Thanks. You said more to me than I want to let know over here. Very appreciated.
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I’m so sorry.
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My problem is that the way the world is going, the latter is outweighing the former (even though we hear poverty is decreasing, and certainly our lives are longer). I feel the world is headed for (even more) misery and destruction and I wouldn’t want to bring anyone into a world like that.
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Yep. Seven years into this gig and still haven’t come to terms with what my children will have to face. The fear stems from wanting more for your children than you ever knew, not less. Whatever the hardships to come in their life it is my job to prepare them, and to raise them to believe in themselves. They may not know the standard of living we have, but neither has 99.99% of humanity.
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It’s honestly fine and it’s a long time ago. No one escapes life Scott free. 
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Right on. While raising kids can be a supremely selfless act, creating a kid is an unambiguously selfish one. You are inflicting another human on a world choked with humans, and you are inflicting the world on another human without their consent, all so you can watch a little doppelganger of yourself totter around.
The tone of the article (the Boing Boing one, not the linked one) is weird. Rather than focus on the obvious and real grief one would have when losing a child, it focuses on the wrong, and frankly insulting, notion that life without a child is meaningless and not worth living. Fuck that noise.
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Both karma and the idea that “being natural” is somehow desirable or good (or that “natural” is even a meaningful category of actions or things) are total horseshit and deeply harmful concepts that cause tremendous suffering. Extremely “philosophically defective” stuff.
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I know. I’m sure it was still painful for you.
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I appreciate yours and @Lexicat opinions on this matter. Given pressure to procreate, especially for women, it is difficult to read something like this and not have the reaction you did. I hope, though, that you would give those of us as parents here the benefit of the doubt as to our motivations for posting. I would never suggest that my best friend’s life is less meaningful than mine simply because she has chosen not to have children. She has more time to devote to her passion in life: pet rescue. Nor would I suggest that another friend without rugrats who teaches yoga for free at the YMCA has somehow “missed out.” These are just two small examples in my small life, but because they don’t have to devote the time to kids, they are affecting the wider world in ways I cannot as I focus on what I have chosen to bring into the world.
The same is true for those who never meet and partner with someone. My sister, for example. She reached 40 and had not met the right person. She chose to have a child on her own. Is her life any less rich than mine simply because I followed a more traditional path? Absolutely not. It’s just different.
I have, do, and will defend a life without kids: whether it’s a decision not to have children or the inability to have them. Those lives have as much possibility as mine to be meaningful.* I only ask for the same respect.
This is an excellent question, and not one for which I have a good answer. This much I know is true: My life irrevocably changed the moment I felt my son and my daughter move inside me. Up until that point, it’s very abstract. But after that moment, well, it was as if inifinity was reduced to a small foot or hand. I’m growing another sentient being inside me and it was like two tectonic plates shifted. It remains the most metaphysical and spiritual moment of my life.
Nothing has been the same since, and others here, particularly @Donald_Petersen, have said it better than I could.
*ETA: Perhaps even more so.
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I re-read the BB post and I can’t find any statement even implying this. Help me out here.
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Can you provide an example from the text to prove what you’re saying?
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Thanks so much for the response. I think you actually framed the whole
thing more succinctly and coherently than I did.
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##Nope.
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To be fair, and I have kids, there is a prevailing narrative that “kids change your life and it’s so wonderful and those without just don’t understand” that I have sympathy for those reading this without kids who have a defensive reaction that might not be altogether rational.
I’m not trying to add fuel to the fire, @Melizmatic, although if you have a gif for that, I’m forever grateful.
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Life isn’t “meaningless without kids”, but losing a kid can make a parent feel like their life no longer has any meaning.
Backing away for real now, cause there’s way too much needless drama up in here.
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And you used a daisy. My favorite flower. I just may love you.
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I understand the prevailing narrative all too well, in ways that are profoundly personal (a lot more personal than the mundane infertility issues that many people struggle with).
But when someone starts to imagine that printed words say something they don’t actually say because their identity is bound up in not having children, then it’s more than a simple push-back.
And I resent that so many posters here who have put their heart and soul into divulging intimate details of their lives are being needlessly insulted for taking the time to do so.
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It’s really awful and complicated, the having/not having of the offspring. I sincerely cried at @Donald_Petersen posts here. Plus the tethering that @kenny described? Beautiful.
You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right. Superimposing intention on printed words when none is there always leads to trouble.
Imperfect I am, so forgive me.
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I come from a long line of really, really lousy parents and even if everything else was right, the world really doesn’t need parents like mine and like I’d be. I ain’t ever parent material, even on my good days.
For those that have kids, y’all look after them best you can. Can’t think that anyone here ain’t doing that, but, ya know, maybe an extra hug for the lil buggers, eh.
For those that lost 'em, I can’t even. Seriously. No words. Just so, so sorry for you.
That’s it. One of those subject I can’t really have opinions on, but I got plenty of feels.
Now I gotta go find whoever’s cutting onions and make 'em stop.
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HUG! Sorry. Maybe hugs make you uncomfortable. But whatever. HUG!
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