- cross-posted to:
- mrlovenstein@sh.itjust.works
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Do you have any idea how much you have to abuse a living being for it to consciously not want to have kids?
And we achieved this level of abuse on humans! And we did it very well, in reproducible way, with reproducible results across multiple countries! We should make a research paper about it.
Nah,
I just think that they’re annoying, and they would absolutely ruin my life
There’s not a single thing that appeals about having children. Everything I enjoy would be ruined by them
I wasn’t beaten or abused by society. I live in a civilised part of the world, rather than the shit show that is 'Murica
It’s not neccesary to invent grand reasons for not breeding
I just didn’t want to
I mean, cynical part of me wants to thank you, since my kids will have better chance at life with less competition for it.
This is exactly the kind of thing breeders say that makes me cringe at the thought of reproducing another human into this world. Fucking lunatic
It’s people like that that comfort me in my belief that leaving the trees was a mistake.
I find people that say “breeders” are even more cringe.
Okay?
Unironically calling another person a breeder is kinda fucked though.
Unironically thinking it’s better to keep jamming unloved kids into this hateful world instead of making it a better place for those already in it is pretty fucked too
Having and raising kids and bettering the world we live in aren’t mutually exclusive.
They certainly aren’t mutually inclusive either
What makes you think their kids are unloved? You just seem extremely bitter. It’s cool that you decided not to reproduce. Whatever, it’s your life and your decision to make. But fuck you for thinking like that about people who do have kids. Fuck. You.
It’s justified. You are not thinking straight, and are shoving non-consenting people into a world that is overburdened, and explicitly does not want them.
We need to fix this place, before forcing anyone to live in it.
You just assume every child is unloved and maybe in their lifetime they won’t make the world a better place? Lol
Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but with parents like this:
“I mean, cynical part of me wants to thank you, since my kids will have better chance at life with less competition for it.”
I don’t expect the world to become a nicer, better, place.
Or, your kids could have less support.
So, let’s say you have a system where people go to work, do their job, and get paid. The employer wants more productivity, so the work becomes more stressful (“a full workload”). The worker does more for less, the company celebrates.
There is a hidden element here: stress. Your workers will be more productive, however their baseline stress levels will rise over time. It’s cumulative and takes years to show; but it means everyone above a certain age who works a well paying job has a high stress burden. A lot of people live without any job security.
Stressed organisms do not reproduce.
I’d put it this way: being a parent is basically a second job. If your workplace takes 100% of your work capacity, then there is none left for raising children.
everyone above a certain age who works a well paying job
Haha I wish
I like how its so obvious there is no need to talk a single word. This could have easily been much longer, but these arguments are sufficient.
because my life is ruined shitheap of misery and i dont have the emotional capacity to deal with kids, the financial capacity to afford kids, and my genetics are a ticking timebomb that i really wouldnt want to inflict on kids the way it was inflicted on me.
and lets not even get into the world itself and how its a festering cesspit on teetering on the edge of fascistic ruin because an elite group of corrupt billionaires don’t want to ever give up their dragon hordes, or their ability to fuck infants and toddlers.
I was raised in a very dysfunctional household. I broke free, met an amazing partner, and we both wanted children. I finally have the opportunity to be a kid again with them, provide them the childhood I never had and be apart of it, by having the childhood I never had. My kids are 9 & 11… and we are slowly having to pull back on fun active activities outdoors during the summer months because the environment is getting worse and worse year over year…
I broke the cycle, but their childhood is slowly being robbed of them.
Record rain in my area to where water drainage infrastructure is being destroyed bit by bit every fucking night. Massive tornado inducing storms where we normally don’t see them (a freak event killed a bunch of people and destroyed nearly a billion dollars in property back in the 80s, nothing since and nothing before). Record amount of tornados in my Province, humid as fuck when I live in the prairies. Smokey unbeatable air because of the one area not getting rain burning down.
I want off this ride.
Same. Never had a tornado warning in my life. Now we get several actual tornadoes every year. I love my kids and I love being a parent but I feel so guilty.
The short answer is: I don’t want to.
The longer answer is: I really, seriously, don’t want to.
That’s the thing that so many people seem to miss
They want reasons that they find acceptable, not “I don’t wanna”
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The fact that I just don’t want kids is a “legitimate” reason
It’s offensive that you think there are “legitimate” reasons, because it implies that anything else is “illegitimate”
I don’t need one of your “legitimate” reasons. I don’t want to. I also don’t want to have a dog, do I need a “legitimate” reason for that?
I went to the Arctic in 2006, learned a lot about our climate future, and decided that if any of it started coming true I wouldn’t have any kids. 20 years later, it’s all far worse than we imagined and i am happy i didn’t bring kids into this mess.
Number One: I’m a homosexual, so I’m not having the reproductive type of copulation, EVER.
Number Two: Bigots. They poisoned public perception of homosexuals. They fought to legislate away our rights and prevent us from adopting children amongst many other things like legalized marriage. They pushed gay people into the fringes of society, lead our friends and families to abandon us, marginalized, and isolated us. Those scars run deep and the societal damage is still festering. Even if I were still young enough to feel confident I could raise a child and live long enough to finish the job now that things are “better” and these rights are an option to me, I wouldn’t adopt. I have seen the inside, and I know it’s all too easy for society to fall back into the abyss. NO thank you. I’m already at max capacity caring for adult parents, can’t imagine if there were children in the equation as well.
Now that’s just me personally. On the other hand…
Fewer couples have the capacity and/or desire to support a family, let alone a large one, as it means a loss of income from one or both partners not working, vastly increased expenses, strain on relationships, and a myriad other problems. If most people could live comfortably and with reasonably fulfilled needs/desires on the income from one person and it didn’t require that one person to work themselves to death, then you might see higher birth rates.
Anecdotally, the people I’m seeing having the most kids (like 3+) are pretty much all financially very well off or struggling really badly. There are exceptions, of course, but most couples who are keeping their heads above water (if only barely) know their limits and recognize that having kids, let alone multiple children, would bring hardship to all involved.
this feels like that one sponge bob meme template with the trash or whatevs.
Trying to find a moment in history when the long term outlook was rosey enough to say “Now is the right time to have kids”, and I can’t.
Part of having kids is the struggle of supporting other people. Part of the joy of having kids is positioning a future person to do things you lacked the opportunity to do, yourself.
If humanity can solve climate change, we still will not be the generation that lives to see it. We’ll pass the torch and then our children will pass the torch and then our grandchildren will know if we were successfully.
My bloodline survived oppression, war, famines, subjugation, violent storms and many more things. I fully understand and agree that people who don’t want kids and can’t see themselves emotionally/financially supporting them should not have kids. It should be a choice and should be a passionate one and there’s nothing wrong with deciding it’s not for you. This doomsaying crap is an awful excuse though. Other than the highest form of elite in a society, there has never been a guarantee for safety or security.
Is it scary that we will be experiencing climate change and the associated catastrophic events associated with it? Yes, it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying that there will be death there will be suffering and there will be violence. It sucks that while we’ve gone through big culture shifts as a species we haven’t united over this or are making big shifts to fix it. We CAN though. We HAVE united under struggle historically. We DO survive the impossible and the terrible and while I can’t say with any absolute that most people are great, there are great people and have been those who have made a positive change.
feeling like the whole society is absolute delulu atp. the world is going down so why the fuck would you set kids in this world? everybody is acting like they dont fear the future and everybody is just thinking one day ahead. do they really think its going to get better by magic?
The drive to reproduce is very deeply seated.
never got that. like i get the drive to have sex, to do risky things or somethink spontaneous. But you can think about kids for years. you can always decide and take your time with the decision. i know for most people its not that deep, but for me i never got the feeling to want my own kids. why would i?
Do you think condoms co-evolved with life on Earth? What do you think happens after sex? You’re programmed to respond to miniature copies of yourself.
you can choose to adopt. i also think kids are cute, but the world is going down and i dont want to be responsible for a human, because i think if you start your life right now the whole world will be shit like 10-30 years from now on. the world is already shitty & im trying to life as good as possible. i also like cute dogs, but if i cant provide i dont get one. imo nobody is ready for whats comming. so yes ill use condoms ffs
Not to mention the clear financial aspect
This is a much better reason, frankly.
“I couldn’t bring a child into a world like this” is a bit of mental gymnastics that people use to convince themselves that they’re being noble and selfless with this decision, when in reality it’s neither noble nor ignoble, neither selfless nor selfish. Every child eventually hits their parents with the classic “I never asked to be born!”, and while it’s certainly true, NOBODY asks to be born, and life has ALWAYS sucked in some way or another. Should pre-humans have refused to have kids because it would be cruel to bring them into a world where they have to kill to eat? Nonsense.
If people simply don’t want to have kids, they should simply say that and own it. They don’t OWE it to anybody to have kids - but they don’t owe it to anybody to not have kids, either. It’s not a moral decision in either direction. It’s simply a case that some people don’t feel up to the responsibility, and that’s fine: not superior, just fine.
And before anyone says that not having kids helps to keep the surplus population down: no problem on Earth is a result of the population being too high. There’s enough food for everyone; the problem is distribution. There’s enough land for everyone; the problem is that some people are hoarding. If the population starts using renewables and just generally going green, corporations build more data centers and invent other novel ways to waste resources.
No, they don’t owe it to anyone else to have kids. There is a biological imperative to procreate, generally, which I think is why a lot of people treat having kids as the default - something you need a reason not to do.
None of this is really relevant at an individual level. A person is free to do what they wish for whatever reason or no reason. But when an entire population stops procreating, after millennia of compulsively doing so, there is probably some cause worth understanding.
Even in that, I’m not saying it’s a problem that must be solved. Just that there is probably some cause. I do believe the biological imperative is there.
Multiple reasons can be true. I could afford kids but I don’t like them. At the same time I lack the energy for such a constant responsibility. But both of these reasons don’t exclude the fact that I’d rather have humanity die out than set another person in this world as long as the current downward trend continues.
What reasons I tell people depends on who I’m talking to. Especially old people get really condescending if you simply tell them you don’t like kids.
Why not? Pre-humans were not smart enough to recognise that having children would cause the children to suffer. Perhaps it would be better to simply die out as a species. It all depends on how you view morality and how you weigh non-existence
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If it depends on how you view it, then it’s not a moral obligation, it’s a personal preference. Which is fine, but just acknowledge that.
Except morality is subjective and thus inherently dependent upon how one views it. There is no such thing as “objective morality”. Morales are always about personal preferences.
There is no such thing as “objective morality”
Then there’s no such thing as morality, but personal preference.
Yes.
no problem on Earth is a result of the population being too high.
Pre-industrial humans caused mass habitat loss, species extinction, and even climate change, and that was with their relatively miniscule populations and emissions. What quality of life are you imagining over eight billion people having such that we somehow don’t continue wrecking the environment? And how do you plan on putting the genie back in the bottle regarding all our polluting technological “advancements” that require fossil fuels and/or intensive mining? Who’s declaring to the world that plastics, electricity, and all forms of motorized technology are over, and how do you imagine this would be enforced?
Even completely stripped of all our technology, humans are still animals, and any animal species will wreak havoc on their environment when overpopulated. Hell you don’t even have to be an animal; go look up the Great Oxygenation Event or what happened when trees first evolved. What do you suppose Earth is going to be like for the millions of years required for it to adapt to the changes we’re making? Unlike monocellular organisms and plants, however, we are sapient creatures; if we can observe this is happening and know we’re the ones causing it, how is it not in any way a moral issue?
If you accept the concept of objective morality, then yes, it’s a moral issue. But I’ve already pointed out that population size is not the cause nor the solution. These are not actual percentages, but if I say “20% of the people cause 80% of the waste”, hopefully you’ll understand the underlying concept I’m trying to communicate.
My selfishness pushes me to not make life anyone else’s problem.
Every child eventually hits their parents with the classic “I never asked to be born!”, and while it’s certainly true, NOBODY asks to be born, and life has ALWAYS sucked in some way or another
Just because something has always been bad or worse and for everyone, that doesn’t make it ok.
The concept that either life must be perfect or else we’re all better off having never been born, is a hell of an extreme.
Yes, just like life. There’s also no perfection in life, if life was perfect it wouldn’t be life in the first place.
In the US you can’t even buy vegetables right now without worrying about getting explosive diarrhea. Just the thing you want for your children.
Our government is just trying to help the people of America by tackling the obesity crisis with this all natural ozempic alternative!
/s (if it wasn’t obvious)
You slash s, but real talk. Make sure your food is up to temperature. A lot of people are about to find out why past us made the FDA in the first place.
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CDC is currently having trouble finding the source and keeping track because a few years ago Trump literally dismantled the very programs that were tasked with doing so.
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Nah, you meant it was because of Biden, surely, and maybe Obama too, right?
Honestly, the government trying to help you is bad.
-ronnie
I was looking at the costs of raising a child the other day and I don’t know how anyone does it. My job pays garbage with trash health insurance.
I’m just so mad at the management class with their high pay and not doing any actual work. My boss seems fine - I think he knows this is bullshit and goes a little out of his way to make it easier for me. But everyone above him? If I saw them drowning I’d have to think a long time before throwing a life vest.
They don’t want to make it more affordable to have children so that women are forced to drop out of the workforce to stay home and raise them.
But they also don’t pay enough to be able to raise a kid without both parents working too, I take it?
Keep them poor and distracted.
I could totally afford a child, but if I chose to do that, I wouldn’t be able to afford anything else fun, so I haven’t chosen to. By all means, I make a pretty decent living and would’ve probably been in the upper middle class 20 years ago.
I was in the top 2% financially in my country before I walked away from that life (the work I did was lucrative, but a brutal grind)
At no point did money feature into the equation
I just really don’t like kids.
Yeah, there are other reasons than just money for me too, though I do want to have one or two some day.
Generally agree, but where did the air quality decrease compared to some decades back?
(80s kid here, so maybe my brain is to slow to realize it, because of the remains still in my bloodstreams of the lead fumes and unfiltered coal power plant exhausts I inhaled back then…)
It didn’t. Air quality is substantially better world wide, there are better, real indicators of how bad the state of the world is the artist could have used. But also far more metrics about how better the world is, which no one ever likes to talk about. Way less extreme poverty, way less starvation, way less war, way more access to clean water, way more vaccinations, etc. The problem is the ultra rich are making life worse for the majority of privileged people, and we are really feeling it. But worldwide, humanity is objectively leaps and bounds better than it was 100 years ago
But its also air pollutants like smoke particles and car fumes. I’m genuinely thinking of taking the bus today instead of biking because I don’t want to kill my lungs.
Update: In case anyone reads this. The Canadian wildfire smoke moved into my city and completely blocks sight within a mile, I couldn’t see the two biggest buildings (not to mention the huge but smaller towers) in downtown from a bridge I bike across everyday. When I tried breathing through my mouth all I could taste was smoke, so I solely breathed through my nose.
Yes but those were worse in the 80s too. Cars used leaded fuel and diesel cars didn’t have mandatory soot filters. I drove behind a Mercedes with a broken (or removed) soot filter the other day and half of the backside of that car was just covered in soot. Like it had shit itself.
You’re probably still better off riding a bicycle due to the simple fact that you’re getting exercise, unless you’re in, say, New Delhi or you ride along a literal highway filled with diesel trucks.
Well, but still during the eighties most of the houses in my area burned brown coal in crude ovens to heat their homes, the cars spit out blue, only half-burned lead-enriched and carbohydrate-tasting exhaust in huge amounts, while the surrounding forests were dying because of all the unfiltered sulphuric acid the power plants emitted.
During winter, we often had dense smog in the valley, heavily tasting like a mixture of wood smoke and burnt rubber and triggering frequent coughing.
And just staying in the inside also wasn’t that great of an option, as constant cigarette smoke was a given everywhere.
If I had to name one thing that definitely has gotten better by an insane amount, it would the air quality.
Right, it’s like - is it worse now than being, say, a middle ages European serf? Or anyone at almost any point in 99% of human history?
You’re not wrong but it certainly feels like it right now, I’m in the Twin Cities and the air is just so gross right now due to being downwind from the Canadian wildfires. We’re just straight up being told to not go outside with a hazardous rating.
Exactly what I was going to say. The comic is only a couple days old, and I don’t know where the artist lives but here in the Twin Cities there has been smoke from Canadian wildfires around this time for several years straight now. I had to postpone my tennis plans today because of it. My older coworker this morning told me it used to never be like this. The office custodians closed the outside air dampers because the smoke was leaking inside.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure the comic is talking about the wildfire smoke. It smells like burning tires outside my home right now and everything is yellow.
Utah
Inversion days in the Salt Lake valley were so dystopian while I was there.
From the smoke of Forrest fires :-/
