Completely Put Off Having Children

cgcsb wrote: »

It's good that you ask those questions instead of just squeezing them out based on instinct and worry about the consequences later. If you remove the individual from the story and take a big picture view, creating another human right now seems like the opposite of a good idea. There are officially 8 billion of us (about 9 billion if you take into account the lack of census enumeration in the vast swathes of shanty towns and refugee camps in the world) already. Even if we completely change our way of living on this planet over the next 10 years and only use renewable/nuclear energy and sustainable materials, we will still run out of resources by the middle of this century. Even now if everyone were to live equitably in the world, we'd all be rationed to a matchbox sized piece of meat a day. This is only getting worse and emerging economies like China and India are increasingly embracing western lifestyles which are consumer intensive, eating 5 or 6 times as much meat as their parents did and driving cars, which were unaffordable 20 years ago. There are already a lot of children in the world who need a home, so can't see the point in creating a fresh one. The future is basically wars over what resources are left, fresh water, land that can sustain crops etc. Our food chain will likely collapse this century due to climate change and over consumption.

There are a few scenarios that will allow human society to continue with what we call normality:

1)Start a nuclear war. If China and India for example obliterated eachother that could reduce the human population sufficiently
2)A natural disaster. But let's be honest humanity isn't greatly impacted by this. Even something as deadly as the corona virus spreading across the world has only managed to kill 0.01% (mostly folks who were old and had already procreated) of us and our response to that will be a global baby boom. Weather events brought on by climate change aren't big enough to dent our numbers. The only natural disaster at this point that will have a significant impact on our population is an asteroid impact
3)On the subject of asteroids and space, another scenario is if we can economically extract resources from the asteroid belt and recover billions of tons of minerals and/or if we can establish a significant presence on Mars and learn how to use martian soil as a growing medium
we may have more capacity to expand for another few generation or 2 before we hit the same problems again.

To anyone who is cross with me because I think the world is awful, here is what I couldn't be bothered to write out to all those posters who attacked me and said I shouldn't have children because I'm depressed etc.

I actually love my life. I have a full, rich existence with a large, loving family and many friends, several pets and an extremely healthy long-term relationship. As for projecting your negativity onto me just because it upsets you if someone even alludes to disease, war, famine... Just because the West seems to be doing alright, doesn't mean that in two decades it will be the same.

I look at the refugee children flopping around on their dad's shoulders as they're carried for thousands of miles, the older child who happens to be that bit more perceptive becoming depressed and suicidal when they start to figure out the realities of life, teenagers reaching adulthood completely lost and without direction who recede into themselves and never become self-reliant.

I worked in education for years and in my part time job, I still care for many people with disabilities who will never have a high quality of life through no fault of their own. I'm always available for free babysitting for any friends or relatives who need it (except since the pandemic). I reared two of my younger siblings so I really know what having a child entails, to a degree.

So many of the exhausted but happy parents on this thread have been very insightful and the chill childless people have also opened my eyes. I only know two older couples (50+) who have decided not to have kids and they are genuinely the coolest and most content people I know.

I think the point about Idiocracy is a great one and I was actually debating with one of my friends who has kids recently, because it's fairly well known by our friends that we probably won't have children... My buddy was going "but ye have to have kids because my daughter won't have anyone to play with only morons otherwise!".

Implying that a loving home for kids is pretty scarce and that breeds unstable and unhappy people all around. But do you really want to bring a child into a world where huge amounts of people are from miserable homes? Strikes me as even more of an argument not to do that to the individual. They currently don't exist, so no harm no foul.

My older brother who is an activist but also has children he massively regrets (one of those parents who is always trying to get out of spending time with his kids, like he thinks they're not his responsibility or his time is too much more important) and he started talking about how messed up the foster kids are, trying to put me off what I know would be a huge undertaking so that I go what he perceives as the "easier" route. All I could think of is how broken his kids are from seeking his acknowledgment and it only spurred my decision to remain childless on more

As a household, we could create stability and love for existing children who find themselves without it. I think it's interesting to note that I have three very close friends are adopted, including my best friend, and by pure coincidence I know about six more who were fostered, met them through the music scene and travelling around the country. Those particular individuals I know are always vivacious cnuts with a huge lust for life and often have thinly veiled psychological issues which they'll suppress by drinking heavily. Which makes me want to foster even more because I want to help people (children or teens) through their separation anxiety and allow them to confront their issues and start a new life.

Sorry for the long post, I really don't feel I have to justify my position or outlook to people who think that the world is all sunshine and light and are completely freaked when I say it's in sh!t, but I hope my stance might be something other people relate to because the world could really use some love and if you have it to give, it might be worth giving it to somebody who doesn't have a lot of it.