I’m even someone who really likes kids. I’d voluntary babysit if I had cool friends with kids while lived closer.
I enjoyed taking care of my brother, 13 years younger than me, but the experience helped cement my belief that it wasn’t what I wanted to dedicate a large portion of my like to doing.
As sure as I was for dozens of reasons, I’ve recently become really horrified at the idea of having a kid because my brother’s mental illness has gotten so bad. Mood disorders abound in my family so I always feared any kid of mine would at best be cursed with my anxiety problems especially after having to constantly watch me model anxious behavior. But my brother’s got schizoaffective bipolar. Having to helplessly attempt to take care of a kid that sick is hard to fathom for me. His main reoccurring delusion is that family members caring for him have been replaced by imposters, and his violent outbursts make it even harder for him to access help and resources. I’m worried to death about him now of course, but I don’t have to deal with it daily like my mother. And she’s only just gotten semi stable after a lifetime of mental health, general health, and drug issues.
People tell my partner and I to have kids because we’re smart, but intelligence has very poor inheritability unlike the many health problems on both sides that clearly run in families. Plus we would want to raise kids with way too many far left crazy ideas. Of course kids are often used to pressure people out of “aberrant” ideas and behavior which has always felt like the real motive for the pressure to have family. It’s really pressure to conform with losing the kids held as a threat. And in our families, especially his, kids are used to pressure people back into the church.
A good moral does not a good movie make… there may be many other reasons the film is
Bob knows I have seen some pretty awful movies that had good things very deeply hidden in the awful.
And I actually liked the Ghostbusters remake (mind you I didn’t pay $18 for it either) aside from a few cringe inducing stereotype jokes (though they did them much better than what is normally done with them but still really scared black person… sigh.) they took the premise and crafted a new and good story with it and entertained me and it made me laugh.
Ghostbusters rocked hard. The emoji movie looked like the most crass commercial crap so the hacker princess may have been a nice surprise but it still could suck.
IQ shows reversion to the mean true, but that’s statistical. However, from my own extended family history I entirely agree with you about health - and mental health - problems, especially families with a tendency to alcoholism/obsessive behaviour/depression. But far left crazy ideas? I think we need more of them. The silencing of the masses since 1945 has developed a lot slower than the German equivalent from 1929 on, but bears uncomfortable parallels.
It seems like kids are unevenly distributed: I know so many people who want them but can’t have them – & the adoption process can take many years depending on where you live. And then many of my friends with kids have their entire lives defined by that and struggle to maintain an individual identity at all.
I’m not trying to be primitivist, but it seems like in tribal human societies the tribe must have taken care of kids more communally than how we do in the capitalist, nuclear family world. I don’t know how to fix that; it seems building long-term trust when so many people have to move multiple times in their lives for economic reasons is a difficult problem.
I totally agree with you, and I think this is huge.
For me, there were two major factors, one of which broke down into two related factors.
The standalone one was money. Recovering from the crappy relationship I was in took a lot of money. I don’t mean paying for therapy ; I mean buying all new furniture (because he took most of the old stuff), moving back to my home town, changing careers, and so on. Most of my remaining “fertility window” coincided with those tasks.
The two sub-factors both had to do with potentially being a single parent. Dating was going nowhere fast, so choosing to be a single parent was a consideration. Since one of my parents died young, the prospect of starting a family with the minimum number of parents right off the bat did not appeal. Plus, all the successful deliberately single parents I knew had supportive extended families, and I knew from what my relatives had to say about deliberately single parents we were acquainted with meant I would not enjoy that support should I choose to go that route.
The way I see it, what I wanted was twisted and soured by my situation. I’m not bitter about it – I assessed the situation and came to a conclusion I’ve agreed to live with – but like I said above, I do get annoyed when people make assumptions.
The line between choice and privilege is a very narrow one.
I wasn’t saying it would be bad for the kids or society. I just meant that it would make an already exhausting job even harder. Especially when it would probably mean severing contact with family members who would usually be your support system.
Ah, the benefits of belonging to a family who range from mildly pink to deepest red, in the rest of world sense.
I was not for one moment trying to influence you though! These things are none of other people’s business. As Buddhism has been teaching people for around 2500 years.
The tropical longhouse has its merits certainly. But is our present problem capitalism or individualism? The evidence is that as we get richer we seem to want to live in ever smaller groups.
Much to it’s credit at least when I was a direct Boeing employee I had way more than I would think for the field women for my fellow sysadmins not so much for POC but I think that has more to do with Seattle/Everett than Boeing. When we got outsourced to CSC not so much.
However being a lefty/liberal type I was in the minority. The worst was during the last position I had there and having to not go ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ out loud when an otherwise on the ball unix guy was all for Ben ‘grain silos’ Carson.
Until coders write software as if users actually had to get shit done using industry standards and practices and their actual skills, fuck 'em. The whole industry is afflicted by affinity fraud among incompetent bros… and contempt for people who know shit but who have given up filing bug reports.
Whenever someone did that to me, and I lived in a city, my answer was far too often, “No, Heavens, no. We love children. I just don’t like you and your horrible brats.”
I live in a smaller town now, so I just list their names, you know, like Arya Stark.
That looks excellent! I’m so tired of the PMS thing – first they say it’s not real (though it is), then they say it’s crippling and makes you temporarily insane (though for the vast majority of people who get periods it isn’t).
ETA: I’ve never heard of it defined strictly as a psychological phenomenon before. The original definition I heard (when medical science finally agreed it’s real) is simply physical changes indicating one’s period is about to arrive: water retention, slight cramps, food cravings. I’ve also heard they’re related to zinc defiency, which might explain why it’s not consistent across the world.
Her research is fascinating. The book goes into all areas of women’s life where supposedly we get all hormonal and crazy: bleeding, pregnancy, menopause. Basically, there’s no credible science that we are any more emotional than men at any time of our life, and a lot of these transitions that are presented as so scary are actually pleasant for women - such as menopause.
; I mean buying all new furniture (because he took most of the old stuff), moving back to my home town, changing careers, and so on. Most of my remaining “fertility window” coincided with those tasks.