• New parents face up to six years of sleep deprivation, study says
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No one is stopping you from fucking, chill.
Is it really a problem that people want to live their own lives and be productive instead of spending 18 years or more taking care of someone else?
Look at japan's birthrates. They are forgoing having children in order to live their own lives and be productive. And i do think there are deeper issues when you render down child rearing to "spending 18 years or more taking care of someone else". It indicates a greater sense of selfishness, of the self-centeredness that is plaguing our society. Having a child isn't just "taking care of someone else". It is doing your part to ensure that things can keep going.
You're making a lot of assumptions about genetics that really haven't been substantiated. You have a 'feeling' that your collection hobby is heavily influenced by genetic or epigenetic factors, but that feeling doesn't have any basis in fact. Family habits can be passed down through behaviors as well. Is it possible that your family has a genetic predisposition to hoarding stuff? Maybe. But it's just as possible (probably more likely) that your family is teaching these practices down through the generations, however subtly. You're making a causative argument based on your preconceptions, not based on anything of substance. Ultimately, the question of nature vs nurture is very complicated and isn't entirely resolved in the scientific community. Of course genetics can affect behavior and certain species are thus led to behave in certain ways, and genetics can affect behavior on the scale of individual as well, but we don't entirely understand if or how genetic differences interact with culture and socialization to lead to specific behaviors on the fine scale you're talking about. Your assertion that we need to pass on these genetic elements which may or may not even exist, even to the detriment of our own happiness or financial stability is pretty extreme. You're talking about demanding people change their entire lifestyles for the sake of some pretty baseless speculations you're making.
... What? You're framing the decision to not have children as some kind of profoundly selfish act. I don't understand that at all. People just don't want to be slaves to their children. Personally there's a lot of stuff I want to do with my life, and it's all a lot of work so I don't think I'll have the time for children. And I'm pretty sure I'd be an awful mother anyway. I'd much rather marry someone I love and just live our lives together, both of us working on the things that excite us.
...keep going towards a planet with far too few resources to accommodate far too many people? Naturally we're going to see societal problems pop up when birth rates go down, because the modern world is based around an assumption of unsustainable, unmitigated growth. But that can't last forever. We can't keep ballooning our population forever because we only have one planet to live on for the foreseeable future. We're going to have to face those problems and figure out solutions to them, because "keep increasing the human population forever" is how we end up overshooting the earth's carrying capacity for humans, which could be catastrophic.
The way you're talking, it is clearly a profoundly selfish act. "Slaves to their children", "I", "my", "I". Having children is about the future. If you think you would be a terrible mother, then you may be right, but I think it is incredibly dangerous to encourage others not to have children. I'm not saying have many, three, four, tens of children. I'm saying reproduce. Recreate. Reinsure that things might keep going on after you're gone. Reinstill the positive ideals so that the world might become a better place, rather than achieve your own successes that will be rendered forgotten, meaningless, and pointless once you die.
The idea that encouaging as many people as possible to reproduce is somehow going to be better for the future is ridiculous. The environmental impact of expanding human populations is enormous. Our current rate of reproduction is not sustainable.
I don't think as many people as possible should be reproducing. I think those who are smart, are caring, are worried about how the world is going have a moral obligation to at least raise a child to be smart, caring, and worried about how the world is going. If they do not, then there will be nobody left to care for the world once we are gone.
Smart, caring, conscientious citizens can adopt and raise smart, caring, conscientious children. If we all consider it an obligation to reproduce, there won't be a world left to care for when we've demolished our environment to expand our populations.
Adopting a child to rear is good, having a child is better.
It's worse for our environmental and resource sustainability. On a global scale, having a child is a whole fuckton worse. The benefits of having a child are benefits for the parents, while the benefits of adopting are benefits for society. Hence why I'm saying that your claims that not having a child is 'selfish' is absurd. If anything's selfish, it's having a child.
Having a single child is not worse for our environment or resource sustainability, even on a global scale. It is less than replacement level. Having two children is fine. Having more than that is when it becomes a problem.
Lmao aren't you just quoting Idiocracy
Not knowingly. There are currently, in the United States, about 400,000 kids, from infant to 21 years old, up for adoption. This is not nearly enough for replacement levels.
So let me get this straight. You want every single person physically able to reproduce to do so, even people who do not want to, and then for families that do want to have larger numbers of children to be forced to have fewer? That worked great in China. Your moral demand for every person to breed is nonsensical. There are currently, in the United States, about 400,000 kids, from infant to 21 years old, up for adoption. This is not nearly enough for replacement levels. Of course reproduction is necessary and adoption alone isn't going to sustain the population at feasible levels, but the idea that everybody would just magically stop fucking is so patently absurd that I don't know why you're even bringing it up. I explictly said that reproduction is necessary, we just need to reduce it, and part of that process is going to be to get rid of these ideas that people have an obligation to reproduce regardless of whether they're suited for it.
And also you can load the kid on tons of candy and then immediately send them back to see the terror and destruction
This has been proven to be a bad idea Source: am not ant
thanks thread for making me feel like a piece of shit for having a kid
When the fuck did he say he wanted anyone to be forced to do anything
I want people to see having children as a beautiful thing and not see them as "parasites" or "crotch goblins" or "taking my spare time and money".
I think most people will have this view at one point in their life. It typically goes away when you reach adulthood/mature.
I very much hope so.
You just go ahead and let me know how we're going to get every single person who does not want kids to have kids, and ever person who wants more than two kids to have fewer. I don't see any feasible way to convince people to adopt such a policy besides compelling them to do so because convincing anybody to do something so completely fucking ridiculous is not going to happen. But however he wants to implement it, the idea itself makes zero sense. Do you legitimately think that people who do not want children, should have children, and that people who do want children should have fewer to compensate? Does that make the slightest bit of sense to you?
I mean, it's your decision. Be confident about it, it really doesn't matter what people here think. We're mostly 18-25, most people don't want a kid at that point in time. Especially in this day and age.
You shouldn't feel bad about having a kid, after all, people having children is necessary for the survival of our species. All I'm saying is that people should not feel compelled to have children or selfish about it, people should consider adoption if it's something they think they can and want to do, and that people who have kids should consider not having a whole bunch of them. But nobody should feel bad about having a kid, just to keep the environmental and long term societal impacts in mind when making decisions like this.
we aren't discussing fucking policy here, man. we aren't politicians, we aren't putting in place things that will actually change how the world works. what we say here really doesn't matter at all. i think having kids is great, and that people who want the world to be a better place can do so by having kids, but i'm not forcing anyone to do anything. we're just talking.
I just don't understand why you think people who don't want to have kids having kids would make the world a better place. It would make the world a worse place unless other people who want to have kids were having fewer. Your point doesn't make any sense.
some people just aren't ready for kids, or will never be ready for kids. I want to have a child, but I know I'm not ready to have one in terms of both maturity, and financial stability. My older sister used to tell me all the time how she would never want a child, and all children are awful. Now she has a daughter who is slowly approaching 4 years old, and she can't imagine a world without her. Of course, the thing to keep in mind was that my sister was both ready, and willing to have a baby. If you force a person to give up their career, hobbies or anything important to them for a responsibility they never asked for, it's just going to cause the parent un-needed stress, or even worse: Resenting your own child.
I would like more people to be open to the idea that kids are more than just parasites
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