to form babby, or not to form babby

Medea, ftw.

no life light burned inside luna. no, luna reflected the life light of another.

mod, please change thread title to "silby's basilisk"

*babbyless

fuck

“People”—Geralt turned his head—“like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves.”

I think there's a particular part of the human experience -- which isn't for everyone -- that is only experienced by raising a kid. I think some people articulate it incredibly poorly, or think that the experience and knowledge they gain by raising a child (see: every man who now thinks they have empathy for women after having a daughter) is something only gained through parenthood. But the best parents I know have a relationship with their children that shows mutual growth.

We're not, at least most of us aren't, in societies where children are responsible for their parents after they reach a certain age, like Yerac mentioned. But we're beings with relatively brief lives, and most of us are going to diminish with age in some way, to the extent we might be child-like again as we approach senility. Looking at childhood and being elderly as somehow not the norm, and the plateau of productive adulthood as the normal human state, reduces our communal empathy

there are very few real rugged individualists out there and if forming your family means forming a babby for you, then by all means...

I think there's a particular part of the human experience -- which isn't for everyone -- that is only experienced by raising a kid.

my conclusion from knowing parents is that this cannot be explained adequately using words and thus there's a divide btwn babby havers and non babby havers that can never truly be bridged, hence these endless arguments

A well-phrased point, Simon.

Which is why I didn't see my experience reflected in Yerac's comment (that most parents in her demographic just drifted into parenting "on autopilot" without conscious decision making). It may seem like that because you're not in their heads, and they may not be able to articulate it in a way you'll understand.

For me and for my wife - and most of my embabbied family and friends - there was a LOT of conscious discussion and a lot of serious thought. your babby-makers may vary?

babby-formers, sorry

I was more or less referenciing that marrying and having kids is a very traditional norm that only recently have we had more leeway in decision making against that standard.

oh, and I meant our parents not us being parents. also mh otm.

I think there's a particular part of the human experience -- which isn't for everyone -- that is only experienced by raising a kid.
my conclusion from knowing parents is that this cannot be explained adequately using words and thus there's a divide btwn babby havers and non babby havers that can never truly be bridged, hence these endless arguments

I agree with both parts of this and, like any other experience, we have to trust the user. From my side of the divide, I'm a passive individual and was never sure I even wanted children. I met someone who absolutely was sure and it went from there. Having kids has been unlike anything else I've done - which isn't of course, in and of itself worthy of note - but the singular enormity of it is only partly explained by mental change and mental processes: it's a totalising gesture and feels molecular and existential all at once. There feels something inherently bougie in measuring life in 'experiences' but if that is a permissible measure of a life, for that and that alone, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Kids are pricks, mind.

okay Yerac, sorry to misunderstand

My wife and I specifically considered the possibility that our child would have a serious disability when we were discussing whether or not to have any children. We decided that, however difficult it might make life for our child and us, that once you take the plunge you have to accept every eventuality and do your best to meet the challenges you're presented with, because challenges are inevitable and you don't get to choose the ones you prefer and refuse those you don't like.

np. some days i am like, punctuation on the internet is a choice xpost

Aimless, as is tolerably well known, my son does in fact have a serious disability (one we could not have foreseen or prevented or prepared for). His life isn't at all easy but he's a creature of pure joy. He is the happiest person I know, and brings a lot of happiness to the people around him as well.

That said, if we'd known about the disability (or its probability) in advance, we would not have had a second child. And my daughter (who carries the gene) will have to be very careful about what she decides.

if we'd known about the disability (or its probability) in advance

aye, there's the rub. it's rare to know in advance what your probabilities are. otoh, known genetically-determined disabilities, identified in advance, are a different matter from just speculating about a 'what-if?'. I completely understand your position, and had my wife and I known with anything approaching certainty what our daughter's life would be like, we would have refrained. we weren't afforded that knowledge. neither were you. so we live with it and make it work as best we know how.

my brother's third child has pretty bad arthrogryposis and they were notified of this while he was still a fetus. they still decided to proceed with the pregnancy. I was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . and then when they became super anti-choice that shrug turned into an eyeroll emoji. My nephew seems fine, but he's still young and already has had endless operations on his legs and back and hands.

maybe i'm wrong here, but don't silby's and even j.'s arguments assume that there is "something" unconceived, that is acted upon by being conceived? but there is nothing. so the "crime" of bringing it into existence is, literally, victimless crime, a crime against nothing/no one

tbh that stance reminded me of anti-natalism: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-case-for-not-being-born

xps no

aww thanks j. i see i'm wrong, sorry for the stupid question

hurray for one less son of a bitch

why should I, personally, forgive my parents

put another way, i think one can say "satisfaction not guaranteed, but on balance it's a good thing" without suddenly transforming into a utilitarian

i want silby to write a response song to 'i hope you dance' from the child's pov called something like 'you hoped i'd dance but did you even consider if it was in my best interest to be born?'. it'd be like the 'no pigeons' song by sporty thievz.

Kinder’s answer is pretty much exactly ours: we both decided we’d probably regret it more if we hadn’t had kids, plus there was basically a moment after this vague anti-decision when E definitely and quite strongly wanted kids. And I was fine with that. Plus I’d seen my older brothers struggle to conceive and suffer miscarriages.

So much we didn’t know. Oh holy fuck what we didn’t know.

I love my kids. They are beautiful and funny and smart and charming - C regularly has older kids fawning over him and talking to him like he’s five rather than two, which I find weird, but he does seem to have this magnetism sometimes that he’s oblivious to. Maybe every kid does but you don’t notice it in other peoples’.

But I do sometimes wonder if it was worth it. Especially given what we’ve been through with C’s cancer. E always says “wtf else would we do with our lives, wtf DID we do before?!” and I agree - they give you SO MUCH purpose - but I can also think of plenty of things I’d do without kids in my life. Would I prefer it? Sometimes.

Knowing what I do now, would we still have had a second? Sometimes I think not. But then I think about C not having existed and, despite everything, it breaks my heart.

One of the best things about kids is watching them eat when they’re about two. Watching N eat back then, and C now, pretty much makes it worthwhile.

And it’s not about ‘continuing the family line’ or whatever but I do have this sense that if you don’t leave someone better behind after you to be a custodian of this world then it’s all been for nothing.

So are children for being special to you or for being their own person

great, great post nick

Had a vasectomy after two - because ‘do nothing more than replace yourself’ - and at five months he was diagnosed with cancer and I felt irrational guilt at us not being able to replace him.

Thank you rvw.

I mean, there’s this: https://www.instagram.com/p/B8TVByUpfeB/?igshid=1h7f0lelt3810

And being able to ride bikes and listen to records and go out to the cinema or a restaurant or drink wine on a rooftop in Andalusia whenever you want is GREAT, but these people who are laughing their heads of and having the time of their lives came out of my wife’s vagina and I put them there and she grew them and HOLY FUCK THATS MAD.

i read sheila heti's semi-fiction "motherhood" and rachel cusk's book about this (see https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/21/biography.women for background on that). read em a bit late (one baby out, another one on the way), but i thought they were both very good.

i can't think of any serious writing like that from a male perspective (recommendations welcome).

listen, I'm an idiot who hasn't read enough books, I'm getting to the end of my rhetorical rope here, all I want is for parents to accept that they've inflicted a potentially grievous harm on their children by having them

<3

Aimless

there's the rub. It's rare to know in advance what your probabilities are.

Yes, sadly, my daughter Puffaleta will be in a very different position from us if she considers babby. She's a carrier, so if she forms a boy babby there's about a 50% chance that said babby will be severely intellectually disabled.

Her choices will be like:

1. Not form babby
2. Adopt babby
3. Select a girl babby
4. Employ some yet-to-emerge technology to form a healthy babby (? Who knows where the science will be in 15-20 years?)
5. Roll the dice and form babby anyway (Not a path I would choose, but ultimately it will be up to her and a hypothetical future partner. She's bisexual, not that that is a determining factor.)

For my son Pufflet I just don't know if he'll ever be in a position to even think about forming babby.

Many xps, this was a difficult post to write. I want to go back and savor Mouthy's posts and respond a bit later

being a human and having a human are both risky ventures

Scik Mouthy, I also had a vasectomy after my second child was born.

For me it was less about an ironclad "anything other than replacement level is unethical," more like a combination of "two is the number we wanted and could handle," plus "gee wouldn't it be nice to never have to worry about birth control ever again," with a side order of "I'm 40 fucking years old and already exhausted all the time."

I don't regret Pufflet's birth and existence. Once he arrived it became our duty to love him unconditionally and do the best we can for him.

Nor do I regret the vasectomy - though I know for some parents of special needsy kiddos there is at least some impulse of "let's try again, and get a healthier one this time." That's not a motive I endorse, but I am not in a good position to judge people in different circumstances than us.

It transcends moral philosophy.

yeah it's hard to argue reproduction is such an arbitrary and "risk" choice when it's a fucking biological imperative. sperm. egg. sexual desire.

risky

Biological imperatives can suck it

That's kinda exacerbating matters in this case

Zing

Why does ilx call babies babbies now? What have I missed?

how is babby formed

Literally a 13 year old meme

We’ve told ilxors younger than this meme

*got not told

We probably don’t but if of you would get your kids to start posting we’d have a little more life in here