OPPOSED? No…I’m supportive of the CONCEPT of having children. Repopulate the Earth and all.
The actual reality of caring for a small child for a few years is quite another issue.
I assumed she was on the young side because of statements like this:
I hate to break this to you, but kids or not, your youth will eventually be taken away from you.
Instead of revolving around what? Curing cancer? Some important career you’ve chosen? Drinking in bars until 3:00am?
Not that you should have children just to give your life purpose, but what do you think you would be giving up?
I know what I’d be missing. Travel- I mean grungy backpack travel through disease filled dangerous countries. I already resent toting my backpack around, I’d hate to see how much I’d hate dragging a kid around. Choosing where I live based on what has the best sidewalk cafes and indie bookstores, not school districts and backyard sizes. City life in general. Being able to take financial risks- stuff like choosing the fun but less steady job over the stable but boring one, or starting up a new career from scratch. Not having to own a car. Sex all over the house at odd hours. An unhealthy diet. Spending weekends out and about all day, or alternatively not even getting out of bed. Going to movies and restaurants and other expensive places regularly.
I’m just not a homebody, and with kids that quickly becomes to expensive and it’s hard on kids to live in the kind of instability I thrive on.
Getting back to the actual title of the OP, isn’t making babies the primary goal of a ‘society’ in order to ensure its survival?
Just like any other organism on earth from the lowly bacterium to the more sophisticated blow-fly, the human animal seeks to replicate itself in order to ensure the survival of the species.
Of course, not all humans wish to do that, and our ability to exercise choice is what puts us at the top of the evolutionary model nowadays.
But what might have happened if our prehistoric predecessors had that same choice?
Childfreers are people who have, for whatever reason, definitely chosen not to have children.
Childless people are just that – people who do not, at this time, have children. They may become parents in the future. They may remain childless. They have either not made a decision, are unable to reproduce, or are not yet at a point in their lives when reproduction is feasible.
A childfreer is unlikely to make a good parent precisely because they do not want a child. It’s a tragedy when children are born to parents who cannot or will not care for them properly. This should not be encouraged. Pressuring a childfreer to reproduce is not in the best interest of the hypothetical child or the childfreer.
My comment was intended to point out what I perceive as the stereotypical view of one side against the other – whenever this debate comes up, it always degenerates into the childfreers saying, “I don’t wanna end up with no life shackled to a baby like those soccer moms”, while the parents retaliate with, “You’re just incapable of loving or appreciating children. But maybe you’ll change your mind.” Both arguments are vastly oversimplified. And just as I pointed out in my initial post, it’s easy to put on blinders and view this as a war between those two stereotypical groups. No common ground is ever reached, no respect is ever given. Unfortunately, it looks like this thread is going right down that path like 50 threads before it. If that’s what y’all want, that’s fine, but I think I’m going to bail out before this goes to the Pit.
This is my argument, too. I don’t try to use my lack of wanting kids as a reason for other people not to have them, so I really REALLY hate it when I get the ‘You’d feel differently about your own kids’ speech, generally followed by “You’d be a great mum”.
Y’know what? I probably *would *be a great mum … in a purely technical sense. I’d take it very seriously; I’d make sure they were always well fed, clothed and generally cared for. But believe me, I would not be a good parent in an emotional sense, because I would resent my children. (You try and tell people this and they first look at you like you’re a monster and then assume you must be kidding or deluded. It’s really bloody annoying.)
I don’t think that being technically capable of raising children - based purely on meeting their needs for physical resources - is a good recommendation for being a parent. There’s a lot more to parenthood than providing shelter and sustenance: that model might work perfectly fine for raising chickens, but human beings require more of an emotional investment.
I don’t want kids. I don’t want the emotional responsibility, I don’t want the time invested. I don’t want the financial impact. I don’t want the nappies, the sickness, the making sure they’re not bullied at school, the helping them with their homework, the sleepovers with their friends, the bed-wetting, the teenaged years, the helping them learn to balance work and play, the weekend sports… I don’t want any of it. I also don’t want the sugary kisses, the warm-clean baby smell, the ‘being the best person in the world to someone’, the Happy Birthdays, the days at the beach, or the sleepy snuggles. These things do not rouse the slightest hint of maternal instinct.
Sure, kids can, on occasion, be cute. But it’s not enough; not by a long shot. Baby seals are cute, but I don’t want one of those, either. Basically, I really *like *my just-me-and-hubby (and, for Sal Ammoniac’s benefit, one cat) life.
So, getting back to the OP… as you can see, I agree. However, I can absolutely say that not one of those things you - or even I - listed would put me off having kids if was inclined that way.
Human beings are amazingly good at starting at an opinion and working their way back from it with apparently logical steps, so really you can save yourself a lot of bother (unless you’re a psychologist who gets paid for this stuff) and just accept that ‘because I want/don’t want to’ is, most of the time, about as good a reason as you’re going to get. Without an absolute right-or-wrong answer, it really doesn’t matter how many people agree (or disagree) with you, it won’t make your point of view any more right (or wrong).
Now if only I could get that through to the ‘You’d feel differently about one of your own’ crowd…
If you want to call me anything other than my username, or my actual first name, there’s a forum for it. My name is not ‘sport’.
It, like many of your other posts, was condescending.
And how is telling someone else in this forum that I’m trying to start a fight appropriate? This is IMHO, not the Pit, and sharing my opinion does not mean that I’m trying to start a fight with you.
I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to tell me that I have ‘delusions’ in IMHO. Implying that someone is delusional in order to discredit them seems like an ad hominem to me.
I’m so glad you’ve given me all these lessons in board protocol: it’s just ducky of you. If you don’t want to be called sport, then I won’t; thanks for letting me know!
No. Yours, like many of your posts, is spoiling for a fight.
So, you think you can call me condescending, but I can’t say that your posts reveal delusions? Here’s your lesson in board protocol: report the problematic post and quit complaining about it.
I apologize to others for the hijack; I feel like I’m an innocent coworker sometimes.
Sure, I acknowledge that minds do change. But I am comfortable in saying “I don’t want children, probably never”. There is *one * circumstance under which I would raise a child…if I had a lot more money than I do, I’d adopt one from one of the Third World countries. I was adopted, and I think my parents made a complete hash of it, and think I could do better.
But spawn one from my body? No. And the reason is, I think it’s irresponsible for **me ** to have children when there are so many unwanted ones in the world. Note that I can and do separate my own morality from everyone else in the world…I don’t force this idea on anyone else (although I do wish more people would consider adopting at least one child.)
That position makes sense to me, a lot of sense, although I’m curious whether the adopting from the Third World specifically is a moral position or more of an aesthetic (for lack of a better word) position. Were I to adopt, I’d probably not adopt from the third world, because there are some kinda sticky politics involved, and because there are a lot of kids homegrown who need loving families, and because if you do it locally, it’s actually something that regular folks can afford to do.
Yes, but I am not homegrown, is my point. I was born in India, and I’d liek to do something to help my mother country, even if it’s so minor. I’ve given everything I have to my adopted country, you see.
Most social workers look askance at people who want to “save those poor third world babies.” Adoption history has told us that motivation does’t tend to work out to well. Those poor third world babies become real imperfect teenagers who have both normal teenager issues and adoption issues - and people who adopt to save often give up when they didn’t succeed. Bad thing all around and the historical adoption landscape is littered with sad stories.
Now, the alternative, which is a desire to have children (for your own selfish reasons) and a recognition that a child not born from your own body would meet your needs just as well (or even better for people who have no desire for pregnancy), is acceptable.
The politics are worse here (IMO) for adopting than overseas, though it depends on which country you adopt from and if you will consider a child for whom parental rights have already been terminated by the court. Parental rights can be very messy here. Adoption is only inexpensive (and sometimes free) if you are willing to consider special needs kids - healthy babies in the U.S. can end up significantly more expensive to adopt than many overseas programs (even slightly older children, or children with only small health issues are usually difficult to adopt cheaply - demand far outstrips supply in the domestic adoption industry - and while we aren’t “selling” babies here, the competition drives up the incidental costs.)
This is the main reason I will never have kids. I didn’t ask to be born, and if I would have had a choice I would have said “no thanks,” and I don’t want someone else to have to face the same ambivalence about life because of something I did, because I “wanted a child” in the same way people “want a new vacuum.” Also, I don’t want my genes to pass on. They’re not horribly bad genes I suppose, no cystic fibrosis or Tay-Sachs or anything, but I don’t feel I have a genetic legacy that is so great that it needs to be preserved at all costs. And of course, we don’t really need another greedy, piggish American on this planet.
I sometimes think that I would like the experience of raising a child, though I don’t know if I’d adopt, seeing as there’s issues involved with that which I don’t want to get into. Looks like I’m on the market for widowers or divorcees with sole custody.
To me, that sort of question is the most interesting issue involved here. On the individual-choice level, the range of views is pretty predictable. Some people want kids, some people don’t. Some people are offensive maroons who insist that having kids is intrinsically a good thing and everybody will ultimately find it enriching and rewarding. Some people are offensive maroons who insist that having kids is intrinsically a bad thing and everybody will ultimately find it oppressive and enslaving. Some people think there should be more kids, for economic reasons. Some people think there should be fewer kids, for environmental reasons.
But individual choice about child-bearing has, for the vast majority of human history, been mostly irrelevant. There simply wasn’t an effective way of controlling reproduction other than controlling access to heterosexual sex, and most humans wanted heterosexual sex for reasons not consciously related to “ensuring the survival of the species”.
If humanity as a whole can reliably decouple heterosexual sex from reproduction, as is now possible for most of the population of many developed societies, what will humans as a species choose to do? What percentage of humans genuinely want to be parents, and what will happen to our species if/when only those people are reproducing?
We never really had to consider this in the past. Nature didn’t have to hardwire into us a desire specifically to reproduce. All that was needed in the average sexually mature individual was a hardwired desire to have heterosexual sex (and also a hardwired desire to nurture children once they were actually born, rather than just tossing them away as an unwanted byproduct of sex). If we can completely gratify the hardwired desire to have sex without ever producing a pregnancy, and thus without ever triggering the hardwired desire to care for infants, will social customs and voluntary choice in favor of reproduction be enough to keep us from dying out as a species?
Sure, we’re still a long way away from making reproduction purely a voluntary choice for all human beings. But it seems inevitable that we’ll get to that point long before natural selection manages to come up with a hardwired desire specifically to reproduce that’s as instinctive and universal as the hardwired desire to have sex. And when we do get to that point, then what?
If your feelings are serious on this issue, you might consider foster parenting. Look for a county that does a good job of running prospective parents through a realistic training program, then give it a try. If the first kid(s) demonstrate that you really do not want to continue, simply bow out of the program once they have gone back to their birth or moved on to their adoptive homes.
(If you were simply expressing a latent idea that you would prefer to not follow, ignore me.)
I’ve heard this from the general public, but an ex-girlfriend (the same one mentioned above) tells me vociferously that ities of domestic adoption are overstated, and an adoption fair I worked at last year underscored that message. “Special Needs” kids seems as if it can refer to any child past infancy that’s made it into the adoption system.
White neonates are in high demand, is my impression, but if you’re willing to adopt a child domestically who isn’t a white neonate, it’s far easier to do.
Again, this is my ill-informed impression from talking to this friend and from the adoption fair I worked at; if anyone has more specific information, I’d be very interested in hearing it.
Anaamika, I can definitely see the motive to “help [the] mother country.” Given your own experience, it seems likely that you’d find the situation less thorny than most first-worlders looking to adopt from the Third World.
If I say First World people get upset. Like it was an exclusive club, maybe for golfing. Besides, there are huuuuuge portions that aren’t remotely modern. I always like to say it’s got one foot in the First World, one in the Third.
Hell, I live in Appalachia :). I see what you’re saying, though: although I think of India as first or second world, the categories aren’t well-defined (at least that I know of). I like the foot idea.
Besides, there are huuuuuge portions that aren’t remotely modern. I always like to say it’s got one foot in the First World, one in the Third.