Children

czvo said:

If you want to have kids, have kids. If you don't want to have kids, don't have kids. There's no law or mandate saying you have to do one or the other.

And of course any decision to have kids is going to be based on what the parents want. They're the one having the kid. It's an inherently selfish decision because the one or two of them are going to have to commit their time to raising this person. There's really no way to make the decision to have a kid about anything other than yourselves.

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Yup.

Lots of good posts already in here, so I'll just agree with this one. Personally, I definitely want kids and probably not in the too distant future. At the same time, I totally understand people who decide not to have kids. It's a personal decision and people just do what they want, really.

As for actual reasons for those who do want kids, plenty already covered in here. But again everyone is different.

David. said:

1. I doubt you would opt not to have been given a life now that you've experienced it

2. Your life is going to be boring as fuck and meaningless if you don't have a family and are 50

3. Selfishness is hardly a bad thing. It's biologically imperative we look out for our best interests

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1. True. But there are good days and bad days.

2. Yep agree. But again, that is the cycle I am talking about from a philosophical lens. However, some of this may be skewed by my own family experience which is not very close and has mostly scattered to the winds now.

3. I think working together is likely a better solution. The dog eat dog, haves and have nots, nature that the US has spiraled into hardly gives the warm and fuzzy feelings.

Let's stay away from black-and-white thinking and absolutes. I'm mid-30's, gay, and have little to no interest in having children of my own someday. I'm perfectly content being an uncle to my siblings' kids, an "uncle" to my cousins and friends' kids, and working in a field where I support many late adolescents and young adults. I'm confident that my blood family and my friends in general, plus my career path, will give me plenty of meaning and satisfaction in my life. Hopefully plenty of travel thrown in there as well (which has not happened much the last 5 years due to grad school loans and saving up for a house - which I just bought!). I know many people similar to me (gay or straight) and later in their lives who are as happy as most other people their ages without having any children of their own (hell, sometimes no blood family of their own or that they're close to. family doesn't have to be who we're genetically related to).

And to anyone who has different goals and dreams and sources of meaning - awesome! You do you. I know plenty of gays who have or want kids of their own, and it's awesome to see that happen in today's society. But I'm also pretty damn confident that's not for me.

Chris said:

Yup.

Lots of good posts already in here, so I'll just agree with this one. Personally, I definitely want kids and probably not in the too distant future. At the same time, I totally understand people who decide not to have kids. It's a personal decision and people just do what they want, really.

As for actual reasons for those who do want kids, plenty already covered in here. But again everyone is different.

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Hydroponic3385 said:

Let's stay away from black-and-white thinking and absolutes. I'm mid-30's, gay, and have little to no interest in having children of my own someday. I'm perfectly content being an uncle to my siblings' kids, an "uncle" to my cousins and friends' kids, and working in a field where I support many late adolescents and young adults. I'm confident that my blood family and my friends in general, plus my career path, will give me plenty of meaning and satisfaction in my life. Hopefully plenty of travel thrown in there as well (which has not happened much the last 5 years due to grad school loans and saving up for a house - which I just bought!). I know many people similar to me (gay or straight) and later in their lives who are as happy as most other people their ages without having any children of their own (hell, sometimes no blood family of their own or that they're close to. family doesn't have to be who we're genetically related to).

And to anyone who has different goals and dreams and sources of meaning - awesome! You do you. I know plenty of gays who have or want kids of their own, and it's awesome to see that happen in today's society. But I'm also pretty damn confident that's not for me.

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/thread

Mr. Orange said:

I mean, I'm just having a conversation man...rather than get stuck in ones own head, and believe me...breaching this topic with the gf did NOT lead to a good conversation lol.

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Totally understand that, and I didn't mean to belittle on this. I think I had the similar conversation with every girl I had a relationship that lasted more than six months eventually. For two in particular I hope they never had kids. They were way too fucked up to reproduce.

Mr. Orange said:

. I think working together is likely a better solution. The dog eat dog, haves and have nots, nature that the US has spiraled into hardly gives the warm and fuzzy feelings.

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One thing I see here is that you are trying to find balance between your philosophy of life on the macro-level and how you make life-altering decisions on the micro-level. Would that be accurate? I ask because I had the same kind of thoughts during the Bush Administration... not that I want this to be a political discussion. When society has a lot of messed up stuff going on out of your control, it doesn't seem like the right place and time to have kids. I know I've read statistics that middle class families had a mini-baby boom during Obama's presidency because the society seemed comparively more stable.

Randolphkeys said:

One thing I see here is that you are trying to find balance between your philosophy of life on the macro-level and how you make life-altering decisions on the micro-level. Would that be accurate? I ask because I had the same kind of thoughts during the Bush Administration... not that I want this to be a political discussion. When society has a lot of messed up stuff going on out of your control, it doesn't seem like the right place and time to have kids. I know I've read statistics that middle class families had a mini-baby boom during Obama's presidency because the society seemed comparively more stable.

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Actually you nailed this... I won't make it political either, but the world has seems a lot colder, darker, less empathetic, and just...mean since the fall of 2016. And it's made me ask if it is a place I would want to bring a child. As opposed to the great society days. Of course those days were mainly great if you were white....

Impressive observation Keys. So how did you get over these thoughts?

Mr. Orange said:

Actually you nailed this... I won't make it political either, but the world has seems a lot colder, darker, less empathetic, and just...mean since the fall of 2016. And it's made me ask if it is a place I would want to bring a child. As opposed to the great society days. Of course those days were mainly great if you were white....

Impressive observation Keys. So how did you get over these thoughts?

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I think it would be inappropriate for me to tell anyone what to think on such an important and personal ethos like this. I can tell you that for me, I got engaged and I was absolutely certain that I wanted to create a lifelong partnership. She really is great and I still believe that, but nobody wants to read about my mushy stable relationship. I don't want to make others uncomfortable either, because I'm sure everyone feels like that when they first get married.

I just deleted a bunch of personal stuff to focus on your question specifically. I think finding the points of separation between your life and how you want to live and the society around us is a critical step for me. I believe in something called the Strength To Look Away. An article written by Gregory Rodriguez by that title about processing terrorism sort of led me on this path. We live in a world that told us for years we had to be as updated as possible on current events. In some ways, that has become a way for us as a society to be manipulated.

Finding my own centered happiness within is more valuable than ever, and for me that meant a little more financial stability and kids. They bring me personal joy and being a good father brings all of us more joy. Follow what is happening on the world, but don't let it consume who you are. That's what I've been grooving to at least.

Mr. Orange said:

Thanks for the reply, but also sort of proves my point. Most people are have kids because they want a purpose. And now they have created a human that will have to deal with pain, suffering, death. All because their parent wanted a "purpose" or companionship.

In a society with things like Universal Basic Income, Universal Healthcare, etc etc, I could understand it more. But modern society seems pretty cruel. Don't get me wrong...in my early 20s I wanted kids, but now into my 30s not so sure. Gf and I are having some issues on the topic. I'm sort of just letting of some steam and thoughts here.

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Serious question. Would you right now prefer to be alive or do you think you’d prefer to give death a shot right now ?

If you lost someone and had a chance to bring them back would you even want them back now ? Or leave them where they are ?

I certainly don’t believe creating a person and being fortunate to provide them life is cruel at all. Many of us have suffered in some form or another and some much more than others—but I’m sure most of us are grateful for having the experience to be alive..

PIP said:

Serious question. Would you right now prefer to be alive or do you think you’d prefer to give death a shot right now ?

If you lost someone and had a chance to bring them back would you even want them back now ? Or leave them where they are ?

I certainly don’t believe creating a person and being fortunate to provide them life is cruel at all. Many of us have suffered in some form or another and some much more than others—but I’m sure most of us are grateful for having the experience to be alive..

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Alive, but only because I don’t know what the alternative is. Same with the person. But that’s another unknown existential. And I can imagine people who have suffered abuse or mental illness or extreme poverty or the like may feel differently. But yes I would choose alive.

This thread has been helpful though, as my mind was in a bad place. Thanks RCF!

Here is that article I mentioned. Of course, it's actually about processing bad news in current events and not about raising a child at all, but I found it ten years after reading it. I think I'll use it in the class I'm teaching this summer, so thanks for giving me a reason to find it:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez8-2008dec08-column.html

What terrorists want

Remember when your high school teachers tried to give their lessons more urgency by repeating the old adage that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it? Well, those days are over, or at least they should be. That's because in today's hyper-connected world, oblivion and forgetting are no longer options. The much greater danger today is our postmodern penchant to watch, replay, fixate and fetishize history even as it's happening.

Seven years ago, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen got into a heap of trouble by calling the 9/11 terrorist attacks "great art." But put aside his insensitivity and you can start to see that he had a point. What Stockhausen (who died last year) was referring to was the performance-like aspect of the televised World Trade Center crashes. He was amazed that Al Qaeda could reorient the American public's worldview in "one act" -- something, he lamented, that a person in his profession could never achieve.
The attacks in Mumbai had a similar performance-art quality. The terrorists, who did nothing to obscure their identities, were monitoring international media reaction to their three-day killing spree on their BlackBerrys. In other words, as they slaughtered people, they were watching us watch them.

Some critics have blamed the media for giving the Mumbai terrorists the attention they so clearly desired. Anyone from Los Angeles to Cape Town could view real-time video feeds of burning hotels and sniper fire. If that wasn't enough, Mumbai residents were also providing live updates by way of Twitter, as well as Flickr and cellphone photographs. As you watched the events unfold, you knew that somehow you were playing into the killers' hands. The terrorists kill to grab your attention, and they dare you to look away.

"This is precisely how terrorism is meant to work," British terrorism expert Paul Cornish wrote last week. "The terrorist's action must always be complemented by the target's reaction in order to complete the scene."

Part of that reaction is the rush to memorialize the moment and honor the dead. The terrorists lure their target societies into the need to remember -- the iconization of the event. They're under no illusions that they will remake the world with their actions or win a conventional battle; their goal instead is to invade our collective psyches. And the rush to memorialize, remember and enshrine these events -- and their victims -- plays into the hands of the terrorists as much or more than 24/7 news coverage.
Of course, it's true that memorializing trauma is one way of processing and making sense of tragedy and violence. If terrorist attacks on unsuspecting civilians breed mass feelings of insecurity and vulnerability, then memorializing the victims and going over and over the event is a way to reclaim some semblance of order. But the manipulation of those memories can also end up being less an act of honoring the dead than of glorifying and justifying the actions of the killers.

The remorseless Mumbai attackers clearly felt that the enshrined memory of their own dead legitimized the murder of others. An Indian television station quoted a militant as asking: "Are you aware of how many people have been killed in Kashmir? Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims? Are you aware how many of them have been killed in Kashmir this week?"


It's a vicious circle. Survivors often allow themselves to be defined by the evil wrought upon them by others. The survivors "complete the scene" that the terrorists started by never forgetting. Literary critic Leon Wieseltier once wisely called into question the transformation of oppressive "experiences into traditions."

Although he was speaking of events that happened over years, like slavery or the Holocaust, I think his analysis extends to incidents of terrorism. "In the memory of oppression," he wrote, "oppression outlives itself. The scar does the work of the wound. ... It is a posthumous victory for the oppressors, when pain becomes a tradition."

I don't blame the media or their consumers for fixating on the violence in Mumbai. It's impossible to forget 9/11 just as it instantly became impossible to forget the events at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, the Chabad center and all the other now infamous locations in Mumbai. But from time to time, when the killers take over our image-driven world, when their actions are first memorialized in one iconic digital feed or another, and as that memorializing explodes into the future, we should also summon the strength to look away.

Mr. Orange said:

No...it's I always wanted kids. I want to have a family. I this...I that.

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I can't even pretend to understand that. Why is "I want kids" a poor reason to have them? What are you advocating - that people only have kids whem someone else wants them to have kids? That if you actually want to have kids yourself, that's inherently bad? Why is pursuing your own happiness/self-interest bad?

I'll say this - the concept that people shouldn't have kids because "growing up is too hard", or "young adults have it tough nowadays and you shouldn't want to put your kids through that" is nuts. That's basically saying, "Gee, you'd really be much better off if you'd never been born." I suspect most kids wouldn't quite agree.

If I want a dog because it's great companionship and responsibility, that means don't have a dog because I benefit from having a dog and that's selfish.

Don't make money because it benefits me to make money and therefore making money is selfish.

Don't get in a relationship because you want a relationship and that's selfish.

That is illogical. Just.. Do everything that you don't want to do and that doesn't benefit you if that's how you wanna play it.

The Human Q-Tip said:

I can't even pretend to understand that. Why is "I want kids" a poor reason to have them? What are you advocating - that people only have kids whem someone else wants them to have kids? That if you actually want to have kids yourself, that's inherently bad? Why is pursuing your own happiness/self-interest bad?

I'll say this - the concept that people shouldn't have kids because "growing up is too hard", or "young adults have it tough nowadays and you shouldn't want to put your kids through that" is nuts. That's basically saying, "Gee, you'd really be much better off if you'd never been born." I suspect most kids wouldn't quite agree.

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Yeah I don't think you did understand.

It's the existential question. Is your unhappiness and unfullfillment a reason to create life? Is that the most selfish of choices? Is your unfullfillment a reason to continue this cycle? I don't think most people think of the existential part before they have kids. No...they just want them for themselves. They want their fulfillment.

And the second paragraph...I mean of course you want to consider the environment before you have children. Zombie apocalypse? Probably not the most humane thing to do to have children.

David. said:

If I want a dog because it's great companionship and responsibility, that means don't have a dog because I benefit from having a dog and that's selfish.

Don't make money because it benefits me to make money and therefore making money is selfish.

Don't get in a relationship because you want a relationship and that's selfish.

That is illogical. Just.. Do everything that you don't want to do and that doesn't benefit you if that's how you wanna play it.

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You out here giving birth to dogs now? Dog is already born homie, you just adopting. Money is not sentient. Relationship? That person already here. None of these examples are good.

Look for all we know, not existing is eternal bliss. And with life comes suffering. And with life comes death. So if non-existence is nirvana and bliss, would it not be inhumane to create life? Assuming we knew this about non-existence? Would you still create?

My sister has a kid who has a birthday in 6 days, he'll be 2. I enjoy seeing him every couple months and watching him grow/change and see the new things he says or does. My brother's wife will be having a kid sometime in the next 10 days most likely, so I'll be an uncle x2.

Parenting is a hell of a lot of work, so props to parents on that. I'm not married at this point, and not sure if I'll have kids or not, but I'm glad my sister has one and my brother has one. Being an uncle is pretty cool. I can see the kids from time to time when I want to, at holidays, etc., but I don't have to worry about whether I'm going to be woken up 2 or 3 times per night.