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I've met a few couples who chose not to have kids without any health reasons.
They are either very selfish people, or have (had) a major hidden marital problem.
No exceptions.
Sorry.
I Disagree.
If people truly don't want kids for whatever reasons and know they won't spend the time/attention on them, that's far from selfish in my book. That's actually being unselfish in my book. I know more than a few happy couples who just don't want kids and have great marriages. And I know many more couples with kids who have major, far from unhidden, "marital problems" so your logic doesn't makes sense to me.
If we want to talk selfish, to me that is having kids without the financial and/or being able to provide the healthy emotional support that parents provide. And there is A LOT of this going on in our country, unprepared/dysfunctional parents who have kids for selfish reasons, ie I want a kid! and do a lousy job of it. That's selfish for you. And let's face it.....the vast majority(all?) of parents have kids for selfish reasons. And I don't use that term in a negative way but parents want kids because it will enrich their own lives in bringing a kid into the world. Even someone donating time to a cause without pay is a selfish endeavor as it makes one selfishly feel good to help/benefit some cause or someone else.
I think it's great that people are putting thought into whether they bring a child into the world or not. Now if only everyone would do this instead of popping out babies without a stable partner, job or other means to support said child.
I've met a few couples who chose not to have kids without any health reasons.
They are either very selfish people, or have (had) a major hidden marital problem.
No exceptions.
Sorry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sspistol
I think it's great that people are putting thought into whether they bring a child into the world or not. Now if only everyone would do this instead of popping out babies without a stable partner, job or other means to support said child.
Most people spend more time deciding which flavor of Starbucks latte to order than they do when conceiving a child.
Most people spend more time deciding which flavor of Starbucks latte to order than they do when conceiving a child.
more often than not when people make a choice about if they are going to have a child it is post-conception and the choice is if they are continuing the pregnancy or their personal beliefs that they are not ending an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy. But for some reason making a responsible decision not to have children is seen by many as a selfish irresponsible decision.
Degrees are not inherited, but if at least one of your parents went to college, you are much more likely to go as well. Kids typically follow in their parents' footsteps in regards to education and career/salary expectations.
The claim that the OP made was that educated people would disappear, ie, "go extinct", if well-educated couples chose not to have children. His post smelled of the worst kind of snobbish elitism which I found offensive.
Being "much more likely" is NOT the same as "won't" or "can't". I speak from experience: my grandparents were illiterate immigrants, neither of my parents graduated from high school, and yet four out of their five kids have college degrees.
The claim that the OP made was that educated people would disappear, ie, "go extinct", if well-educated couples chose not to have children. His post smelled of the worst kind of snobbish elitism which I found offensive.
Being "much more likely" is NOT the same as "won't" or "can't". I speak from experience: my grandparents were illiterate immigrants, neither of my parents graduated from high school, and yet four out of their five kids have college degrees.
I am sorry if I did not make the point clear. You are to be congratulated for your efforts, but the point of the thread has nothing to do with folks with your life story and family background.
As a person you are a precious gem and represent tremendous achievement. But, unfortunately not all people that come from a background where education is not promoted do as you do. I would venture to say you had great parents even if they were not formally educated.
Furthermore, those that come from non-elitist backgrounds often achieve replacement fertility rates.
I am talking about those that belong to the elite class that have decided to not reproduce for whatever reasons. And I want to make cleat that I do not judge or place value to their actions.
The theme of the thread has to do with the real issue of nations that have achieved a developed status and now their citizens are not reproducing. Why do you think most of Europe is so welcoming of migrants? They desperately need young people because they are advancing to a society where most people will be old and dependent on the young citizens to survive. In fact, In Germany they pay women to have children and this strategy is failing.
That is what China thought years ago. Read the NEWS-----the plan did not work.
I don't know. It worked for us in the 1900s through the 1940s before there were so many people in the US. We managed well then, having a military who could take on Japan, Germany, and Italy, new innovations to help people, not nearly as much violent crime, more jobs (except in the Depression), lots fewer people on the roads and we sure didn't have a problem with our roads and bridges falling apart like they're doing now. We didn't have to worry about the strain on the electrical system or having enough fresh drinking water or about having 40 or more kids in a class with one teacher.
Are you seriously trying to tell me things are better now with all the extra people we have in the country and that we'd be better off when our population here in the US doubles?
Then why is Europe importing so many foreigners? In Europe the fertility rate is well below two which is NOT enough to replace the population.
You're forgetting they already had an extraordinarily high population to begin with and so do we. Germany is a small country with limited space. Even in 1970 they were worried about their children finding a place to live when they were grown. If you were talking about a fertility rate that can't replace the population at levels of people during the 1700s, maybe you'd have a point. But if the kids now can't replace the population and we go down to 1940 levels, that can only be a good thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Julian658
Zero gain sum.
Sorry, being childfree gives me a lot of options and benefits having children would take away. Zero sum, my ass. I love not having children and I don't feel any loss from it. If that's being selfish, then so be it. I always did think getting the fur coats and the sports car was a better bargain than having a kid.
That was not the point of the thread. I am talking about the consequences of highly educated intelligent couples that decide not to procreate. In a sense it is a loss for future generations. One may think that it is no big deal at the individual level, but on a large scale it has consequences.
The decision not to have kids is not limited to only the well educated and economically successful members of our society. People of all social levels make that decision whether or not a loss will occur depends upon who would have been born and no one can predict that. The outcome is going to be the same. A poor family can produce a well educated and economically successful individual as we have seen in some of our leaders and business people. Look at the Howard Schultz or Ray Kroch. Abraham Lincoln was dirt poor. Steve Jobs was adopted so who knows what genetic material he came from.
No one can predict what is or isn't a loss if it never happens.
Think 400-500 years ahead and try to see the consequences of drastically reducing the number of children that could have being born in homes that would have promoted education and achievement.
What's likely to happen in the distant future, is that the worldwide demographic distribution will resemble what it was in pre-industrial times. In those times, Europe had comparatively small population. Places that we today consider to be "backward" were at the same level as Europe in 1500 - if not more advanced.
In other words, we'll see a different racial and ethnic distribution. But can we assign normative value to this? It's a very different question, from that of what happens when "smart" people curtail reproduction, while "dumb" people accelerate it.
If the brighter and better-educated Brazilians, Nigerians, Pakistanis and so forth continue reproducing at a heady clip, there's no reason to dread an Idiocracy-style dystopia. If globally the better-educated become systematically child-free, that is quite a different matter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina
... the ability to procreate is considered a fundamental right. It's not written anywhere, but because there are no laws or regulations that curtail it, procreation is a right.
At the risk of going off-topic, I must insert an objection here. Consider the "Relationships" forum on C-D, where droves of young (and not so young) men (and to lesser extent, women) bemoan their lack of dating-success. Some of these people are uninterested in having kids, but some are desperate to become parents. Well, the lack of social-skills or opportunities that stymies success in dating, necessarily means no success in reproduction. I'm not aware of any government programs, in any nation, that will match a hapless young person with a mate of the opposite gender, to secure reproductive opportunities for said person.
We could even have a complementary thread: "What happens when the best-educated and the most-intelligent people have the worst street-smarts, and are therefore systematically unable to reproduce, even if they wish to".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ummagumma
I've met a few couples who chose not to have kids without any health reasons.
They are either very selfish people, or have (had) a major hidden marital problem.
No exceptions.
Sorry.
In my locale, the above statement is unfortunately not far from the truth... and I say this as a child-free person. That is, local men or women - singles or couples - who are volitionally without children, have generally taken that stance not from philosophical conviction, but from lack of self-esteem, from various mental illnesses, from financial privation and so forth. Well-established local white-collar professionals are reproducing. No exceptions.
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