Actually, I think it is, at least at work.
If people want to talk about their family, you will catch on pretty quickly; but life is life, and work is work, and personal questions just aren’t appropriate.
What, everyone has to like children to be right? I find this odd. Despite my comments, which were mostly flung out of irritation at your post. I apologize for any comment made to your daughter directly; however I defend the use of derogatory statements used by people who are ranting against condescending idiots. It’s not like I’d shove some kids into the street to get run over and take glee in it, but I don’t want to be around them, either. What is so hard to understand?
Yeah, I’m really concerned for solely myself. That’s why I’m putting my eldest nephew through college (he starts Tuesday, and I am positively ecstatic about it). I am so selfish and subhuman that I’m planning to devote my life and education to public service, up to retirement and beyond. That’s why I’m already planning to take care of my Mom and my In-laws when they get older: I am so fucking selfish! You either have a ridiculously close-minded view of people’s choices or you’re fucking retarded.
I could care less about overpopulation or overcrowding. I simply don’t have that burning desire to have children. You know how some people see kids climbing on merry-go-rounds and swings on a playground and instinctively put a hand on their stomach and think about the day when their little boy or girl will run around on a playground just like that? I don’t get that feeling. I see kids running around and think, “I wonder what time the grocery store closes today?” or, “I hope I get home before that NOVA special starts.” I just don’t get that wurzum feeling inside when I see kids running around. Occasionally they will do something adorable or funny and I think that they are cute but I don’t feel the need to have one of my very own.
These days? Seriously, you think women not wanting to have children is a product of the modern era?
The only difference between now (say, the last 50 years or so) and time before is that women have real choices and options “these days”. I can, with 99% confidence, tell you that my own mother probably never wanted children. And she had six.
Bully for you. Fuck, bully for me. I love kids. In fact, I refer to my nieces and nephews (all 9 of them) as “my kids”.
But I ain’t birthin’ no kids, no how.
Yes it was. And that was rather my point–that pregnancy is a hard and sometimes dangerous undertaking with a not inconsiderable risk of permanent injury and death for the mother and for the child as well. Even if one gets past pregnancy and birth physically intact, there are still the innumerable pitfalls and challenges that make raising the child a daunting prospect–physical, emotional, financial, social, there’s just no end to the possible bad outcomes of rearing children.
My point is that ANY person, absent physical damage, is capable of either engendering or of bearing a child. Likewise, any person, absent physical damage, is capable of deciding to become a lawyer, doctor, machinist, sex worker, cop, firefighter or to join the military. Whether one is actually fit for those professions is very much a matter of personal judgement, preference, talent, ability and inclination. Nobody EVER looks down on someone who says “Damn, those firefighters are brave, I could NEVER do that!” Indeed, many people will chime in and agree with such sentiments. Why, then, (and it’s especially noticeable when a woman says it) does a similar sentiment regarding being a parent automatically raise the hackles and cause otherwise fairly sensible people to flip out?
Not every person is cut out to be a parent, even if they DO have functioning testes or uterus. Not everybody NEEDS to be a parent, we have more than enough people already. Why then can we not just accept the fact that those who have a talent for and a desire to be parents will do so and that others may safely and happily choose otherwise without raising so much as a quizzical eyebrow? I submit that there have always been people who just do not like and/or want children but who ended up with them anyway due to dodgy birth control methods paired with a desire to have a partner in their lives. Society did not smile on those who expressed these opinions, however, and therefore one did not hear them as often as one does these days. It’s kind of like being an atheist. It used to get you killed, now you just get snarked at.
I think we’ve evolved past the point of senselessly worshipping procreation as the highest and most noble calling a woman can aspire to. Any critter can fuck, any critter can have babies and most critters can raise them adequately–if they’re no good at it the babies die young and all is well. When people who are ill equipped for parenting bow to societal pressure and attempt it anyway, the usual result is fucked up adults who quite often pass along their own damage to yet another generation, because shitty human parents aren’t allowed to kill their kids young and save everyone else the hassle.
I really think people ought to keep their noses out of other people’s crotches unless they’re specifically invited to investigate there.
You just don’t have a sense of humor. 
That’s all.
Or you’re posting in a Pit thread where the standard mode of discourse is belligerence. I was fucking with you, in case that’s not readily apparent. Kudos to you on a life of public service, that’s admirable.
SmartAleq I don’t really see the raised quizzical eyebrow as being quite as big a deal as you do. Certainly the woman at pbbth’s office sounds irritating. But the quizzical eyebrow just shows a mild curiousity at a behavior in others that you don’t relate to.
The thing is, you don’t have to relate to everyone’s behavior; as long as they aren’t doing any harm, you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them in peace.
I don’t relate to people who want children; I never have. And I truly cannot fathom why some people want children so badly that they go through extraordinary methods (prolonged and difficult fertility treatments) to get them. But I just accept it as a given that they do want children that badly and don’t trouble them about it.
Thank you, mswas. Without your contribution we’d only have 6,718,481,873 people in the world instead of 6,718,481,874. It gives me nightmares to think that if you hadn’t screwed your girl friend in the back seat of that Rambler we’d all be extinct now.
But why do I imagine that during the actual physical process (an image I am trying to wipe from my mind as I write) you were thinking, “the future of the species is in my hands!”?
Fact of the matter is my genetic material is more viable than anyone who dies never having bred. 
I win at Natural Selection thus far.
I think this is where you got your wires crossed. While there are no doubt some who think that the continuation of the species “detestable”, that does not describe most child-free people. That seems to be a distinction that you are either unwilling to make or are purposely blurring to support your position. Not wanting to have children is not the same as wishing extinction upon humanity. That makes about as much sense as saying that since I do not like lima beans and will not eat them, I wish starvation on the world.
I am just one person, but I believe that as a child-free person, my views are fairly common among those who share, ahem, my views. They are:
-I am not prepared to become a parent. Not financially, not emotionally.
-I like kids just fine, but only those of other people, and only in tiny doses. Any more and I get a huge headache from the screaming, whining, and crying. And even then, I’m not the one that has to clean up the poop.
-I have a fulfilling life as it is. I have my friends, my loves, and my hobbies. Why would I trade all that in just to become the sole custodian of screaming poop machine that will suck up 110% of my time and resources? (I say sole custodian because right now I’m unmarried and living alone. Should I someday get married, I still won’t want kids.)
-I don’t detest children, but I sure as hell detest people who think that the functioning of my genitalia is their business. I especially detest those who would judge me for it. (In fact, at any given time, only two people may broach the subject with me. One gets flowers, the other gets a copayment.)
-Personally, I’m too old for that shit. If I started having kids right now, I’d start paying college tuition at the age of 65. Sorry, that money is going towards my boat.
-I “owe” my parents grandchildren, right? No. Bringing a child into this world does not give you a right to have grandchildren.
-The species will continue on just fine without me. It’s not we’re on the verge of extinction, what with the population being higher than it ever has in the entire history of the planet.
Having said all that, do you really think I’d be doing the world a favor by having a child?
Exactly. I don’t pester anyone about wanting kids, although I don’t relate to it (they say they actually want to have children in their lives, and I believe them, freakish as it sounds to me). I leave them alone, they can leave me alone (which, ideally, would mean them not allowing their choices to affect me in public places, either).
And so far you’ve lucked out by not having fucked someone who’s susceptible to postpartum depression or your oh-so-viable genetic material might have been smothered under a blanket. You may yet find, however, that your genetic material might be too dumb not to play in the street and therefore your win is actually a delayed and now far more traumatic fail. There’s many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, as the saying goes, and you’re nowhere near out of the woods yet. Then, after all that chest pounding about the viability of your genetic material you may yet find out it’s refusing to have children of its own and therefore you still fail–but you’ll probably browbeat and harass and nag for grandkids anyway. Some people never learn to MTOB.
You didn’t - well, I won’t say left out - cover the reason I and my spouse are childless. You see, one of us can’t have biological children. We decided many years ago to NOT spend a fortune on “fertility treatments”. As both of us have siblings that reproduced just fine our nieces and nephews share a significant portion of our genes, thus, our “genetic heritage” is unlikely to be wiped from the face of the earth (if that is even a valid argument in the first place). If we had had children we would have been happy and raised them with joy. As it happens, we did not have children but still have a wonderful life.
This gets into the sticky, medical areas of childlessness. It is no one’s business what is “wrong” with the affected person in our marriage. It is no one’s business who is the one with “the problem”. It is no one else’s business how we choose to deal with this issue. It is quite presumptuous to assume that because we have no children we somehow don’t want the species to continue, we hate children, or whatever kneejerk assumptions assholes make.
Likewise, I’ve known a few individuals who, due to genetic disorders, elected not to reproduce. In at least two instances they made that decision before modern genetic testing was available - in other words, their choice was to risk having a child with a debilitating condition, or not have children. They did not have the option of testing before birth, much less before implantation, and only allowing the healthy fertilized eggs to grow to term. Arguably, they are being more responsible in taking action to eliminate suffering and defective genes by forgoing their personal reproduction than taking chances, but such a childless person will nonetheless have to endure kneejerk assumptions about being selfish, child-hating, and what have you from ignorant, insensitive assholes who don’t know when to shut the fuck up. Such nosey parkers are not entitled to know the details of why someone chooses not to have children (or can’t have children) so as to pass judgment on who is “good” childless and who is “bad” childless.
Bottom line: it’s no one’s business why someone else does or does not have children.
Excellent point.
tdn Marvelously well written post. Too bad it was responding to a strawman. I’ll let the imaginary person who you were responding to field that one.
That’s why I said, ‘thus far’. And what about this is not minding my own business? I responded in a public forum. You want to go into the public square and rant, then it IS my business. I’m just mildly amused that my innocuous question caused so much vitriole, and that my tongue in cheek comments are eliciting so much bitterness.
If you’re not careful, you might learn something about people who aren’t like you.
So you’re a troll? Good to know.
It’s not a strawman when one responds to what you actually wrote rather than what you think you wrote.