Swoop, I think we’re arguing on incompatible angles. I tried to shift yours to fit with mine, but all you did was show that we’re not exactly discussing the same thing. I am talking about why I had kids. I interpreted the OP to mean ‘why do people (the ones who will be answering the OP) have kids’. The “you” was, IMHO, understood, because of the inclusion of the content on ‘why I don’t want to’ that followed. It implied “here are my reasons for my decision, what are yours?”. The followup statement prevented me from seeing the question as a generalist OP, dealing with the reasons ALL people have kids, because it didn’t say ‘here are some reasons some people don’t have kids’ it was I, which implies you in response, not ‘everyone’ in response. So I answered from I. My reasons. So did nearly everyone else.
You, however, have clarified that you are arguing the question as if there was no ‘I/you’ involved. Why do people (in general) have kids? (reading from the title, that makes sense, but not reading from the OP). That’s a whole different question. And, as you’ve noted, my answers aren’t relevant to the question you think I am answering, because they are answering why I had kids, not why ‘other people all over the world’ have kids. You’ve interpreted all the answers as if they were answering the question the way you thought it was asked, which then will of course make no sense whatsoever, because the reasons are personal, and therefore not objective, let alone universal. The answers don’t even address the question YOU are dealing with. They only answer the question WE were dealing with.
So, let me try to answer the question the way you interpreted it, so we can at least be arguing on the same plane.
- because they don’t know the implications.
- because it is expected of them either personally or culturally.
- because they have wounds they think having children will heal.
- because they are scared nobody else will love them.
- because they thought about it carefully and decided it was a rational, logical, spiritually and emotionally appropriate choice, and one for which they had the emotional, physical, economic, and social resources to do well (admittedly these are the rare ones).
- they are more scared to give the child up or abort than they are to keep it and potentially mess up, or they do not have alternative resources to prevent parenthood, or those resources are laden with negative implications that are unreasonable for most people to bear.
- because they are afraid of being alone in their old age.
- because they are afraid of mortality (regardless of religion), and can only live on by passing on either their genes or their name/clan/heritage.
- because they were faced with the choice in the moment, and decided that even if they mess up some, aren’t entirely ready, they can learn and do better than their parents did, and that will be good enough (which it often is, and sometimes isn’t). Or even if they didn’t decide in the moment, they still felt they’d do better than their parents, and that is good enough.
- because, well, that’s what has always happened.
- because their religion demands it, or lauds it.
- because their worth (individual, social, or financial) is measured by their children (numbers and/or success thereof).
Those are reasons I see all the time, even in the middle-class US world. They aren’t the justifications I’m given on the surface, but they are the ones that express in the parent’s behaviors, expressed fears, over-reactions, etc. I’ve seen the same in my travels, as well. They seem to be fairly common (if not universal) reasons, false beliefs and logical fallacies included.
Now, as for your answers to me:
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You don’t understand the limitations of ability in childhood. Reasoning is far beyond dogs, of course. But the ability to self-manage is not. Impulse control is a major issue until near adulthood, and it varies by area of control in question, and age/development. And because development is not a smooth curve, but occurs in bursts, there are repeated stages where a child reverts to earlier levels as their brain develops in another. Two steps forward, and between 1 and who-knows-how-many steps back, depending on the area and the situation. And that’s putting it in the most basic black-and-white terms. Your lack of education on the subject doesn’t make you a bad observer, but it dramatically reduces your ability to see the subtlety and really incredible complexity of the process. It is not simple at all, and clearly (based on your comments) far beyond the complexity level you have assigned it. RE: the dog analogy, the limitations of the developmental stages are as hard-wired as the limitations of breed-specific behavior. That was what I was trying to imply - not that kids and dogs have the same learning and reasoning abilities. The analogy, IMHO, stands, because biological wiring, even in combination with environment, is just not up to the tasks you would like it to be. Period. The puppy commment was intended to pick up the differences between the impulse control levels in puppies and adults, not trainability and reasoning between a 4 year old and a dog.
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I’m totally puzzled as to what your point was re: the McDonalds thing. Can you clarify? All the things you said were ‘yeah, right, I know that, why is this relevant to the quoted line?’ I appear to have missed your point.
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Convert to the THINKING, not the experience. I would think that was obvious. Of course you aren’t going to convince me to un-reproduce. So why even comment on that, because I would think that I’m obviously smart enough to not have meant THAT. So maybe if what you thought I was saying was that stupid, perhaps I was saying something else there, and you missed it? Hmmm? Take the analogy again - when someone starts telling you all about the joys of their religion to you, and you get pissy about it, you will tell them all the reasons it doesn’t make sense (using the generic ‘you’, here - I have no idea what you, yourself, do). It is an attempt to convert their thinking, not their religion. You don’t necessarily want them to stop thinking their religion is okay at all, but to stop thinking that it is good for everyone. The thought process, not the religion, is what is being converted. The process of proselytizing isn’t about how good my religion is, it is about the idea that my religion is right for you, too, you just don’t know it yet. So, therefore, the analogy stands, IMHO, because the process isn’t about making me wish I didn’t have kids, it is about making me realize that kids are not for everyone. My decision to have kids is not un-made by your wish to not have me push parenthood-as-a-human-ideal on you. They are two separate processes in thought, and only one of them can be affected from the outside (typically) - either you want them, or you do not, and nothing anyone says is likely to affect the desire (though it may affect the decision if the argument is reasonable enough, or hits a sensitive spot). Only somewhat more likely to be affected by the discussion is whether or not my decision is best for everyone else. The don’t-want-to-have-kids people have a great advantage here, actually - they know that if we all stopped having kids, there might be a problem later on (including the practical issue of ‘who is going to take care of everyone when we’re all old?’). So people who don’t want kids are unlikely to think that everyone should not want kids. Only those who want kids (whether or not they have them) are likely to think that the other side is not normal, appropriate, or acceptable on an indvidual basis. Because there is an ‘apparent loss’ of benefit if you don’t (which leaves out all the research showing that children with childless older relatives survive better, demonstrating a long-term survival benefit to genes that permit the ‘I don’t want to have kids’ behavior, but that’s outside most people’s research focus.) (Oh, and just because most strangers don’t try to push reproduction on random passersby doesn’t make it not the same process… different social code, but still the same process of thought - this is good for me, it will be good for you.)
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Perfect/Imperfect practitioners… people mentioned on this thread that some people who have kids and think others should too are hardly good examples of parenthood (it implied that their perspective was suspect), and clearly a lot of people have kids and aren’t good at it. We tend not to accept the argument that something is good from people who suck at it. That was the only point there. It isn’t about the absolute ‘I did or did not’ it is about the interpretation of the value of statments from people who are not good at it, vs. the fewer people who are good at it.
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Just because something is the most important thing I’ll ever do (presumably), doesn’t mean I grow a whole new set of reasoning skills just for that. We use the same thought processes over and over. We increase the rigorousness of the application based on the importance of the situation, but it is still the ‘why do anything’ reasoning PROCESS. I think about the implications (big? little?), I think about the risks (huger than anything else? tiny?), I think about the benefits to me (substantial? unknown? definite?), I think about the concerns for others (my family? my coworkers? my community? my offspring, putative or otherwise?). SAME PROCESS. Get it? Yes, it is the biggest decision. Huge. Appallingly arrogant. I remember talking with my husband about the absolute gall, utter arrogance of creating another human being without even so much as ASKING. My child has no choice but to come into being, because I decided to (and was able to) get pregnant. Good lord, that’s just stunning. Mind boggling. But it is still same process as ‘do I eat the leftover turkey, or make some salmon?’ - measure the risks, measure the impacts, determine the benefits, identify the satisfaction, balance them together, integrate the areas where there is disagreement, and then end up with the decision. If you really have a completely different way of making decisions about big things vs. little things, that’s way outside my experience. Even intuitive decisions are the same process, only pattern-matching to ‘has this kind of choice worked out well in the past, and therefore I have a good feeling about deciding it, or has it worked out poorly and therefore I have a bad feeling about it.’ I happen to be very aware of that pattern match, and can extract it pretty easily even from instant gut reaction. Others don’t, but that doesn’t mean the decision isn’t still measured and balanced, just the same.
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Once a justification becomes a question for analysis, it is no longer a justification. So that doesn’t apply, either. If you say “I want kids so they can take care of me in my old age” that’s a justification. If you ask, “should I want kids to take care of me in my old age?” that’s a question upon which you can analyze your situation. Most people don’t ask, so they are still justifying. If you leave it as a justification, it is still weak, and still a justification. If you change it to a self-challenge that will measure your ability/committment/capacity, then it isn’t a justification, because you aren’t using it as a reason for action (regardless of the implications), you are using it as a challenge to yourself, so that you are certain of the implications (or at least tried to be). Huge-o difference. And the same difference either way - justifying not having kids or having kids both are weak. Using your surface justification to analyse whether or not you are actually making a good decision, and adjusting your decision-outcome as a result (if that is still possible), that’s sound.
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I disagree that people want justification from people who don’t want kids. Justification does not get them to shut up, does it? So therefore that’s not what they want. Some just want REASONS. Give them the underlying reasons, that don’t have inherint weaknesses, and they are far more likely to shut up (IME). The underlying reason of “I simply have no urge to have any, period” is, IME, more likely to get an ‘I really don’t understand…’ than a ‘but let me tell you why that justification is wrong.’ The remainder probably don’t want justifications, either. They just want you to agree with them. Period. Justifications, again, are not what they are asking for. These are the ones who won’t shut up no matter what you say. These are the ones where you have to convert their thinking from ‘this is the best thing for everyone’ to ‘this is the best thing for me, and not for everyone else’. Still a big hurdle, not an easy conversion. But neither, IMHO, is asking for a justification. They’re only given in response because that’s what people think they are supposed to do. Just like people jump to the justification when asked why they did have kids. Easy answer. And it is what we think we are being asked. It probably isn’t, either, given the bewilderment of the people who truly don’t want them regarding those who do - you don’t want justification, either. You want reasons. Only with reasons can you self-assess to see if there is something fundamentally wrong with your self-analysis, or theirs (since most people do think they, at least, are right).
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Your version of love is far more limited than mine. Forgive me for not expanding further, but boy, I write long enough damn posts as it is. Love includes that whole-self experience of what it means to be human. Heck, I’m writing a book on it at the moment, trying to help people leap from the separate ‘just this part counts, just that part counts’ approach so many of us do to the whole-self, intellect, heart, skills, body, even ‘soul’ (defined as that which experiences wonder, awe, and a sense of connection to things greater than self, including athiest joy in nature or science), all are part of the experience, all are constantly growing, learning, expanding. All can be supported, should be honored, can be recovered if hidden/forgotten/damaged, and all are essential to our humanity. If that whole-self humanity is what you hope people teach their kids, that is what I hope, too - because that, for me is part of love. Love and true passion for all that we are, respect and admiration for what it means to be fully human, in context of ourselves and in context of others, denying none, using all our tools, relying on all our resources, respecting our weaknesses but not catering to them, always growing, always capable of learning something (even if that native capacity is limited for some functional reason)… that’s love.
By the way, I do think it is pretty rotten that ‘people’ think ‘other people’ should want the same things they do, and pester them about it. I find it annoying when people wish my son liked to eat meat. It tastes bad to him, leave him alone. Same when people get annoyed at introverts just because our dominant culture is extrovert-based. Just because YOU get energy from spending time in crowds doesn’t mean everyone does, or that they should, either. Nothing wrong with introverts, just different way of being. (I’m an extrovert, by the way, but married to an introvert, and have one of each in the kids - and I bite back when someone suggests that my older son ‘should’ be thrilled to jump into big parties full of strangers… but that’s another thread.) Assumptions get people into trouble, all over. And the assumption that the human norm is to want offspring is still an assumption (based on some really awful science and some pretty effective propaganda in some countries and religions). I try not to assume. Not always perfect at it, but I agree that it would be a lot more pleasant for most of us if people ‘assumed’ that how one felt about something wasn’t necessarily wrong just because it isn’t how someone else felt.
Sigh. I’ll probably shift back to other areas myself, as soon as this thread dies (I hate to leave someone with a question directed at me unanswered… probably a character flaw of some sort).