To think that having kids is selfish in today’s world?

[WorthyRedBeaker]

With the planet facing overpopulation, climate change, and dwindling resources, isn’t it selfish to keep having kids? AIBU to think that choosing to have children now is more about personal desires than about what’s best for the world?

Well there won't be anyone alive to give a toss will there. It's not like the trees will be sad about it.

The OP hasn't been back, guys. It's a wind-up.

Enough! Enough of this same stupid question everyday!

😂

Even if the world is overpopulated overall, there are drastically falling birth rates in developed countries due to contraception and freedoms of modern life. It's actually quite important that the people of developed countries have children to perpetuate their culture, which has been one of the most successful and less oppressive ones.

"Offer" what? I don't understand.

I don't have 'DC' but that's irrelevant. Homo sapiens has been the most aggressive and destructive species in the history of the universe, so I don't see any inherent value in perpetuating it.

Quite. Rich people wanted sons and heirs. Poor people wanted labour.

Why do people still believe this ‘ the world will become overpopulated’ BS?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/11/global-birthrates-dropping#:~:text=The%20IHME%20study%20said%20by,%2C%20Niger%2C%20Chad%20and%20Tajikistan.

We have AI for that. Most jobs or functions are automated requiring less people.

YANBU OP as it’s not a nice world to bring them in to is it. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Hardly a huge issue, given the downward trend for birth rates. Let’s see how we get in a few years time with a massive number of economically inactive elderly people, and no young people to pay for and provide their social and medical care. Let’s just hope the robots step up.

Also, when my grandparents were born, fascists were on the march across Europe, there was a huge economic depression and the world was about to be plunged into war. When my parents were born Europe was gripped by the Cold War and the ever present risk of nuclear armageddon. When exactly was a good time to have kids?

Having kids has always been about personal desires and it has always been selfish. So I voted yanbu but I don't think it's anything new.

People have always had kids even in the direst of situations and when they thought the world might end soon. Having said that I do feel that the threat of climate change and dwindling resources is on a different level to anything that has come before and I worry a lot about what kind of world my kids will have to face when they grow up or when I'm not here anymore.

Having 2 children each doesn't increase the population so no.

Having kids has always been about personal desires.

Hilarious. As if anyone has ever had a baby because it's 'what's best for the world'. We're all doing what comes naturally. And being a mother is one of the best things I've ever done with my life.

Any woman who denies herself the joy of motherhood because of 'the world' is bonkers.

Well yes.
Having children has always been 'selfish'.
Human beings are not essential for the planet and never have been. We have never been having kids for the benefit of the planet.

Just like all animals we are driven to reproduce for no good reason.

I agree, OP. Of course it is essentially selfish. And not particularly kind. I am astounded at how self-serving and indulgent I have been, procreating quite despite all rational arguments which have been pointing toward a precarious future for decades. My own DC are very clear they will not have children of their own but will endeavour make the best of what a future of climate breakdown and fraying social structures has in store for them.

I look at the children and young people I know, actually whole families, who are resigning themselves to multi-generational living as it is becoming increasingly challenging for the young to move out of the family home.

The climate is fucked, and trundling irrevocably over the brow of the hill, as a direct result of increasing tensions around access to resources, come the inevitable war, famine and pestilence. To think we in the west will somehow be insulated against this is naïve beyond measure: babies born today will live lives where the mess we've made of the climate, through our Western economies' dogged insistence on growth at all costs, will impact every area of their lives.

YABB

It's not normal to feel this way. At 19, you have your whole life ahead of you. Please speak to a Dr about how you are feeling.

Arguments along the lines of '"Well, there's never been a good time..." are missing the point that war is temporary and regional, and there will be places which remain unaffected, where life will go on as normal.
The climate breakdown, by contrast, will render much of the world unlivable on account of flooding, excessive heat and desertification, leeching of soil nutrients rendering meaningful food production at scale impossible. Climate breakdown is an existential threat.

If anything the British need to be having more babies.

There's always an end of the world.doom about people in certain generations, it helps them process the fact that they are mortal and the tiny gap they leave will be filled and life will go on for others. This generation are particularly tiresome because they have SM to doompost. If my granny had SM in the mid 1980s she would have been posting about Thatcher ultimately taking us to nuclear war and the world being in danger not to mention my 2 weekly cans of Silvikrin personally depleting the ozone layer above the roof of her house meaning she will probably be worse affected by the fallout (she lived next door) My grandfather would have posted about creating a generation of deaf people from the dreadful racket of pop music (there's no tune just bang bang bang) and women with deformed feet from wearing winkle pickers. To be fair, my feet are pretty mangled but the rest didn't happen. In 100 years, it will be something else although what doesn't bear thinking about if the gloom and faux totalitarianism is anything to go by.

Stupid comparison. If you're already alive you have human rights and can live as long as you like, until nature decides otherwise. The unborn don't have those rights. You think people deciding to end their life is comparable to just not popping out a kid (that doesn't need to be born)?