to form babby, or not to form babby

Everyone deserves to have parent(s) who love them more than all others, of course it's fair.

I think the proprietary interest granted to birth parents of their children is inhumane.

At the very least all children should be granted a guardian ad litem from birth and the right to emancipation starting around age 5

do or don't you see that in nature, among non-homo sapiens xp

Child liberation requires tearing down the presumed naturalism of the birth-parent-family.

or to put it another way why am I not just as entitled to raise your kids as you are?

as an only child with no nearby cousins, growing up i had essentially no experience with babbies. never really occurred to me to have or want one. i'm pretty calm and good at explaining things, so as an adult my interactions with kids have been totally fine, but of course i could walk away if things went awry.

at one point i convinced/fooled myself into thinking that having a kid would probably be okay, and worthwhile, if i also had a good partner. neither of those things worked out.

mostly the idea of being constantly and endlessly 'on' and responsible scared the shit out of me, which is lame, but so it goes. i sleep like hell and have trouble leaving the house as it is.

i might have enjoyed being a part of many of the childhood activities, but i can't say i regret being childless at all. it will be a deep bummer when i'm dying in the hospital and no one visits or cares about me, but that doesn't seem like a great reason to have kids.

I am very much into that South Carolina filed bill that if the state bans abortion after 6 weeks then the state must compensate the woman the going surrogacy rate and provide living and healthcare expenses and under certain conditions lifetime healthcare expenses to the mother and child, + start a college education fund for the child.

Kids are wonderful, but I never want to be a parent. The big reasons are probably a lot to do with my own experience as a child: child of a bitter divorce, absent father, a very economically unstable home. I myself was a terrible, angry and violent teenager, and know that I couldn't deal with my own teenage self as a parent. I am amazed every day that my Mum put up with me, but I know being a single mother of 3 still wore her down, as wonderful as she was to us. I know people change, and learn lessons from previous generations, etc. but I genuinely fear that I would end up being a parent/husband like my Dad was due to some traits subconsciously handed down, and the general human thing of eventually becoming your parents. I wouldn't want to inflict that onto a child, or my partner. So there's that.

But there's also the fact that, growing up poor, I wasn't used to having money and freedom or stable relationships, and now I have all of those things, I see a child as something that could very quickly take that away from me. I value the joy that freedom brings me too much to risk it. I understand that people say there are joys associated with having children that are unmatched by anything else, and believe it, but I'm quite content with the joys I get from my partner, my friends, my work, literature, music, just being a human in the world. The potential joy of having a child isn't work the almost certainty of pain, anger and frustration that would also come along with it. The environmental impact of having a child is something that resonates with me a lot too. I don't know if we're at a place yet where we can have a mainstream discussion about the morality of bringing another first-world consumer into a world that is being ravaged by global warming and other environmental impacts overconsumption, but I think for the sake of the world and your potential child, it's something worth seriously considering.

xxp i have never regretted not having kids. life becomes insipid but i'm fine with it

yeah there's also the fact that having kid(s) would have been entirely economically unfeasible until the very end of my/our spawning period

47, married for 17 years, no kids, not having any.

Not sure we ever *made* a decision. I'm pretty passive and my wife never had a strong biological drive for children. In fact, pregnancy invokes some serious body horror feelings with her. We never got beyond general discussions.

Tbrr, I have a bunch of unresolved issues relating to my upbringing and felt like not visiting that shit on kids. At least that is the justification I use for the "decision." I just didn't feel like I would be a great parent.

These days I do feel slightly regretful at particular moments, but these are very passing thoughts based mostly around anxiety of loneliness in old age. But that ain't a great reason to have kids, either.

On the other hand, my wife and I are doing well financially, travel, are about ready to pay off our house, etc., none of which would have happened with kids.

people who do not love or care for their own offspring are even less likely to love or care for any other children under any circumstances, so the problem is not primarily located in the imposition of the parental custody upon the child, but in the shortcoming of parent qua parent. society does recognize the existence of failed parenting, and the need for other arrangements for the kids, but the system for this is chronically under-resourced.

all children should be granted a guardian ad litem from birth and the right to emancipation starting around age 5

this may vent your spleen, but apart from that I hope you know it is pure nonsense

idk anarchism for children!

I would love to raise 1/16th or so of a child

i am sure we could set up some meetings with some choice private equity funds to get this done.

lol

haven't seen adoption mentioned here. my two best friends were adopted, as well as my god daughter. I don’t think people need for a child to be genetically theirs to experience parental love

my parents are such dicks. I once brought up possibly being more willing to adopt older kids than having a baby of my own and they were so against it because of whatever stigma they have in their minds of not raising your own pure baby from scratch.

I don’t think people need for a child to be genetically theirs to experience parental love

as for loving an adopted kid, the love part doesn't need any genetic component. but the genetic link is actually kind of useful in its own way, in that many personality traits tend to run in families, at least as much as physical genetic dispositions do, so the chances are that you will recognize how your child is developing more easily, whether it's seeing a bit of yourself or some trait of a parent, grandparent or sibling. it's not entirely necessary, but it does help ease the child into the family.

I'm not sure I believe that the genetic link means much tbh. I don't have children of my own, and I didn't understand parental love until my god daughter was born (she was adopted from birth). But now I feel like I really get it, and it has nothing to do with a genetic relationship, for her parents or for me

many many things i don't get about having kids, but near the top is naming them You Jr. or having their names all start with K or whatever

when i was little i knew a pair of fraternal twins, both boys, one of whom got the Jr. while the other was instantly branded second-best

There are many circumstantial reasons my being a parent is unlikely to ever happen, but a big one is that for most parents I know, considerations often seem to shrink (quite understandably) down to "fuck you we got ours", consciously or not. Also the notion that making more life is the highest achievement in / "point of" life drives me up the wall.

Doing things for your kid(s), instead of for yourself, does feel like the most important stuff you could ever do, though. I certainly understand how that might sound pretty dumb to non-parents.

having a kid is unethical, to the kid, for making it exist without consent*, i can give a pascal's-wager style argument to prove this but the margins of this post are too small to contain it

*unless you're religious or quasi-religious and have some kind of sophisticated understanding of the repayment of intergenerational existential debt, which, good luck with that

Doing things for your kid(s), instead of for yourself, does feel like the most important stuff you could ever do, though. I certainly understand how that might sound pretty dumb to non-parents.

hence "quite understandably" - I don't blame them. in general I treat parenthood like a particularly effective and widespread cult, one whose benefits can only be properly understood by its membership.

This month my daughter is turning 9, and due to various considerations and circumstances, she’s gonna get her first ever non-hand-me-down device (my old, loveworn iPad mini no longer holds a charge) and her first pet that’s hers (our cat passed last month, cancer) and these seem like such significant milestones to me, whereas in the absence of her, they would be quotidian events (a trip to the Apple Store, a trip to the humane shelter).

^^^ El Tomboto's posts

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

Doing things for your kid(s), instead of for yourself, does feel like the most important stuff you could ever do, though. I certainly understand how that might sound pretty dumb to non-parents.

oh, this totally makes sense!

having a kid is unethical

ethics are a construct designed to improve life within a human society. when ethical constructs are pushed in the direction of absolutes, the results are always a reductio ad absurdum.

hence my asterisk

my parents are both good-hearted ppl but both deeply dysfunctional, terribly insecure and immature emotionally, and i've often though "wtf were they thinking, having kids". and i've often resented being born, as i suffer the terrible, endless psychic pain that follows having inherited these traits (not genetically, but by nurture/observation)

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

― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Wednesday, February 12, 2020 9:56 PM (six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

why are you acting like people acknowledging that their children add meaning to their lives is a gotcha

I love my kids unreservedly and have never regretted any aspect of parenthood, but I want to say that I respect and understand the reasons given here by people choosing not to have children. Specifically I would never feel threatened by someone making that choice, or think less of them either.

xp because ppl say it without acknowledging who pays for the meaning

biggest breakthrough we've had here is discovering, after 13 years, what topic can *finally* make silby act like a jerk

I’ve done it several times!!

silby's comments are fine

i kind of get what silby is saying though. Like the people who only do nice things for other people because it makes themselves feel good and it's a form of impression management.

I hate this part of asian culture because there is so much expectation and duty placed on the child to give back monetarily, in later caretaking and in success as an entitlement of their parents. It's so fucked up.

granted i have to quell the urge to nurture other people and place them first to my own detriment because that shit was ingrained in me and I hate it.

hadn't thought about the idea of 'impression management' before, makes sense

"But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun."

Ecclesiastes, getting down and dirty with it. But then, the Essenes and early Christians were all dead set against procreation. Jesus seems to have thrown in with that idea, too, but less explicitly than Ecclesiastes. Sophocles was known to have said something along those lines, too. The Catholics and Mormons have other ideas, obviously. You pays yer nickel and makes yer choice.

Everyone deserves to have parent(s) who love them more than all others, of course it's fair.

This is beautiful logic and a beautiful sentiment

xp i don't know that it would be better (to anyone) for anyone not to have existed, but it is most definitely the case that in the long run one person does the procreating, and the procreated does the existing, which is kind of dicey risk-assumption-wise.

Don't want kids, but would love to be an uncle. Unfortunately both my sisters didn't want kids either, and they're in their mid to late 40s. They have almost no maternal instinct. Now at least. Like my cats are cute as fuck and they just aren't enamored by them in the least (not equating kids to cats, but pets cuteness is tied into parenting instinct).

Totally feeling Tom's post about imbuing meaning to otherwise meaningless events. I do sometimes think it'd be so cool to mold a human from scratch and see the world through fresh eyes. But then I'll spend a day with my bff and his 3 young boys and I'm like yeah no, fuuuuuuuuuuuck that.

lol

His kids LOVE me. Partially cause I'm only around once or twice a year, and partially because our other best friend is a very cold, detached person who hates kids (though he is nice enough to the boys and shows affection in certain ways eg buying them stuff). But partially cause I do enjoy being around kids in short bursts and have no qualms with being goofy af with them.

I'm very happy with how my life is going. I enjoy my freedom. Why would I want to change it completely at this point. Compromising my freedom to accommodate my girlfriend's wants and needs is plenty for me and my selfishness.

Btw very interesting to read everyone's perspectives here

Matthew K's comment that everyone deserves to have parents who love them more than all others is so right imo

xp youve obv never talked to parents with large families

in my sons lil hoops league we had an end of season party at pizza video games house and the team mom (of 4) said she wished she had stopped at 2 (NB: we are not close or intimate enough friends to have had this conversation), not within earshot of those 2 but you know...*shrugs* lol

no one who has & is raising babby will tell you out loud that having babby was a decision that they regret

perhaps it is because they understand that such an act would do harm without doing the slightest bit of good. also, most feelings of regret are temporary, while parenting is lifelong and encompasses every known feeling a thousand times over.

I have a friend whose mom told him she would have aborted him if it had been legal at the time, which I don't think did wonders for his self-esteem, so, yeah.

look even if it would be a crushing unrecoverable psychological and spiritual blow for someone to coldly realize & admit such a horrifying thing, it would mildly assist me in my decisionmaking process therefore they should just do it

i imagine someone has called into 'beautiful anonymous' with this crucial info

I can see regretting it in the first few months when they do nothing but cry and ruin diapers but having a kid so fundamentally changes who you are that it's a little scary to imagine anyone having that thought after a couple of years

having a kid is a big risk, requiring optimism even without climate catastrophe. I'd imagine only the luckiest parents face their greatest challenges in the soiled diapers and crying years. I wouldn't want anyone to feel bad about experiencing regret in any stage, as it's easy to imagine circumstances where it's very rational and human. it's only the open sharing of the thought, depending on perhaps venue and who is listening, that could potentially be offensive.

lol i second guess it all the time

you spend most of your free time dealing with the little shits, and some of your non-free time too

news flash, kids are little shits. even the “nice” ones. they’re megalomaniacal, selfish little shits who expect you to do everything for them and then they complain about it. YOU WERE THE SAME WAY.

i was a demon kid until at least 7

I'd imagine only the luckiest parents face their greatest challenges in the soiled diapers and crying years.

very true but I mean if it's your first one there are definitely some thoughts at first of "I don't know if this is for me"...by 3 or 4 they're such a part of your life that you can't imagine being without them even when they irritate the shit out of you. I've definitely had those "it might not have been a good idea to bring kids into this world"/"I'm not sure I'm meant to be a parent" thoughts but if anything happened to them I'd probably never recover

Agreed, the absolute worst thing about being a parent ime is the constant awareness that something bad might happen to them. It subsides to background noise over time but never goes away.

Casper made up a genuinely awesome joke the other day. Not sure he understood the mechanism in an intellectual level but he nailed it.

Knock knock?
Who’s there?
Amanda
Amanda who?
A Mandalorian

Casper is three and technically still has cancer, though it’s been in remission thanks to targeted gene inhibiting drugs since he was about 9 months old. He loves Iron Man and eating garden peas straight out of the pod.

Form babby. What’s the worst that can happen?

that's a great one! hope he continues to see improving health, helluva card to be dealt at such a young age :(

very high quality stuff from Casper

<3 Casper

I have a friend whose mom told him she would have aborted him if it had been legal at the time, which I don't think did wonders for his self-esteem, so, yeah.

From when I was very little, my mom was very vocal in her opinion that "having children is the stupidest thing you can do in your life." As I got older, the phrasing changed to "I hope you don't do anything stupid like get married and have kids and then finally to "I'm so glad you didn't waste your life by getting married and having children." (note: this was after I *was* married, but my marriage only lasted 14 months). Neither my brother or sister had children (or any kind of relationship where a family would be likely) so this branch of the family is closed permanently.

So yeah: that talk is great for your self-esteem and personality. Thanks mom: you saved me from a life of emotional attachment and self-sacrifice but I did eventually find a decent therapist because of it.

I don't believe there's a absolute right or wrong answer to the thread title's question. It used to be that whenever I was asked about having children, I'd trot out the usual answers about overpopulation, inequality, and declining resources but I realized that I was fronting. I don't want children because I don't want the emotional competition from bringing a needy stranger into my house. I have no concept on how to be reassuring to an adult and yet I'm expected to do that for a child?

For me, the major phenomenological change in becoming a parent was how fast my own concerns just... melted away.

Like, in an instant, I (myself) went from being my top priority to sixteenth or seventeenth on the list. The things I thought were important simply didn't seem all that important anymore. In a way this was refreshing. ymmv of course.

no one who has & is raising babby will tell you out loud that having babby was a decision that they regret, even though there are babby-formers who must certainly feel that way

Reddit has had several threads where these people speak up. They're certainly there, though the reasons for regret vary a lot

"my son joined an indie rock band"

no one 'has anything against' only children, C or D? maybe you won't either