Wait, if you can make pancakes I might be able to get you in on a technicality.
I went to cooking school; I’m a bad-ass cook.
So what you’re actually saying is that the only point to life is being a parent, not just procreating. Whatever else anyone does with their life is pointless if you don’t add being a parent to it.
Susanann, I honestly thought that your initial post was dripping with sarcasm and that everybody was mistaken for taking it at face value. I see that I was wrong and that you feel that people who don’t raise children have empty, worthless lives.
Just out of curiosity, is this a value you have instilled in your own children?
Apparently Jesus Christ, who we are led to believe never sired any children, led a hopeless, senseless life.
People who think “community” does not extend beyond the world of their family are just plain nuts. It is possible for a person to have a tremenduously positive impact on other people without having created them.
Maybe it takes not having children to be able to really understand this.
See now? That’s something to live for 
ok.
Everybody does those things.
And? What’s your point? I was responding to your statement that you didn’t know what the heck people without children do with their lives. I told you. Just because other people do those things, too, and might also have children, doesn’t negate the fact that you made a statement that you didn’t know what people without children do, and I fought your ignorance.
You know, it was having friends who thought like this that turned me off the whole idea of parenthood. I used to think I wanted 'em when I was a teenager, but in my early 20’s my earlier-marrying friends started reproducing and lost all other interests, ambitions, desires, and topics of conversation. I couldn’t tell you what any of them thought about any current books or movies or events, but I could lip-synch to the story of the birth of one of them’s first baby. (FYI, when you’ve told any story that many times, you really need to broaden your horizons.) And they were all so…so smug about the whole thing, full of that smarmy self-satisfied “I can’t imagine what sort of meaning you think your life has” bullshit Susanann’s spouting.
If that was what parenthood turned you into, I wanted no part of any such thing.
Of course, I’ve never had kids or invented anything, so what the hell do I know? All I’ve ever done with my pitiful pointless life is help animals and the people who love them, and make beautful useful things for people to enjoy.
But other people do those things, too, so they don’t count.
As far as I can tell, Susanann believes that the mere act of having children imbues everyday activities with such meaning that a parent doing a mundane act reaps a far greater reward from that activity that a non-parent.
Susanann’s opinions on this subject are about as nutty as they are on everything else.
I’m the father of a beautiful 8 week old boy. I honestly don’t enjoy being around children very much, but I adore the hell out of my son and am happy to have the kind of life that permits me to be around him often. He is a treasure.
That said, I don’t usually like being around other peoples’ children. I often don’t enjoy being around other new parents, whose only source of stimulation seems to be the nitty-gritty details of parenthood. More than ever I feel that I treasure my child-free friends and my friends who are experienced, more relaxed parents. They do other interesting things with their lives, and the experienced parents often have really useful practical advice that has helped my wife and me greatly over the past few months. My child-free friends have been by and large wonderful: they don’t mind coming up to my place to accommodate my infant. For our part, my wife and I try especially hard to take care of them when they are here. They appreciate that we still make time for them and that the baby has not utterly taken over our lives, and we are thankful for their flexibility. I certainly do not feel like we have somehow outgrown them or have any less in common.
These are just general opinions and not rules. I do have some wonderful new parent friends, and there are certainly other children I do like being around. Just not most of them. I don’t find this any more socially limiting than my general introversion.
I certainly don’t think my life is any more meaningful, per se, than it was before. Now it’s just different. Parenthood has reorganized some of the more trivial aspects of my life due to the time demands, but I’m still me and the same things make me tick. Better yet, I have a wonderful excuse to avoid some of the social tedium that was harder to get out of before. No doubt birthday parties, playgroups, and other crap like that will crop up, but I will deal with that when the time comes. For now I have a perfectly good excuse to stay under my bridge, and I get to spend time with my wife and son whom I am crazy about. Life is good.
It would seem that there are people who never questioned whether or not to have kids, and when presented with the possibility of someone choosing not to, they get kind of agitated and bitter.
Reasons for not having kids:
- bad childhood, don’t want to relive it in any way
- not confident that I could provide a happier childhood for someone else
- medical issues that may be a burden to any children that I may have
- I make a wonderful auntie (including willing my almighty stuff to other peoples kids)
- I am a lazy bum who likes to sleep in
I love kids and admire (some) parents. Why the bashing?
At this point in the world, the eight shrubs I’ve planted in my yard in the year we’ve been here (much, much more to come in the future) is worth a hell of a lot more than any more resource-devouring, carbon-emitting human babies.
There’s an expectation in society that everyone is supposed to love and care about children. Especially if you’re a woman. I remember a long time ago, when I was trying to think of careers, my mother suggested I be a teacher because “of course I love children”. Um, why would she assume that? I didn’t even like children when I was one!
I don’t hate children, nor do I bash them. But I am uncomfortable with the idea that I’m somehow a bad person if I don’t go nuts over them.
I don’t want children not because I don’t go gah-gah over them, though. I love my neices and nephew and I’m sure I would love a child that my own loins produced. It’s just that I like my life the way it is now. Unleashed and worry-free. My biggest responsibility beyond myself are my two cats, and they can take care of themselves for days unsupervised. I just don’t want to give that up. Some people would say that’s selfish, and they would be right. But it’s also selfish to have kids just so you won’t die all alone, or so that you’ll always have someone to love you, or so you can burst with pride to see your genes propagated. Having children does not automatically equate to being an altruistic person, and choosing not to have them does not make you a hateful, selfish loser.
Since we’re trying to fight ignorance and you seem to be unfamiliar with the meaning of “choice”, it is “no, actually it’s not a choice; I did not choose to dislike mushrooms. It’s a fact, but not a choice.”
Gah! Thank you, Nava. I thought my analogy had totally failed. (We’ll just set aside the whole “gays dislike women” thing, cuz that’s a whole 'nuther hijack.) Trust me, I’ve tried to like mushrooms, so it’s not like I “choose” to dislike something that’s in a lot of the dishes I’d otherwise be ordering at Chez Fancypants. I just … don’t like 'em.
And +1 to the whole WTF? at Susanann’s post. I … don’t feel like I can respond further without getting myself into trouble.
Heh, you are imputing to me opinions I don’t hold. I don’t think those who dislike others - be they kids, or old people, or women, or whoever - are “discriminatory asshats”. I think they are limiting themselves, whether they realize it or not.
“Discriminatory asshat” is a description I save for people who both dislike some group, and act in an asshat-like manner as a result of disliking them.
You are quite amusingly missing my point. 
I am using the term in the sense of “power, right or liberty to choose; option”. As in, “it is your choice whether to like mushrooms or not” meaning, not “you may, through concious volition, decide to like mushrooms” but rather “you have the liberty of liking mushrooms, or not; that’s your right, and no-one can say boo to it”.
Now you can thank me for ignorance: fought. 
Most people have classes of people they do not associate with on a regular basis out of preference, but tolerate when necessary. Whether it’s vegans, new-earth creationists, schizophrenics, Democrats, Truthers, or discriminatory asshats.
Those are limitations too, right? They’re limitations many people find to be beneficial to their peace of mind, ability to engage socially, internal moral compass, etc. Thus, if someone wants to limit their exposure to children, because they feel this limitation is beneficial to themselves over all, I don’t see that as a harmful thing, an extreme act, or even unusual human behavior.
If you constantly seek the company of people whose behavior you find unpleasant, you are quite a special individual.