taking sides: single, childless men in their mid-thirties vs single, childless women in their mid-thirties

Sure, but you have to prove it to the authorities, who are going to ask all sorts of searching personal questions about your marriage/relationship, your finances etc etc.. Anyway, I'm just saying that adoption is by no means an easy option. The people I know who have done it have gone through hell doing it, spent vast sums of time and money and it has required real single-minded determination.

From what I've seen, I think it's psychologically much tougher than pushing one out through your vagina.

All through my 20s I was stoiclly anti-children (for myself) and I thought if I ever changed my mind I'd adopt (for precisely the reasons JBR and Alisa have articulated.) But what can I say, I have changed as I've grown older. Starting about 4 years ago I came to terms with the fact that I really want to bear a child. This was greatly intensified by my grandmother's death last year. She was like a mother to me and now that she's gone I realize how much she brought to all of our lives -- her little family. I feel like I wouldn't do her love justice if I didn't pass it on to a child of my own. Now having children is at the top of my goal list.

£80/month child tax credit, falling to £40/month after the first year. £256 child trust fund payment (one-off, though I think there's another payment at 7). £68/month child benefit.

Obviously, with all this cash rolling in, I barely need to work but it's nice to have some pin money to keep the nanny in Bentleys.

i think america is a very self-centered country, and too often the reason for having children stems from a kind of sense of entitlement and acquisitiveness ("i should have a child because GODDAMMIT I WANT ONE" and never mind what they might be passing down to their offspring -- hereditary diseases, addiction/mental illness genes, toxins in the body that cause serious developmental problems). when you have a kid you're creating a life. that's serious shit and you'd better have a really good answer when the kid is old enough to ask why he has multiple sclerosis or why his sister has to live in a group home. i remember being in high school and how my friends were depressed and confused and resentful that there were all these factors in their lives they couldn't control and they'd have to live with them for a very long time. i would hate to mess up someone's mind like that just because society told me it's my destiny to be a baby-machine.

Errrr... you're blaming *America* for this? What? I think you're projecting political agendas onto a very basic animalistic instinct for self propegation so deep it goes down to a genetic level. (Dawkins to thread, etc.)

I mean, I know that this opens up a whole nother kettle of fish, but... if you choose not to have children, that's your decision. But it's frankly bizarre to condemn others as being "selfish" because they do. I think that's going a bit too far.

I mean, if you want to blame anything, blame Science! (here comes the man in the flaming hat) for introducing these question of choice (little c, please) in the first place - or for allowing humans with flawed genetics to grow old enough to make the choice whether to pass on their flawed genes.

Bring back natural selection, I say. Mutter mutter.

This is incoherent and sputtering, yes, I know.

oh, absolutely. look at how tv networks are falling over themselves to provide "family programming." look how political leaders and the ever-powerful christian right are driving home the importance of "family values" and treating people without families like they don't figure into the dialogue at all. it's very alienating. it makes me feel like america doesn't have a place for me.

But the only thing that pisses me off more than the BABYBABYBABY pressure is people trying to extrapolate their personal choices to the entire human race by saying things like "having children is selfish". It's reactionary and doesn't make either side any better.

x-x-post

But yeah, what others said, men can produce children up to a much later age.
Maybe they cannot be a dad, but they can impregnate.

just because you feel an instinct doesn't mean you have to act on it. on the other hand, there are some instincts/urges that DON'T fit into the so-called biological imperative, like homosexuality. and i don't really care about this imperative (the word gives me the creeps); i figure the world will go on turning even WITH a smattering of childless heathens and homos.

i'm not suggesting that everybody is selfish, just that too many people are.

(I am just touchy because this was not my personal choice. And I am full of cookie.)

Anyway, the desire to have children isn't selfish, it's a basic imperative. We evolved from creatures that wanted children, so of course we do too.

Those of us who don't want children aren't selfish either. Society will always need childless people to pay for the tax breaks of those of you who have bothered to reproduce...

Why doesn't it just mean wanting something for yourself? Not that this is necess. a bad thing. But yeah not wanting kids could be seen as selfish too because either way it's a decision you're making to suit your own interests ahead of others (parents hopes/expectations etc.).

it's why i said "so-called." i believe in biology (obv) but this notion of "imperatives," well, it's a slippery subject and it gets thrown around in politics a lot by people with dubious science backgrounds. if we're talking about nature taking its course, well that leaves wiggle room for, you know, evolution.

O don't, please!!! I've given them up for Lent.

You have to braise them just so, though.

It seems that people are equating "basic imperative" with "having children". This isn't true. Women with full-grown children don't drop dead after menopause.

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation

Specifically: the first section, which addresses evolution