Despite my mom enjoying being a young mother? Despite the fact that both her and I have enjoyed happy, meaningful lives and made positive contributions to society? Even though everything worked out swimmingly, my birth should have still been an occasion of shame and reprobation?
Oh, you may say, we are working on probabilities. Why, exactly, are you deciding ahead of time that a child is headed to the worst possible fate? Who does that help? What good does it bring to the world to decide that a child is “doomed” and their existence should be mourned?
It all made sense to me after I figured out she was she a dog person*. They are notorious for being odd and ill-tempered, in my experience anyway. I haven’t met many that were happy to see children at dog exhibitions either. Shame, because they’ll find their sport dies if they don’t encourage young people to be interested.
*Not just a dog owner, but one who shows, breeds, & trains. She is I’d guess fairly well known in her breed circle and has had some nice successes with her dogs (the dog show world is a small one).
I’m glad curlcoat posts here - it’s good to have opinions from all over the spectrum, and she’s a good counterpoint to people who have the opposite view to hers.
I saw that she didn’t understand the over the top ‘joy’ expressed in what could be a dire circumstance. I think that reaction could be tempered as well.
Because frequently there’s still time to end the problem pregnancy before it becomes a worse problem of an unwanted birth. If a little (or a lot) of public shaming, ridicule, etc., is what it takes to get some one to end a bad idea pregnancy, I am in favor of it.
The problem isn’t that she doesn’t understand why people express joy in these marginal situations. The problem is that fundamentally she doesn’t understand why people express joy about any pregnancy at all. She doesn’t get why people can be happy to have babies.
In that sense her world-view is so different from mine and, I suspect, that of most adults that we will never be able to communicate.
As long as the law does not allow the the rest of society to decide whether or not to bear the financial and environmental costs of a child, yes. As long as we have a safety net, there must be some discretation in breeding.
Yes, and what we have been trying to say is that the reaction she sees, in public can be due to:
Confirmation bias
Completely different experience from others
Again, this is in public. In private, the responses may be way more different.
IOW, the reaction she sees in public is because in general people don’t go around berating/belittling/insulting/acting negatively towards other people (in public). This covers not just pregnancy.
I got that from her posting history throughout that thread and going several years back as well. Not just the OP. She’s made it very clear: She hates kids, she hates babies, she doesn’t know why anybody would ever have one.
To whom would such a responsibility fall? Do you have any evidence to suggest that the financial and environmental costs of a child are significantly higher for the children of unemployed or unmarried mothers?
And this is where people differ and have different experiences, and public vs private is different. In public, it is frowned to be a jerk to someone. In private, you can talk to that person and express your concerns.
Experiences also differ because I’ve known relatives who became pregnant at various less desirable times, and while yes, in public the relatives were in a way happy at the prospect of a new relative, in private the more somber and ambivalent feelings were expressed. But you know? Unless you’re family, unless you’re close the pregnant person, you wouldn’t know.
Also, I don’t see the exuberant joy that others see. It may be a matter of degrees, or perspective, since that is a very subective judgement.