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My prior just won't allow me to believe the conclusions of this study. I mean are all these married people with kids just duped into it? Surely, mom or dad would have sat some of us down and said don't do what we're doing.
Just to respond to recent posts:
Gift giving is a very human thing to do, often you get as much if not more from giving gifts than receiving them. Costs hardly anything to pick up a baby bottle from Target or a few flowers for a coworker who just lost a parent. My goodness....
In the case of recent posts, though, I'm thinking it's not the fact that you can get a pack of pacifiers for a couple of bucks. It's more a conscious refusal to participate on principle. It's not about the babies, it's about being resentful of feeling socially beholden to participate in something with people he doesn't even like and actively resents.
I always wondered if I wanted to have kids and when I bought my house, I mostly cemented that I wouldn't have kids. It's a bit easier for me to make that statement, since I can't conceive a child, I can only help facilitate. My reasoning for not having children has been mostly involved with my upbringing. My Dad didn't really want to be a Dad. He went to prison when I was 8, got out when I was 14, and then completely disappeared from my life at 15. I'm 34 and I'm still not completely over it. Watching my Mom struggle going into a situation expecting 2 parents, but then only getting one. Me having developmental issues as a child and my Mom having to figure it out on her own.
Then you bring in my older brother who has 4 children, dealt with a cheating wife who got pregnant, and now he's raising that child as his own, and let's not forgot his lack of ambition and money woes that has plagued his entire life. Something that I believe TabulaRasa brought up, which I think is VERY IMPORTANT, is family resources. I really wouldn't get a lot of help from my Mom or Brother, so it would be a situation that would fall back on myself, the mother of my child, and if we're lucky, her parents. That's a huge risk for me to take and I've known for several years that I didn't want to take that kind of risk, unless I felt the path was a bit easier.
Growing up financially struggling and then seeing your family continue to struggle really painted a picture of the more things in your life that you can't control, the harder it is to have control of your life. I can't beat fate, but I can beat the unnecessary things that could pop up in my life. It's likely why my relationships haven't worked out well in my adult years either. I just don't live with my heart on my sleeve, because it's just too dangerous to me.
WOW! Respect. What a compelling and touching display of vulnerability you shared with all of us. Thank you for that, weezerfan84. I have great respect for you and greatly admire your strength and courage.
In the case of recent posts, though, I'm thinking it's not the fact that you can get a pack of pacifiers for a couple of bucks. It's more a conscious refusal to participate on principle. It's not about the babies, it's about being resentful of feeling socially beholden to participate in something with people he doesn't even like and actively resents.
I'm seeing the resentment more pinned on the notion that society celebrates the event of having a child, but does not celebrate the things that are just as meaningful to Dissenter. Thereby implying that his life choices and milestones and accomplishments aren't worthy of celebration, yet someone's choice to conceive and keep a pregnancy and give birth to an infant, is.
Honestly, I kind of get it.
Especially when he's kind of sensitive to situations that feel like negative value judgments against him. His lived experiences have coded this. It sucks, as a way to live, it doesn't feel good. But Diss has made a lot of progress in the years he's been here, and I think that's worth acknowledging. Always hoping he gets to a happier place, I do believe he's got it in him.
Everybody's accomplishments are valid. I wonder if his coworkers knew that he would have appreciated some celebration of his? Generally people aren't being jerks, they just legit don't know such things.
And shaming the CFBC is a thing. Even if you do not do it yourself, some do. Seriously, remember that terrible Jurassic park movie? Where the woman was portrayed as some frigid, "not a real woman" who could only come into her own as a character when she learned to love children, and found a man, and got started on her happily ever after. But with, like, velociraptors, and some random unobtanium-rex of a thing running around trying to kill everybody. Oh, don't mind the dinosaurs. This is a movie about a woman melting her cold, career driven heart, and learning how to be the thing that makes us all REAL and fulfilled as females...motherhood... Good lord. Gross.
I'll sign a card that's going around, but I'm not likely to contribute to a coworker's baby shower or even attend one for someone who is a friend. I don't want to hold the babies of coworkers who are visiting with them, either. I'll spare them a look and an "Aw, so cute" and that's about it. Not everyone is excited about babies. Or has to be.
The reality is that we parents are just as selfish. We have children because we want that feeling of total love, giving and receiving. We want to share and teach. We want to "change" the world...into a world WE want (which is different for every single parent, you'll notice). We want a sibling for a child who's already there. We want our lives to have meaning. We want we want we want.
Some people literally have a third child because they didn't get a girl yet, have a baby to save a flagging marriage, or become parents to be "taken care of" by the child who somehow owes us once we're older. We are just as selfish as CFBC, just in different ways. Everybody is selfish, but some selfishness appears more martyr-like than other forms. That doesn't mean it is actually superior in some way.
It's a choice, period.
Finally! A parent that will admit the truth, that they are just as selfish (maybe with a touch more ego?) than those without kids.
Next you're going to admit that the reason you all want kindergarten (in communities that don't have it) paid for by ALL taxpayers, is that it will save you money for that additional year of daycare you'd have to spend otherwise, and not really about education.
Then, if you really get on a roll you can admit that the reason that childless couples should pay for public schools forever (we are about 3% of the population) is not about the need for us to "contribute to society" or the "benefit for society", but really because you just can't let any group, no matter how small, get away with not helping you paying for the decisions you made to have children.
If that ever happens, I'll be able to leave this world at peace, but I'm not holding my breath!
Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 8 days ago)
35,634 posts, read 17,975,706 times
Reputation: 50663
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beaconowner
Finally! A parent that will admit the truth, that they are just as selfish (maybe with a touch more ego?) than those without kids.
Next you're going to admit that the reason you all want kindergarten (in communities that don't have it) paid for by ALL taxpayers, is that it will save you money for that additional year of daycare you'd have to spend otherwise, and not really about education.
Then, if you really get on a roll you can admit that the reason that childless couples should pay for public schools forever (we are about 3% of the population) is not about the need for us to "contribute to society" or the "benefit for society", but really because you just can't let any group, no matter how small, get away with not helping you paying for the decisions you made to have children.
If that ever happens, I'll be able to leave this world at peace, but I'm not holding my breath!
That's what taxes are about, Beacon. Everyone pays, even if they don't use the service.
You are paying for fire departments although your house is unlikely to burn down.
You pay for the public libraries even if you are illiterate and never set foot in a library.
I found the original premise of the thread interesting, because I can pinpoint the exact day when my marriage started to spiral down to its eventual demise (though in hindsight it was obvious built on shifting sands to begin with).
It was the day I told my husband I was pregnant. He went to the bar and didn't come home for three days and only then because his buddies told him he was being an idiot.
But he was the son of a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic father. I didn't grow up with those things. When he told me stories of the rotten things his father did to him, in my mind, that meant that he would do whatever he possibly could to be the opposite, but instead, he slowly became the man his father had been. And it started that day. It took eight years before the marriage ended for real, but it started that day.
it goes without saying adding another layer of responsibility and source of stresses will add to frustrations in a marriage.
It also goes without saying that for those who want children and end up having them that it might not actually be beneficial or rewarding to their over all indivual wellbeing. The desire to do or want something doesn’t dictate the outcome of events surrounding the desire. Likewise, Wanting to be a good parent doesn’t inherently create a good parent. things we cannot predict or dictate may happen that fail to allow is to be what we wish we could in that regard. Their will always be a level of uncertainty in child rearing, with that comes new burden and stress
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
26,700 posts, read 41,748,461 times
Reputation: 41381
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork
I'm seeing the resentment more pinned on the notion that society celebrates the event of having a child, but does not celebrate the things that are just as meaningful to Dissenter. Thereby implying that his life choices and milestones and accomplishments aren't worthy of celebration, yet someone's choice to conceive and keep a pregnancy and give birth to an infant, is.
Honestly, I kind of get it.
Especially when he's kind of sensitive to situations that feel like negative value judgments against him. His lived experiences have coded this. It sucks, as a way to live, it doesn't feel good. But Diss has made a lot of progress in the years he's been here, and I think that's worth acknowledging. Always hoping he gets to a happier place, I do believe he's got it in him.
Everybody's accomplishments are valid. I wonder if his coworkers knew that he would have appreciated some celebration of his? Generally people aren't being jerks, they just legit don't know such things.
And shaming the CFBC is a thing. Even if you do not do it yourself, some do. Seriously, remember that terrible Jurassic park movie? Where the woman was portrayed as some frigid, "not a real woman" who could only come into her own as a character when she learned to love children, and found a man, and got started on her happily ever after. But with, like, velociraptors, and some random unobtanium-rex of a thing running around trying to kill everybody. Oh, don't mind the dinosaurs. This is a movie about a woman melting her cold, career driven heart, and learning how to be the thing that makes us all REAL and fulfilled as females...motherhood... Good lord. Gross.
I'll sign a card that's going around, but I'm not likely to contribute to a coworker's baby shower or even attend one for someone who is a friend. I don't want to hold the babies of coworkers who are visiting with them, either. I'll spare them a look and an "Aw, so cute" and that's about it. Not everyone is excited about babies. Or has to be.
I couldn’t have put this better than myself. It is just maddening when your coworkers see you barely even to stay awake and work because you slept only 4 hours last night finishing up a paper, to not even get a “good look Diss” when you achieve what you nearly killed yourself for. But to see a coworker have an unplanned pregnancy get showered with $400-500 worth of gifts just because they decided to keep the child and raise it.
I don’t even like getting gifts but having someone be like “I see you” means the world to me.
I couldn’t have put this better than myself. It is just maddening when your coworkers see you barely even to stay awake and work because you slept only 4 hours last night finishing up a paper, to not even get a “good look Diss” when you achieve what you nearly killed yourself for. But to see a coworker have an unplanned pregnancy get showered with $400-500 worth of gifts just because they decided to keep the child and raise it.
I don’t even like getting gifts but having someone be like “I see you” means the world to me.
I work with someone like you. He sits on our floor, but his manager and the rest of his team is out of state. So he really doesn't have any local teammates. He lives alone and had been working on his Master's degree. When he finished, I arranged a surprise potluck with a cake and passed a card around from the rest of the people on the floor. When we surprised him, he was really choked up. I think all that time feeling like an outsider with no recognition really was getting to him.
I couldn’t have put this better than myself. It is just maddening when your coworkers see you barely even to stay awake and work because you slept only 4 hours last night finishing up a paper, to not even get a “good look Diss” when you achieve what you nearly killed yourself for. But to see a coworker have an unplanned pregnancy get showered with $400-500 worth of gifts just because they decided to keep the child and raise it.
I don’t even like getting gifts but having someone be like “I see you” means the world to me.
Any chance it's because you don't celebrate their milestones, and you're their superior?
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