Couples who CHOOSE not to have kids

iguana

I think that people deciding not to have children is a perfectly valid life-choice. It is one that I had dificulty understanding in my early twenties but that was because I couldn't see past my own desire to have children.

Similar to what Seamus has said I have the most unbelievably strong urge to have children. I am 26 and am aware that if I had a child now I would not be able to offer it the life I would like to give it but that doesn't stop the ache that I get every so often.

Perhaps it is because I had such a good relationship with my own parents that I want to copy that, while at the same time learning from what I percieve to be their mistakes. While I have professional ambition it isn't on the same radar as my desire to be a great mother.

But I have far more respect for someone who decides they don't want children than someone who decides to have then because they should and is not willing to put their children first for a few years.

My mother used to work as a child minder and while many of the working mothers were great there were those who just never put their children first and that is not ok. Obviously a parent can't always put their children first but for a few years kids need to come first most of the time. That doesn't mean spoiling them, often bad parenting means giving children everything they want as opposed to what they need.

At the end of the day deciding not to have children is your decision and if that is right for you, it is no-one else's business. You aren't willing to have a child to fit in with society and that is a whole lot less selfish than bringing a human being which you don't really want into the world and that is to be admired.

Macmorris

nesf wrote:

For instance, look at a collection of siblings in their 40's. They all (for the sake of argument) have the same genetic background, and the same biological parents.

Although siblings have the same parents, that doesn't mean that they share all of the same genes. They inherit different combinations of genes. If one of the parents is much less intelligent than the other one, then it's likely that some of the offspring will more closely resemble that parent in intelligence, while the rest will resemble the other parent.

And that argument could also be used to undermine your claim that nurture is more important than nature. If siblings get the same upbringing and grow up in the same environment, why is that some of them turn out to be more intelligent than the others?

Differences in intelligence between people in the same family are more easily explained in terms of differences in genes than by differences in environment because the environment they grew up in would have been identical but the genes they have inherited from their parents are not identical. The exception is with identical twins who share the same genes. I read (I can't remember where so I can't link to it) that identical twins have almost identical IQs while there is a greater disparity between the IQ levels of normal siblings. That would seem to indicate that genes have a greater influence on intelligence than environment.

Macmorris

The Corinthian wrote:

What I said did not in any way say that the environment is not important or that anyone had said that it was not important.

I didn't say that you did. I was speaking generally. The reason I quoted you was because I thought you made a similar point to one I made in a previous post about the way a child's environment is determined by the intelligence of the parents.

"often the offspring of stupid or intelligent individuals will be brought up in a similar environment as their parents."

Sorry, that’s not how genes work. You inherit them, your genetic code does not mutate because you get a degree.

I don't know what that is in response to. I never said that acquired traits have an effect on a person's genes. I actually said the opposite, that it's the genes that have an effect on the quality of the environment.

The Corinthian

Sorry, it would appear I completely misread your post.

Bad, bad Corinthian...

MorningStar

The Corinthian wrote:

Sorry, it would appear I completely misread your post.

Bad, bad Corinthian...

For a person with teeth as eyes you are a bit easy going. I might have to have a word with dreaming about you