I quoted conflicts because this is rather a invidual game preferences what classified as a conflict or what is not.

Before, I never payed attention to a sims wants but recently use them as inspiration when deciding what my sims will/might doing in the future, but sometimes when you play sims with completely different characters (couples with different preferences) or using clashing aspiration (like family with romance), you often end up with funny situation.

• Sims who want to get married but fearing it
  which is rather annoying, when a family sims for example having commitment issues.

• or a couple where one want many kids but another loathe them or focusing on their career instead.
  I use ACR2 to calculate ideal kids and risky woohoo. I don't put sims on birth control right away, but adjusting the ACR settings instead, when a sim reach their ideal amount, I might consider having them do BC if its suits their personality.

• Sims who want children but fearing them at the same time
  which isn't that much of an issue to me, as they are positive memories after having the kid and sims with family as secondary evens it out.

I guess work and hobbies can always get these situations, but I don't there are any typical clashed wants on these, well apart a poor sim want luxury, of course. For me, it's usually family life/genetics and relationships that I focusing on.

Want to get married or fearing it - look at those fears again: sometimes they simply feared being rejected by the future spouse - being left at the altar or something.

While some sims may want to have more kids than others, I still have to see a sim who is a truly bad parent - they always love their kids.

(I have a couple in my game - family sim married to a romance sim. These two hit it off right away, became the best of friends (I often saw them dining and fishing and dancing together on community lots when I was not playing either of them) and eventually got married - I made that call because I felt he deserved some happiness as well; she loves her 3 kids and since she is a playful sim, she has often rolled a wish to play peek a boo with the kids when they were toddlers.She rolls the fear to have a baby once in a while. And she does flirt with others - he forgives her every time, because they are BFF's and she knows how to smooth talk him ).

Family sims roll those fear/want a baby at the same time thing at times - mostly in my game when they already have some kids. Since they do cancel each other out, you (or ACR) make the decision

Relationships would stay the same after the want/fear is fulfilled but I understand why would it be a conflicting situation.
Usually, what I do, since I have similar playstyle as you do (playing things as they happen, building sims characters and relationships instead of stories) is:

- If its two conflicting sims, I usually make them have an outing or a date for deciding. Tbh now that I think about it, it seems that more natural would be to have them argue a bit, and see if they get over that hardship by either of two outcomes. Could wait for one sim's fear or wish to dissapear.

-If its one sim, I usually go by the flow. If that sim needs an heir they get it but if they can go by without it they sometimes dont. It all depends of the role my sim has bult it for him and the story opportunity they opened for me. For example, if my sim has built a role of a sim that cannot settle and will never have a family those usually dont get a child, but sometimes its interesting to see a child grow up besides irresponsible parent.

Or again, you could just wait for the fear or want to pass, and you still have the power of locks.

I regard conflicting wants as an opportunity - a great opportunity - for story-telling. Plenty of people in RL have both a fear and want to get married or have kids. It's pretty normal as far as I can see.

I am that (mean) type of sims player who enjoys having unexpected drama shake things up a bit, so typically when sims have conflicting wants and fears I lock them both in. It's even better when couples want conflicting things...let alone a single sim.

As a final deciding factor (if the want/wants cannot be reached autonomously by a sim), I sometimes just roll a die or flip a coin.

Here some ideas:
1) Perhaps that sim is anxious to get married.
2)Ok this one gives me an idea of drama: Due to couple not finding a compromise to their opposite desires, the girl goes off and hooks another guy to make another family (or If you wanna make the storyline more chaotic: the girl manipulates him just to be impregnated him (by drugging him and then.... you know- I probably can't use that word for the crime?). This would cause a devastating effect on the love triangle and beyond the affair issue.
3)Hesitant, but conceives it nonetheless. When the child gets born, the mother gives the child away to the foster home (you know, feelings had changed through the period before and after the birth). Probably even faints and would be more fittingly If she hits aspiration failure.

I always thought it very genius of the developers that they included things like that. The simultaneous wish and fear for a baby has been showing up a lot in my game since the very start and, well it does make so much sense.
Babies are adorable, a hope for the future, something to love and take care of....
...but babies are also an astronomical amount of work and even more responsibility, produce a lot of extra costs, add a whole additional person to the family and you can just give them away if they turn out to be too difficult. So they can be terrifying as well.

Number one and three make sense to me.

1 is the definition of cold feet. Am I making the right decision? Am I ready for this?

3 is pretty much the same. I want kids, but do I want them now? Or, I want to concentrate on my career for a bit before I have a kid; it would be really bad timing to get pregnant now.

Number 2 to me could be a relationship killer. Agreeing on having kids or not is kind of an important thing in a relationship. Either the one who wants kids doesn't get to have them and feels resentful or the one who doesn't want them is forced to have them and feels resentful. If the other sim just wants to concentrate on their career then they might be able to compromise by ensuring that they never have to be the stay at home parent.

Not wanting children does not equal not loving them once they arrive

Usually the Sim with the positive want gets their way, so I lock in the want but not the fear; the main exception is that witches stay witches unless they want to be cured, whatever their partner may think of it.

If it's the father who's wanting a lot of children, he's the one who has to get up in the middle of the night, change the diapers, and quit his job if they run out of paid vacation and there still needs to be someone home during working hours.

I think wanting and at the same time fearing to have another baby is perfectly natural, and a conflict of head (we can't afford this) and heart (I want a baby). Since having a baby gives more points for fulfilling the want than for fulfilling the fear, it's still a positive experience.

People are often conflicted in real life, both wanting and fearing something, seems normal to me.

As to babies, I let risky woohoo deal with that. However if a female sim constantly has a baby want I will let her have one unless the father has an active fear of one. if he has no want good or bad then it means he doesn't mind either way. If its the male sim with a baby want and he's knowledge, well he can go and get abducted otherwise he's out of luck.

actual conflicts I think would occur mainly through secondary aspiration.
-becoming married/joined; primary being Romance, secondary probably being Family or Fortune.
-having children;primary being Romance, secondary being Family. or if the sim has more than 4 children, primary being any non-Family (at least base game ones) and secondary being Family.
-alien abduction; primary being non-Knowledge (at least base game ones), secondary being Knowledge.

without Freetime and/or without a secondary, actual conflicts would probably be bugs/glitches.

Your Sims have the option of choosing? You pamper them too much.

But, what's more interesting for the story? What makes more sense for your Sim's personality and behaviour?

I really hate how people just presume that. Probably a lot of abused kids wouldn't have been abused if someone hadn't told someone, oh you'll love it once it arrives.

I have some friends who do foster care. From them I've learned that a lot of people want and love their kids AND abuse them. People are complicated. Which sucks, it really does.

Secondary aspiration is probably the main aspects that cause conflicting wants combined with family (marriage, kids) and knowledge (supernaturals), but I also referring to actual game styles, because if you followed only the wants to have kids, sims other than family wouldn't want them until they are married.

I often use ACR and along with a calculation (Nice/2 + playful points x Aspiration/ 3, ) to decide how many kids they "want" before putting on birth control (but Lazy and Sloppy sims will not use BC)

For example, the Ramaswami family, Sanjay want 2~3 children (Pop-Fort) while Priya wanted 1~2 (Pop-Plea), using "~" to include secondary rather than a strict number.

Since they are neither sloppy or lazy, they will be put on birth control after having these children. With ACR, its seems like its only the mothers decisions which sometimes feel a bit wrong, but there are families where both decide. Currently they have twin girls and I'm debating whether I should let them reach the husbands ideal or not. The sims wants will not have a conflicts since neither has family secondary and it's less than 3 kids.

This is one of the easier families since they have already twins, i might stick to Priya's preferences, as I tends to not let my sims have more kids if having twins, or at least wait a couple of "years" before that and beside since I include both aspirations I could just change Sanya's to 2 kids (Popularity, fortune is 3).

But I have families where one sim want 1 kid while the other one want 6 kids. Those families are harder to decide as they do get the want/fear wants constantly (to have 6+ kids, the ideal kids would need have maxed playful/nice points and either family or knowledge, The Ottomas family has 1-2/Peter and 4-8/Samantha in ideal kids ). This is an example of that I mean with conflicts in game-play. It's not necessary restricted to actual wants.

You are getting too mathematical for me now

But then I have Mr No Nice Points. Born in game. I left him like that. He is a fortune/knowledge sim. He studied hard, is as fit as a fiddle and actually succeeded in marrying (eventually) a popularity sim. He has become the youngest general in my game.He is a good father! He does not like playing with his kids, but he taught them (he has three) all the toddler skills and he also trained them on the obstacle course! The twins are at Uni now and the third one will go soon. He has calmed down a bit and does not fight as often anymore (but when he does, he wins) and I am looking forward to see what happens with him once he is in permaplat. Since his wife is very nice, the kids are relatively nice too, so there is hope for them. (He is a looker too, I could not let that genes go to waste).

So it is truly up to you if you want to persist with the mathematics or perhaps allow the game to throw out some surprises

I will bore you all.
When I have a sim with conflicting/opposite want and fear, I simply wait before giving them their want. Knowing the fear will eventually roll away and be replaced. When the conflicting fear is gone, then I give them their want.
The end.

YAY! I am not the only boring one!

I have been playing Strangetown and while Ripp Grunt was in college I was able to give him another aspiration and just to add drama to my game I chose the family one. I don't know if you know much about Ripp but he has the Romance aspiration. As you can see there's a serious conflict there. But it fits well with my story of his commitment issues. I found out that sometimes with the stories I come up with there are still some things that happen on their own. And it's hard sometimes dealing with it, but then I just kind of go with it hahaha of that makes sense.

my post (post #12), did I tell something wrong? there are now 3 disagrees on the post.

Don't you worry, you said nothing wrong. Some people just don't want to hear/read about game mechanism or even logic, to the point of disagreeing with you.
There is not much one can do.

I only disagreed with secondary aspiration being the primary cause of "the gave a baby" wish/fear combo. It happened in my game since before secondary aspirations were a thing. and actually happens pretty often with my Sims, particularly if they or their partner are already pregnant and getting closer to birth, or if they already have a number of children.
I think I might have also seen the wish/fear combo with unmarried, pregnant Family Sims and with Sims who are very low on funds while pregnant.

The rest of your post is correct as far as I can tell :-)

While I'm not one of the disagreers, I don't think this "without Freetime and/or without a secondary, actual conflicts would probably be bugs/glitches." is correct. Conflicting wants/fears are common without a secondary, and I don't think it's because of a glitch, but it's a case of the developers adding complexity to the game.

Conflicting wants have been part of the game since the base game, I believe, and secondary aspirations indeed do not cfause it (I did not disagree either, but that is probably why).