Except that I’ve never been provided a satisfactory explanation of how my decision to have one more child would contribute to anyone else’s privation, either down the street or in Ethiopia.
Cessandra, you might try this in response:
Cessandra (sweetly): “Do you like your nose?”
Person who disapproves of your family: “Yes, er, well, I guess. What’s this about?”
Cessandra (much less sweetly): “Because if you don’t get it out of my business, I’m liable to punch it!”
That’ll get 'em to back off. 
You can come live in my world.
My son is Korean. We are not. My daughter, just a year younger, is our child by birth.
Surprising how there seems to be no polite way to comment on our family. (I’ll help “Nice family you have.” I’ll help some more - both my children are “my own” and they are both “real”)
It is a nice size by the majority of public opinion (and everyone should make their family choices by public sentiment!) - every so often someone asks if we will have another, but it doesn’t seem to be a very judgemental comment, just looking for information or making small talk.
I don’t know. I hear that all the time about my two kids (12 year age difference). Along with “I can’t believe you’re old enough to HAVE a 23 year old daughter”.
I think it depends upon how it’s said. I mean, lets face it. Having kids at all, whether one, or more is quite a job. Lots of hard work, lots of money, lots of love, dedication etc.
I think many times people say things like this, not so much to be rude or presumptuous, but just out of a sense of mild awe, or surprise, as an icebreaker maybe… At least that’s the main vibe I get from people who say it to me. As in “wow, that’s different” or “difficult” etc.
If it’s said in an obviously “sneering” way, well then of course the above priceless 4 letter insult applies
And what might those traits be, praytell? I’m really tired of hearing every Tom AssFuck and Harry KnowItAll tell me that everything that’s wrong/right about me is solely because I’m an only child.
Only children are supposidely self-centered and unable to work in groups. They are also stereotyped as deficient sharers and think things should go there way/be handed to them. This is based on the delusional belief that without siblings around to annoy you and take your shit (like my little brothers were masters of) you wouldn’t learn the proper way to socialize with other people.
As the oldest of three boys I can attest to the fact that siblings don’t really teach you the best way to interact with society as a whole. If any of us based our interactions with other people on our interactions with eachother we would be in jail by now. Non-family doesn’t put up with the same crap.
There is however a sub-class of child that only children are highly represented in, though I’m not sure if it is disproportionately so. That is overprotected and fawned over, though even the overprotected can come out alright.
I’m one of those kids who counts as both, sort of. I was a BIG surprise that came 10 years after my parents thought they were done having kids. And I gotta tell ya, I had the best of both worlds; I didn’t grow up entirely “alone” (although the implications there are ridiculous), yet I still got all the “Spoiled Princess” benefits of being the only child in the house for most of my growing-up years, including the college tuition (Spelman . . . hey, Sqube!) my parents couldn’t afford when they had MORE than one college-age kid.
I think those May-December sibling things can work out quite well, myself.
Good thing you didn’t adopt one of those “fake” Korean kids.
As others have mentioned these are typically regarded as negative traits. Therefore the comment is a subtle backhanded insult, frankly I’d rather people just insulted me straight.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, could you tell me what you think the charachteristics are ?
SD
Yes, some of the stereotypes of only children (and some oldest children) are negative - they don’t socialize well, they’re used to being the center of attention, they’re spoiled because there was no one there to compete with.
There’s also the ones that say onlies/oldest kids tend to be high acheivers. And, I’ve had several friends who are onlies tell me that they learned to socialize with adults better than with kids - because that’s who they spent more time around, so it helped them once they got to high school, college and into careers.
Oh, and all you people who say you’ll never have kids…“just wait. Your biological clock will start telling you it’s time before too long” (that’s what I got at the Christmas holidays this year from an aunt).
Well, since I must have a say as well, I’d like to ask you to help us all out and kill yourself. Thanks a bunch!
:wally
As to the sharing of resources issue, I’ll go ahead and contribute my 2.5 kids’s worth of resources to Cessendra’s family- I’m not having kids.
Enjoy that water and air, Cess and family! 
But unless the more procreative among us are willing to make the same disclosures, your argument falls on its face. Why should culture have to use gray water to accommodate someone else’s contribution to net population growth? If this were a more perfect world, our efforts of conservation would reduce humanity’s sum total consumption of resources, and not merely accommodate more population growth. Population growth in the abstract may not have much effect on you, but if you commute daily in the Los Angeles area, or any other major city, it has a tremendous concrete impact on your quality of life. If your kids go to school in temporary classrooms (aka bungalows) that have stood across the school yard for decades, because the district has never found the money or land to build more schools, that affects you. And if you can’t hope to buy a house within 50 miles of your job because there’s just too many people willing to pay more money for houses in town than you can afford, then that’s population growth affecting you too. I really don’t see why people with none, one, or two kids should have to accept these detriments to lifestyle just to accommodate someone who feels that he/she doesn’t have a real family unless they’ve got four or more.
You know, about fifteen or so years ago, Potter and I wouldn’t have to look forward to dealing with these sorts of questions. Now, I’m not sure anymore :eek:
don’t get me wrong, I like having civil rights and all… we’re just both scared of children. Terrified. Permanently.
OH matt, you’d just be so fabulous with a little pink pram, sipping at a lemonade at someone’s garden party
(my emphasis)
Wow…so that’s why people have families with four or more children?
How many families did you interview to arrive at that conclusion?
:rolleyes:
I’d just like to note some facts for the record:
[ul]
[li] I am an only child.[/li][li] I am well-developed, and equally at ease talking with my friends or having discussions with adults (if they ever let me talk, since the fact that I’m 18 seems to preclude me having a reasonable statement to make a lot of the time)[/li][li] I’m one of those over-achievers you were talking about, and it helped me get my scholarship.[/li][li] I make it a point not to have people brag about me. I generally leave when my mom starts.[/li][/ul]
So uhh… yeah. Spare the only-child stereotypes for your upper-middle-class-parents-didn’t-raise-them-and-can’t-understand-why-little-Jimmy-tells-them-to-fuck-off-when-they-tell-him-to-clean-his-room-and-it-must-be-Eminem-and-Marilyn-Manson-and-the-movies-and-the-video-games, right?
Sorry, I just really wanted to get that off my chest.
Another “no kids” person here.
While women who don’t want kids seem to be told time and again their “biological clock” will eventually get the better of them, this argument isn’t really used against men.
What i have been told, on quite a few occasions, is that i will end up a “lonely old man.”
Well fuck you, ignorant cunt. I anticipate that, in my old age, i will have a circle of friends with whom i feel comfortable sharing the ups and downs of my life. I will also have my partner, with whom i enjoy spending many hours together alone. Having children, or not, is no guide to whether you will be lonely in old age.
And, apart from the “cunt” reference, that’s what i tell anyone who’s rude enough tell me how to live. I strongly recommend such a strategy, beagledave; it makes you feel much better.
Beagledave, don’t roll your eyes at me. Assuming that the number of children is a voluntary choice, and I realize it might not always be, whatever their personal reasons for selecting that number is immaterial. I said “because it makes them feel that they have a real family”, but it could be anything. Maybe their religious faith encourages large families. Maybe one spouse wanted the additional children while the other didn’t, which brings in a slew of other issues that we probably don’t need to go into now. The main thing is that it’s a conscious choice made somewhere by somebody, and that choice does affect others, whether they wish it or not.
The population of the U.S. is growing by leaps and bounds, and is expected to hit 500,000,000 by 2050 (and 1B by 2100). I would rather not live in a place where all our efforts to conserve and invent new ways of water and energy production go to accommodating population growth.
Honestly, many of the replies in this thread demonstrate that ZPG advocates are considered lower than child molesters in the rogues gallery of abominations.
I wasn’t trying to imply that there was anything wrong with being a high-achiever, whether you’re an only, an oldest or one of several.
Frankly, I could care less whether someone is an only, an oldest, a middle or a youngest. They are who they are - unfortunately, there are steroetypes that exist about all of them - I get “oh, you were the only girl with three brothers? You were spoiled, weren’t you?”. Or …“You were the baby for eight years…boy, you must not like your younger brother for making you not the baby anymore”. People have said both of those things to me, and others that I don’t remember at the moment - I finally learned to shrug them off or simply reply with a no, and leave it at that.
Oh bullshit. You chose a phrase like “because it makes them feel that they have a real family” to denigrate the choice of folks who have “large” families. When called on it…you backpedal as fast as you can, saying essentially…well I didn’t really mean that that was their reason…uh huh.
Back to the original point that you responded to : culture said that “It seems to me I should have some input in how much these common resources are split up.”
IOW, he/she gets a “say” in the choice that a family makes about the number of children that they will have. Yes or no, do you agree with that statement?