You’re not being attacked as nasty, judgmental, and narrow-minded because you have a different opinion. You are being attacked as nasty, judgmental, and narrow-minded because you are being nasty, judgmental, and narrow-minded.
It is ill-bred in the extreme to presume to inform another person that their reproductive timetable is not to your liking. It’s not even the OP’s family members’ place to do so, and it certainly isn’t yours, even if you had left out that odoriferous little nugget about how people who aren’t having children are selfish.
Did you notice we’re in the Pit? The bunnies and flowers forum is up there --^
I, for one, don’t care. This is, in fact, irrelevant. Why put it in there?
Cite?
I’m fighting the urge to tell you to eat shit and die for this paragraph only because you think that we should think the same way you do. Someone else mentioned and I agree with them that the act of actually having kids is selfish because you think that the world cannot go on without a piece of you and that to not have kids is selfless. And having kids is NOT a need. A need is defined as something required to survive. There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people in this world who cannot attest to the fact that having kids is not a need. And whether or not I want kids and why is really no one else’s business. The only people who can safely ask me that is the person who wants to procreate with me; and there is no one at the moment who wants to do that.
Okay there goes my resolve; eat shit and die.
Intelligence tends not to mean shit when it comes to raising kids, neither do our ‘predictions’ at to whether someone would make a good parent or not. Just coz people are smart, doesn’t mean they’ll be good parents. I do know several people who are dumber than a box of rocks but they are fantastic parents. Why? Because they love their kids. They wanted them.
For Og’s sake; cite? I want damning evidence that tells me that I am a slave to my chromosomes. I want to know exactly why I have no feelings or free will when it comes to procreating.
Well it’s clearly not.
Uh, you started it. You’re the one who came in and said that not having kids makes us infinitely selfish.
Paging Bob55, please come to the front desk. You have a call waiting from reality.
Again; needs are defined as food, water, shelter. You’re right, some of us don’t want kids. You’re wrong, we’re not selfish. We’re individuals with free will. I will not have a child until I know for damn sure that’s what I want and that I can give it the best life possible. If that time never arises, then boohoo, no spawn for me.
Do you even LIVE in the real world? Do you know how often children are being abused because their mothers can’t stand to hear them crying any more? There are so many kids out there being abused and neglected, 41% of them are less than one year old. (scroll to pie graph)
See that’s the thing. It’s my life. And again, needs and wants. You do not need to procreate to survive.
Well congratulations, you’ve pissed us off. It’s posted in the Pit because we’re pissed off about morons like you who think they should run our lives, even if they don’t know us. Your point of view implies that everyone else should see the same way. Close minded:
Which is exactly what you’re being. You cannot comprehend that we feel differently to you. If you had said “I believe that everyone should have kids, because they’re a wonderful thing to experience, but hey, those are my beliefs, not the facts” you may have done all right. But telling us that our beliefs are wrong makes you a Grade-A dickhead.
You have yet to explain exactly how procration is a survival need when there are billions of us, other than your assumption of the selfish gene. By your own logic then, the main reason to procreate is itself selfish since the main reason is to insure that your genes are passed down.
Or, is it that you are offened by people who decide not to have children because they are denying the potentiality of another human being? The same way some people are against abortion, because of the lost person. But being against abortion for the sake of the lost possible person I can sort of understand. You seem to argue that every possible child has a right to exist, even if there hasn’t been a fusion of ovum and sperm yet, such that everyone who denies that potential ovum and sperm fusion is being selfish.
But fornication no longer means you have to have kids. Thanks to contraception, we can have sex all day and night and be pretty well assured that there will be no pregnancy.
But you’re only thinking of your future - your needs and wants in terms of feeling fulfilled and having someone to look after you in your old age. I haven’t seen you raise the point from the perspective of the children at all. In fact, you’ve been saying that people who don’t want kids should have them anyway - something that could be incredibly bad for that child. It’s incredibly selfish of you to effectively sacrifice those children to an unhappy life because you think we should all pass on our genes.
Just as a side note; you seem pretty convinced that people cannot live completely fulfilled lives without having kids. And with your talk of genes, you’re pretty certain that should be biological kids. So do you not think gay people can be totally fulfilled people?
Intelligence has nothing to do with wanting to have a child. I know smart people who shouldn’t have had children. Plenty of smart women succumb to post-partum depression and kill their children - yeah, that’s a good reproductive strategy. I know a bright, well-to-do couple who wanted a baby because of course you have a baby, that’s what you do. They treat the child like any lifestyle accessory and then become very annoyed when their child’s needs interfere with what they’re up to. (On top of that, they’re inadvertently teaching their child a very screwed-up version of adult affection, by having screaming arguments at each other as a method of foreplay, then obviously go off to have make-up sex.) Meanwhile, I’m smart enough to check my familial history of
And at any rate, propagating my genes - on the micro level that you seem to care about, the unbelievably small branch of Homo sapiens that my family makes up out of the 6 billion currently living - would only make sense if I were the only member of my extended family to be capable of reproducing, and that isn’t the case at all. My family’s genetic code is well-represented all things considered - my father and mother each had multiple siblings, and out of them, most of them had multiple children each and those cousins are going on to have many children each as well.
However, that’s not how evolution matters. Any genetic shifts that would make a lick of difference for the species tend to happen over the extreme long term, millions of years. In a few generations, anything you can point to as “your genes” will be so diluted by reproduction with other families that it will almost entirely be lost in the noise of the rest of humanity’s contribution. We share over 99% of our genetic code with chimps, after all - there is nothing genetically that you or I can do to Homo sapiens right now that
My genes, your genes, the genes of the full population of the SDMB don’t matter a single bit when it comes to the entirety of the human species, even if we all settled down and started having kids non-stop right now.
And finally, all the subscription tells you is that someone has access to a computer and that someone (the member or a kind fellow poster) ponied up either $7.95 or $15 each year. It tells you nothing about other resources, the safety of the neighborhood in question, the suitability of the individual to raise a child, and so on. But hey, if you want to continue to argue with people who say that they really don’t feel any parental instinct or even actively dislike/hate children, or people who say they’d love children but can’t yet find a suitable partner, go right ahead - I just hope you realize the implications if you change anyone’s mind but were wrong about your expectations for a happy ending. Worst case scenario if you don’t change minds is that you get regretful people later in life. Worst case scenario if you do - neglect, abuse, even death, and passing down pain to a generation beyond or farther.
Dammit, I’m not smart enough to proofread while uncaffeinated. (See? Clearly unfit to pass on these genes…)
… smart enough to check my familial history of awful, long-term health conditions and mental illnesses to see that it would be a not terribly good idea to have a child and pass those along.
See? I’m only proving my case that I should not have children - one more clarification.
“We share over 99% of our genetic code with chimps, after all - there is nothing genetically that you or I can do to Homo sapiens right now that can make a bit of difference.”
Simple question: Which is worse: Getting to an infertile age having never had children and regretting it? or Having had children and regretting it?
If you don’t have kids and regret it, you only make yourself miserable. If you have kids and regret it, your chances of screwing up at being a parent are pretty darn high, in addition to being miserable.
Recently, my grandmother (turning 94 a week from today) got angry at Mom and said she wished she’d had only one daughter, instead of three!
Then, and before my mother could bring her eyebrows back to a normal level, she said “oh… but what if that one was a bad one? Ok, forget I said anything that stupid.”
Not really related, but Dangerosa’s question brought it to mind. We can play what if until the world ends, it’s still our reality that we have to deal with. And for some of us, that includes wanting kids, for others wanting kids but only if they’re bio, for others not wanting kids… what-ever.
Wow, there is so much to address here, bear with me.
Not relevant in the least. I had a happy, ideal, normal childhood. My parents split up when I was 21. My ideas on having my own rugrats had pretty much been formed by then.
I don’t think you are nasty, judgemental, or narrow-minded. Just stupid. :rolleyes:
YES! I AM selfish! That is the very reason I don’t want to have children. I am being selfless in my selfishness. I DO want my life, and my material things, and my free time, and my career, and to just sit at home and watch TV. You sound to me like you are trying to justify your own wants to have a child by classifying them as a need. Either decision is selfish…being selfish is not always a bad thing.
I regret a lot of decisions I have made in my life. That doesn’t mean they were bad decisions. Even if someday I wish I had children, I don’t think I will look back and think I made a bad decision by not having them. I’m sure that is hard for you to comprehend.
Yep, I’m intelligent enough to raise children, but with this big ol’ evolved brain o’ mine, I can think through a situation and make a rational decision. I’m not a slave to my genes.
You leave no room here for people who would adopt a child. If I were to give an unwanted child a home would I still feel empty and depressed because my chromosomes weren’t represented?
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Asshat. Stay outta the Pit.
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<Kyle’s Mom> What, what, what? </Kyle’s Mom>
Clearly there is room for a baby in my life? You haven’t seen my apartment.
I’m having an uncivilized urge…
<snip>
I’ve listened to your viewpoint. I respect your decision to have children. I really do. Can you not give me the same courtesy?
For the crying thing, it’s something I’ve personally observed with my children, and other people’s children. Women have a “care reflex” that is much stronger than a man’s for a screaming baby.
You said it’s not selfish if you don’t think you’ll do a good job. Well the only reason you won’t do a good job is because you just don’t want to. You’d rather focus on your own life.
The ultimate sacrifice in this world is to devote your life to the next generation. And yes, propagation of the species is your responsability, unless you’d prefer to be selfish.
QFT
Yes, I’m allowed to judge others, there’s no law against it. And I’m also free to be judged. Get over it.
The smiley is there because likely many people here feel empty and depressed because they fight their own “genetic need” and prefer instead to indulge in materialism.
No, I’m not cultured enough to get your deep references. You are beyond me in every way because you can shoot out something like this and run. But it’s wasted time on being “deep” like this that is a perfect example of how most people here cannot just focus on the important things in life but would rather instead be “cultured”.
Reversing my argument won’t help you. I’ve established that the reason people don’t want to have kids is for selfish motivations, through needs and wants. You said “beyond those necessary to keep myself alive and happy”. Even putting “happy” in there is a perfect example of such selfishness. If you were truly purist you would have 2 children to replace you and your spouse, and then pass on. BUT this would not provide your children the ability to survive, so evolution keeps you around a bit longer to teach them how to keep the species going.
It is none of my business if someone doesn’t want children, until they post a flame on a message board about those who dare think they should want children. Then I believe the door has been opened for me to express my opinion. Sure, to someone’s face I’d not go off on them and say “YOU BETTER HAVE KIDS”, I couldn’t care less. But if it’s a debate on the subject, I’m going to step in.
The fornication-contraception link is discussed in length in Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee where he in fact states that it was likely human’s recognition of this link that partially caused a woman’s fertility to go into hiding so that people could not just have sex when they wouldn’t get pregnant, or a male couldn’t fertilize a female and move on to more females, knowing the first was already pregnant with his child. It forces humans to stay together, to pair bond to help raise the next generation of the species.
Never said I’d change her mind. Was just trying to explain her family’s point of view. And why she was being selfish.
You attacking my points of view are by definition nasty, judgmental, and narrow-minded.
Sorry I couldn’t respond to everybody but I must work, I will try later if you still care, though you probably don’t really want to hear from me anymore
I’m getting all teary-eyed over here. I’m in the presence of such greatness, such nobility, such unselfish, sacrificing humanity I’m surprised your posts don’t glow.
Do you really believe this shit you’re spewing, that you’re somehow a better person because you managed to do something every species, including cockroaches, can figure out?
My sister teaches at an alternative school. This is a school for children who are so troubled they cannot stay in normal public school. Some are just steps away from juvie or a lifetime of prison. The vast majority of the children in her classes have “parental neglect” listed on their records. But hey, at least those parents weren’t selfish, 'cause they successfully fucked.
Mine? All little ol’ me? Gosh, I never knew I was so important to humanity. I feel sorry for all those childless people who devote their lives to charity, those selfish, heartless bastards. Get to fucking, people! It’s the only thing that matters.
I just love it when men tell women what we women are like. Now tell us how women just can’t get along with each other.
I don’t have a baby and fortunately haven’t had to spend much time with them, but I am amazed that there aren’t a lot more stories in the news about babies being shaken or smothered to death. I just don’t know how people can hear that sound several times a day for years and not desperately want to make it stop by any means necessary.
The day that I realized I was a very poor candidate for motherhood was one day when I was sitting in a restaurant looking out the window and saw a young family getting out of their car. A young, sporty dad, a young, perky mom, a baby, and…a puppy. I went into mental raptures about the puppy, wishing I could have one. I couldn’t have been less interested in the baby.
See, The problem I have with conservative folks like yourself is that you think you know what’s best for everyone. That the world would just be a great place if everyone was married before they turned 30 (man/woman of course), had 2.5 children, worked 9-5, and went to church on Sundays.
Bob, your living in a fantasy world. Your attitude of “Everyone would be happy if they were just like me” will never happen.
I’m living your life right now (a wife, a kid, a house in the suburbs, and two cars in the garage) and I’m as happy as a clam. It’s what I want and it’s what makes me happy. But I’m not about to preach it as gospel and tell everyone that’s what they need to do.
Having children is not a decision to be taken lightly. I wish more people would take the time to decide if kids are right for them. To see if it fits in with how they’re going to live the rest of their lives. To see if they have the resources to do it right. If they want to put in the time to do it right. The whole “just do it, just have kids” attitude you have is just wrong and it’s that attitude some people have that’s fucking up the world. Too many kids out there living screwed up lives cause their parents thought it was the right thing to do at the time.
And your point of view that “Not having children is selfish” is as valid as “having children is selfish”. You had kids because you wanted them. You wanted to pass on your genes. You didn’t want to get old and not have a family.
Having kids is about as selfish as it gets. I should know. I have one because I wanted one.
The world needs single adults. It needs gays and lesbians. It needs childless couples. It needs 2 kid families. It needs 10 kid families. It needs atheists and christians. It needs conservatives and liberals.
It’s called diversity and it’s a good thing.
If everyone was like you and me Bob this world would really suck. So live your life and do what’s best for you and stop being so preachy.
No, you haven’t. You haven’t “established” jack-shit. You’ve stated your entirely baseless opinion that people “need” to have children. But you haven’t proven it. You haven’t provided any evidence for it. You have formulated a logicall coherent argument as to why that’s true. What you’ve done, is stated your personal preference as a biological fact. It ain’t so, Bob. People do not need to have children. Having children is not guaranteed to make anyone happy. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t made you happy, else you wouldn’t be in here trying so desperatly to justify your own mistake by insisting that everyone else replicate it.
See, unlike childbearing, happiness is a genuine need. Being happy makes people live longer, healthier, more productive lives. Having children does not. Therefore, happiness is a need, and having kids is not. Unless having kids makes you happy. Then, knock yourself out. But I can tell you right now it would make me miserable, and that would be no good for me, and no good for the kids. They’d probably grow up to be like you, and what a fucking disaster that would be, right?
Why? How does having children help anyone but myself? How is having kids anything but selfish? Who is aided by me having kids? What lives are saved by me reproducing? Whose lives are improved? Not mine, that’s for sure, and that means not the kids, either.
Then shut the fuck up, you ignorant asshole. Jesus, how dumb are you? The point of this rant is that it’s nobody else’s business if the OP has kids. You’ve just said you agreed with that. But if someone bitches about people butting into their personal business, that “opens the door” to you butting in, as well? How the fuck does that work, exactly?
- one more clarification.