They are incapable of thanking you for all you have done because they cannot recognize it the way you can.
The population is ever-increasing, teetering on the brink of dangerous.
They take your youth and are unable to feel remorse–once you have kids, don’t expect to ever be yourself again. It won’t happen. A mother is, well, a mother.
There is a good possibility that your kids will end up hating you for your flaws, even the most subtle ones.
Do you really want your whole purpose in life to revolve around a child?
Don’t take this post offensively, it certainly is not meant to be. But really, does anyone agree?
There are tons of reasons not to have kids, and tons of reasons to have them regardless.. Which side you choose to emphasize depends on your station in life, and maybe, just on bloody hormones.
For about 2 weeks. After that, they start to respond. Also, I know teenagers are in another world but they are not so spaced out to say thanks as they take the car out.
Dangerous? Cite.
They make you feel young long after your body has told you that you’re old.
Uh? My experience is that children are incredible grateful for the smallest things. And they need not even be, since, as for all gifts, the joy of giving often surpasses the joy of receiving.
Which population is that? The world population is leveling out. The population in the west is generally shrinking, some places in danger of collapsing.
They don’t take your youth and have no reason to feel remorseful. You’ll grow old with or without children. Of course with children, you have somebody to share that old age with. Anyway, you really should be moving on from the 50’s which you seem permanently stuck in.
More likely they’ll grow up to be exasperated over your antics and a little embarresed to be in the same family and love you despite driving them crazy. Do you really suggest living your life and evaluate all choices after worst case scenario?
I’ve know worse purposes. Anyway this is really not the way it works anymore, if ever.
It’s a private theory of mine that people who express views such as yours usually have dogs. But enough about me, tell me more about your mother. It sounds like she got at least a little something out of the deal, if she was able to foist a cocker spaniel on you.
Fortunately for you, no one forces you to have children. Fortunately for you, some people don’t agree with you so that when you are 87 years old, someone will work in a nursing home and feed you.
Children are an incredible amount of work. You do give up incredible amounts of your life and money to them. And most parents wouldn’t have it any other way. But if you don’t want them, you don’t want them - and no one forces you to have them.
I’ve never liked my mom, and neither has my sister, who is a very nice person if a little gullible and naive.
Well, my mother is very selfish, will go out of her way to help a stranger but never her family, she is exasperatingly lively but extremely quick-tempered if you do not answer her inquiries with equal enthusiasm, she is VERY nosy, and I’m not making this up either, she loves Pecan the cocker spaniel to the point of fault, she very often brings out the worst in my father, and she is very emotional and sensitive. I think my whole family agrees that she’s a pain to live with but hates to admit it.
Sorry to hijack the convo but i was, after all, asked a personal question.
[quote=Rune]
The world population is leveling out.If you mean that the rate of growth of the rate of growth has slowed, I’d agree - but actual population is still increasing markedly. AFAIK any levelling out is in modelled projections only.
New Girl, you sound young, and so please take my comments in the spirit that it’s someone old talking to someone young, not as someone wise talking to someone foolish:
When I was your age, I didn’t understand why folks would want to have kids, either. I did, however, recognize that when I was older, I might understand it: that’s why I didn’t take the advice of my EarthFirst!ers friends and try to obtain a vasectomy.
At my age, I understand why people want to have kids, and I’ll probably try to become a father before too long. I do, however, understand that when I was younger, I didn’t want to have kids.
People at different points in their lives have bodies doing different things, minds and hearts and lives doing different things. That having a child seems uninteresting to you now is meet and good: my guess is that if you had a child now, it’d keep you from doing a lot of the things you want to do. By the same token, understand that as folks get older, their lives change such that having children can deepen their lives immeasurably.
Incidentally, very few working ecologists accept the Population Explosion theory these days; it’s widely considered discredited.
You’ve obviously never gotten a hug from a little girl who thinks you’re the best daddy in the world. When they get older they start thanking you also.
A good reason not to have 10 kids, I agree - but replacing yourself has to be ok.
But when you have kids you get to play with toys and watch programs you could never do as adults. Age takes your youth - kids preserve it, really.
Teenagers will say they hate you for both your flaws and your good points. Then you start getting smarter. Little kids don’t see your flaws - you’re not just people, you’re parents.
You do that to yourself, if it happens. It doesn’t have to.
There is nothing better in the world than to see your kid do something wonderful that you could never do yourself. Your kids bring you to places you’d never go yourself, in my case the set of a TV show, and the stables of a horse show. I’d never try to convince someone who didn’t want kids to have them, but it is a lot more fun than you might think.
And those models have had to be restated every few years as the population has failed to grow as expected. While it is “only” modeling, given that the models need to be constantly revised downward to stay within sight of reality, I think that it is safe to say that there is nothing “dangerous” about current population trends. A few nations can be expected to suffer some problems due to overpopulation in the immediate future, but there is simply no evidence that population, per se, is an issue about which the world needs to be overly concerned. (People living in the developed countries actually need to be more worried about population lag–unless they are willing to accept a host of immigrants to keep their economies moving.)
I am not big on the idea of having kids. I don’t concern myself with what other people do, and of course my feelings may change, but right now I am not interested at all in having my own children (much to my mom’s consternation) and honestly I don’t think this will change as I get older.
First off, I am uncomfortable with how involuntary being born is. Life is a huge responsibility. And it is a grave failure and will hurt many people if you give up on it. But none of us had the tiniest little say on if we were born or not. Some of us get depressed. All of us watch our bodies deteriorate. Every once in a while I feel the burden of the decades- decades where I will experience both joy and pain- and think “wait a minute! I never signed up for this!” Even feeding your body and keeping a roof over your head is a burden at times. It doesn’t seem right to spring it on someone.
On a practical level, I am an adventurer. They say when you have kids, you get different priorities. I am sure that is true a lot of the time, but not all of the time. Generations of men have been able to reproduce and continue their careers as war journalists or bush pilots or pirates or whatever (all things I’d love to be) but unless I can find a loving a complacent wife (unlikely for a straight girl) I’ll have to choose and honestly you can’t not choose family. I don’t think I will ever fully lose my wanderlust and taste for spontaneous danger.
On the philosophical level, it bugs me that we live all this time. Then we have kids and start living for them. And we sacrifice everything so that they can have a better life. And then they turn around and do the same thing. Why not just cut out the middle man and live the good life yourself? I know the answer- blah blah blah the rewards of family. But the truth is, most children cannot live up to their parent’s dreams for them. I think there is some degree of hurt in all parents-child relationships. Spending 18 years devoted to someone- several of those actually being their entire world- and then watching them go and live their own life (and sometimes make bad choices) is heart wrentching.
Even sven, you totally embodied my idea! I’m really happy now. At least someone knows what I mean. You make a lot of good points, even better than the ones I listed. You should email me sometime.
I do think that hurt ALWAYS plays some role. Even though we say we love them and all that nonsense, I don’t know one person who seriously likes both of their parents and thinks their parents did a great job of raising them. I mean come on, be realistic. It doesn’t happen.
I like both my parents and think they did a great job raising both me and my brother. That’s not to say I’ve they’ve never been hurt by things that we did. We’ve done some godawful dumb stuff, and I’m sure there were times that mom and dad would have happily traded us for a Carribean vacation (and I know I would have made that deal a few times). But on the whole, I think we’re all fairly happy with the way the last thirty years have turned out. It does happen.
In my early twenties, I thought that I wouldn’t want kids; and if I’d had children at that age, it would have been a disaster for me and them. At 30, I’m still not sure. I know I don’t want them now (two dogs are plenty), but the idea of having kids at some point doesn’t fill me with the same sense of dread that it did a few years ago. In another few years, it might be the only thing I can think about.
Daniel said it really well - people’s priorities and goals in life change. Who knows what’s next?
Something to think about - you are the product of a genetic line tracing back millions of years. If you don’t have children, your particular genetic line dies out - with you.
I believe one of the great motivations of people who desire to have children is simply to have a bit of themselves carry on. This isn’t surprising - it’s a biological imperative that we all have, without which the race would simply die out.
As you get older, you stop seeing the future as this endless adventure awaiting you, and you start to see yourself as something a little more…transient. Once you do, you start to feel more strongly about wanting to carry a bit of your life forward. Not just genetically, but in terms of leaving your values behind, leaving some of your prized things to an heir who will care about them, etc.
Plus, having kids lets you revisit a bit of your youth - something that becomes increasingly attractive as you get older. I get a lot of enjoyment out of watching my daughter discover the things I discovered, reading and loving the books I read and love, etc.
When I was 20, there was no way I was ever going to have kids. When I was 25, it was, ‘well, maybe someday, but I doubt it’. By 30, I could hardly wait.
Forgive me, but this makes you sound really young.
I like(d) my parents. I like myself–in large part a product of their upbringing. (My Mom might have been a bit taller so that her genes hadn’t stunted my growth, but I got over that more than thirty years ago. My legs both reach the floor.)
This is not an argument that everyone should breed. I accept anyone’s choice to refrain from begetting progeny. However, you phrased the question as though no one should have kids and I reject that idea.
