Exactly, and if a childless person can’t understand that, yes, the lifestyle of a new parent is going to be chaotic and unpredictable, and might require some flexibility / understanding on the part of the “childless person”, then maybe there is a bad friend in the mix, but it’s not necessarily who they think it to be.
Another married couple I know had twins, and he traveled a lot for work. We used to be fairly close, but I understood that their lifestyle was going to be altered dramatically from here on out. We knew that, if we wanted to see them, we would have to ask if they wanted company, as it was more difficult for her to wrangle up the kids and lug them somewhere than for us to visit her home. Sometimes, she would decline, saying that her house was a mess, or that (despite the help we would offer during our visits) she didn’t want to have to deal with the stress brought on by company.
I don’t see them nearly as much as I’d like, but I completely understand, and I still get emails and texts, and now that the kids are older, they are easier to transport and require less attention. During the first year or so, I by no means thought “Well, that’s the end of our friendship” and I just really wonder about the parties who feel that way once their friends have kids.
Maybe my experiences have been the exception to the rule. I dunno…
Your whole point was a massive generalization about parents.
The example you chose to provide indicates that your sense of perspective on the topic is sorta wonky (really, a casual co-worker literally composing emails about an adoption - according to you - is destracted and not “reciprocating”, and this causes you hurt?), which leads the rest of us - who have not experienced the trait you describe as being general to parents - to conclude your generalization is probably wrong.
If your best example is that a co-worker didn’t devote his full attention to your conversation while he was in the middle of the adoption process and receiving messages updating him about the situation, then yeah, we’re gonna make certain assumptions.
Also, and this is an honest question, what topics were fascinating to your friends, pre-kids, and now completely uninteresting to them? I’m just curious.
There are actually a couple of upsides to this phenomenon.
Good Kimstu quite likes hearing parents talk about their kids and doesn’t really mind if the conversation just gets tuned to that station and stays there for a few years. She, I mean I, find it especially enjoyable when a parent tries to sound moderate and nonchalant about their kid’s unprecedentedly amazing impressiveness. “Oh well, of course I’m biased, but I thought Deanna did unexpectedly well on that test for a kid her age, but then she’s always got her nose in a book, although it’s usually the most appalling trash, except for her bizarre predilection for the French poets, I have no idea where she gets that from…”AWWWWW SO CUTE.
Evil Kimstu secretly relishes the look of consternation when I, I mean she, casually alludes in passing to some HUGE BOMBSHELL of personal news and a parent suddenly realizes that they’ve fallen completely out of touch with her life because they’ve kept the dial permanently set to the News-of-My-Kids station. “Wait a second, did you say fiance/PhD/Everest/CEO?!? What?! Oh my god, congratulations, why didn’t I know about this??!?”BECAUSE FOR THE PAST ELEVENTY YEARS YOU HAVEN’T HAD A WORD TO SAY TO ME THAT WASN’T ABOUT YOUR KIDS, BEEYOTCH.
To summarize my feelings about this, and all similar, threads: There is a big difference between someone who is merely childfree, and someone who is resentful of the existence of children in society. I find the latter very strange; to me there is something not quite right about them.
The “basic math” is that people only need to have two kids to provide caregivers for them in their old age. Not even that really, since those two kids are likely to have kids themselves by the time the original couple needs a caregiver, so they would have a choice of four at least.
Plus what Lemmytheseal2 said. The idea that we have to keep increasing the population so we will always have workers and tax payers is ridiculous. If nothing else, we already have “leftover” workers who cannot get jobs.
Oh, then I misunderstood. That is very much too bad.
Are you a male person? My parents didn’t put much pressure on my brothers; I’m also 56 so it may be something that has since died out.
It helps if you don’t make things up. I dunno about the OP, but I don’t “bemoan the fact children exist at all” and I really don’t think that Cat Whisperer does either. What I don’t like is being expected to help pay for other folks personal choices, and expected to put up with very excessive noise (think screaming like one is being gutted) and mess without complaint. Meanwhile, my personal choices are reduced, taxed, and threatened despite them creating far less impact on the environment and society as a whole.
I don’t give two shits what anyone’s choices are, as long as I am not expected to help pay for it and/or they continually impose on me. That seems to elude some in this thread.
It is probably the number one response parents give when it is suggested that maybe they shouldn’t have had kids, or had so many - “Who is going to take care of you in your old age” and “You’ll need the taxpayers”. It’s like they don’t want to admit that they had kids just because they wanted them.
Blink.
You are very wrong about that.
And children who are raised on government assistance tend to grow up thinking that they are owed a living, rather than earning one. Its the same thing as rich kids growing up being handed things just because they are there; they don’t learn to be responsible for themselves.
Stupid people apparently don’t realize that the caregivers figure out very quickly that if they continue to have kids, the handouts don’t stop.
There are plenty of extra children to go around, and the taxes I pay in that don’t go to support the children I didn’t have are raising those extra kids.
The thing is, though. Children aren’t an “impact on society as a whole”, they ARE “society as a whole” a few years down the road.
I don’t think that necessarily entitles parents to a medal or something—I don’t think parents are choosing to have kids out of altruistic service to the community, after all—but I do think it needs to be kept in mind when we consider things like tax policies.
And they may continue to negatively impact society as a whole those few years later, since no one knows for sure if a kid will grow up to be a brain surgeon or a serial killer.
Because they are having people we don’t need and who we can only hope will contribute when they are adults? I just don’t see the need any more to encourage people to have children.
No, he’s not. You missed his point, which was that the people society is deliberately giving benefits to are the kids themselves.
The parents are just the ones transferring the benefits from the government in the form of money (which is a medium of exchange that kids don’t know how to use) to the kids in the form of actual food, clothing, shelter, etc.
Cite? Because the actual numbers indicate that most families who receive welfare benefits stay on the rolls for less than two years. Nor are children of welfare families less likely to work for a living than other poor people.
As for non-welfare forms of “government assistance”, of course, your claim is nonsense. I was raised with “government assistance” benefits like public schooling, vaccination, SS benefits on the death of a parent, etc., and I certainly never got the idea that I wasn’t responsible for earning my living. Nor did any of the dozens of other kids I knew who were similarly benefited by various forms of “government assistance” paid for by adult taxpayers.
This is gibberish. Just because human societies have some bad people in them doesn’t mean that human societies are a bad thing.
Likewise, the fact that some children will turn out to be bad people when they grow up doesn’t mean that we as a society shouldn’t devote resources to children in general, who are simply the next version update of society, features, bugs and all.
[QUOTE=curlcoat]
I just don’t see the need any more to encourage people to have children.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not advocating for “encouraging people to have children”. But I definitely see the need to invest societal resources in whatever children happen to show up as a result of individual choices about parenthood.
I was not limiting “benefits” to material things. I’m thinking more along the lines of noise law violations by small children are ignored, damage done by them is expected to be ignored, people can have as many children as they want whether they can afford them or not, people with serious genetic diseases are not dissuaded from having children, parents esp mommies can be roaring assholes and it’s excused because they have kids. However, there is no oversight as to what is done with the government benefits the parents get that are supposed to be used for their children.
I had a cite the last time this was discussed but didn’t save it - it was a study done in the projects in Atlanta about generations of people living on welfare. That is what I was talking about - children who are raised on welfare, not those whose parents had it for a couple of years.
This may be more of an issue in big cities than any where else, I don’t know.
When did I say anything about that? I don’t like paying for our local schools because they are crap, but that doesn’t mean that all public schools are. Tho looking at what high schools are graduating these days, I begin to wonder.
Where did you get that? I said that parents claim that it is a good thing for them to have children because they will grow up to be workers and taxpayers in the future, and I say they can’t know that. Their children could grow up to be ax murderers, unemployed and living in the basement, or politicians.
However, we should stop throwing good money after bad, and get rid of programs that are not working.
And that is the problem in a nutshell. As long as you make it so bloody easy for anyone to have a child, they are going to do it. Especially if they view it as a way to make a step up in the world. You really aren’t doing a baby any favors by allowing to be raised by a 14 year old or as one of many in a tenement.
Contrary to what you suggest, parents are legally liable for damage done by their children, and there is no legal loophole that permits people to be “roaring assholes” in any illegal way just because they have kids. As for deciding who can procreate and how many times, I thought we just agreed that that is entirely up to the individuals concerned. The government has no business decreeing who may or may not have kids or how many kids they may have.
What seems to have your panties in a bunch is social, rather than legal, privileges or extra slack customarily granted to parents.
[QUOTE=curlcoat]
However, there is no oversight as to what is done with the government benefits the parents get that are supposed to be used for their children.
[/quote]
Horseshit. Welfare case workers definitely monitor family budgeting and expenditures to make sure the children are benefiting from the assistance they receive. Subsidized housing also involves a shit-ton of oversight of family behavior, often including draconian measures such as kicking families out of their housing if a family member abuses drugs, for example.
[QUOTE=curlcoat]
I had a cite the last time this was discussed but didn’t save it - it was a study done in the projects in Atlanta about generations of people living on welfare.
[/quote]
From when, the 1970’s? The TANF regulations that limit lifetime welfare eligibility have been in place for nearly 20 years now. Get some valid current cites for your claims or stfu about “generations of dependency”.
In what sense do you imagine it’s “easy” for anyone to have a child? Easy to get into that situation without fully intending or properly planning for it, maybe. An easy thing to spend a huge chunk of your life doing, hell no.
If people who understand that simple and self-evident fact decide they still want to have a child, I don’t see why we should consider that a “problem” in any way.
It’s pretty widely understood that being a single mother without resources is not a high road to social or career advancement.
Struggling poor people have kids either because they want kids or they didn’t have the knowledge or resources to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. Not because they think parenthood is going to be some kind of shortcut to Easy Street.
Honestly, curlcoat, you sound as though you derived all your knowledge of family assistance policies and poverty demographics from old half-remembered Reagan campaign speeches.
Generalizations and jumping to conclusions are the name of the game in this thread!
Speaking of jumping to conclusions, I’m not aware of anyone in this thread who has said they resent the existence of children. I recommend you read the words on the page and not add your own prejudices and assumptions to them because you seem to be seeing things that aren’t there.
Yeah? Really? Have you not read curlcoat’s sage submissions?
I recommend you read the words on the page and not add your own prejudices and assumptions to them because you seem to not be seeing things that are there.
Oh dear, Guin, how DARE you mention that! Don’t you know it’s quite kosher for curlcoat to be on a Disability Pension because she paid into the insurance scheme for all those years (we don’t know quite how many, but it was lots apparently!) I guess she forgets that it’s other healthy people’s premiums that are now keeping her alive.
Talk about sucking at the welfare teat…but we won’t go there!
I don’t recall saying anything specific like only government policies.
That’s nice, that you think an article about noise complaints to landlords is the same thing as cities ignoring noise complaints about children screaming after midnight on weeknights. But if a neighbor complains about a dog barking during the day, the police are right out.
Uh huh. Yet, when I complained about the local kids destroying planters on my yard and how they dented the next door neighbors garage door, people here did the same thing as the parents of the kids - “kids will be kids” and no offer to replace. Because, you know, we should just expect anything they can reach from the street to be fair game.
Then it has no business telling me I have to give money to people who had kids they had to know they couldn’t afford.
Yup. Where did I say it was just legal issues? Tho it would be nice if the police would apply the noise ordinance evenly.
Oh good lord. Welfare case workers cannot even get around to pulling kids out of actual abusive homes, due to them being seriously understaffed. The people across the street were getting EBT for a while, and their kids free lunches at school, even tho they live in a house that was worth at that time around $500,000 - if welfare can’t figure out there is a problem there, I don’t see how they can monitor anything that is going on in South Central.
No it was fairly current - this isn’t it but was the first Google hit. There was also a pdf of a study in Vermont, done in 2013.
I have not said a thing about spending “a huge chunk of your life” raising a kid. I was addressing all of the support even 14 year old girls get that tends to encourage them to continue a pregnancy and keep the baby.
I begin to think that you either don’t get this or you are too emotionally invested. It’s a problem (no quotes) because too many people decide to have and/or keep a baby just because they want one, with no thought as to whether they can afford.
Social issues with single mothers have pretty much gone away, at least out here in liberal heaven. Not every female cares about career advancement.
No one has said anything about Easy Street.
And you sound like you are so emotionally invested in the subject of baybees that you can only think in black and white. The incorrect conclusions you jump to and the exaggerations indicate you come to the subject with your mind made up.
The irony - it burns.
Social Security is not government assistance. Damn you people are stupid.
Actually, I’ve specified it several times, but don’t let the facts get in your way.
And? This has what to do with people having children the country doesn’t need? Especially those that the parent(s) can’t afford to raise without my taxes?
And no, those other healthy people’s premiums are not keeping me alive. I would never be dumb enough to think I could live on Social Security alone.
