Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Compelling reasons to have children:
All of your friends are getting married and having kids
Your religion expects it
Your parents are pushing for grandchildren
You love other people's children and can't wait to play with your own
You want a legacy
It is expected in your career
You will get a welfare supplement without which you will not be able to leave home
That guy you just met is really attractive!
Everybody loves and pays attention to a pregnant mother
It will tie a parental couple together for life
You know you can raise kids who are better than your acquaintances kids and want to prove it
No reason in the top 10 ever:
So someone will take care of me when I get old
I find none of those reasons compelling reasons to have children.
I have friends who are married and unmarried. I have friends with children and without children.
I'm not religious.
My parents can push all they want, but it's my body and my life.
Sure I love my nephews and I can't wait to send them home. I have no desire to have my own short people.
A legacy? No. I want each person to be the best they can be and do what they love and be happy.
I know of no career where you need children to be successful.
I earn far too much to receive welfare as does everyone I know with the exception of a handful of elderly family members.
I've been married for 19 years so I'm not meeting any new guys and wanting to pop out a kid for them.....never wanted to pop out a kid no matter how attractive the person I was dating was.
Nope. Everyone doesn't love a pregnant lady. Many people don't get a thrill out of listening to them complain during the pregnancy.
Actually, there are many people who have children together who never see each other and have no interest in the child. Let me give you my father's phone number.....oh wait he left when I was 6 months old and he was married to my mother!
There is absolutely no way to prove this one:
You know you can raise kids who are better than your acquaintances kids and want to prove it
There are absolutely NO guarantees in life about anything!
It's my life. I am not humanity. What works for me doesn't work for others. What works for poster #546 works for them and probably doesn't work for poster #3. We're all unique individuals. You can't squish each of us into a mold and expect the same or even similar results.
It wasn't meant to be personal. From a humanity standpoint, there is no discussion. The birth replacement is 2.1. If we don't reach it, the human population will decrease. Period.
Everyone is well within their right to not have kids. Just know that immigration from areas with higher birth rates (poorer countries have more kids) is required for a country to reach birth replacement. This is math.
[quote=Opin_Yunated;41942555]It wasn't meant to be personal. From a humanity standpoint, there is no discussion. The birth replacement is 2.1. If we don't reach it, the human population will decrease. Period./QUOTE]
With 7+ billion people competing for resources on this planet, why are you immediately assuming this is a bad thing? It's not like humanity will go extinct overnight.
It wasn't meant to be personal. From a humanity standpoint, there is no discussion. The birth replacement is 2.1. If we don't reach it, the human population will decrease. Period./QUOTE]
With 7+ billion people competing for resources on this planet, why are you immediately assuming this is a bad thing? It's not like humanity will go extinct overnight.
Exactly. We're going to run out of resources. Also this replacement thing is bogus. People are living longer and using resources. People need to have small families if they must have children and need to think about whether they are doing it because they want to or if they are giving in to societal or familial pressure.
Exactly. We're going to run out of resources. Also this replacement thing is bogus. People are living longer and using resources. People need to have small families if they must have children and need to think about whether they are doing it because they want to or if they are giving in to societal or familial pressure.
As I said above, China tried this and it does not work.
This country got along just fine with 100 million people adding more is just going to take up more room to house them all unless Americans are okay with living in tiny homes. The argument that one won't have kids to take care of them when older is a sham because I know people who could careless about their parents. They sent them to a cheap state home to live. Long term care insurance is the best way to take care of the future for yourself.
There is a paradox in the NO CHILDREN philosophy for the sake of improving future generations:
The folks that do not reproduce are supposed to be intelligent, educated, and from the higher socio economic groups. They are generally environmentalists and worried about the future of the planet. And yet, they deprive the planet from children that could grow up to do great things.
They promote a system that leads to a world where the majority of children come from disadvantaged parents. This create an enormous imbalance between educated/productive and non educated members of society.
If the productive folks systematically commit genetic suicide by not leaving their valuable genes behind future generations will suffer from these actions.
This country got along just fine with 100 million people adding more is just going to take up more room to house them all unless Americans are okay with living in tiny homes. The argument that one won't have kids to take care of them when older is a sham because I know people who could careless about their parents. They sent them to a cheap state home to live. Long term care insurance is the best way to take care of the future for yourself.
Anecdotal statements are OK, but what is your point?
This question comes up a lot. Is there an agenda or just obsession?
I don’t like kids. My wife doesn’t like kids.
There are too many people in the world, too many of them poor. It’s good that rich countries don’t breed as much, then people can immigrate from poor countries and move up. Seems like a perfect system.
"If we don’t have kids, those people will take over!" So what, "those people" are people. I have no special love for people like me. Lots of smart, inspiring people come from humble origins, that the story everyone loves, but suddenly we’re supposed to believe that only rich educated people have worthwhile offspring? I think these arguments have a different meaning.
This question comes up a lot. Is there an agenda or just obsession?
I don’t like kids. My wife doesn’t like kids.
There are too many people in the world, too many of them poor. It’s good that rich countries don’t breed as much, then people can immigrate from poor countries and move up. Seems like a perfect system.
"If we don’t have kids, those people will take over!" So what, "those people" are people. I have no special love for people like me. Lots of smart, inspiring people come from humble origins, that the story everyone loves, but suddenly we’re supposed to believe that only rich educated people have worthwhile offspring? I think these arguments have a different meaning.
There are plenty of people in the world.
You make awesome points!
I accept that the concept of talented people having children sounds like eugenics. And we decided a long time ago that eugenics was nasty and barbaric.
But, we cannot escape the fact that great kids regardless of ethnicity often come from great homes where education is a priority. It is no accident that the biological father of Steve Jobs was a very intelligent educated Syrian man.
IN the USA the fertility rate is 1.9 which is not enough to replace the population. Among new migrants the fertility rate is higher, but within a generation or two new arrivals lower their fertility rate to conform with the majority.
This is not so much about favoring one racial group over another. The discussion is centered on the outcome of low fertility rates for future generations. Perhaps the way to go is the European model where young Germans and Scandinavians will be replaced by migrant young workers. We will see where this experiment goes.
BTW, I am not against the mixing of all ethnic groups into a single global human ethnicity. In fact this has been predicted by many as migration patterns intensify. However, despite racial uniformity we will have a divided society of "have and have not" folks.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
