to form babby, or not to form babby

while my heart is with silby (and by extension VHEMNT and various forms of anarcho-primitivist nihilism) in terms of "yup bad idea", my head always remembers the wise words of a fellow enviro-activist: "you can't let the assholes have all the kids"

also, kids rule

u know what gandhi said "breed the change u want 2 see in the world"

no shame if you and yr partner are awesome and want to bring more of that energy into the world

I understand the logic of a single kid but I gotta say having 2 prevents their parents from having too much influence

(with appropriate apologies to the only kids here)

um i am LITERALLY the perfect father so i mean i guess i see how that would affect OTHER parents

if roads and public transport are both closed because they melted, does that have an influence

this thread has gone to some weird places: some edifying, some useless

one thing that has always frustrated me about being on the fence w/this topic is that 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

huh that's so weird!

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