I was just thinking about this. Since I see most of my relatives babies and toddlers and kiddies a couple of times a month, they’re used to seeing me, which means I can babysit them for a few hours without much fuss (especially when they go into that clingy stage around 8 mos). I wouldn’t take a kid overnight (unless it’s an emergency), but the fact that all my relatives’ kids are used to being around all of us on a regular basis means that it’s much easier to deal with babysitting when you need it.
And the fact that all of us are socialized growing up with screaming babies and kids who managed to get too much sugar in them means that it doesn’t freak us out when those issues crop up. I mean, I’ve had more than my share of babies poop on me or spit up on me or cry crying jags at me, and I’m just like “oh, that’s a baby for you.”
You parents who don’t want to socialize after you have kids, well it’s your choice and I suppose you know what’s best for you. But I kinda feel like your making things more difficult on yourselves by not exposing your baby and your friends to each other.
As has been noted upthread, most people without kids understand perfectly well that relationships with new parents will necessarily change and that the new parents will be far less available for visiting than they were before. It’s the condescending, self-righteous, sanctimonious martyr attitude that sometimes goes along with becoming new parents that we could do without.
If you choose to fundamentally change your life by adding a massive time commitment to it, that’s of course, your decision. But please don’t act like you deserve a medal for it. Because you don’t.
And if you’re not the kind of person who feels the need to talk down to people without kids, then I’m sure we’d get along just fine.
That may be true, but my impression is that Una is exceptionally perssonal. Her post read like, “Sure, my life is SUPER AWESOME but even I have regrets that I haven’t passed on my AWESOMENESS because I was so busy being AWESOME.”
Nobody jumped up to run the numbers for me, so I made an attempt. Checking most recent posts, the string "I " appears 211 times* for Una and 135 times** for you. So while you may talk about yourself a lot-- dunno, really, haven’t noticed-- Una just does it a lot more, at least in that sample. Not to mention that she apparently believes that there is another site dedicated to her and that I’m working for it or something. It couldn’t possibly be that somebody noticed something annoying about her and remarked upon it-- no, it must be a conspiracy.
I may be mistaken or may have missed it earlier in the thread but Dread Pirate Jimbo is Cat Whisperer’s husband, correct? So we’ve got a child free couple and curlcoat railing against the world that people generally find their kids more interesting than the neighbourhood cranks such as themselves. Go figure.
All the time. Activities include: moving, construction, landscaping, entertainment, travel, etc.
Not that hard to think of a few examples. All of those are comparable to what was mentioned in post #14, which started this discussion.
And who is it you think I’ve confused the OP with? I think you are the one who has her posters confused, not me. What does that say about your brain, again?
I sure don’t remember a lot of people stepping up to regularly help me raise MY kids. As far as I can recall it was pretty much 99.9% parental effort, unless we were paying out the nose. My sister babysat once for three hours, and my ex wife’s best friend babysat once for two or three hours, and that’s about it. Where is this magical place where people will help me raise my children through the magic of plentiful favors?
No kidding. I would have loved it if the world was like these folks described, and I work in a flexible field. I had to scramble to get any maternity leave. My husband got nothing. Daycare was outrageously expensive and not tax deductible like other business expenses might be. I don’t know how people who work rigidly scheduled jobs and hourly jobs, like shift workers etc even manage to make it work and meet family obligations. It’s the family obligations, not work, that tends to suffer, in my experience.
But hey, I’m sure the anti-breeders will turn down the SSI my working kids will be paying into the system or not get medical or professional care from anyone a generation younger, since accommodating all us parents raising those kids were such a burden on their life.
Yeah, there’s something weird to me about the childfree movement…the idea that for whatever reason that generation is the last one with the right to exist. It’s not like all of us adults weren’t children at one time, but suddenly children are too much trouble.
And, I know the curlcoats of the world will say it’s different now because kids are spoiled and in the olden days we all knew our place and didn’t cause any trouble, but that’s a load of crap, really. Kids don’t change. My kids’ friends are all nice, polite, cute kids and they’re fun to be around. Unless you hate kids, in which case it doesn’t really matter if they’re good kids.
The irony of course is that the point of the video linked in the OP is the woman’s explaining why she can’t spend more time with her friends - you know, fun time. I love hanging with the guys, but I can’t do it as much as I used to, because I have family obligations. How that is a burden on anyone else but myself, I do not understand. Gosh, sorry, Dave, I’m not going to spend as much time with you eating chicken wings and watching hockey. What, am I the only person in the world you can do that with? Get your own life.
The simple fact is that raising a child is going to fall almost entirely on the parents. That’s just the way it is. The idea that there’s a lot of free support for parents is just complete and total horseshit. We didn’t get that. My sister and brother in law don 't get that. I know of not a single parent/set of parents who isn’t shouldering essentially the entire load of parenting. (There are of course extended family situations, but then you’re just assigning the role of parent to a few more people, with the pressure distributed accordingly.) Nobody steps up with the offer of lots of free babysitting; you get the odd favour from an aunt, or grandparents or what have you but that’s really a miniscule percentage of the time, and it’s a favor that most have to repay. All these concessions parents allegedly get from their employers? Complete horseshit; I have never in my life had my workload reduced an ounce for having kids, know no one who has, and cannot imagine why an employer would bother anyway, since most adults do have kids at some point, so it’s generally accepted as just Something You Deal With. And anyone who tells you maternity leave or paternity leave isn’t a career-limiting move doesn’t have a real career.
The central point in the video linked in the OP can be summarized rather neatly:
**
When it comes to other people’s lives you should usually shut the fuck up.**
If a parent spends more time with their kids and less with you, don’t complain. Shut up. Of course I’m going to spend less time with my friends when I have kids. I’m going to spend less time with my friends if I start a new relationship with a significant other, too. I’m going to spend less time with my friends if my father has cancer and I have to go help my parents. And you can mix and match that too; I spend less time with my kids this week because I was with my Dad who has cancer (really). I spend less time with my fiancee when a big thing comes along with my friends, like a big baseball tournament. I spend less time with everyone I like when I must travel to do my job. These are transitions common to all functioning adults, and even kids; every teenager goes through the phase of spending significantly more time with their friends and less with their parents. Anyone who bitches about this sort of thing is a complete asshole. You (generic you) are a supporting character to every other human in the world, and their lives must change and adjust to that. If other people’s priorities change for legitimate reasons, don’t bitch if they spend less time with you playing Call of Modern Warfare or drinking cheap wine or whatever.
And I’m sure your kids will happily give back all the health care premiums and school funding that have come out of my lifetime of taxes as well. Do you even know how this works?
So do you consider being child-free more or less weird than being gay? Just curious as to where you sit on the continuum of lifestyles that aren’t the default choice.
That’s seriously your takeaway from the video? That’s idiotic, even for you. I don’t recall a single instance where the mom in the video tells anyone to mind their own business. You could argue that the central point is “My life as a mom is so incredibly busy that I literally don’t have time to visit with you, even when you show up at my house to visit with me on my schedule,” or you could say the message is “Look how funny my busy life is,” or you could say it’s, “I seriously have better things to do than do you the courtesy of simply replying to your texts,” or “When you visit me I spend the whole time being jealous of all the free time you have rather than actually engage you,” or “What I am doing with my life is so much more important than the trivial garbage I fantasize that you’re doing that I can’t be bothered to even pretend to be a decent human being when I’m around the likes of you,” etc…
“When it comes to other people’s lives you should usually shut the fuck up?” Not even remotely close, but perhaps some words of wisdom that you may want to live by as well.
What a stupid comment. Of course I do. It’s part of the social contract- society benefits when we have a well educated citizenry. Those kids pay it back by contributing to society that we all benefit from. That’s entirely my point- you (and we all) directly benefit from have a younger generation up and coming, so you contribute to it and the kids contribute back to society (in the form of paying taxes and filling important roles society needs as the older generation ages out). I’ll only have kids in school for 13 years. I’ll also be paying school taxes most of my adult life, and will happily do so, as I pay it forward as others have paid for me.
I personally think that choosing to be child-free is a fine choice. It’s vitriol that seems to appear, like those of with kids are somehow gaming the system and screwing up for all you child-free folks that baffle me. It’s the attitude that having children is the selfish and imposing choice that’s the problem. It’s not about looking down on people who don’t have the “default Lifestyle”. It’s about having snide attitudes to those who do. It’d be the same as gay couples looking down upon and being offended about straight couples. Ridiculous, right?
Not having kids is a bit like being gay, inasmuch as it’s one of those things people do that’s fine.
“Child-free” in the sense that you and curlcoat are–that is, being insufferably sanctimonious and nasty about it, all the while accusing parents of being sanctimonious, in one of the great examples of hypocrisy in our times–that’s a bit like being a lesbian separatist in terms of its weirdness.
If you do have a grasp of the social contract, then your initial comment about me giving back all your kids’ social insurance money is stupid. I have never once griped about paying for the education of children that I’ll never have. Because I get it. You don’t have to explain to me the importance of having a well-educated population.
And as for the vitriol? In my day-to-day life I don’t actually care one way or the other about parents or their children; it never even enters my consciousness. But when I have it shoved in my face with the whole “my life choices are so very important and all-consuming and your life choices are irrelevant and trivial” attitude, it gets my back up.
So please, by all means, have as many kids as you want, raise them in whatever manner you see fit, with as much or as little attention devoted to them as you choose. But don’t bother coming to me with your stories and excuses about it because I honestly don’t care.
What can I say? If I’m exposed to enough sanctimonious garbage from the breeders, eventually I return like for like. This may be a childish “she started it” argument, but I never claimed to be a perfect person. And besides, she did start it.
P.S. If you’re somehow suggesting that this is a subject that I am constantly griping about, you should perhaps check how often I bring it up. I will assume that you likewise aren’t constantly posting anything and everything about your life as a parent.
