So, yeah, there are STILL people who think couples who focus on themselves and their happiness WITHOUT having or wanting children are selfish and horrible people.
Also, these people think that childless couples are going to “die alone or live unhappy lives” without having a child in their life.
God, I hate humanity in this regard!
Thoughts and feelings?
What about the people who can’t physically have children? That doesn’t make them selfish if they want to adopt, or any less of a person. In fact, adopting is a good service if the couple is sound. It gives children who otherwise wouldn’t have a second chance another shot at life.
Or if they decide that it’s not a good idea to bring kids into the world because of financial circumstances/current events (e.g. not enough money from their jobs, a potential war, etc). That’s also being responsible. Waiting for better circumstances, or just not having kids.
People who are that narrow-minded need their perspectives changed.
Yes, some couples are able to have children right away and that’s also fine. But couples who don’t want/can’t have kids shouldn’t be looked down upon for their choices.
People seem to forget that, because in all honesty, most people don’t consider adopting children the same as HAVING children.
In their eyes you’re just caring for someone else’s child rather than having your own. Some people have a weird mindset.
It’s one myopic worldivew looking at another just like it.
That word there isn’t nice:
“myopic: lacking imagination, foresight, or intellectual insight.”
But it is apt. Neither side recognizes its own selfishness.
Simply put: if my reasons center around me, and my fears, that’s by definition selfish. It does NOT mean that my self-centered reasons are ill-grounded. I think its pretty smart that if you’re mentally unstable and unwilling to or cannot find the abilty to stabilize, then children ain’t for you. Its still an “I, me, mine”–but then, so is deciding to have a kid while in that state.
We have a consumer society, currently: the only way to care for the elderly who don’t have family to advocate for them is to produce consumers to fund them or to print money without anything backing it (inflation: we were not happy at the price of eggs for a while, there, remember). The only reason our dollar is this stable is because its a global currency. The more things that quit trading in our currency, the less stability our inflation will have and either our money will go under or we’ll have to change the way our nation runs.
We have countless governement funded nursing homes with people who have no children or who have absent children that have people dying of dementia with bedsores so severe that their bones are exposed and dying before they do. There are places I wouldn’t send my elderly to die, and without me or another family member stepping up, there is little protection for them. This is the reality anyone who doesn’t either have loyal chilren or good caretakers and tons of money will face.
There is an absolute fear of increasing such hellholes: to avoid it would require a total revamping of our system. We have little to no sanatoriums of any sort left because our system refuses to fix itself: its either increase bad things or drop them altogether (good or bad). Progress has almost always been a lack of progress. I dont have faith in government
And the way our brains work is that when we see the person we will be in the nursing home? We don’t think of that person we will be with parts of the brain that is reserved for us, we think about it like we would a stranger. Our brains are ill-equipped to be anything other than myopic because we cannot easily place ourselves in that nursing home bed, losing our minds, with bedsotes and no one to answer our cries for help.
So, I do see a bunch of people who are headed for a lonely, bitter, poor quality of life death, who don’t have kids.
But I also see the same for those who have children. If you raise people who dont want to rasise kids–who says they will willingly “raise parents” either? I nean, some parents have really been toxic monsters and legitimately have made their own bed–they aren’t going to have advocates at the end of their life.
Just legitimately: if you decided you aren’t going to have kids, ask yourself if youre going to take your parents into your home, fund everything they failed to cover, nursing them yourself when you can’t afford to pay someone else to do so? If you cant see doing this for your own parents, then you know children aren’t a magic answer to this.
That and we are mostly cut off from a generational household. We are pushed to live on our own instead of in a community. When a community has babies, grandma and great grandma are right there, giving mom the breaks she needs so she can raise a large family–so are her sisters. Without this, youre on your own. That’s intimidating for a lot of people.
Beyond this, its a statistical thing: we are now under a growing birthrate. That means a couple could have 40 kids and we are still heading into an era of more people in nursing homes than kds in school. One person changing their attitude and having LESS than 3 kids ain’t doing jack for the numbers. Its really funny when someone lectures you on having children and they stopped at 2. They have no room to talk because they havent met the 2.3 people to replace JUST themselves.
And all this is before medical conditions that get in the way of you having kids even when you want them.
I understand for the most part.
It’s just people seem to push the idea that “having children is a wonderful thing and you’d be lost without one” on to people who either strongly don’t want children or isn’t ready to be a parent or just can’t physical be a parent OR isn’t truly qualified to parent, when children aren’t the be all and end all to EVERY relationship.
I get it how nursing homes is one of those things that people fear because of all the horrible stories tossed around because of it. Some of those people working in nursing home obviously don’t want to waste their time caring for the elderly when the only thing that matters is a paycheck and/or feeding their twisted ideals.
Honestly, your comment makes sense, because if you have an elderly parent that needs caring for and that isn’t your thing, then being a parent might not be something worthy of your time neither.
I, obviously, won’t have children or even get marry in my lifetime and I am in my thirties.
The thought of being someone’s mother or even wife greatly disturbs me and I don’t even like being someone’s daughter half the time or even friend. My own mind is weird in that aspect.
So, I’d enjoy being single and childless, but I don’t see why pushing that mindset on someone who wants to get married and have a family, is a thing.
Seriously, @J.L.O, do people even have a choice of their own anymore?
They also proceed with, “Having a child is a blessing and is an absolutely amazing experience.” Meanwhile their toddler is spreading poop all over the walls, thinking it’s painting time.
I once saw this meme on Facebook that said:
“Plants are the new animals. Pets are the new children. And children are the new exotic animals—you’ve got to be a little bit crazy or rich to have them.” And I solely agree.
I think a part of it might be the generational trauma talking because, think of it, these people were also told by their parents and their grandparents and people who are much older than them that they need to have a kid, that they have to continue the bloodline, that they will regret not having them. And some of these people actually forced them to have them, some perhaps through manipulation of some kind. Saying things like, “You’re going to grow old and live unhappily.” “You’re going to regret not having children.” And so on.
It’s really messed up.
And the fact that some of them have the audacity to say, “You’ll change your mind,” is frustrating. Like they think people do things in phases. Sure, some do. But not everyone does. Not everyone wants the same things.
And then what’s also ironic is the fact that some of these people will also say things like, “It’s best to have them in your 20s so you can use your 40s, etc. for you-time.” As if childless people don’t get you-time? They do. Believe me, Sharon. And they enjoy it. They enjoy being able to take time off work and go on some vacation somewhere without having to worry about pulling their child out of school and dealing with their homework crisis. They enjoy go to bars and clubs without worrying about finding a babysitter at the last minute. They enjoy going to theme parks and riding things without having to take turns because their child isn’t tall or old enough to ride it. They enjoy having sex without having to be quiet so they don’t wake the kids, or having to be too quick in case their kid gets back from school or a friend’s house. They enjoy taking showers or baths or going to the bathroom alone and without having to worry about why their toddler is quiet or without being bothered. And they enjoy so much more.
Still grappling with how refusing to have kids in a world that is now exponentially facing the effects of climate change, is rapidly falling back into corruption, and where older generations are failing to transfer the wealth to younger people resulting in severe housing crisis among younger generations and no quality of life, is somehow selfish. 
I will not be making another person endure this. I’m already pressed enough that I was born in a world like this. My generation is already screwed; I only have sympathy for generations that follow.
Here’s the thing. This is true, overwhelmingly so.
But its not all-or-nothing. This is where that myoipic thing comes in. You, not having kids, is ill-equipped to figure out you, having kids. And those having kids eho are jot you and your situation, are ill-equipped to see if youre good where you are at becauee they ain’t you.
There is a part of yourself you choose to lose when you dont have kids. There’s also a part of yourself that you choose to lose or at least majorly put off when you choose to have them. I didnt have my first until I was 34. So, Ive been on both sides of this.
Basically I left it at: if we have a kid, great, but I’m not putting myself onto debt to just try and fail. My first miscarriage? I didnt even know I wanted a kid until I was losing them.
Ive got 3 now. I shut down the factory, facing 40, starting complications.
Weirdly, this is one of the threads of my most recent book! A woman is made to feel guilty for not having had any kids before her husband divorced her, but she and her husband believed in family planning, and the conditions for having kids were never right.
I too fail to see how it’s selfish not to have kids on a planet plagued by climate change, when global warming is driven by human activity. Just why would it be a good idea to increase the amount of human activity on the earth right now? (⊙.⊙(-̶●̃ₒ●̶̃)⊙.⊙)
People totally boggle me. (-᷅_-᷄๑)
On a related note, I recently read this excellent book about women who had kids because they were told they’d regret not having them, but those women went on to regret having them. It was called Regretting Motherhood by Orna Donath who conducted a study on women in Israel who’d been pressured to reproduce. I wish she’d expand her study to the rest of the world. It would be interesting to see how many women around the globe actually regret motherhood and how that affects society in various ways.
Side-note: there is a far stronger corelation between Carbon footprint and income level (to a certain threshold), than there is to having kids, in developing nations. On top of that, the richest 1% makes double the carbon footprint of the poorest half of this world. Generally, having kids isnt increasing the carbon load enough to justify not having them for the health of the world overall. The ones consuming the most account for almost none of the baby market. Its the equivalent of saying “Im not having kids so Leonardo DiCaprio can fly out to another global warming meeting in that expensive jet off the cost of my Uterus”.
Now, saying it differently: “I dont want to raise a kid in a world where Leo keeps flying his plane to places so he can tell me to have less babies so he can fly. I want out.”
Its the same end outcome: less emissions, not caused by my kids, and they don’t live in this. But the latter takes opposing views into account more.
it’s wild how deeply ingrained in our society these ideas are. ive known i didn’t want kids since i was very young and have always been met with “you’ll change your mind when you’re older” and then once i got older “you’ll change your mind once you’ve met the right person.” never mind how if someone wants kids and i don’t, theyre not the right person for me. but im just supposed to be the baby machine, right? not a person with my own wants and desires independent from a man’s.
now im in a long-term stable relationship with someone who also doesnt want kids, and ive got family members who’ve joked about how they are just waiting on my birth control to fail and telling me how i may not think i want or like children now, but it’ll be different once i have my own. it’s not going to happen.
little do they know i’ve pursued sterilization since i was nineteen, now i’m in my late 20s and up until recently ive still had medical doctors pooh-poohing about how i might change my mind, how my partner might want kids, how it’d be a shame to let it all go to waste, etc…
caught a lucky break a few years back when an infection left me hospitalized for two weeks resulted in my internal reproductive organs being badly damaged. my fallopian tubes are now covered in scar tissue. i have been told by multiple doctors i am now effectively sterile. funny how that works, it took my body nearly going septic to get what i wanted when doctors kept refusing.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but Kim Kardashian lives large and has four biological children. Four children per couple doubles the population. Steven Spielberg also has four; so does Joe Biden, Al Gore, Meryl Streep, Phil Collins, Neil Gaiman, Tom Hanks, Nikki Taylor (fashion model). Trent Reznor has five, so does Tori Spelling, Richard Carpenter, Bill Cosby, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Nicholas Sparks. Sting has six; so does Erin Murphy (played Tabitha on Bewitched), Jesse Jackson and Chris Kardashian. Mick Jagger has eight, so does Rod Stewart, Eddie Murphy, Alec Baldwin, Clint Eastwood. These are just the celebrities I know about. And I guess I don’t have to mention all those Duggars and Osmonds…? The point being that a lot of one percenters consider heavy breeding a status symbol, so they have large families and destroy the environment for all of us.
I mean Kris Jenner, but you knew that…
The decision to have or not have kids should be up to the person, that is my belief.
Ik it can be complicated with family/societal pressure and such, but ideally one shouldn’t be telling other people to have or not have children. Stuff like “you’ll change your mind someday” or “you’ll regret it if you do/don’t” just ain’t cool for me.
I do want to have children someday (once I feel I’m in the right conditions to do so ofc), but that is my decision alone.
Oh, some of them do, certainly. And our 1% compared to our poor–its welathy women having more kids.
That is by percentage, and minimal, at that.
This really only covers the “3 kids”, so really a tad under 70% of the 1% have less than 3 kids and a tad over 70% of the poorer have less than 3.b so, in this nation, Im in the 30% minority by having 3. To the najority, rich or poor, I might as well be a Dugger.
3 kids is nothing compared to “developing nations”.
But really, in-study for Korea (South), their aging population has less a carbon footprint because they stay home. The argument is youngers with kids must get out more with kids, to have that bigger footprint. But that part could be argued back and forth for ages.
“But a deeper look at the data shows that increasing abundance for families at the top is built on declining opportunities for those at the bottom.”
Omg I know that’s true, at least here in Florida. I feel so sorry for the children of poor people today who won’t be able to get jobs in the future because of the intense competition from all those children of the rich. This is an interesting article…thanks for linking me to it! ( ˆ◡ˆ)۶ ٩(˘◡˘ )
Florida is a much stronger case for division because its a retirement state. There’s a big influx of people to swipe jobs from the “native population”, but specifically in fields where there is a chance for growth. Its comparable to the green card population more than “illegal immigration”.
Those people are obviously living in the past. That’s an old argument topic. Those people need to leave the other people alone.
Why do they care so much?
Let people live their lives, right?
My oldest aunt and uncle have no children and they’re pretty happy.
Somenof that is lifestyle choices too. If you choose to have your kids later, that comes with more infertility and higher doctor costs, while poverty risks are increased the younger you have children, up to “established in career”. So people who don’t “make it” wont have more kids later because treatment is astronomical.
I’m an oddity: PCOS: high testosterone doesnt become fertile until mid 30s, without medication. So, geriatric pregancy is normal to that issue.
People who have kids solely out of obligation will make terrible parents. Because they care more about appeasing the people around them than actually making their own desicions.