why are women threatened with "growing old and lonely" if they don't have children and marry young? (Brown, how much)
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Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste...
And the wealth was largely driven by my astute decision to remain child free (duh).
Well if that is what you want good for you. Taste is purely a matter of opinon, if you prefer to sip bottles of 1967 penfolds grange, over the 2022 Bin 28 or if like your wagyu at level 12 rather than 5 - Good for you, however I do not envy you one bit.
One thing i learnt very quickly while working with individuals worth 10's to 100's of millions of dollars as part of my employment for years is how boring, cranky and miserable they all seem to be. Never had a billionare (was not good enough to move to that level) or a sports star/rock star more attuned to a party lifestyle - so sure there may be a gap.
Maybe you should listen this and think about it for a minute in the context of your comment?
Once a woman is no longer able to conceive her desirability drops a lot naturally as nature intended women to be the caregiver of children and not continuously produce. This is why society especially equality is bad for women. They want the same pay as men but you have to manage your own career and have children at the same time. I would rather not have to work and let the men go out to work.
Now women who decide to pursue corporate ladder during their fertile years is robbing themselves of valuable time. By the time they become some corporate director, they will be childless and not desired. You gave that 15-18 years of your best productive years away just for career and now you have to spend the rest of your life without a mate and especially children. You may find a man who chooses to tag along but as soon he gets a younger woman he's gone because you can't have a kid with him so there's no way to keep him.
Is it worth it? Or you would rather be without a career, have tons of children around you and take care of you. That's how my grandmother lived. Never worked a day in her life.
Oh Lord. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this post.
My worth, and the worth of any woman, is not dependent on their ability to conceive or raise kids. In my case, I don't even consider myself a "woman". Being female is something I use to describe myself and it's way down on the list along with having brown hair and eyes. I consider myself to be a person, first, second, and last.
And nature really screwed the pooch when it came to me. I have no maternal instincts at all. I hear a baby or small kids screaming and I want to get out the plastic bags. Nature in no way intended me to be a mother.
Equality is bad for women? Please. The 1950s are calling and they want you back.
I will agree that most women can't have it all and they do have to make a decision, but here's why they have to make a decision: it's because most men do zip, zero, zilch when it comes to housework, raising kids, or helping out in the home. If men did the same amount of work women do when raising kids, then advancing a career would be as big a problem for them as it is for women who raise kids and work today. In other words, your reasoning is only valid because of a man's ineptitude in helping his wife out with raising a family. Just bringing home the bacon ain't everything, Charlie. Men need to raise the kids, too.
And by the way, my life has never been about "being desired". If the only men who desire me, desire me because they want me to have their kids, I'd rather be single. But the facts are, there are hundreds of thousands of childfree women who don't plan on procreating who are married and living their best life. I think we'll do just fine without having to be "desired" by anyone.
If any man who was married to me wanted to go after some young thing so she could give him kids, then he's not worth the whiskers on his chin and I say good riddance and don't let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. That's not a man who wants kids. That's a man who either didn't know himself very well and changed his mind while leading on his wife, or that's a man with a major character flaw. And what woman needs that grief?
If I ever get married to someone, I would hope we'd be partners. I wouldn't want to be a little pet goldfish in a bowl, safe but never experiencing life, while someone takes care of me. I'm a grown woman and if I get married, it will be to a husband, not someone who wants to be my father.
Yes, it's worth it. Freedom is always worth it, to some more than others. My mother never worked a day in her life after she got married. She never learned to drive. She was taken care of hand and foot by my father. I'd suffocate if I had to live the way she did. She liked it. I wouldn't be able to stand it.
You know, you're entitled to your opinions and how you feel, but flat out telling us women without kids that we're flawed, unwanted, and not natural is pushing that a bit. But if you're a man, I wish you luck in finding a doormat you can wipe your feet on when you come home at night, or if you're a woman, I wish you luck if you choose to find happiness in being a doormat.
Last edited by rodentraiser; 12-13-2023 at 10:58 PM..
Reason: I took out the more sarcastic remarks
Well if that is what you want good for you. Taste is purely a matter of opinon, if you prefer to sip bottles of 1967 penfolds grange, over the 2022 Bin 28 or if like your wagyu at level 12 rather than 5 - Good for you, however I do not envy you one bit.
One thing i learnt very quickly while working with individuals worth 10's to 100's of millions of dollars as part of my employment for years is how boring, cranky and miserable they all seem to be. Never had a billionare (was not good enough to move to that level) or a sports star/rock star more attuned to a party lifestyle - so sure there may be a gap. ...
Recent activity suggests that this thread will soon be locked; a pity, as for a while, we had a vigorous and productive discussion going. So here's an attempt to interject, before the lock-hammer drops...
The "boring, cranky and miserable" can be found across all strata of wealth or choices about family-arrangement (single or married, parents or child-free). It has more to do with character than with life-circumstances. It is true that fanatical pursuit of wealth tilts our allegiances and passions, but such outcome is not inevitable, and plenty of people achieve wealth without corrupting what might poetically be termed the soul. Others, are plentily corrupted, without achieving any material success.
Plenty of child-free persons are dedicated employees, modest savers, reserved consumers and just all-around regular citizens. Plenty of fathers are playboy cads, and plenty of mothers are whatever is the female equivalent. Parenting can sometimes sharpen our finest faculties, but just the same, it can dull them.
Where I think that Mitch was heading, what you evidently have missed, is that the desire to have children is a matter of taste, just as the desire to get a tattoo, to join a religion, to buy a house, to climb Mt. Everest, to throw stones or to gather them. With the throwing vs. gathering of stones, we can perhaps make with some confidence a moral judgment, but with parenting we can not; it is folly to try, and idiocy to insist.
Forget marriage and relationships, I ultimately believe that man and woman were made to simply procreate with one another to keep the species alive. That said, I really dont care if people choose to get married and have children or not as it has no effect on me. At the end of the day, we seem to keep ourselves confined by all of these societally influenced decisions when in fact they may not be the best choice for every individual as its really no ones business what we do. If people feel marriage and children should occur for reasons x,y, and z, that great, but please don try to influence others into thinking the same way. We each have a different outlook on life, we each have a different idea of happiness...leave it at that.
Forget marriage and relationships, I ultimately believe that man and woman were made to simply procreate with one another to keep the species alive. That said, I really dont care if people choose to get married and have children or not as it has no effect on me. At the end of the day, we seem to keep ourselves confined by all of these societally influenced decisions when in fact they may not be the best choice for every individual as its really no ones business what we do. If people feel marriage and children should occur for reasons x,y, and z, that great, but please don try to influence others into thinking the same way. We each have a different outlook on life, we each have a different idea of happiness...leave it at that.
I completely agree.
The only areas where I'm giving people some side-eye...
1. Please do not tell me how I feel or will feel about a thing. I know this better than anyone, I live in my head, no one else does. My gyno doctor argued with me at least half a dozen times when I wanted to get my tubes tied, "The most common side effect is regret..." and "But what if you meet a man...." Most women who manage to get sterilized do NOT regret the choice. So to expand on that...no one has any business telling another person how they feel or how they are bound to feel. You don't know better than they do.
2. Do not try to push other people into complying with your idea of how things ought to be, and more to the point, developing a relationship with someone who has a defined goal of having or not having kids, when you do not agree but you're keeping it on the down low assuming they'll get on board when it happens... That kind of manipulative behavior is horrible. Accidents happen, but when it's on purpose, it's not an accident, it's a plot.
3. If you DO reproduce, on purpose or accidentally, and you decide to keep the child (not just with regard to abortion but also adoption)... Do your best to be a good parent. It does not matter if it was what you wanted or not, the child had no say in it. Once you bring a life into your care, you've got obligations and there's no excuse not to give them your all. I walked this talk when I was raising mine. Obviously in the absence of severe disability, the kid does need to grow up and leave the nest eventually but until then... I grant zero excuses for a lack of self control in how people treat their kids or act around their kids. I don't judge much in life, but when I see parents behaving badly toward their children, with no impulse control over their tempers or attitudes, in public...yeah, I judge the heck outta that nonsense.
My ex recently told me that if I had aborted one of HIS children, we would have had problems. And yet he really didn't do more than the base minimum of being involved with their upbringing. He rarely acted like he loved them or cared about them. Sometimes he was cruel to them, or used them as hostages to push me around. The fact that a man can insist on it being so important that his spawn walk the earth yet be so indifferent to their suffering...I don't have words for the rage. I will never understand the lust that some people appear to have for the pain and suffering of others.
Most of the posters here are beyond the window of life necessary to even consider a change. However there is a conversation that should be had with young people. Explaining life's choices and potential consequences is not a threat... how ridiculous is that.
Go to a doctor, go to a financial planner, go to a house of worship, go to a place where truth and knowledge is shared... those are not threats. In fact, just the opposite is true. Here's a good video to share, that provides both arguments... for kids or not to have kids.
These are the kinds of stupid videos that I refer to in my original post. This Valuetainment guy leans mysoginist. There was a video he made that Islam may be the answer to the problem of progressive women.
That is a cultural trope, and in my opinion, a gravely unfortunate ones. What is family? The mere accident of genetics. But friends are chosen volitionally and intentionally. I wish the society didn't place family on such a pedestal, and instead gave more primacy to friendships.
Even today, our society pushes reproduction as an overwhelming positive, marginalizing those who are disinclined to reproduce. It more acutely affects women, because women are more obviously "reproductive"... but it also affects men. A disgusting bias, in my opinion... but while we're making progress, it will take several generations to truly remove the pro-natalist bias.
Exactly. But we've packaged it as some kind of grand boon, nay even a duty.
It's a way of lashing-out, in a more "conservative" couching of their frustrations at not getting a date.
I agree but it's interesting that many of the people with the viewpoint are married - like the Valuetainment guy.
I also find that many of these married conservative men are desperate to sleep with other women other than their wives but it's something they keep secret.
I agree but it's interesting that many of the people with the viewpoint are married - like the Valuetainment guy.
I also find that many of these married conservative men are desperate to sleep with other women other than their wives but it's something they keep secret.
Always seems like those who are the loudest in judgment of others are trying to distract everybody from judging them. Projecting, I guess. At least until their secrets come to light, and then it's all like, "well I am human and I made mistakes..."
You don't know?
Old men can woo young women, but old women rarely find young men.
That leaves the older women without mates or children, pretty much on their own.
They're on their own if that's what they want and cant' get.
The other day, I went out with a few girlfriends - one of them being a 55 year old woman, and she introduced me to her much younger fiancé. Her fiancé is a young 27 year old attractive woman many men could only dream of dating.
This is the kind of scenario that threatens these youtubers who post videos about women growing older and alone.
I don't think this is as sexist as you think it is. It is a reality that often women live longer than men so there are more old widows than old widowers, but I think the possibility is a real issue for older people of either gender if they have no family or friends nearby. It's not a "threat" necessarily, but a "fear". And both women and men risk being alone and without help or support as they get older, especially if they have no close relatives or children.
I guess I would ask why you feel it's a threat. If you don't fear getting old and needing help with anything, good for you. Many of the rest of us who are past our prime are dealing with diminishing health or fitness or stamina and it can be lonely and scary to be alone.
Just today, my hubby and I helped an older neighbor who lost her husband last year and wanted to see a doctor. We took her in to Urgent care to have her issue checked out. She could have driven herself, probably, she could have called an ambulance, but I think she thought it was nice to have some support and a friendly ride there. She has kids, but they are a long ways away. If she didn't have us close by, would she or her kids think it might be time to move closer? Maybe.
I think it becomes important to people as they age, to have some kind of support network, whether family or friends or paid staff at a facility. My grandmother wanted to stay in her home as long as possible, but she feared falling or becoming sick and not having anyone find her for for days. I think our older neighbor friend is probably having those same fears.
Friends are good, but sometimes friends can drift apart as lives change. They are for fair weather and fun times, not long illnesses or unpleasant tasks. Family seems more "obligated" to stand by us. I sat with my parents both, as they died, who will be there for my hubby and I? That's part of what I think I missed out on, not having kids. It's not a threat, it's a real thing.
Perhaps you feel pressured or threatened by it. I think that means you're young yet. Wait til some of the signs of age come in, or you see what happens to elder relatives as they grow older with or without family nearby. Then maybe it will seem like wisdom to have a support network, not an offense to suggest we all need one.
I do not believe in having kids so they can be our slaves as we get old and sick. If I had kids, I would not want them to give up their careers, free time, hobbies or relationships to be my slave.
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