My happiest uncle never had children. He rode on trains and hitchhiked to Alaska as a young man. Became an electrician and spent his free time hunting and fishing. Now he lives near the border in Arizona on small ranch with cows and horses.
Is that a yes or a no?
If I had enough money to overcome capitalism I would adopt. That likely won’t happen so I’ll try to live as happily as possible on the limited resources available to me.
It’s a complicated answer if you live in the US.
Two costs that can make it unaffordable even for folks who are doing ok are daycare and health insurance. Those two expenses alone can be huge just for one child, much less two or more.
But, let’s say you have a grandparent who wants to watch your kid for free when you work and you have health insurance through work that covers your kids and isn’t too much $. Then honestly, kids aren’t THAT expensive and most working class folks could pull off having a kid or two.
The thing is, the entire child product industry is geared towards bougie parents because a lot of them will spend whatever and find ways to rationalize it. So when you go into the kids section of a store, it seems wildly expensive. But kids don’t eat much, second hand clothes and toys are dirt cheap (not like the kids care), and there are usually plenty of parents who want to just get rid of things like cribs and strollers.
Admittedly this is all geared towards younger kids, teens might be a lot more expensive idk.
It feels more and more like a bourgeois privilege to be able to have kids.
Which is obviously in conflict with the fact that it’s an essential part of social reproduction, and has to happen at a large surplus for capitalism to sustain itself.
I don’t think it’s unethical or anything. Ethical codes kind of break down when you’re talking about creating life I guess. Life perpetuating itself kinda just happens regardless of how bleak things get. And there’s happiness to experience even in tumultuous times.
I can’t imagine having kids though. I have a cat that is very important to me and he’s already such a massive constraint on my ability to navigate the world as it is. Harder to find places to rent. Rent is more expensive. No longer feasible to live in my car. I have to put up with shit that I wouldn’t otherwise have to because I know if I lose a job or have to move it’ll be that much harder to get a home again. It feels like even having a pet is becoming a fucking bourgeois privilege. And that’s just a cat. I don’t even know how working class people manage having children nowadays. More expenses, have to manage schools and healthcare and everything, and you’re responsible for an actual human who’s gonna have to deal with their childhood experience for the rest of their life.
Idk comrade. I think for those of us who are back and forth about the subject who can conceive of an answer that would dissuade you from having children the biological directive isn’t the motivation it used to be. There’s plenty of people for whom there’s no question and others still who have oopsie poopsies. If the future was theirs I wouldn’t be too beat up about it. I struggle to find purpose, my temperament isn’t often upbeat, and I struggle to find a partner to cherish. I don’t like the political climate, the climate climate, or the economic climate on the horizon. A child feels like an obligation more than a desire to me and that immediately makes my internal referee throw a flag. That Islamic poet who talks about showing the world the love I had for your face would be what would make me have a child. I can’t imagine any other reason. The child would be born to have a purpose - even born into a bleak world.
What do you mean by “the love that someone has for your face”?
Here, I found it!
Give me a daughter with your stubborn heart, or your even temper.
Give our children your dark-bright eyes, or your enchanted smile.
So that even when we are gone, the world will find within them all of the reasons why I loved you
إعطني إبنة لها قلبك العنيد أو حتى طبعك
إعط طفلنا عيناك السمراوين اللامعين أو إبتسماتك المسحورة
لكي حتى و بعد رحيلنا، سيجد العالم فيهم كل الأسباب التي أحببتك لها
-Nizar Qabbani
Note that I don’t know the first thing about Arabic, but that’s what someone poster on Tumblr along with the poem. I’m 80% sure about the name of the poet.
Oh, so the point of having kids according to the poet is that you love someone so much that you want to leave a piece of them behind?
Edit: Do you ever feel scared that if you don’t have children you might end up all alone when your parents die?
Yeah, I can’t help but think that it’s like going “this is such a lovely part of humanity that I want the world to keep it after we’re gone.” It’s the only line of thought I’ve ever seen that would convince me to procreate without an oopsie poopsie.
Well, I certainly feel fear for the post of my parents dying. I haven’t given any thought to using children to fill that hole in my heart. I would circle back to the poem as part of my canon that looking for and propagating a personal love to be the kind of meaningful labor that would do justice to the love I have shared with them.
yeah. in fact i even hear some people are doin it.
and even if you don’t, do what you can to nurture and help the children that are brought into this world.
Guys who talk to kids are considered creepy 🤣
I would love to have a kid someday, it’s just sad that it’s primarily a fiscal decision
I mean yeah a lot of people are out there doing it lol
Definitely not ideal, and my partner and I aren’t going to for a variety of reasons, but given adequate money and a strong family support system you can avoid most of the problems poorer people will face
I think the problem is that “adequate money” gets harder and harder to get.
May I ask which are some of the reasons why you decided against?
climate
the US is a shithole that I wouldn’t want to bring anyone into
the feeling that you should only have kids if it’s the #1 thing you want in life and that isn’t true for either of us
Really these points are all kinda the same thing lmao
Which things about global warming worries you the most?
I have similar answers to the question. For me it’s a combination of knowing that in the West, no matter how hard you try, another person just living life here will disproportionately contribute to climate change and waste purely because of how society is set up. Sure a revolution would fix that eventually, but having kids is not an important enough desire for me to roll the dice there.
And second, knowing how bad things are likely to get in the near term seems like having a kid is really setting them up for a ton of difficulty and dread unless you’re very wealthy.
For me personally, I think communism will come from outside the west and anyone here who can organize is doing it primarily as harm reduction for their community and attempting to slow down how much the west can fuck up for the rest of the world. Having a kid might add another to that group, but it’s also part of the two points on climate and doesn’t seem fair to the kid or the world to me.
I’m sure others are more optimistic or have a stronger desire that make it worth it to them, and I’m glad for it. Otherwise things would be pretty grim for the left here
It’s hard to imagine a situation where it’s not feasible to have children, short of an apocalyptic one
yeah about that
Due to an oddity of health insurance and drug manufacturer coupons we have our maximum out of pocket hit without spending any money.
If not for that, our baby would have cost us $40,000 out of pocket, out of about a $300,000 bill, in 1 year. That’s pregnancy, screenings, birth, and a single cold from the first day of day care. The cold was $200,000 for a week in the hospital.
Hypothetically, yes of course it is feasible. But below-replacement fertility rates all over the world shows that it’s no longer practical.
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I don’t know why crackers have a culture of hating their parents and fucking them over later in life with retirement homes
A lot of that is because those parents hated their kids and fucked them over early in life with child abuse.
my dad went hindutva and wants me dead for being trans so it’s kind of hard not to meet like with like
From a south asian islamic perspective, I don’t know why crackers have a culture of hating their parents and fucking them over later in life with retirement homes (it’s probably just capitalism tho).
I think the whole “americana is when you move out of the home when you’re 18/graduate” is probably the most devious social engineering done by capitalism.
You answered your own question. Their parents boot them out of the house when they’re 18, so there’s a degree of resentment that carries over as the parents grow old. There’s also a reverse dynamic where the parents treat their kids like complete shit since “well, they’re going to be out of the house at 18 anyways.” Here’s my impression dealing with cultures that haven’t had their family dynamic get ruined by Anglo culture: there’s a mutual understanding by the parents and the kids that the parents need to rely on their kids later in life, so the parents can’t burn bridges lest the kids decide to just fuck off and abandon the parents. The kids also can’t burn bridges since the parents are their main gateway to their extended family. The lack of generational housing also means the kids are unable to help their parents too. What happens to parents who are old enough that they get completely tired from buying groceries? Obviously, their kids aren’t going to fly half-way across the country to buy groceries from Walmart and fly half-way back to their homes.
Anglo culture is perversely anti-family. You have dictatorial parents who raise ingrate kids and ingrate kids who grow up to become dictatorial parents.
with retirement homes
The thing is that most people have no other option. If you work full time, live far away from your parents, and have other responsibilities, how can you take care of them? Getting good home health workers is very hard and expensive. Letting the parents move in may be impractical due to housing costs, and may also ruin your marriage if you have one. It’s put them in a nursing home or let them die alone and not be found for days, usually.
From a south asian islamic perspective, I don’t know why crackers have a culture of hating their parents and fucking them over later in life with retirement homes
Speaking as a cracker that came from neglectful parenting; It’s because their parents hated them and fucked them over early in life. Many of us had to be parents to our own parents while they took everything from us.
You’re a cracker? I thought you were an owl
Never meet your heroes
Crackerfied owl. I am so sorry
Gotta laugh how fash think people aren’t having babies because of Jewish mind control when in reality the people are fucking broke and childcare in the USA is a luxury lmao
The mental gymnastic to defend capitalism 😂
yes, hardships never stop people from have kids
In the time of famines and wars in China, people (my grandparents and great grandparents) tend to have more kids. In less hard time, people stop having kids. There are a lot of factors at play, poor time requires people to not put all their chip in one place, a lot of family labour division needs a bigger household, there are a lot of community involvement (it requires a whole village to raise a child).
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Are you sure that people just don’t end up having more sex in hard times to at least have something nice going on? 🤣
So far the only way it has been working out for me is a number of privileges I’ve not earned such as paying far far below market rent.
How is that possible? Do you live with your parents?
My landlord is a family member who can afford to be nice to us
Oh, I see
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Why is that? Story time!
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