There is no special virtue is procreating, in my humble opinion.
Do it or don’t do it, it insures nothing. There is no experience you can have with children that you can’t have otherwise. The world is chock full of children thirsting for parenting, though they have the required two parents. If you feel the need to parent, now or later, there are lots of opportunities to do so.
Umm… childbirth perhaps?
I’m pretty sure I don’t agree entirely with Pyrrhonist’s stance here, although I agree partially.
Kids bug me. I’d prefer not to have them around. I don’t adore them. I don’t think they’re cute. I realize their place in the whole scheme of things, but I don’t want to have them imposed on me.
This topic has been discussed before, if anyone’s interested in checking the archives. And one thing that has been debunked in those discussions is the “there-are-too-many-people-the-whole-ecosystem-is-going-to-collapse-aaaaahh!” argument. And I don’t think that, realistically, anyone is asking you to keep your children in the cupboard under the stair until they can drive. That’s not reasonable. Kids need stimulation and needd to interact with adults in social situations. It’s how that whole “learning” thing works.
I think what those of us who are “childfree” or childless or whatever would prefer is just a little consideration. The types of people who let their kids roam around restaurants and whatnot are the same types of people who bring their cellphones into movie theaters. But, because parents are protective, they tend not to be able to take criticism of the way they (and by extension their children) behave.
It’s just common courtesy. If you’re going to take your children out with you, fine. Just teach them to be quiet, and calm, and keep them under control. Again, leaving your children to their own devices is tacitly asking me (as a proxy for society) to take care of them. And you do not want me to raise your children.
However, I believe most parents are trying their best. They don’t want their children to bother others. They just sometimes don’t realize that their children are bothering others. So, parents, try not to get so defensive.
You have expressed two ideas as one, here:
“There should be some places reserved for adults.” is fine, although I do not unreservedly include restaurants in that category and I am not sure in what venues other than “grown up” (as opposed to “adult”) movies and plays I might make that an absolute.
“Nobody would even consider bringing an unruly child into a fancy restaurant!” is great, but you have now qualified it with the word I italicized.
I do not believe in taking kids where they cannot behave appropriately. When we got our kids, we only reluctantly tried McDonalds a few times in the first few months. By the end of a year, both kids (then 6 and 4) could be taken to any restaurant and garner compliments on their behavior. If the younger one was having bad day, we avoided the restaurants–even Mickey D’s.
I agree that children should not be allowed to foist their unruly behavior on people seeking a quiet meal (or movie, play, etc.) I can remember, however, when my dad had to use his considerable force of personality to get his perfectly behaved children into some restaurants, even when the youngest was 10. (We weren’t perfect kids, but it would have meant death to screw up in a public place.)
So places that want to take your money have relaxed their protocols (possibly a good thing), and people have taken advantage of that fact to drag their screaming brats into those venues (a bad thing).
The solution, IMNAAHO, is to return to the days when a restaurant would chuck obnoxious people out into the street, not to bar all children on the off-chance they might misbehave while allowing cell-phone bellowers and loud drunks to display their “adult” behaviors.
The “Humanistic” philosophy (as I am right or wrongly classifying your response) of meriting every human life as valuable and unique has lofty and noble goals. Every now and then I try to look at the world through similar eyes, but my jaded, cynical, and pragmatic stance does not permit such a rosy view. The six billion people on this planet allows for high redundancy, i.e. “Nobody’s special,” and nearly everybody on this planet could be removed and immediately replaced by someone else. If that’s not enough to scare the insignificantly of individual people into you, compare the “value” of one child against the size of the cosmos. So when some kid starts an impromptu Elvis imitation in the aisles of Barnes and Noble, I’m not filled with the warm fuzzy that the parents feel, I’m longing for the days of the Gong Show when no-talents could be sent packing. Well, I can’t gong them off the stage of life and obliterate their feelings, but asking parents to keep their kids “hushed” is appropriate. Honestly, the way some people protect their children’s rights to childish behavior, I might just as well suggest clubbing kids like baby seals when they misbehave for all the good it will do.
The NERVE of some people.
I’m a 24-year-old single mom of a 6-year-old boy, and the first to admit that my son is not always perfectly behaved. In fact, he’s often substantially less than perfectly behaved. I don’t think this makes me deficient as a parent, just a normal one. Bad behavior happens - I take steps to correct it. This is my job as a parent as well as a responsible member of society - to ensure that my son can function appropriately outside the home bubble.
That being said, I recognize that there are places that virtually guarantee that my son will get restless and fidgety. I think I have realistic expectations of how much or how little stimulation he can stand without losing his cool, and try to plan accordingly. So, beyond the standard completely off-limits stuff (any movie that is more adult-themed than, say, My Dog Skip; fancy restaurants; etc) I can generally gauge how well and for how long he can handle being in an adult place/around adults only. Yes, he has misbehaved in public places before; yes, he has probably irritated some passerby. Not always the most comfortable situation, but a necessary one - if I remove him from any situation that might present a behavior problem, he’ll never learn the correct way to behave. If he learns proper behavior now, chances are he won’t be an obnoxious adult.
As with many things, I think there is a balance to be struck here. I made the choice to have a child, and beyond normal social interaction, no one else should be forced to deal with him. Pyrrhonist, you can rest assured I’d limit my son’s exposure to you and folks like you - it’s pretty clear you’d rather be left alone.
I support your choice to remain childless. Truth be told, if I knew at 18 what I know now, I’d probably have delayed having my son until I knew myself a bit better. (Yep, I was a teen mom – say what you will, I’ve heard it all) Then again, if that would have changed the child that my son is even a little, it wouldn’t be worth it. He surely isn’t perfect - but neither am I, and neither are you. Part of the human condition. Good parents do the best they can with the resources they have, and while I respect you for knowing yourself well enough to not give in to social pressure and pop out a bambino, I think I and others like me deserve equal respect for our choice. And we’ll keep our kids out of your hair in return.
Gundy,
While I applaud your approach to parenting as well as your respect for the childfree, your approach is in the minority. Most parents prefer the “free range children” approach. Furthermore, they get some sort of sick pleasure in the misery a childfree person goes through while enduring the unruly offspring of others. I wish there were more like you.
As a note, we prefer the term childfree. Childless has the connotation that we’re lacking something. We’re not.
Okay, okay, childfree. Jeez - semantics. Call me tailless – promise I won’t infer you mean I’m lacking something.
“Most” Do you have some stats for that?..“most” of the parents I know ancedotally don’t take their unruly (or even ruly) children out to nice restaurants, movies other than the G rated matinee kind (and if anyone is complaining about little kids at the latest Disney matinee you need to get real), the theatre (except maybe children’s theatre). Many don’t fly unless they have to because they don’t want you to have to endure two hours of their screaming toddler (and, honestly, they dont either). They call before parties asking if the party will be “kid-friendly” or “adults only.” And if they do have to take their kids into the adult world, (and, lets face it, sometimes Grandma insists that the kids be dragged along to Grandpa’s retirement dinner at the Club) they are mortified by any small inconvience they cause the adult world.
A few parents do drag their beloved offspring everywhere, and expect all of us to put up with them…we’ve all experienced them, and I don’t know which is worst, the parents or the children. But this is a case of a few rotten eggs giving all of us parents a bad name.
Not to pull an “I’ve got it worse than you,” but imagine have two children in diapers, one of them well into the whiney stage and the other in the doesn’t hear the word no stage, hiring a sitter to spend a nice evening at a nice restaurant with your husband, and getting to experience someone else’s children through dinner.
Although you stated in the OP your intended purpose was to open a discussion on the pros and and cons of childrearing, you have done nothing but make inflammatory comments. “swarms of gnats, breeders, childFREE, etc” then to further prove your superiority, you gloat over how you had to point out to an old man that he was flatuent.
You are an anal-retentive jerk of the first order with little tolerance of anyone who is not in control of their body emmissions be they farts or children. How do you feel about the sick, disabled and unpretty?
You are a troll and are to be ignored.
What Gundy and Dangerosa said.
Plus I just thought I should add that I hope you’re not planning any European vacations in the future. You’d find the attitudes toward children in most Western European countries to be frighteningly tolerant…I’ve seen Italians actually coo over other people’s kids, and compliment parents about them, rather than snarl in impotent fury when an ankle-biter crossed their path.
Oh, and if you feel like going Korzybskiing, you are actually lacking something: children. You may not feel that this is much of a loss, but you still don’t have any, no matter what you call yourself.
I prefer to call myself “elephant-free.” If you want to laugh at me for my elephantlessness, I’m completely at your mercy.
Freak! Quite selfish of you if you ask me, Ike.
It just now occurred to me that Pyrrh’s “childfree” intimates that I have something I shouldn’t, being a mom. Huh. Works both ways, I suppose.
When I use the term childfree, I don’t mean it to be snide toward those who are not. I guess it could be seen kinda like “drug free”. Some people like drugs. Some people need drugs to live. At any rate, as I said before, well behaved children are fine. It’s those that aren’t well behaved that irritate me. And they really only irritate me when their handlers don’t do anything about it. The way Gundy describes her parenting, she’s not one deserving of any of the negative sentiments. What the good parents need to understand, is that they are in the minority. Most couldn’t be bothered with what comes after conception and childbirth. Regardless, I still think there should be some places reserved for adults.
clue # 2. We also don’t especially appreciate to be referred to as “handlers”.
As some one else posted already, yea, I don’t especially enjoy kids running from table to table in a fine restaurant, however, I’ll take that ** any day ** over some drunken/not drunken loudmouthed, snob adult. (not necessarily calling you one, ya understand)
Well, that was for the most part a reasonable, polite post, BM. And I can’t argue against the final statement; nobody should bring a squalling infant into the Rainbow Room or the Village Vanguard.
But really, why do you feel that “good parents” are a minority, and that most folks with kids just spew 'em out without having an actual plan for raising them?
I might be wrong…I live in New York City, and most of the parents I know planned long and carefully before spawning. The moms are professional women who got their careers rolling during their 20s and put off having a baby until they hit 30. Moms and dads here obsess about getting into good public school districts, or about choosing private schools (that’s why the double incomes are necessary!). Then there’s soccer and Little League baseball, music lessons, ballet, etc. Halloween is an enormous deal in my neighborood.
Are you thinking of teenage welfare mothers or something?
Well, would you look at this; we seem to have discovered the source of the whole problem! 
Umm…for about three months, I was a teenage welfare mother. What’d I do?
Oooops! I was having a Republican Moment. (As all good Reagan/Bushites know, Teenage Welfare Mothers reproduce only to increase their government assistance checks, and they use their food stamps to purchase vodka.)
My apologies. It was lazy and unfair of me to use the phrase as a synonym for “bad parent.”