# People thinking of having children, can you consider the following points? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 7, 2017, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766 "2017-09-07T23:11:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2017, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/61 "2017-09-08T16:26:28Z")
**Marcus Flavius** is the person who won’t eat an apple because it will eventually be a core. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2017, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/62 "2017-09-08T17:16:07Z")
> [@Marcus\_Flavius](#): > > This is for people thinking of procreating at some point in the future: > > -Your future child does not need to be born These kidneys don’t grow themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2017, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/63 "2017-09-08T18:31:52Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > _The agony and the irony, they’re killing me…_ Agony and irony live together in perfect harmony, side by side on my computer keypad Oh, Lord, ain’t that sad? [sub]apologies to Stevie Wonder[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2017, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/64 "2017-09-08T19:06:24Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > These kidneys don’t grow themselves. Yet. There’s no meaning or honor or justice or good or evil or mercy or faith in the universe. So let’s make our own! And making babies is a really, REALLY fun way to give meaningless things meaning. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2017, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/65 "2017-09-08T20:41:57Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > There’s no meaning or honor or justice or good or evil or mercy or faith in the universe. - …for the world, which seems \*\*To lie before us like a land of dreams, \* \*So various, so beautiful, so new, \* \*Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, \* \*Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; \* \*And we are here as on a darkling plain \* \*Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, \* _Where ignorant armies clash by night._ ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2017, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/66 "2017-09-09T09:02:16Z")
If parents have children mainly, because they want to be parents, isn 't there a selfishness issue there? Something like giving a puppy to a child who just wants a cute little puppy, which will some day become a neglected or abused dog? ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2017, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/67 "2017-09-09T10:28:58Z")
If I thought like the OP, I think I would’ve stuck the barrel of a gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger by now. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2017, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/68 "2017-09-09T10:34:30Z")
> [@ExTank](#): > > If I thought like the OP, I think I would’ve stuck the barrel of a gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger by now. Pretty much. I much prefer existence to non-existence, and almost everyone, _including_ most people who attempt suicide feel the same way. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2017, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/69 "2017-09-09T12:54:59Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > If parents have children mainly, because they want to be parents, isn 't there a selfishness issue there? Something like giving a puppy to a child who just wants a cute little puppy, which will some day become a neglected or abused dog? What the hell are you ever talking about? ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2017, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/70 "2017-09-09T14:18:22Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > If parents have children mainly, because they want to be parents, isn 't there a selfishness issue there? Something like giving a puppy to a child who just wants a cute little puppy, which will some day become a neglected or abused dog? Many people who want to become parents want that with the full understanding that it’s a lifetime commitment. I know from experience that some don’t think it through, but most grown adults are well aware that having children is not just something fun to do for now. The difference between children and adults is often a greater understanding of long term consequences and better insight into the associated responsibilities involved with any decision. It’s selfish insofar as anything anyone does ever is selfish. Which is to say, not a very meaningful paradigm for selfishness. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2017, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/71 "2017-09-09T16:21:51Z")
The only good reason to have children is to get grandchildren. Children are your only source, so they’ve kind of got you over a barrel there. That’s how they get you. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/72 "2017-09-09T16:35:11Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > The only good reason to have children is to get grandchildren. Children are your only source, so they’ve kind of got you over a barrel there. That’s how they get you. I’m in no rush for grandchildren, but I’ve heard that grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies against parents. I plan on exploiting that advantage to it’s fullest if and when I find myself in a position to do so. Revenge at last! ---
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2017, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/73 "2017-09-09T17:18:39Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > If parents have children mainly, because they want to be parents, isn 't there a selfishness issue there? Something like giving a puppy to a child who just wants a cute little puppy, which will some day become a neglected or abused dog? Being a parent doesn’t end when the kid grows up. I know several older folks (50s/60s) who have great relationships with their adult children, seem to take a lot of pleasure in both their adult children’s accomplishment and in playing with their grandkids. My own kid is still just a toddler, but I definitely will want to be part of his life still when he is a grown man. You never can be sure how life will turn out, but I know enough adults who seem reasonably satisfied with their lives that I don’t feel like I am condemning my kid to a miserable existence. Oh, and I am a psychiatrist, so it’s not like I am oblivious to all the misery and suffering that goes on. Life doesn’t have to be that way. I actually have thought about the kind of issues that OP brings up. Ultimately, though, even if life is meaningless, it’s over fairly quickly for all of us, so I don’t see any reason to let neuroticism over the point of existence determine my life choices. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2017, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/74 "2017-09-10T12:31:27Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > I’m in no rush for grandchildren, but I’ve heard that grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies against parents. I plan on exploiting that advantage to it’s fullest if and when I find myself in a position to do so. Revenge at last! When we exasperated him, my Dad would raise his eyes to Heaven and sigh “now I understand why my mother would say ‘my grandchildren shall avenge me!’ Vengeance indeed…” You don’t even need to be explicit allies, it just happens. **Marcus** ’ dad probably angsted more than a whole squad of Professor Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters alumni, now baby boy is trying to up-angst Daddy. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2017, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/75 "2017-09-10T16:10:40Z")
[RIGHT]“What is my purpose?” — Butter Robot “You pass the butter” — Rick “Oh my God.” — Butter Robot “Yeah, welcome to the club, pal.” — Rick[/RIGHT] > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > My philosophy classes were full of this sort of thing. Maybe that’s why it sticks in my craw. For about two years in college, I was a philosophy major. I studied a lot of existentialism and I’m well aware how maudlin it can be and how hard it is to draw from that well without being poisoned. > > But at some point, you get over it. You take what’s helpful and you leave the rest. Eventually you cobble together some meaning and purpose and accept that sure, life may be absent objective meaning and it may entail a lot of suffering, but that doesn’t mean it’s pointless. To find meaning when you are severely clinically depressed is particularly difficult, but I managed. And if you are inclined toward existential despair, constructing meaning is something you have to do in every moment for the rest of your life. > > But I’d rather do that than persist in a fatalistic state that requires me to criticize and shame others in order to justify my own messed up worldview. Misanthropes leave a bad taste in my mouth. > > The nihilists and existentialists weren’t exactly playing with a full deck and they don’t corner the market on reality. For all my love of Nietzsche, the man was a seriously mentally ill self-contradictory mess. He was crazypants. Most of the great existentialists were, which should give you a clue about how seriously you should take their arguments. I think they are only useful if you’re crazypants, too, and need to manually construct life’s meaning because your brain chemicals aren’t supplying it naturally. (Most people don’t have to work at wanting to be alive.) As one of those crazypants people, I often forget that most people don’t think about that stuff or find it relevant. The upshot is that the people studying and engaging on the subject will more often than not be biased toward depression. You end up in an echo chamber full of depressed people in the quest to find meaning and yet posit that you’ve found some philosophical “truth.” Even if the OP is not himself depressed, his views are directly influenced by the dysfunctional neurology of others. There’s nothing remotely objective there. > > In the grander scheme, existentialists were separate from classic philosophers precisely because they were making emotional arguments rather than rational ones - a fact which horrified their academic contemporaries. The OP is making an emotional argument and begging the hell out of the question. > > Marcus (as Machinaforce often does) is taking subjective nihilistic ideas and acting as if they are irrefutable fact. This is silly. I’m a fan of existentialism and prone to existential despair, and even I think this is silly. There is no final word on whether existence is worthwhile. > > Now I’m all inspired to re-read some Nietzsche… Who doesn’t depress me at all. If you ask me, he was the answer to nihilism’s “so what’s the point?” I think you agree with me more than you don’t, but I do want to provide a different slant on this just the same. Imagine a teleological Universe, where there is a place for everything and everything is in its place, the center damned well _does_ hold, and if anarchy were “mere” it wouldn’t exist. Imagine that your purpose in that Universe was to be something you hated. Your fitness as a being is entirely dependent on how well you fulfill that task. _That_ is existential terror. To me, the fundamental tenet of existentialism is that we live in a Universe where _that_ can never happen. All authority is derived from ultimately temporal sources, there is no unchallengeable philosophical truth, only physical fact, and nobody will be coming around to mark your papers. If you can find happiness being something your society disapproves of, well, it’s _possible_, in our Universe, for society to be wrong and an individual to be right. There’s no metaphysical basis for society, it’s just something humans do. (Well, I suppose a number of species could be said to have society, but we don’t usually stay up nights wondering what chimpanzee troops think of us.) Therefore, society can be questioned, and changed, and made better for everyone. Progress is possible, and desirable, and never-ending. Things can always improve, and no external force can say otherwise. In short, I find existentialism joyful, and all of my future philosophy will have elements of it. Further, I refuse to give philosophical legitimacy to bad neurochemistry. The ideas your brain comes up with when depressed are just you trolling yourself. They’re bullshit, by which I mean they’re statements made regardless of truth value simply to engender an emotional state. When you look at them with a clearer head, they’re _boring_, like all trolls: They’re utterly repetitive in spirit, because they’re all bent to the same end. It’s a constant blatting noise, devoid of real content, endlessly circling, never making progress. There’s no philosophical core to its arguments because they’re all based on a physical flaw in the system. Looking back on my own episodes, the ideas were spooks, affecting at the time but insubstantial in the light of my modern ability to reason and feel emotions. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2017, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766/76 "2017-09-11T02:32:52Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > I think you agree with me more than you don’t, but I do want to provide a different slant on this just the same. > > … > In short, I find existentialism joyful, and all of my future philosophy will have elements of it. I mostly agree. There’s no point to any of this, but that’s not depressing. It means we gotta step up if we want a point. There’s a Shel Silverstein poem that I love. Okay, there aren’t many Shel Silverstein poems I DON’T love (short of his regrettable posthumous collection, but I’m already hijacking my own point so let it go), but there’s one that nicely sums up my existentialism. > [@Shel Silverstein](#): > > Magic > > Sandra’s seen a leprechaun, > Eddie touched a troll, > Laurie danced with witches once, > Charlie found some goblins’ gold. > Donald heard a mermaid sing, > Susy spied an elf, > But all the magic I have known > I’ve had to make myself. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-thinking-of-having-children-can-you-consider-the-following-points/795766.md?page=3)