I am really looking for people’s opinions on both sides of the topic.
Personally, I have yet to find any logical reasons to have them.
If someone has one, please let me know.
Here are my reasons NOT to have children.
The world is overpopulated.
I don’t want to pass on my weaknesses to any offspring.
Having children means I must be responsible for them. Ewww!
Any money I make is mine and doesn’t have to be squandered on some stupid college fund.
My parents don’t get to gloat over me suffering for the same reasons they suffered.
I am extremely happy with my life now. I don’t want to change that or screw it up by having kids.
The world is not in optimum condition right now, why bring some poor innocents into it?
I am very childlike myself, and I have noticed that people that have children lose a lot of that sense of wonder. I would rather remain forever a kid.
A lot of people have kids because they’ve truly thought about it and have decided that they want to be parents and would be good at it. A depressing number, however, have kids because that’s just what you’re supposed to do. You graduate high school, go to college, get a job, get married, and have 2.5 children. These people are, obviously, horrendous parents.
I can kind of understand the urge to have kids. Kids can be pretty entertaining sometimes, and teaching them stuff can be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it seems that they spend a much larger proportion of their time being loud, twerpy, expensive, intrusive pains in the rear. (Before huge crowds of outraged parents swoop down to defend their offspring, I’ll go on and point out that this is merely my perception of the kids I personally have been around. It is not an insult to your child or your parenting skills.)
There aren’t really logical reasons to have kids, any more than there are logical reasons to have pets or collect stamps, or play the guitar. It just makes some people happy, and happiness rarely has its roots in logic.
The world is not overpopulated, although there are a few regions with (steadily, if slowly, shrinking) population problems.
Your choice. (And I do not fault you for it.)
Having children means you must be responsible for them. You don’t like a challenge?
Your choice.
Your parents don’t get to gloat over you suffering for the same reasons they suffered. (And you would deny them this simple pleasure after all the grief you’ve given them?)
Your choice.
The world has never been and will never be in optimum condition. If it is so terrible, you can take yourself out of it. If it is not that bad, why deny it to a child?
I have noticed that only children without wonder turn into adults without wonder. Watching children grow increases one’s ability to find wonder in the world (as well as increasing blood pressure and the likelihood of heartburn).
If you do not feel that you want children, you should neither breed nor adopt and you should resist any external forces that push you toward an action against your will.
Your OP indicated that you were looking for any “arguments” for children. There are none. The only reason to raise children is to go through the exhilarating (both joyful and terrifying) experience of raising children. (When I was asked on the adoption form why I wanted to adopt, I wrote “To warp a child in my image.” So far, I’m batting about .500, with both of them turning into smartasses with a love of travel, but each of them going in a lot of ways that I would not have chosen or chosen for them.)
If a couple has only one or two children, it makes the situation no worse.
**Surely you have a number of strengths too though?
Indeed, but it really isn’t that bad a thing, in most cases.
Education is not a waste of money.
**Hmmm… You thnk they would? Maybe they would offer support, having been through similar situations…
**Then don’t, but realise that many people simply don’t see things the same way as you and for them, NOT having kids is screwing up their life.
**The world has NEVER been in optimum condition, it probably never will be. How would you describe the optimum condition of the world anyway?
I beg to differ here; having young children has, for me, helped me recapture some of the joys of childhood - the thrill of waking up to a snowy landscape, for example; I’m not living my life through my kids, I’m living it alongside them and loving the experience.
Seriously though, Sweetfreak, it just sounds like you’re young and not ready for the huge and diverse rollercoaster experience of parenthood; maybe this will change, maybe it won’t.
Attempt to be “sucessful” through their offspring
(Seems people really beleive in being “eternal” through kids)
Some people just think its part of a regular lifecycle (mentioned already)
Some people apparently like children. Even thou they have never raised one or have never thought about it being a two decade commitment.
Pensions
Finally Hormones. Many women do want to have a kid once in their lifetime. Men too though in smaller numbers I would wager.
Cynicism Mode Off…
I love kids myself… I just woudn’t want to be responsible for one myself though. I do admire and at the same time doubt the sanity of those who chose the path of parenthood. Many of course do it for the silly reasons or for selfish reasons. Others seem to have the gift or knack for being and enjoying a less selfish existence as a parent. Kudos for them. Kids are a big sacrifice… but they can be fun and loving creatures.
A significant part of the plus side of the whole parent thing, for me, has been the fact that children are actually small humans - you actually get to observe (and actively participate in) the spectacle of the growth and development of a sentient lifeform.
All I can tell you is that being a parent is the single most astonishing thing I’ve ever been a part of. Most rewarding and gratifying, too.
And I sure didn’t feel ready when Lady Chance first caught. Teach US to get completely wasted on a long trip to New Orleans! (Don’t tell the kid that)
Is there hardship? Sure, we don’t have as much loose cash as before.
Is there responsibility? Sure, we’re not as free as we were before.
But cry me a river…the ability to see her growing and learning and to be a part of that is more entertaining than anything you’ll ever see on a movie screen.
I have always known that the whole need to have children, and then grandchildren, is the base need to have your genetics passed on. When a child is born, the chemicals in the parents’ and grandparents’ brain tell these people that this is the most beautiful person that they have ever seen, and the lack of this child would make these same people incomplete. But the ends justify the means, because the genes have been passed on.
My wife and myself, however, discussed this topin early in our dating period. Neither one of us feels the need to have children, at least yet. So this is not at all a contentious subject between us.
I believe that more and more couples are choosing not to have children, without being able to produce any cites to prove that. This is just from my perception.
I think maybe I have been left totally out of the need to have children thought process. This is because if I did suffer from the need to have children, and wasn’t currently working on it, then the thought that I was at an evolutionary dead end would depress the hell out of me. Yet I feel normal.
Your opinion, not mine, the world’s resources ae being discovered to be vaster then 1st expected, old oil fields are beign renewed (somehow, most likely from deeper u/g), we US currently pay farmers NOT to grow crops because there is too much food. Also one day the earth WILL get hit by a space object that will kill off most life, we need people who can invent ways to deflect it and deveolpe ways to colonize other planets.
I don’t know what your weekness is but perhaps for you personally it would not be wise for you to have offspring.
Along with puppies or for that matter cars, why not get rid of everything you own then?
Yes and if you are burried with it you can take it to the afterlife.
And you will never gloat either.
Yes material goods is where it’s at.
When would you say the world is at optimuin conditions? The world has so many more possibilities now then it has. Almost anyone can be anything they want. Boundries such as race and sex are not a barrior (perhaps a obstical, but I use barrior to mean absolute barrior). There is great opportunity in this world now more then ever.
So would Michal Jackson evidently. I think you would see more wonder by raising a child personally and at some times become more childlike.
So far, from what I have read, the only reason people have children is because it makes them happy or seems to fill a hole in their life.
If you are not happy now, and children bring some sort of happiness and/or meaning to your life, then maybe you should have some.
I could never see the sense of having them since I was 13. Twenty years later, I still feel the same.
I love to experience life myself, not vicariously through my kids.
I do agree that somebody had to breed or else, in the long run, there won’t be any humans left.
I am just glad it doesn’t have to be me.
Which, I’m sure, it utterly incomprhensible to starving people in imposverished third-world nations.
You can’t just look at the wealth of the US, and assume that gives an accuate picture of the world as a whole. We are extraordinarly rich in this country as compared with a vast majority of the world’s population. After all, when was the last time you saw a starving child who wasn’t on TV?
**
That’s silly. There’s an enormous difference between caring for a child and caring for an inanimate automobile, or even a puppy. Puppies can be left in a crate whily you go to work. Try doing that with a child, and you’ll probably be spending the night in jail.
Or you can spend it on fabulous vacations, a dream house, a cool classic car you’ve always wanted, or give it to charity.
Me, I intend to die broke, having spent all of my money enjoying life.
**
The OP said he was happy with his life right now, not that he was materialistic. But if even if he is, more power to him.
For the record, I am a she.
Also, I am probably the least materialistic person I know.
The only thing a person can really own is themselves.
But, as my biography asks, who wants to know?
Probably almost no one, and that is fine with me.
Were you expecting some great theoretical rationale that imposed a duty on us to have children? Of course the only reason to have kids is that having them will make one happy, whether it be the joy of watching them develop, a sense of fullfillment, or any other reason. A person who does not want to have children should never be pressured to have them, but people who do choose to have them should not need to “justify” their actions.
I agree, for the most part, that people that have one or two children and have the means and capability of raising them, should not have to justify their actions. But what about the uneducated and poor who breed mindlessly and live on welfare?
How is that justified?
Also, I am constantly berated by friends and family members to have children. Why should I have to justify my choice not to have children?
Everybody’s reasons are their own, and sometimes it is frustrating trying to explain to loved ones why I feel the way I do.
Maybe the reason I started this thread was to get a better understanding of why the people close to me try to convince that I will change my mind?
Hmm…could be!
We are also biologically programmed to reproduce. Every one of us is the product of unbroken lines of continous ancestry all of which were at least minimally successful in reproducing. That sort of genetic imperative is difficult to overcome strictly by power of reasoning (not something people are that good at anyway). And those individuals who are good at not reproducing tend to not pass that tendency on to their children for some reason.
It’s the biology, people! Nurture plays a role, but nature provides the default settings which can be damn hard to override.
(NOTE: I am not denigrating the choice to not reproduce. I think it’s a perfectly reasonable choice for anyone to make.)
