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Always amazed by the fact that telling people to get married and have children seems to illicit this emotional response where some go “no, it’s not right for everyone”. Actually, it is. This isn’t like being interested in pickleball, this is the core of human existence. Survive and reproduce. It’s not a lifestyle decision. And if you think it is you’re severely brainwashed. It’s time to delete that bit of malware in your mind.

Replies (113)

The very first commandment was, "be fruitful and multiply", to the husband and wife couple God had created. Paul may have said something differently, but he was talking to specific situations and specific people. Most people don't fit those criteria. Most people who say "it's not for everyone" are still dating, just not getting married. Stop sinning, make marriage great again! This is why I wrote "How to prepare yourself for marriage" with my husband! Because marriage is great! And I/we want to help people know how to pick someone they'll actually enjoy being married to, and how to go about finding such a person!
There are many cases where people should not have children. Economic, genetic, inability to provide to start with a few. Simply not wanting any is also fine. If you’re ok with your bloodline ending that’s a choice that should be respected.
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I don’t know if you’re making a biological argument here but there are support functions that people who choose not to (or can’t) reproduce confer towards relatives that can help propagate their highly similar (if not identical) genes. Survival isn’t just a free for all— as an example from the other end, the more kids people have the less attention and resources each gets and the less likely they are to succeed growing the next generation.
I agree with you and disagree. My fiance doesn’t want children. I am indifferent. And what I’ll say is - if you want to see things improve. Fewer people having kids is a net positive. Think of it like one step back to take two steps forward, if we don’t eff it up before then. Sounds weird to apply to reproduction - but we desperately need to take a step back and rediscover ourselves. So don’t be mean to those that are just here temporarily. Just let em be. Just focus on laying the groundwork for others to not repeat our mistakes.
Your life does not belong to you. You are the latest link in a chain forged over millennia by the suffering of your ancestors. You don’t have the right to be “indifferent” to forging a new link in that chain. You have an obligation to everyone that came before you, who suffered to put you here, to put a new link in that eternal braid leading back to prehistory. Don’t be an idiot, this woman is bringing a final death of total obliteration to your family lineage. She was made fo da streets.
A man never matures until he is a father. A woman always pursues trivial matters until she becomes a mother. Being a Father or Mother is a privilege nobody turns down, when faced with it in marriage, unless there is something severely wrong with them. Birth control sterilizes the reproductive act to the point where having children is the furthest thing from one's mind, for both men and women, and yields opportunity squandered and a sterile life. There are no riches that compare to a large and loving family.
Everyone needs to study a little developmental psychology. We are meant to strive for our potential just like every blade of grass in the field. And for humans, that potential includes making babies and striving for a deep connection with a mate. Is it hard? Yes. Will it drive you crazy sometimes? Yes. Will it forge character and give you an amazing highlight reel before you shuffle from this plane of existence? You’re damn right.
Why are you having such an emotional response to some people deciding to not have children? I mean, if you believe that people who choose not to reproduce are so damn stupid, isn't that the best outcome? Then only all the really smart breeders and their offspring will be left to enjoy the world, right?
I dunno man, the posts you have in these veins sound like you yelling at people who don't have kids. Seems emotionally charged to me. Maybe I'm reading them wrong, are you going for inspirational? I agree with you that the hedonistic/ dink mindset is problematic, but it is their lives to choose just like yours is.
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Maybe it’s because you’re ’telling them’ most people don’t like being told what to do. I didn’t wants kids until I had them. If you’d told me before I had them I would have said ‘you don’t know me, you don’t know how I feel about it’. Rather than telling people that they should do something just tell them how great it makes ‘you’ feel. Even more powerful, if like me, you can tell them ‘I was the same as you and I was wrong’.
"People should not be sharply corrected for bad grammar, provincialisms, or mispronunciations; it is better to suggest the proper expression by tactfully introducing it oneself in, say, one’s reply, or into a friendly discussion of the topic itself (not of the diction), or by some other suitable form of reminder." -a wise dude from a long time ago
The lashback comes from totally different experiences and how misaligned incentives are, mostly caused by fiat in one way or another. Countless examples, but here's a few: - Women often get more perceived value out of divorce than they do by staying married. The risk a guy takes by marrying is extreme. Yeah, there's prenups and shit but there's plenty of inexperienced men that don't even consider this at first. So they get screwed and either say "fuck bitches" or they attempt to understand why it happened. On the other hand, for women, there's hardly a risk by marrying. Either she gets a husband she's satisfied with, or she divorces and gets half his shit. Can't blame them for doing what's in their best interest. - Men increasingly struggle to be a good provider (non-bitcoiners at least), which lowers the woman's attraction to him. - Men don't know how to be men anymore, this happened through various ways of propaganda, even from their own family, unwittingly. This ofcourse also lowers his woman's attraction to him, and if a woman loses a certain amount of attraction, the relationship is as good as finished. These are just a few off the top of my head. Besides all of this, you are one of the very few "lucky" ones in a happy long-term relationship even though it's not about luck. But this is how it's perceived and it invites the responses you mentioned. Underneath these responses lie envy, rationalised by "it's not for everyone".
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I’m brand new to this conversation… it’s an interesting topic that I have very mixed feelings about, as a long term married woman with children… particularly on what you said about the risk for women. I think married with kids and married without change the equation. Survival and altruism become very real instincts after having kids. That desire for long term stability in order to care for the children and survive so you can be alive and well to guard your children is about both providership of the monetary kind and also of the emotional kind… I believe. There might be less financial risk for women to marry initially and without children, but after children are conceived, divorce is a risk for women, from my perspective…
Maybe, or it’s an incentive response to a broken system and/or years of that system breaking down. I love my kids and hope I would have had them even if I was poor, but I can’t say for sure.
Building a family and having children is the ultimate low time preference activity. I see the joy and happiness in my wife’s grandmother’s eyes when we visit her with kids. That’s the happiness I look forward to. Not the dread of being alone and forgotten in an old people’s house with no visitors because everyone who knew me are all long dead. Nothing makes sense without children. Not even Bitcoin.
Yes, birth rates are close to or below replacement in many western countries. That’s why I suggested it is especially important for those people to have more children. I’m not sure what manners, blood, arrogance, ignorance or hate have anything to do with what I said. Not wanting one’s race and culture to disappear is normal.
It also sounds incredibly insecure to try to force other people to have kids while you’re trying to convince everyone you have a great life by making that choice… If you truly had that you wouldn’t need to flaunt it and try to make others make the same decision you did. Most people that HAVE kids shouldn’t have even had kids, they’re awful parents
Such a ludicrous statement. Great men of faith have lived extraordinarily meaningful lives without ever having children. Your identity should not be based on whether or not you have children, nor should you believe you are better than other people simply for having kids, that’s insane. And I’m not coping at all, I’m pointing out the irony. His entire post was literally an emotional rant so HE could cope. He needs to act as if every single individual should have kids just to justify the fact that he decided to have kids. Happy people don’t go around trying to convince everyone they’re happy lol
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I'm a specialist. One of a handful of people in the world who can do what I do. And I am still refining my craft. If I had to budget years of my life to a family, it would be impossible for me to reach this level of proficiency, let alone where I *want to get to. Everybody makes choices. GFY.
HODL will not be achieving enlightenment anytime soon You can rest assured that he will suffer through at least one more lifetime, and in the next lifetime, he ain't gonna be this loaded. Talk about a missed opportunity. You can ignore reality, HODL, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. Apparently HODL never watched The Big Short or read Mark Twain. "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." He thinks he knows something., but he lacks logic, humility, and compassion, so what he thinks he knows just ain't so. Case in point: 1-2% of infertility cases are the result of sterility, meaning no possible chance of conception. He earned sats though and got attention and feels validated. He doesn't give a fuck about the edge cases. He doesn't care to consider that other people are contending with unique circumstances that he is not and it is not his place to judge them. Unless they serve his goals, they're not really people to him.
you're the one coping, pretending you’re living well when you will die alone with nobody to care for you. All the parties and the sense of importance about your work will fade. It does for everyone in later years. No kids means nobody to see you, and you will be surrounded by foreigners that hate you because nobody had kids. The window to avoid this fate will close. Your youth will end, and you will regret having thrown away your family’s lineage for dalliances and office politics.
It's not necessarily an emotional response. It's basic intelligence. There are people who should not have children simply because they can, for various reasons. Can that change? Sometimes. Sometimes not. It takes quite a large amount of arrogance to claim that you know what is the core of everyone's existence and what they should or shouldn't do, especially when it concerns something as serious as having children. I think you're confusing the response to your arrogance with brainwashing or an aversion to people reproducing. We get it. You love having children. Wonderful! That doesn't mean everyone should have them. I see multiple examples of such people every shift I work in the emergency department. I'm sure there are many other examples.
There are many answers to this and several ways to take the question, but I'll assume you're going for the predictable and feeble "gotcha" route where I say my parents had sex. If not, you can be more specific. My existence still doesn't mean everyone should have children. That's not a real argument. There is no ethical or moral duty to have children and some people are wholly unequipped for the tasks that come after the sex part (leaving the burden to others). My parents irresponsibly had me when they shouldn't have and it resulted in a horrible childhood for me. It happened. I've made the best of it. I love life now. But that doesn't mean they *should* have, only that they could and did by accident. Not every experience is as rose colored as yours, and not everyone is in your position. There are a multitude of reasons any number of people should not have children (or keep having them after discovering horrible genetic conditions, as was the case with a uncle and friend of mine), regardless of your inability to acknowledge or accept that reality.
I think I've made it clear that I think people should have children if they want to and can bare the responsibility of it. My only real issue with your position is that everyone *should.* You just arrogantly make that blanket statement like it is so obviously true and then reduce disagreement to emotional based responses. Sure, most humans have some emotion. I have plenty. But this is an issue that should involve reason as well. And I find it irrational and unreasonable to just proclaim that everyone should have children, when I've so clearly seen examples of where that is not true. That's my stance on it.
I'm not mad at my parents for anything. Even if I was, that still doesn't mean they should have had children when they did, in the state they did. You're trying to distract from my actual argument. I realize that they simply should not have had children when they did, in the state they did. They were mentally ill drug addicts who absolutely should not have had children in that situation. They weren't even bad people. They were just sick and could hardly help themselves, much less a child. Maybe they didn't have the presence of mind to even rationally consider reproduction. That's fine. But you'd be standing by their bed telling them that they SHOULD do it and that's what I have a problem with. You keep trying to distract from that but I'm not going to let you. There are people on this earth who should not have children.
If not for their illnesses, I would say it was immoral and unethical. But it just was. Given you seem to be of sound mind and body, cheering them on would have been immoral and unethical, according to my position. I'm glad you're here too, but that doesn't mean I don't think your position is any less arrogant and out of touch with reality.
And this is the fundamental disagreement that we have. I do not think an act is good simply because the victims of it happen to survive, and rarely, thrive. I don't think it was good that someone kidnapped Adam Walsh from his father simply because his father went on to do good things after. The original wrong was still wrong. John is still a victim. Adam is still a victim. There are still consequences of the evil even if the people involved did something you consider good. You're idea here is basically the underpinning of the idea that it's okay to crack a few eggs for the greater or "common" good. It's an unpredictable and dangerous path to take, even of someone at some point just happens to benefit from it. You can't negate your mess and its consequences simply because someone else chose to clean it up.
Some people arent capable of having that type of commitment, and for those situations, it is indeed not for everyone. On the other end, i think that we should always aim for it, teach the new generation that its important, not only for the human life but also for the values that we all share, and the joy of it.
Reducing human existence to nothing more than “survive and reproduce” ignores human agency. That might have been our only viable path thousands of years ago but today we operate with far more sophisticated minds and far broader choices. And calling every disagreement “brainwashing” isn’t an argument. It’s just a shortcut to avoid actual debate. View quoted note →