just watch, and poke occasionally.


Thank you, yes it did fulfill the $5500 wish! I put the bowling alley next to the sauna she asked for last week, but has yet to use!



I think shallow is a good word to describe her- she's all about fun for sure! I'm considering what everyone in this thread has suggested, but I'm not adverse to just following her wants and letting her have a good time. I rather liked the idea of having Bryan's family carry on, but it's not going to spoil things at all as she is fun to watch anyway. I'm sure Bryan, Jessica and Howard will roll other wants if I unlock the baby ones!

ETA: I extended the sauna building to accommodate the bowling alley!