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I was married to a nice but lazy man. He did the minimum to just get by. He once admitted doing a lousy job on chores around the house hoping I would quit asking him to do things. He wanted kids and I did not. I even went so far once as to borrow a baby for a weekend so he could see what it was like. I told him before we married that I didn't want kids but he thought I would change. If he had carried his share of the load, I might have.
I knew if I had kids I would be doing all the work alone. I also knew our relationship would change and we would no longer have fun and enjoy life in general. I had already seen most of my friends go down this path and no one had anything GOOD to say about having kids. Most said yes, they love their children but they would not do it over again. And no one said their relationship had improved in any way post babies. They were much less happy.
My husband was so lazy he was like a child. I didn't think it would get better to add real children into the mix! I never liked children enough to want to be pretty much a single mom so I didn't have any.
Well, there are several things going on at the same time. Women can vote. Women can use birth control. Women can pursue educational and career goals. None of these have always been the case.
Are these things "selfish"? Before you rush to shout "Yes! Those selfish, selfish wimmenz!", please pause for a moment to consider that men do all of these things, too. Plus, men have had the privilege of these choices far longer than women have.
Both of my sisters have a B.A.
One of them works in criminal justice and the other married a pro athlete and is now a stay-at-home mom.
Of course I believe women should be awarded all the opportunities that men receive.
My "feminism" I can assure you is just as valid (if not more) than the "feminism" that a lot of society has become accustomed to believing in.
...I was commenting on your ridiculous claim that feminism has caused people to not care about national pride.
Perhaps what the gentleman means is that societies that successfully compete with opposing societies, who flourish and dominate - instead of getting outstripped and absorbed - generally conform to a quiver of conservative principles. What is necessary is a kind of vigor and compartmentalization of roles, be it between classes or genders. In a successful society, there are the priests, the warriors, the merchants, the artisans, the peasants (particularly dear to me personally) and so forth. If priests start smelting iron, and blacksmiths make theological disquisitions at street-corners, both society's mettle and metal will suffer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by coschristi
I’m biased but Ancient Greece was by far the greatest civilization. ...
There's much truth to this, but it could also be argued that Greece suffered a horrendous dark-age sometime around 1200-800 BC. The civilization that emerged was largely derivative from trade in the Mediterranean, with peoples whose own civilizations were based on those of Egypt or Mesopotamia. Going back further, the Greece of the Homeric heroes, whose language is lost to us, was likely the result of migrations from the Near-East. Great as Classical Greek civilization became, it was not "original". It was not crafted-together ex nihilo, but came as an adumbration on all sorts of confluent ingredients. The same, I think, can be said of the Anglo-American civilization that dominates today.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kavalier
That poster I was responding to literally said white societies are inferior. Like, LITERALLY said whites are an inferior people. As if most of you wouldn't have jumped on him if he had said that about blacks?...or Asians?...or Latinos? Please.
Most of us recognize that the cited statement was a rhetorical ploy, an intentionally provocative exaggeration meant to expose what the poster in question regarded as complementary exaggerations... the sort that happened to raise his own particular ire.
I was married to a nice but lazy man. He did the minimum to just get by. He once admitted doing a lousy job on chores around the house hoping I would quit asking him to do things. He wanted kids and I did not. I even went so far once as to borrow a baby for a weekend so he could see what it was like. I told him before we married that I didn't want kids but he thought I would change. If he had carried his share of the load, I might have.
I knew if I had kids I would be doing all the work alone. I also knew our relationship would change and we would no longer have fun and enjoy life in general. I had already seen most of my friends go down this path and no one had anything GOOD to say about having kids. Most said yes, they love their children but they would not do it over again. And no one said their relationship had improved in any way post babies. They were much less happy.
My husband was so lazy he was like a child. I didn't think it would get better to add real children into the mix! I never liked children enough to want to be pretty much a single mom so I didn't have any.
My philosophy in life has always been for me to be happy but not at the expense of someone else. So all of my life decisions have been based on that philosophy. That would include decisions such as if I marry, who I marry, future kids, employment, promotions, etc. To follow this philosophy has meant that I have occasionally acted counter to the standard, accepted social pursuits of life. I first married at age 50, never wanted kids, and have declined promotions on several occasions. When I was in my 40s my father asked me why I am yet to marry. I told him I had not yet had the urge to get married. My father gave a thin smile, shrugged and said that he never thought there was a choice. I found that a little sad.
It can be selfish to have children and it can be selfish to not have children. The fact is the motivation for any one's actions can be self-serving. I often hear about people wanting to have kids so they have someone to love, someone to take care of them in old age, someone to nurture, someone to pass wisdom upon, someone to carry the family name, etc. The craziest motivation I've heard was from someone who claimed that their childhood sucked and the only way to get it back would be to have a kid and re-experience childhood through them...that person turned out to be an extreme narcissist who constantly revised history to fit their current situation.
I've also heard people wishing to not have kids because they don't want to be burdened, fear their bodies changing/delivering a baby, fear sacrificing their own ambitions, etc. I also know folks who don't want kids because they do not think they will be good parents.
So having kids or not having kids in itself is not a selfish act; it's subjective based on various motivations.
Was having this discussion with my oldest cousin not long ago (more on him at a later time - he's a piece of work), but he had four children (3 boys and 1 girl) and they're all in their 30s now (I'm as old as his oldest child) and I told him he must be dissapointed only one of them (the daughter) had children.
He told me he's glad they are keeping their "stuff" wrapped. I said that's just really sad. He said America's system/scheme is a complete folly. The way you are just a part of the machine (taxable) and nothing more...and how hard it is to get ahead. I believe part of his view is that there are too many people on the Earth, as well.
And I was thinking recently and I think that people that consciously make a decision to not have children are kind of selfish. Especially people that are intelligent or have a good sense of structure and discipline. I think far too many people that don't have structure or discipline or are very destructive and not very intelligent at all are having way too many children. I think it's completely backward.
Do you think that the lower-than-acceptable "replacement" birth rate in the West at the current moment is an example of how selfish we've become?
In China you could not even have more than 1 or 2 children (I believe they've lifted that law recently) and in America people try desperately to have their own children but for various reasons they can't have them. Yet so many in this country (and the West) have made a conscious decision to have children. I think it is strange.
There's no proof that how many children one decides to have, if any at all, is tied to their intelligence, selfishness or selflessness. Further, many people who find out they're infertile feel they've won the lottery. However, thinking of people as progeny or as commodities to fulfill a need is ALWAYS selfish. The most obvious would be adults ignoring children in foster care and instead begging for money through crowdfunding for IVF or adoption. Your piece of work cousin is correct.
There's probably all sorts of things. What about 6-12 months paid time off for nursing mothers? Free daycare? No taxes for mothers of 3 or more children? I believe that last one has been implemented Hungary recently.
There's probably many more incentives that could be implemented.
Oh great, so let's punish those that cannot have children or choose not to for whatever reason (medical, physical, mental, etc) by making them take up the slack. Who's going to cover the nursing mothers for 6-12 months? On top of their normal leave? Who's gonig to pay for the salaries for the free daycare workers? Who's going to pay in all the extra taxes that all the mom's aren't paying for the kids? And what about father's? What if the mother abandon's her kids or dies? Sorry, I lost my mind working two jobs picking up the slack of a woman who was on leave....then decided to take more time off. And then more time. It's great that the law covered her, but who's covering me? Who's helping me with my double workload? No one, that's who. Just me, myself, and I. And I'm the one being seen as selfish, but hey, let's incentivize people to have more kids....as if welfare isn't already doing that for those that can't afford kids or birth control obviously.
IMHO, we should be having less children. Less kids means less natural resources being used. Less trash. Less diapers (average is 7,000 disposable diapers per kid, PER KID!!!). Less everything so we can clean up this country first before we try to have more kids. We do not need to repopulate 1:1. I personally think it's good that people are having less kids.
Last edited by psichick; 07-05-2019 at 12:34 PM..
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