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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To not understand why people are still having kids?

688 replies

Tobythecat · 20/09/2020 19:21

I understand that the urge to reproduce is very strong, but the future looks incredibly bleak (I'm not talking about just covid, but also climate change). I fear for the future and what sort of quality of life people will have, considering Automation/competition over jobs, climate change issues (food/water shortages, extreme weather). Honestly, how can you think that everything will be fine and work itself out, or do you just not think about it? Children today will face unimagineable suffering in the next 20-30 years, how can you justify it to them? I wanted children desperately but decided not to because of the above, plus genetic factors.

People mention the war and how people kept having kids, but the threats we face have never been faced before and are multifaceted. Is existing to suffer better than not existing at all?

OP posts:
Kazakaren · 21/09/2020 10:32

if we don't all fall all over the place catastrophising and wishing we'd never been born or had children yada yada, we must not know anything about the subject confused. Nope, sorry.

Super. Glad you know all about it with your one and a half degrees. It wasn't clear you knew anything at all about it by your previous posts. Glad you cleared that up by providing your academic qualifications 😉

LadyH846 · 21/09/2020 10:33

@neversayalways

You can't deny that in becoming the top species

Top species? I dunno, grass is doing pretty well.

Well we don't have too many predators. That's what I mean by top species.
Enrico · 21/09/2020 10:34

So much of this 'argument' is based on false equivalencies. Having children isn't a leisure or consumer activity so equating it to either betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the boundaries of your own argument.

everyonesmama · 21/09/2020 10:37

@GreatMindsThinkAlike

If I have children, I've decided I'll adopt. There are so many children who need a good home and then I can't be blamed for bringing them into this shitty world.
Wishing you luck with that! If you think becoming an adoptive parent is simply your decision or an easy journey you are sdaly mistaken.

There are lots of children needing homes - True
There are also lots of people who could provide good homes who cannot jump every hurdle!

Emmnooo · 21/09/2020 11:28

@Tobythecat The reason why you posted this thread isn’t really to find out why people are having children in the face of adversity. The reason you have posted it is to make people who have children or considering them feel bad because clearly you aren’t happy with your situation . Your post is a projection , it isn’t a real question.
Why do you think people still have children or want a family with their loved one @Tobythecat? Even in the face of war, pandemics, climate change? Are you very happy you don’t have children given the situation @Tobythecat?

Emmnooo · 21/09/2020 11:31

Also do you really think everyone deciding to not have children tomorrow is going to solve all of the worlds problems ?
One of the key things for humanity to survive and to evolve is the concept of hope and continuity .
Maybe you want all humanity to die out then what’s the point of you continuing to live with your strain on the earth ,the universe?
Do you honestly not get why people continue to have children @Tobythecat?

Kazakaren · 21/09/2020 11:39

Also do you really think everyone deciding to not have children tomorrow is going to solve all of the worlds problems ?

From an environmental point of view, it would go a long way towards it.

One of the key things for humanity to survive and to evolve is the concept of hope and continuity

Why does humanity need to survive and evolve?

Maybe you want all humanity to die out then what’s the point of you continuing to live with your strain on the earth ,the universe?

The op is not having children. So her strain won't be continuing.

GreatMindsThinkAlike · 21/09/2020 11:42

@Everyonesmama Thanks for wishing me luck. What a lovely gesture 😉

OliviaBenson · 21/09/2020 11:45

[quote Emmnooo]@Tobythecat The reason why you posted this thread isn’t really to find out why people are having children in the face of adversity. The reason you have posted it is to make people who have children or considering them feel bad because clearly you aren’t happy with your situation . Your post is a projection , it isn’t a real question.
Why do you think people still have children or want a family with their loved one
@Tobythecat
? Even in the face of war, pandemics, climate change? Are you very happy you don’t have children given the situation @Tobythecat?[/quote]
I'm not sure it's the op who is projecting here to be honest.....

aSofaNearYou · 21/09/2020 11:47

Tbh besides issues like overpopulation (which is not yet widely regarded as something people have an individual responsibility to curb) I really don't understand why anyone would think this is the worst or bleakest time in history to live through. People have dealt with far worse and continued to have children. Would you rather they were married off at twelve to pop out ten kids and then die at 25 of dysentery? Or be brutally killed for a petty crime or during a religious rebellion?

The reality is people have always had children despite the hardships of the world because for most people, the world they live in is just how it is, and the majority of us would rather live through what we are currently living through than never have been born. People obviously think the same about potential children.

BiBabbles · 21/09/2020 12:21

Life contains suffering for any species, that doesn't mean suffering is the purpose. It's just a consequence of it, like getting wet from standing in the rain. While people have debated the purpose for decades, and I'm generally under the 'the purpose is to choose and carry out purpose,, some of the current research on what most people think makes a good life includes: choosing and having meaning in life, mentally rich and interesting, and pleasure alongside (preferably greater than) the pain. For some, children are part of all of these, some - with and without children - work towards those in other ways.

I don't see the benefit in being angry at my parents for my existing or wishing I hadn't been born. Part of coping with trauma is accepting reality and move past wishing it away. I grew up knowing I was a daughter unwanted by my mother, told from my earliest days that I only exist because abortion wasn't accessible or acceptable. Generally I take the neutral idea that there is nothing I can ever do to make up to my mother what was done to her, and there is nothing she can do to make up what was done to me. Non-existence isn't automatically worse than existence, but people who go on that we shouldn't exist because 'humans are bad' and that to think anything good can come from us is 'fantasy' just remind me of my mother who used to say I should kill myself to unburden everyone and to not do so just proved I didn't have real feelings. I learned to tune out such extreme views young.

Humans will eventually go extinct, but I don't get saying 'what makes our species so special' and then listing off special-if-terrible things some humans have done as if cruelty and destruction for destruction sake exists in no other species. Just because they're less capable of it doesn't make us special. We can go on about how terrible we are, self-flagellating dramatically, or we can get on with our unchosen existence by choosing to use our capabilities until the end.

On a objective-ish access to resources level, I have not yet reached the quality of life my parents had at my age, and I likely never will be able to have the quality of life my father has now working in finance and tech. This is partially by circumstances and partially by choice. My mother doesn't have the quality of life her parents had, partially by circumstances and partially by choice and this was true of far more of her generation than I think is commonly talked about. My grandparents were mostly okay for their time, but the relatives I know beyond them were all born subsistence farmers, many of them traveling thousands of miles just as I did but under far worse conditions.

My quality of life is better than theirs, and likely so will my children's which was my great-grandmother's desire when she got out. I'm not trying to compete with my parents, I do not view them as a standard, but looking at my family line, quality of life has meant a lot of different things for my great-grandmother, it was never having to grow her own food or kill a chicken with her own hands again, some people today think that's the height of a quality life and the wider socially incentivized ideas of what a quality life is are going to continue to change. I don't think any one person's kid is going to save the world, but we'll have to go through the population bulge one way or the other and far more of our overpopulation issues are in increased longevity rather than birth end which is already below replacement in the UK and several others parts of the world and heading that way for the Earth as a whole in 30-40 years.

ChelseaDaggers · 21/09/2020 12:39

Super. Glad you know all about it with your one and a half degrees. It wasn't clear you knew anything at all about it by your previous posts. Glad you cleared that up by providing your academic qualifications 😉

Confused I was trying to clarify for you, as you wrongly assumed that I "don't like having difficult" conversations. But, since you're so convinced you're right that you just brush off what anyone who doesn't agree with your opinion, then I can't really help you 🤷‍♀️.

And it'll soon be two and a half thank you very much 😜.

Have a nice life.

pigsDOfly · 21/09/2020 12:40

Children today will face unimaginable suffering in the next 20-30 years

Goodness, what on earth is going to happen to them.

Can you clarify that statement?

And where exactly are you getting that information from.

Disasters come and go. Times get bad, improve, get bad again; it's the human condition.

No one knows what the future holds.

I imagine people thought things where pretty bad after the war but things improved.

Thousands of people who had lived through hell in concentration camps survived to rebuild their lives, some of them to start success businesses, get married, have children.

We are driven by instinct as human being to keep moving forward, to have children, to keep trying and striving.

Of course people go on having children it's what we're programmed to do.

ChelseaDaggers · 21/09/2020 12:44

What anyone says if they don't agree with your opinion*

LadyH846 · 21/09/2020 12:47

@aSofaNearYou

Tbh besides issues like overpopulation (which is not yet widely regarded as something people have an individual responsibility to curb) I really don't understand why anyone would think this is the worst or bleakest time in history to live through. People have dealt with far worse and continued to have children. Would you rather they were married off at twelve to pop out ten kids and then die at 25 of dysentery? Or be brutally killed for a petty crime or during a religious rebellion?

The reality is people have always had children despite the hardships of the world because for most people, the world they live in is just how it is, and the majority of us would rather live through what we are currently living through than never have been born. People obviously think the same about potential children.

the majority of us would rather live through what we are currently living through than never have been born.

I don't agree. We never got a choice to be born did we? Can most of us really say for sure that we'd definitely prefer to be alive as opposed to not alive? Life can be shit for a lot of people, and has been very shit for most people historically.

The fact is, many pregnancies happen by accident and we just end up here through no choice of our own.

Emmnooo · 21/09/2020 12:55

@BiBabbles, really great post!

MsTSwift · 21/09/2020 12:56

Agree with pigs. Life has been pretty bloody awful for the non aristocratic majority for hundreds of years - read your history. Only since the 1960s onwards have we had it this good. Imagine being an ordinary person in the 13th century or even Victorian times. Pretty bloody awful. What was the quote about the life of the average British person “nasty brutish and short”.

lynsey91 · 21/09/2020 12:58

I guess a huge amount of women have children simply because they want children and never really think beyond that.

I know numerous couples who didn't even discuss if they wanted children or not but just had them because apparently "it is what you do"!

So with the numbers that just blindly have them regardless of what sort of life they can give them, whether they can afford them etc and the large number of "accidents" it's easy to see why so many have children.

Humans have totally fucked up the planet and, to be honest, I think we deserve to die out.

I don't have children by choice and I am so glad of that. It means I don't have to worry about their futures. Climate change is real and is going to get worse. It's probably too late to stop it or even change the outcome much.

Rising sea levels, food and water shortages. My what a great future to look forward to.

Mind you if we kill off all the bees as we have killed off so many species of animals, insects, plants etc we will die out anyway

Cheekyfox · 21/09/2020 12:59

OP- your in the wrong forum sweety.... I think you might want to head over to the child free subreddit 😂

ChelseaDaggers · 21/09/2020 12:59

I don't agree. We never got a choice to be born did we? Can most of us really say for sure that we'd definitely prefer to be alive as opposed to not alive? Life can be shit for a lot of people, and has been very shit for most people historically.

Just a little aside re this; this is the original argument for antinatalism, which began at least as early as the ancient greeks. It is an ideology / philosophy, which has been around for thousands of years. It isn't something I agree with personally, but the argument has been around for a very long time. I find it very interesting, (even if nobody else does), how people come up with the same arguments for and against something, centuries apart.

I also find the threat of constant agony which is usually predicted by people on threads like these, (not usually by actual scientists), reminiscent of religious dogma in days gone by. Same threat, different reason.

ChelseaDaggers · 21/09/2020 13:01

Oh god, I've just seen a username I refuse to converse with. I am out. Bye! Enjoy your apocalypse porn session everyone.

unmarkedbythat · 21/09/2020 13:04

@neversayalways

It’s not him (Trump) as a baby that was the problem, it’s the millions of idiots who voted for him as adults. (as it is with Johnson)

Neat illustration of exactly why people keep voting the way the left don't want them to.

What, because mean and nasty people say they are idiots? Just proving the meanies right then, aren't they, if they will vote against their own interests as part of a tantrum about being called an idiot Grin
Abouttimemum · 21/09/2020 13:04

Well it’s all just fucking pointless anyway though - we exist to continue existing.
We’re all just a tiny speck of dust in an infinite universe, in which the earth will implode one day.
Which is why I have no idea why people give so many fucks about what other people look like, or believe in, or what Sandra had for tea or why Brian’s all of sudden wearing skinny jeans and flip flops.

Utterly matterless. Focus on yourself and the ones you love.

Ref OP I do agree actually, and I often feel guilty about having DS, and what his future will be like, and how he’ll manage on his own. But it’s too late now, so I need to try to give him all the tools he needs to get by.

Alabamawhirly1 · 21/09/2020 13:11

The way some people are talking you would think we were all living is Mao's China, or a village in the third world where we have no health care, education and have to walk 10 miles to a disease filled puddle for water every day.

Where I live, England, we have a pretty comfortable existence. To say kids are and will face unimaginable suffering and would rather not have been born - is more than a bit dramatic.

We don't know what the future will hold. But we're unlikely to see an apocalypse in the next 30 years. There are actually plenty of resources for everyone, we just need to be less wastefull and distribute them more fairly.

I don't think many people wish they hadn't been born because we've damaged the environment. If you do feel like that you've probably got some issues that need addressing. Most of us are generally happy. We had kids to share and extend that happiness and take great joy from our kids. And isn't that the point of life? Just to be happy and share that happiness. If that's by having kids, have them, if not, don't.

We can live in harmony with the planet. It's not like the only option is human race or happy natural world. Just because we are currently fucking up the planet doesn't mean we can't live without doing it.

sharpeidiem · 21/09/2020 13:13

To everyone here who is against having kids for environmental reasons, have you ever wanted children?

I'm not trying to be divisive, I'm just aware that when I was younger and more emotionally vulnerable from the things that happened to me, I too had the thought of; "bringing kids into the world can be cruel." Turns out I needed a bit of Sertraline in my system and then I was fine (now I actively would like kids in the near future, though that's unrelated).

Not insinuating that's anyone else's situation, but I would be curious to see if health reasons or anything other than environmental reasons comes into it.

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