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Our generation is the first to realize that having kids fucking sucks.
I've had the opportunity to foster twice in my life and both times are some of the happiest I've been. I'm gearing up for a run at permanent adoption in the next few months because I think kids are absolutely amazing and I want the opportunity to raise someone from childhood to adulthood in order to share everything about life that is good.
I've got friends who are in the teaching field, and they regularly give me some wild stories. But the worst things they inevitably come back on are the administration hurdles and the idiotic bureaucracies. The kids are always the reason they stay in the field. They love the kids, even the rough cut ones. They even like the parents, more often than not.
Having kids is an amazing, life changing experience that transforms you and gives you the realiest opportunity to connect with other people and transform the world around you. The fact that we treat it as some kind of luxury, rather than a fundamental part of life, is a tragedy that's reflected in the hollowing out of the nation.
I don't have words this good to say but I just wanted to echo this.
I love being a dad. It feels like the most important and fulfilling thing I've ever done and I love my kid more than life itself. The only thing I'd change about it IS doing it under capitalism. Childcare costs, having to do a religious preschool because secular ones are even MORE expensive, my wife and I both having to work full time jobs (often with decent length commutes) and not feeling like we get enough time at home with him.
None of these are inherent to parenthood they're inherent to capitalism.
bro it isnt a "fundamental part of life", its just that you are a caring and responsible parent who understands the gravity of what it means to raise a child to adulthood and accepts it wholeheartedly
raising kids should not be seen as a way of finding meaning for the sake of finding meaning, its someone elses life in your hands, meditation, prayer, and shitposting also exist
raising kids should not be seen as a way of finding meaning for the sake of finding meaning,
Good thing he didn't say that then. It's a fundamental part of life because it literally enables the existence of future generations of humanity. Human life doesn't happen without parents. It's fine to not want kids, its not a fundamental part of every single individual's life, but it is a fundamental part of life as a whole, for the species.
"Having kids is an amazing, life changing experience that transforms you and gives you the realiest opportunity to connect with other people and transform the world around you. The fact that we treat it as some kind of luxury, rather than a fundamental part of life..."
I hate this website sometimes. I typed out a whole reply and then clicked cancel accidentally lol
Anyhow, I can totally see where you would get that impression but I think you are kinda assuming the worst. I don't personally know anyone that thinks "everyone should have kids even if they don't think they want to" or anything remotely like that, and zifnab seems like a good dude, so I was more charitable in my reading. It was pretty clear to me that he was countering the increasingly deranged posts about how awful having kids is and nobody should do it by citing his own experience and those of people around him, not saying that that poster in particular, or "everyone always", should have kids. Just reinforcing that it isn't an inherently miserable experience, quite the opposite, for many it turns out to be very rewarding.
I don’t personally know anyone that thinks “everyone should have kids even if they don’t think they want to”
I do, I see it everywhere in person and online whenever the topic is brought up. Its a common cuckservative talking point and forms part of the background radiation of ideology.
However, “everyone should have kids even if they don’t think they want to” isnt the statement im responding to, its the assertion that having children is "a fundamental part of life" and is an inherently positive thing. I think this is dangerous in this day and age because everyone is on their own, the man doesnt give a shit about anyones wellbeing and our soyciety is basically a free for all.
As such, I believe that one should think really really really carefully about bringing more people into this world or taking on the massive burden of childcare, forming someone else's life. Suffering is a guarantee in life, are you prepared to subject another human being to it?
I think you're mostly right but the focus on "parents need to make a responsible decision" over "attack the forces that actually make our society such a cruel free-for-all" rubs me the wrong way. I'm sure you care about both, but rhetorically the focus is really skewed. I just don't think anti-natalism or whatever is super productive, even if conservatives are going crazyballs the opposite direction. People who feel as you do will make their choices one way, people who do not, won't, and I don't think convincing people not to have kids is nearly as productive as tryign to improve conditions for everyone.
and this:
Suffering is a guarantee in life, are you prepared to subject another human being to it?
this also does not sit well with me. Sure, there will be suffering in life, fine, but having a child does not mean you are the cause of everything that happens to them. Suffering has material causes that are not the sole responsibility of parents. If someone assaults your kid, or some company irradiates them and gives them a horrible cancer, or whatever, that is not the parents fault for bringing a kid into a world where that could happen.
Anti-natalism is defeatist garbage that surrenders all infinite possibilities of the future to the altar of capitalism. We should work to excise these ideas from ourselves. This idea is a bastard child of capitalist realism and causes loving awesome comrades to confuse compassion for cowardice. It posits that life is suffering and the world is damned to live out as a capitalist hellscape. The time for action is past, the world is going to burn, and everything nice will go with it. (For loving Disco Elysium so much this website seems to forget that the deserter isn't right) Anti-natalists cry out from the rooftops:
"save your kids from suffering!" "Don't bring new people into the world!"
They've given up. The logical conclusion from that is that we should all save ourselves from suffering by killing ourselves.
It's as if we're trying to end Capitalism by striking from the grave.
This is ridiculous. There is a time in your life that at least a single good thing happened. Or a simple hint that there is good in the world. One instance that bore the fruit of love for your fellow man. You wouldn't be a socialist otherwise. This kernal of joy is what you fight for. That is why people want to have kids. That is why people dare to die for something better. They wish to share and spread the hope and joy they feel for the world. Have kids or don't have kids. Work to share what you found to be beautiful in life. Work to make it exist more. Work to make that communist train utopia real.
Dare to live. Dare to die. Dare to win.
There is a world of wonder and beauty out there and we mustn't let the horror of capitalism deprive that from us.
Suffering is a guarantee in life, are you prepared to subject another human being to it?
Honestly, so what? Everyone in life is, at some point, going to experience some suffering or pain. That's just part of life and being human, I don't see how that can be blamed on the parents (unless the parents directly caused it). I suffer with physical pain every day, that's just part of my life. But most of the time, I still want to continue living, and I don't blame my parents for it. And when I have dark thoughts and don't always feel that way, I'm able to recognise that it's not a true reflection of my life and how I feel overall.
But most of the time, I still want to continue living, and I don’t blame my parents for it. And when I have dark thoughts and don’t always feel that way, I’m able to recognise that it’s not a true reflection of my life and how I feel overall.
I don't disagree with the overall premise of your post; however this section of it does tacitly admit that the main reason you're coming to the conclusions that you are is because you have other things to look forward to other than just being in physical & emotional pain 24/7.
That's not necessarily a given about anybody else.
it's pretty much rhetorically identical to what rando extended family members hound at me (UNPROMPTED) every gathering with their incessant demands to manufacture offspringlets
Not everybody that has kids is out to pester you to have your own. There are people that enjoy being parents, how would you exactly have them express it in words without you feeling attacked for it?
I think by not saying it’s a fundamental part of life.
It’s a wonderful part of some people’s lives, and for others they don’t want to do that. But it’s not fundamental. It’s really not that hard.
People telling me I should have kids drives me nuts and it happens way too often. Mind your own Fucking business. I don’t tell them that they shouldn’t have had kids.
I take the "fundamental" in that comment as being fundamental in the literal sense that we are all here because our parents had kids, is just the way humans perpetuate, not that everyone MUST have kids or they will be going against human nature
I dont want kids btw but I dont see any comment here as an attack against that descision
raising kids should not be seen as a way of finding meaning for the sake of finding meaning, its someone elses life in your hands, meditation, prayer, and shitposting also exist
in jest sure but putting raising kids and shitposting on the same sentence isn't a plus to your argument. meditation and prayer too. its one false equivalency after the other. having kids is a meaningful thing to do, wether you seek purpose or not.
people are planning not to have kids due to their material conditions. if having kids is so shitty then boomers wouldn't have done it. yet they did, and lived comfortable lives too because their material conditions allowed for it.
i've had siblings, cousins and nephews in my life and it was great. i also know that i won't be able to afford child rearing in any way. but if i won the lottery tomorrow i'd seek to provide the same environment i've had to someone else, either through foster care or helping to birth a child of my own. probably both.
(ok in all seriousness though how is meditation and prayer a false equivalency to finding meaning?)
its a false equivalence to having a child and building a family. the equivalence itself relies on diminishing that experience into 'finding a meaning', and then claiming that a good substitute for it is 'eating, praying and loving'. imagine telling all the lgbt people who fought for the right to raise a family that, actually, they lead vapid lives and should have gone on vacation to sicily instead. finding meaning is all there is, isn't there?
what kind of communist future does one actually wish to build if not to share with the future generations? if you can't reach that level of solidarity, why even pretend that unions and social welfare are important things?
again, raising a child is a meaningful experience. it's not clout chasing.
its a false equivalence to having a child and building a family. the equivalence itself relies on diminishing that experience into ‘finding a meaning’
no but OP was the one saying that its a "fundamental part of life" and whatnot, im not saying that its vapid or stupid or anything, and am definetely not saying that we should strip minorities of bodily autonomy because thats fucked
my main point is quite the contrary, that its dangerous in an abstract philosophical sense to put having kids on the pedestal as a means of finding meaning or having a meaningful experience because one also needs to consider the risks and the fact that you literally have someone elses life in your hands and/or are creating a being to have subjective existence in our world. Sure please go ahead if you know what youre doing but it shouldnt be done without acknowledging the gravity that the decision holds.
Sure please go ahead if you know what youre doing but it shouldnt be done without acknowledging the gravity that the decision holds.
And in saying so, you've proved yourself wrong. Child rearing is a fundamental part of life. It has been so for, well, the entirety of the human experience. It must be treated with the seriousness of something which, as you put it, is on a pedestal. Wether someone is fit for parenthood or not does not make it any less fundamental. On the contrary.
We live in a world that is not conducive to raising children. We have been rendered poorer, indebted and alienated. In other times, even those of us who couldn't or wouldn't raise children of our own would go on to engage it with others. Via foster care, or from fulfilling extended family duties. Even work, religious and military lives once held structures of kinship to them. Well, the extended family is dead by debt and so is the family unit. Corporate lives have no camaraderie or stability whatsoever. This leaves us with the cloisters of pretend Apostles and Salafis, of militias and soldiers. One wonders why the world is on permanent never ending fascist turn then. But I'm digressing.
Understand this: you did say that it is vapid and stupid to raise a child. Inadverdently. I don't think it was out of malice or anything. I think it is a wider societal cope that is spreading. You know, the kind of thing that humans do when they post 4-5 times a day on social media how happy they are that they don't have kids. There's the reverse side of the coin too. In reiterating that one is responsible and won't have children, some times people will point the fingers at the poors who aren't and therefore crank out the babies. These ideas spread in such a way that we end up ignoring that countries are going below replacement rate, ignoring all the people who are perfectly capable to be parents, and put emphasis on the horde that supposedly isn't. Nobody is born father of the year, and no generation has raised a perfectly trauma-less successor. But they still did it. Forever.
And yet through all of this new generations find themselves with no prospects whatsoever. Nevermind all the philosophical dilemmas about 'putting in a child in this world, just to suffer'. We are all going to work to death and only some of us will be privileged to entertain foster care. That's the future we are building. In this context problematizing a supposed sacredness of child rearing is to lose the forest for the trees, and to ignore the solidarity that humans will have to display if we are to survive this century at all. We are going to have to care for each other. We'll have each others lives in our hands. Where would you put that responsibility, if not on a pedestal?
Having kids is magical and cool, but of you cant afford to gove that kid a good, or hell, an even passable life.. why have them?
A lot of people dont want to bring a child, or foster a child if they know they wont be able to take care of them.
A former friend of mine qanted desperately to have a child. She was lucky to have her dad finance a home for her. But now, her home is a mess. There's water damage from the sheer amount of piss on the floor. Her husband works constantly and has almost no time to help with the kid or the house. She also has to work, which leaves the kid in the care of literally whoever can stomach being in that home for longer than a few hours due to the smell.
And now she's having another one. We've already contacted CPS. I have no doubt in my mind that she and her husband absolitely love and adore their child. But they simply couldnt not handle raising a kid with all the other pressures forced down on them by the world we live in. This is the unfortinate reality for a pot of young people. We're all too mentally ill and being wrung out by capitalism, that raising a family is considered ridiculous at best, anf actively sabotahing both your life, anf the life of your kid at worst.
Love to go onto my communist message board to tell impoverished proles that they're poor unlike me because of their poor life choices like irresponsibly becoming parents.
You literally told another user here that unlike you who'd be living it up with all of your disposable income they were going to be b****ing about their kids endlessly to everyone like "everyone" who has kids does.
Pregnancy isn't necessarily always planned, nor is termination of pregnancy available, nor would it be pleasant even if everything was ideal. If the parents want to air their grievances, I tend to let them without judgment.
I have a friend with a kid who went through several different stages of grief about the pregnancy because the father of the child was "mean" (he'd call her the R word for making a mistake while speaking), and broke (he made roughly median income, a bit above, but spent half his pay on pokies).
You’ll be bitching endlessly to everyone about how awful it is just like everyone else with kids.
Who are you hanging out with? I know plenty of people with kids, many of them into their teenage years, and these kids are their pride and joy. My sister-in-law sends me near-daily videos of my nieces because she's so caught up in their lives. My Facebook feed is an endless stream of friends, with their kids, traveling and partying and having a great time. My next door neighbors kids bump into me in the neighborhood all the time, with parents dotting on kids lovingly and razing them playfully and pretty much always smiling.
My wife's coworkers will just go off about how many cool things their kids are up to. One practically glows with pride when he recount's his son's sports accomplishments and dating adventures. Another is forever enthralled by how quickly his kids pick up his hobbies (painting warhammer minis, playing with a new raspberry pi he got them for a gift, getting into archery).
I’ll be living it up with all this freedom and disposable income and regular sleep schedule.
More power to you. But as I get older, its not enough to have a treasure trove of accumulated SorosBux and a bit of creature comfort.
Yeah... I'm not that guy, I don't think having kids blanket "sucks" but having kids is expensive and if you can't really afford it, then having kids will probably tank your quality of life. If you can afford to give them a decent life and not work yourself half to death in the process, then good, I'm told its incredibly rewarding, but that's a luxury most people don't have. As you said above, its a tragedy.
having kids is expensive and if you can’t really afford it, then having kids will probably tank your quality of life.
We've gutted social services in the US. Cost of living relative to income has gone to absolute shit. But it doesn't have to be this way. People should be more upset at their ability to raise a family being gutted rather than passively accepting the "actually children are shit and I'm better off this way" alienation.
There are few more enduring and more well-recognized forms of communal living than the extended family. And normalizing this single-person-living-in-a-broom-closet lifestyle simply because its cheap is really fucking bad at an existential level.
People should be more upset at their ability to raise a family being gutted rather than passively accepting the “actually children are shit and I’m better off this way” alienation.
"Razing children" has got to be one of the funniest typos I've seen because it makes the sentence mean pretty much the opposite of what you seem to intend.
oh god are we doing the "DAE school is a prison" thing again?
Why can you not accept that while not for everyone, being a parent is an important part of life (as in it literally makes human life possible), and for many is very rewarding. All the fucking issues with raising kids is because america also forces people, except the wealthy, to work full time or more through their child's upbringing.
So if those issues exist, and we haven’t been able to fix them (and in fact Capitalism looks to be a run away algorithm that will end all life on earth someday) why would you have kids, again?
If you don't believe a better world is possible: why are you even here? If you do: you can try to leave a better world for them, and your kids can keep on fighting the good fight. Just because we won't overthrow capitalism this generation doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a next generation, or that only libs and fascists should have kids because they're winning right now.
Also maybe this isn't you, it's just a thought, but I think a fundamental reason a lot of people are anti-natalist is because they wish they hadn't been born. And that sucks, but it's the human condition, we don't get to decide the circumstances of our birth, and most people simply do not feel that way.
If nothing will ever get better, and nonexistence is preferable to existing, why haven't you sought euthanasia? Anyone who genuinely believes anrinatalist ideology should logically extend it to themselves. It's because anrinatalists aren't genuine.
thinking having kids is a bad idea is not the same thing as thinking everyone already alive should kill themselves. stop making straw man arguments if you are so confident. it's embarrassing. i'm not even against having kids, i just don't like people trying to tell me to do so when i don't want any.
get better at making arguments if you want to be a successful leftist.
there were 1 million and one posts from parents complaining that they were not stuck at home with their awful children that they couldn’t ship off to learning jail.
I know a lot of people who were effectively told "You need to be online 24/7 now, because you're working from home" on top of being told "we're shutting off that daily child care service that affords you time to do a normal 9-5" and that fucking sucked. But if you're being told that kids are getting in the way of doing your job, then you're buying into some seriously fucked propaganda if you decide the problem is your kids.
Plus most everyone I know attributes their mental health problems to their parents sucking, myself included.
The worst psychic trauma I ever suffered was losing my dad in an accident when I was 11 years old. I have friends and extended family who grew up without a parent - due to death or divorce or what have you - and its enormously difficult relative to having both parents (even not-great parents) in the house and able to do parenting.
most parents I know have bags under their eyes and a blank look on their face as the moan about the miseries of child rearing
Your life inevitably begins to revolve around your kids as you get older. But a critical caveat to that is your kids making friends and you getting a second lease on a social life by way of that network of parents. I have found its incredibly difficult to meet other adults and form friends out of college. That's in no small part due to work life being so divorced from home life. I don't live on a street with a dozen of my coworkers, we're all scattered across the city. But as kids socialize with each other, local families inevitably form new bonds and new relationships.
I had bags under my eyes in college. I've had bags under my eyes while on some crazy work project. Bags-under-the-eyes is just a way of life sometimes. But what I'm working for, when I have an opportunity to parent, is worth so much more than anything I do for a paycheck. And there are a host of knock on benefits that I feel go unmentioned.
their explanations often sound like a drug addiction. “Oh yeah it triggers some special breeding chemicals in my brain that FEEL SO GOOD!”
We're chemical animals. If you're feeling good, its because your brain is releasing Feel Good sensations. That's true whether you're dancing, playing video games, fucking, or raising your kids.
The difference between doing a line of cocaine and taking care of a toddler should be fairly obvious.
Our generation is the first to realize that having kids fucking sucks. Everyone else just did it and then complained about it endlessly, we were the first to realize we could just NOT.
:downbear:
I think this is more a consequence of you never wanting to actually be responsible for the wellbeing of another person, rather than anything in particular to do with child-rearing.
Birthstrikes have for a long time been a means of class struggle. 1892, Feminist Marie Huot invoked a „grève des ventres“, a birth strike. In the late 19th century, botched abortions were a leading cause of death for Berlin women 30 or younger because they refused to put kids into the hellhole that was their lives. Neither are we the first to think of it, nor are we the first experiencing a backlash for it. Back then it was soldiers for the fatherland, now it's workers for walmart
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I've had the opportunity to foster twice in my life and both times are some of the happiest I've been. I'm gearing up for a run at permanent adoption in the next few months because I think kids are absolutely amazing and I want the opportunity to raise someone from childhood to adulthood in order to share everything about life that is good.
I've got friends who are in the teaching field, and they regularly give me some wild stories. But the worst things they inevitably come back on are the administration hurdles and the idiotic bureaucracies. The kids are always the reason they stay in the field. They love the kids, even the rough cut ones. They even like the parents, more often than not.
Having kids is an amazing, life changing experience that transforms you and gives you the realiest opportunity to connect with other people and transform the world around you. The fact that we treat it as some kind of luxury, rather than a fundamental part of life, is a tragedy that's reflected in the hollowing out of the nation.
Good on you, comrade. Providing a safe and loving house to an adopted child that needs a family is something I deeply respect.
Being a dad has been the most fulfilling aspect of my life for a long time. I wish you the best of luck and nothing but joy.
I don't have words this good to say but I just wanted to echo this.
I love being a dad. It feels like the most important and fulfilling thing I've ever done and I love my kid more than life itself. The only thing I'd change about it IS doing it under capitalism. Childcare costs, having to do a religious preschool because secular ones are even MORE expensive, my wife and I both having to work full time jobs (often with decent length commutes) and not feeling like we get enough time at home with him.
None of these are inherent to parenthood they're inherent to capitalism.
I’d love to have kids if I could afford to properly take care of them. But I sadly cannot.
:rat-salute-2:
bro it isnt a "fundamental part of life", its just that you are a caring and responsible parent who understands the gravity of what it means to raise a child to adulthood and accepts it wholeheartedly
raising kids should not be seen as a way of finding meaning for the sake of finding meaning, its someone elses life in your hands, meditation, prayer, and shitposting also exist
Good thing he didn't say that then. It's a fundamental part of life because it literally enables the existence of future generations of humanity. Human life doesn't happen without parents. It's fine to not want kids, its not a fundamental part of every single individual's life, but it is a fundamental part of life as a whole, for the species.
idk man he kind of implied it overall by saying:
I hate this website sometimes. I typed out a whole reply and then clicked cancel accidentally lol
Anyhow, I can totally see where you would get that impression but I think you are kinda assuming the worst. I don't personally know anyone that thinks "everyone should have kids even if they don't think they want to" or anything remotely like that, and zifnab seems like a good dude, so I was more charitable in my reading. It was pretty clear to me that he was countering the increasingly deranged posts about how awful having kids is and nobody should do it by citing his own experience and those of people around him, not saying that that poster in particular, or "everyone always", should have kids. Just reinforcing that it isn't an inherently miserable experience, quite the opposite, for many it turns out to be very rewarding.
I do, I see it everywhere in person and online whenever the topic is brought up. Its a common cuckservative talking point and forms part of the background radiation of ideology.
However, “everyone should have kids even if they don’t think they want to” isnt the statement im responding to, its the assertion that having children is "a fundamental part of life" and is an inherently positive thing. I think this is dangerous in this day and age because everyone is on their own, the man doesnt give a shit about anyones wellbeing and our soyciety is basically a free for all.
As such, I believe that one should think really really really carefully about bringing more people into this world or taking on the massive burden of childcare, forming someone else's life. Suffering is a guarantee in life, are you prepared to subject another human being to it?
I think you're mostly right but the focus on "parents need to make a responsible decision" over "attack the forces that actually make our society such a cruel free-for-all" rubs me the wrong way. I'm sure you care about both, but rhetorically the focus is really skewed. I just don't think anti-natalism or whatever is super productive, even if conservatives are going crazyballs the opposite direction. People who feel as you do will make their choices one way, people who do not, won't, and I don't think convincing people not to have kids is nearly as productive as tryign to improve conditions for everyone.
and this:
this also does not sit well with me. Sure, there will be suffering in life, fine, but having a child does not mean you are the cause of everything that happens to them. Suffering has material causes that are not the sole responsibility of parents. If someone assaults your kid, or some company irradiates them and gives them a horrible cancer, or whatever, that is not the parents fault for bringing a kid into a world where that could happen.
Anti-natalism is defeatist garbage that surrenders all infinite possibilities of the future to the altar of capitalism. We should work to excise these ideas from ourselves. This idea is a bastard child of capitalist realism and causes loving awesome comrades to confuse compassion for cowardice. It posits that life is suffering and the world is damned to live out as a capitalist hellscape. The time for action is past, the world is going to burn, and everything nice will go with it. (For loving Disco Elysium so much this website seems to forget that the deserter isn't right) Anti-natalists cry out from the rooftops: "save your kids from suffering!" "Don't bring new people into the world!"
They've given up. The logical conclusion from that is that we should all save ourselves from suffering by killing ourselves.
It's as if we're trying to end Capitalism by striking from the grave.
This is ridiculous. There is a time in your life that at least a single good thing happened. Or a simple hint that there is good in the world. One instance that bore the fruit of love for your fellow man. You wouldn't be a socialist otherwise. This kernal of joy is what you fight for. That is why people want to have kids. That is why people dare to die for something better. They wish to share and spread the hope and joy they feel for the world. Have kids or don't have kids. Work to share what you found to be beautiful in life. Work to make it exist more. Work to make that communist train utopia real.
Dare to live. Dare to die. Dare to win. There is a world of wonder and beauty out there and we mustn't let the horror of capitalism deprive that from us.
:communism-will-win:
:order-of-lenin:
I've been handing out more of these than usual lately. Semper Post, Hexbear!
Awful post.
Ok
Something that isn't awful? The extinction of the human race because kids bad. /s
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Honestly, so what? Everyone in life is, at some point, going to experience some suffering or pain. That's just part of life and being human, I don't see how that can be blamed on the parents (unless the parents directly caused it). I suffer with physical pain every day, that's just part of my life. But most of the time, I still want to continue living, and I don't blame my parents for it. And when I have dark thoughts and don't always feel that way, I'm able to recognise that it's not a true reflection of my life and how I feel overall.
I don't disagree with the overall premise of your post; however this section of it does tacitly admit that the main reason you're coming to the conclusions that you are is because you have other things to look forward to other than just being in physical & emotional pain 24/7.
That's not necessarily a given about anybody else.
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it's pretty much rhetorically identical to what rando extended family members hound at me (UNPROMPTED) every gathering with their incessant demands to manufacture offspringlets
Not everybody that has kids is out to pester you to have your own. There are people that enjoy being parents, how would you exactly have them express it in words without you feeling attacked for it?
I think by not saying it’s a fundamental part of life.
It’s a wonderful part of some people’s lives, and for others they don’t want to do that. But it’s not fundamental. It’s really not that hard.
People telling me I should have kids drives me nuts and it happens way too often. Mind your own Fucking business. I don’t tell them that they shouldn’t have had kids.
I take the "fundamental" in that comment as being fundamental in the literal sense that we are all here because our parents had kids, is just the way humans perpetuate, not that everyone MUST have kids or they will be going against human nature
I dont want kids btw but I dont see any comment here as an attack against that descision
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in jest sure but putting raising kids and shitposting on the same sentence isn't a plus to your argument. meditation and prayer too. its one false equivalency after the other. having kids is a meaningful thing to do, wether you seek purpose or not.
people are planning not to have kids due to their material conditions. if having kids is so shitty then boomers wouldn't have done it. yet they did, and lived comfortable lives too because their material conditions allowed for it.
i've had siblings, cousins and nephews in my life and it was great. i also know that i won't be able to afford child rearing in any way. but if i won the lottery tomorrow i'd seek to provide the same environment i've had to someone else, either through foster care or helping to birth a child of my own. probably both.
no i was being over 9000% serious, to make a good shitpost is like having a child, you need to nurture it for it to grow
(ok in all seriousness though how is meditation and prayer a false equivalency to finding meaning?)
its a false equivalence to having a child and building a family. the equivalence itself relies on diminishing that experience into 'finding a meaning', and then claiming that a good substitute for it is 'eating, praying and loving'. imagine telling all the lgbt people who fought for the right to raise a family that, actually, they lead vapid lives and should have gone on vacation to sicily instead. finding meaning is all there is, isn't there?
what kind of communist future does one actually wish to build if not to share with the future generations? if you can't reach that level of solidarity, why even pretend that unions and social welfare are important things?
again, raising a child is a meaningful experience. it's not clout chasing.
no but OP was the one saying that its a "fundamental part of life" and whatnot, im not saying that its vapid or stupid or anything, and am definetely not saying that we should strip minorities of bodily autonomy because thats fucked
my main point is quite the contrary, that its dangerous in an abstract philosophical sense to put having kids on the pedestal as a means of finding meaning or having a meaningful experience because one also needs to consider the risks and the fact that you literally have someone elses life in your hands and/or are creating a being to have subjective existence in our world. Sure please go ahead if you know what youre doing but it shouldnt be done without acknowledging the gravity that the decision holds.
And in saying so, you've proved yourself wrong. Child rearing is a fundamental part of life. It has been so for, well, the entirety of the human experience. It must be treated with the seriousness of something which, as you put it, is on a pedestal. Wether someone is fit for parenthood or not does not make it any less fundamental. On the contrary.
We live in a world that is not conducive to raising children. We have been rendered poorer, indebted and alienated. In other times, even those of us who couldn't or wouldn't raise children of our own would go on to engage it with others. Via foster care, or from fulfilling extended family duties. Even work, religious and military lives once held structures of kinship to them. Well, the extended family is dead by debt and so is the family unit. Corporate lives have no camaraderie or stability whatsoever. This leaves us with the cloisters of pretend Apostles and Salafis, of militias and soldiers. One wonders why the world is on permanent never ending fascist turn then. But I'm digressing.
Understand this: you did say that it is vapid and stupid to raise a child. Inadverdently. I don't think it was out of malice or anything. I think it is a wider societal cope that is spreading. You know, the kind of thing that humans do when they post 4-5 times a day on social media how happy they are that they don't have kids. There's the reverse side of the coin too. In reiterating that one is responsible and won't have children, some times people will point the fingers at the poors who aren't and therefore crank out the babies. These ideas spread in such a way that we end up ignoring that countries are going below replacement rate, ignoring all the people who are perfectly capable to be parents, and put emphasis on the horde that supposedly isn't. Nobody is born father of the year, and no generation has raised a perfectly trauma-less successor. But they still did it. Forever.
And yet through all of this new generations find themselves with no prospects whatsoever. Nevermind all the philosophical dilemmas about 'putting in a child in this world, just to suffer'. We are all going to work to death and only some of us will be privileged to entertain foster care. That's the future we are building. In this context problematizing a supposed sacredness of child rearing is to lose the forest for the trees, and to ignore the solidarity that humans will have to display if we are to survive this century at all. We are going to have to care for each other. We'll have each others lives in our hands. Where would you put that responsibility, if not on a pedestal?
Beautifully put :gold-antifa:
Having kids is magical and cool, but of you cant afford to gove that kid a good, or hell, an even passable life.. why have them?
A lot of people dont want to bring a child, or foster a child if they know they wont be able to take care of them.
A former friend of mine qanted desperately to have a child. She was lucky to have her dad finance a home for her. But now, her home is a mess. There's water damage from the sheer amount of piss on the floor. Her husband works constantly and has almost no time to help with the kid or the house. She also has to work, which leaves the kid in the care of literally whoever can stomach being in that home for longer than a few hours due to the smell.
And now she's having another one. We've already contacted CPS. I have no doubt in my mind that she and her husband absolitely love and adore their child. But they simply couldnt not handle raising a kid with all the other pressures forced down on them by the world we live in. This is the unfortinate reality for a pot of young people. We're all too mentally ill and being wrung out by capitalism, that raising a family is considered ridiculous at best, anf actively sabotahing both your life, anf the life of your kid at worst.
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Love to go onto my communist message board to tell impoverished proles that they're poor unlike me because of their poor life choices like irresponsibly becoming parents.
You sound like a fucking libertarian.
EDIT:
:downbear:
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whats funny in this whole debate you just sound like a kid sharing their hot takes.
You literally told another user here that unlike you who'd be living it up with all of your disposable income they were going to be b****ing about their kids endlessly to everyone like "everyone" who has kids does.
Fuck off dude.
Everyone I know is miserable therefore you must be too
I make everyone miserable, therefore you must be miserable too
It comes off as a bit, idk, icky at best.
Pregnancy isn't necessarily always planned, nor is termination of pregnancy available, nor would it be pleasant even if everything was ideal. If the parents want to air their grievances, I tend to let them without judgment.
I have a friend with a kid who went through several different stages of grief about the pregnancy because the father of the child was "mean" (he'd call her the R word for making a mistake while speaking), and broke (he made roughly median income, a bit above, but spent half his pay on pokies).
What is that? Pokémon?
Australian slang for video poker machines
Who are you hanging out with? I know plenty of people with kids, many of them into their teenage years, and these kids are their pride and joy. My sister-in-law sends me near-daily videos of my nieces because she's so caught up in their lives. My Facebook feed is an endless stream of friends, with their kids, traveling and partying and having a great time. My next door neighbors kids bump into me in the neighborhood all the time, with parents dotting on kids lovingly and razing them playfully and pretty much always smiling.
My wife's coworkers will just go off about how many cool things their kids are up to. One practically glows with pride when he recount's his son's sports accomplishments and dating adventures. Another is forever enthralled by how quickly his kids pick up his hobbies (painting warhammer minis, playing with a new raspberry pi he got them for a gift, getting into archery).
More power to you. But as I get older, its not enough to have a treasure trove of accumulated SorosBux and a bit of creature comfort.
Yeah... I'm not that guy, I don't think having kids blanket "sucks" but having kids is expensive and if you can't really afford it, then having kids will probably tank your quality of life. If you can afford to give them a decent life and not work yourself half to death in the process, then good, I'm told its incredibly rewarding, but that's a luxury most people don't have. As you said above, its a tragedy.
We've gutted social services in the US. Cost of living relative to income has gone to absolute shit. But it doesn't have to be this way. People should be more upset at their ability to raise a family being gutted rather than passively accepting the "actually children are shit and I'm better off this way" alienation.
There are few more enduring and more well-recognized forms of communal living than the extended family. And normalizing this single-person-living-in-a-broom-closet lifestyle simply because its cheap is really fucking bad at an existential level.
:order-of-lenin:
"Razing children" has got to be one of the funniest typos I've seen because it makes the sentence mean pretty much the opposite of what you seem to intend.
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soy reddit antinatalist please go back you misrepresent the ideology
oh god are we doing the "DAE school is a prison" thing again?
Why can you not accept that while not for everyone, being a parent is an important part of life (as in it literally makes human life possible), and for many is very rewarding. All the fucking issues with raising kids is because america also forces people, except the wealthy, to work full time or more through their child's upbringing.
So if those issues exist, and we haven’t been able to fix them (and in fact Capitalism looks to be a run away algorithm that will end all life on earth someday) why would you have kids, again?
If you don't believe a better world is possible: why are you even here? If you do: you can try to leave a better world for them, and your kids can keep on fighting the good fight. Just because we won't overthrow capitalism this generation doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a next generation, or that only libs and fascists should have kids because they're winning right now.
Also maybe this isn't you, it's just a thought, but I think a fundamental reason a lot of people are anti-natalist is because they wish they hadn't been born. And that sucks, but it's the human condition, we don't get to decide the circumstances of our birth, and most people simply do not feel that way.
Cw suicide
spoiler
If nothing will ever get better, and nonexistence is preferable to existing, why haven't you sought euthanasia? Anyone who genuinely believes anrinatalist ideology should logically extend it to themselves. It's because anrinatalists aren't genuine.
This is the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard
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thinking having kids is a bad idea is not the same thing as thinking everyone already alive should kill themselves. stop making straw man arguments if you are so confident. it's embarrassing. i'm not even against having kids, i just don't like people trying to tell me to do so when i don't want any.
get better at making arguments if you want to be a successful leftist.
I know a lot of people who were effectively told "You need to be online 24/7 now, because you're working from home" on top of being told "we're shutting off that daily child care service that affords you time to do a normal 9-5" and that fucking sucked. But if you're being told that kids are getting in the way of doing your job, then you're buying into some seriously fucked propaganda if you decide the problem is your kids.
The worst psychic trauma I ever suffered was losing my dad in an accident when I was 11 years old. I have friends and extended family who grew up without a parent - due to death or divorce or what have you - and its enormously difficult relative to having both parents (even not-great parents) in the house and able to do parenting.
Your life inevitably begins to revolve around your kids as you get older. But a critical caveat to that is your kids making friends and you getting a second lease on a social life by way of that network of parents. I have found its incredibly difficult to meet other adults and form friends out of college. That's in no small part due to work life being so divorced from home life. I don't live on a street with a dozen of my coworkers, we're all scattered across the city. But as kids socialize with each other, local families inevitably form new bonds and new relationships.
I had bags under my eyes in college. I've had bags under my eyes while on some crazy work project. Bags-under-the-eyes is just a way of life sometimes. But what I'm working for, when I have an opportunity to parent, is worth so much more than anything I do for a paycheck. And there are a host of knock on benefits that I feel go unmentioned.
We're chemical animals. If you're feeling good, its because your brain is releasing Feel Good sensations. That's true whether you're dancing, playing video games, fucking, or raising your kids.
The difference between doing a line of cocaine and taking care of a toddler should be fairly obvious.
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Natalism is correct and antinatalism is wrong. Cope and seethe.
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:yes-chad: yes
You must be lost. Here's where you should be.
Rick and Morty tier take.
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Least credulous antinatalist
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it's not thanksgiving or christmas dinner, you're not by bf's christian parents/grandparents, why are you birthsplaning natalist propoganda at me?
:jesse-wtf:
I don't know either man. You shared a nice story and a bunch of people took it personally for no reason.
anti-natalism isn't a specific politics, it's a politicized sense of grievance from people with pushy family, extrapolated into a general misanthropy.
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I'm sure I'll find something else to complain about.
come on, don't be corny
:downbear:
I think this is more a consequence of you never wanting to actually be responsible for the wellbeing of another person, rather than anything in particular to do with child-rearing.
Pure idealism :wtf-am-i-reading:
They should be able to figure this out quickly. After all, I thought capitalists were the best innovators.
Birthstrikes have for a long time been a means of class struggle. 1892, Feminist Marie Huot invoked a „grève des ventres“, a birth strike. In the late 19th century, botched abortions were a leading cause of death for Berlin women 30 or younger because they refused to put kids into the hellhole that was their lives. Neither are we the first to think of it, nor are we the first experiencing a backlash for it. Back then it was soldiers for the fatherland, now it's workers for walmart