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I definitely regret not being a banker though
Kramer?
I never had kids, but being a school bus driver has made me regret not having kids. Being a school bus driver has also made me thrilled to the fucking core that I never had kids.
There’s a H U G E difference between your kids and other people’s kids.
As a bus driver, you’re basically working in a penitentiary and coming to the conclusion everyone’s a criminal. Well… Yeah…
Yeah, I don’t really like other people’s kids that much. I don’t really like anyone quite the way I like my own kids either. But I don’t besmirch anyone not having kids, I respect the decision. I don’t want people having kids they don’t want. I also know that I wanted kids, but after having them, and as they’ve grown, I realize I didn’t quite understand it. But hey, this is life.
Plus if you really regret not having children you can always become a foster parent/adopt.
On the other hand: what if you do have children and you regret that? Start killing?
Hansel and gretal moment
That’s my answer everytime. Tbf I love children I just don’t want to be a parent, but if some day I regret it I can adopt!
My family always say “oh it’s not the same, you don’t know where they came from”
MF my children would have more mental health issues than anyone out there. Also I have 2 dogs and 2 cats that I love more than anything and Idk where they came from either. If I can love pets I can love a child even more.An adopted girl I knew would say “your parents were stuck with you, but my parents chose me!”
You don’t know where they came from.
But you have a better idea of who they are than when you make new ones from scratch
Fake your death, orphan your kids, why kill them. Plus, it has a benefit that you can disappear from your old life and start anew! Somewhere in Finland or Norway or Japan.
Yup. I got the snip for a few reasons, but when we get more financially stable we plan on adopting/fostering.
In all fairness that’s an awful comparison and they really need to just have better comebacks
Why is it awful? Pretty nicely makes the point in my books
We are not genetically wired to be bankers. Though I’m not sure there is anything equivalent to compare properly.
Some people aren’t “genetically wired” to make kids either. Just like you don’t have this strong urge to start dishing out credits and tie pens to the desks with curly wires, I don’t have this genetic urge to make kids, and it’s exactly as weird to me when someone says to me that I’ll love it when I get them or whatever
It doesn’t make the point to the other person so it’s not a good comeback
That’s the entire point, is to demonstrate to them their own fallacious reasoning yet all you’ve done is come across like a dumb dumb that thinks having kids is somehow equivalent to becoming a banker
Or maybe you just didn’t get it and projecting it onto other people
Is it likely that someone would not want to be a banker in their 20s and change their mind in their 30s?
I didn’t want kids in my 20s. Got them in my late 30s. Best decision ever. Your mileage may vary.
Is it likely that someone would not want to be a banker in their 20s and change their mind in their 30s
Yes, obviously. Some people want to be bankers, some don’t, and that’s OK. The only weird thing is when bankers say that everyone will want to be a banker one day, and even if you don’t like it, you have to anyway, you will have no choice but to love it later.
Except both their parents were ‘bankers’. As were yours and mine. And our all grandparents. Indeed, every single predecessor, ever.
That’s where it falls down, regardless of how one might feel about parenthood. It’s just not a very good analogy.
This is absolutely not relevant in context of this analogy.
How so?
Analogue, you see, isn’t supposed to be 1-1 recreation of the thing we’re talking about. It’s an instrument that suppose to focus on one aspect of the phenomenon, exaggerate it, divorce it from the original connotations so it’s easier to talk about the aspect itself, without being emotionally attached to the whole picture. “But in this other aspect it’s not like the original” therefore isn’t a rebuttal of the argument. It’s like saying that an architectural model of the center for kids that can’t read good is stupid because it’s too small and kids can’t actually enter the building.
Fair
There’s nothing wrong with having kids. There’s also nothing wrong with not having kids. Why are people so aggressive toward the other side?
People overlook an obvious factor: having a kid physically changes your brain, and therefore how you perceive parenting. I know of lots of instances of this change happening anecdotally, someone radically changes their stance after an unplanned pregnancy.
Neither side is necessarily wrong, but choosing one or the other impacts who you are as a person so it’s not as obvious as “I definitely [will/won’t] regret it”. So skip the social pressure and pro/anti natalist personal debates, but also don’t hold too much blame against someone who struggles to grasp your mindset.
in 2016, there was a group in Spain that first looked longitudinally at moms who were recruited before becoming pregnant and then scanned for a second time a few months after the birth of an infant. What they found is going to sound like a bad joke, but it’s actually we think a good thing, which is the brain got smaller. So it lost some gray matter volume between that first preconception time point and the postpartum scan.
It’s official folks, having kids makes you an idiot :D
Totally. It seems weirdly limiting to say ‘I will never want children’. People change. I’m not saying that people who don’t want them now will want them later, but it seems odd to speak with certainty about it.
I’ve never wanted a tattoo. Low-key find them a bit silly. At 48 it’s doubtful I’ll change my mind, but you never know. I might hit 60 and develop an interest in them. Unlikely, but who knows.
Of course, if you decide at 60 you want a tattoo, you can get one.
Having a child at 60 is trickier…
I can buy this. I knew 100% I could raise a kid. I was fairly certainly I wanted children. We had my first kid, and I got more certain. Only as I had a second and they’ve grown older and I watch them develop and become people do I realize it was the right decision. I don’t think you can know it’s the right decision until it’s done.
And the inverse (maybe not inverse) is true too, with people who knew they wanted to have kids, only to discover they were wrong.
Life’s complicated for sure. That’s it. I wanted to put a but, but there’s no but. This is not a decision that has a clear right and wrong to it. It’s a thing. There’s 8 billion of us here, so it’s not some special thing, even though it is.
because (IMHO) a lot of people that have kids either didn’t time it right or didn’t think it through, or it happened by accident.
and they are now wishing to get their freedom back. kids (I’m sure) can be great and worth the return on investment… but there’s immense pressure on them to do well as a representation of the parents.sucks… but it do be that way.
I planned my kids and still can’t wait to get some of my freedom back. Both can be true.
No amount of babysitting or exposition can truly show you show how relentless having kids is. Timing and planning will help alleviate that. But you are still one flu away from two weeks of hell. And that’s when your kids are healthy.
Absolutely right. I was living in a party house before I met my wife, and at that time I would’ve laughed at the idea I’d have kids. Fast forward three and a half years, and I’m married with a kid, and eventually two, and now they’re not babies anymore, or toddlers, and so while they can absolutely still be a burden, it also comes with an enormous amount of upside.
I’ve always firmly believed that without winter there is no summer, and so nothing is always the ideal situatiion you’d like it to be. And so yeah, winter comes and my wife and I get that household anxiety that there will be a stomach bug, but it is what it is. We cancel plans, we’ve missed thanksgiving and Christmas, but we’ve also had amazing times that wouldn’t have been the same without them. The good and the bad, and the ugly, because I like spaghetti westerns even though my family thinks they’re boring.
I think not having kids requires similar efforts of planning/thinking it through - just in a different way. Here’s an example that really made me thing about it: My friends neighbor are a childless elderly couple. The wife has dementia of some sort. Things have rapidly escalated - and the husband is not able to care for her or make decisions rapidly enough to keep them both cared for. My friend regularly has to intervene or help (she does not want to). She is also childless and genuinely surprised at the amount of care an elderly couple needs from outside just with day to day stuff. Having kids does not guarantee you won’t fall into this situation. But I don’t think people realize how much support the elderly need - and that it is most often provided by family members. I understand in an ideal world we would care for the elderly differently, but this is our reality today. So not having kids comes with a price down the road.
I also think the number of parents who actually regret having kids is smaller than you think. But to be fair, parenting is tough. My kid once pooped in an actual fan. So there are moments that even I wish didn’t happen.
In all cases, neither side is right or wrong. And I think we should have more empathy for folks - even if they chose a path we would not.
I know you said it, but counting on family support when you are elderly is such a gamble. I know so many people that moved away from family or their kids are too busy with their own lives to support. Many people get out into a home and visited a few times a year.
Being a parent is awesome if you want to be one and it aligns with your personality. Our existences are largely shaped by our relationships (I say this as an introverted AuDHD nerd) and being a parent is probably the most significant and transformative relationship in the lives of people who are parents.
However, I know that I have always been a kid person and also always wanted to be a parent. And then my wife and I couldn’t have kids for the longest time, went through some more years of pain with adoptions falling through, and then finally had our own biological kid. And not only is he somehow perfect in a better way than we could have designed ourselves, but his neurospices seem to mimic mine so it’s like I have a superpower for relating to him and interpreting his issues.
I assume that qualifies me pretty high on the scale of Lemmy users who are very much into being a parent. I’ll wear that rank proudly.
With those decades of experience and the satisfaction of how it is currently going, plus all the stuff I learned navigating my mental issues alongside it, I am quite confident saying that having kids is NOT for everybody, and it will NOT fix your problems.
Raising kids is probably a potentially good experience for most people, sure, but in supportive circumstances.
Unfortunately, society pressures people to conform to the norm, and the huge “you are supposed to start a family now” step usually comes right after you were pushed to go into tons of student debt, marry the first person you dated for longer than a year, then top up the debt to get an overpriced house and vehicle or two.
Some people may think that by not having kids, their lives would be incomplete. But still having kids is one thing, but raising them right is quite another ball game.
Just provide your kids a gauntlet of dangerous trails that test their wits and reward the strongest of your children with love and banish the weak children from your realm. Eventually the strong children will make your reign absolute by securing you the presidency or the weak children will rebel and kill you. Either way, you win.
sound advice, I’ll keep that in mind.
I would MUCH rather be unhappy that I didn’t have kids than unhappy that I did.
Yep!!
Aren’t you afraid that you’ll regret having them?
"Well, son, a funny thing about regret is that it’s better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven’t done.
And, by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, be sure and tell her… SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!"
I completely understand someone not wanting to have or not wanting to bring kids into this mess, but I also don’t think this is a gotcha.
Why not? Some people do not want to be a parent and never have. Just like others do not want to become dentists or accountants.
There’s no genetic drive to be a banker in anyone. There is a drive to have children in some people, and that drive may not manifest for a while. At the same time, having a kid in your fifties is difficult in a way which retraining is not.
So it’s not a good comparison. Just reply “I’m pretty confident, and having a child I don’t think I want would be an insane thing to do and the only alternative”.
It’s different though. Being a parent is coded into us. Being a banker is not
Its clearly not coded into all of us. The “having kids is coded into us” is at least partly “most of us are coded to want to fuck.” We now have options that mean that doesnt have to cause birth.
I expect your “us” isnt as wide as you expect, as this growing global sentiment shows.
But it’s clearly coded into most people. I expected my friend group to not want kids due to our demographic but they’re breeding like rabbits (on purpose)
my friend group = most people
Nice sample size mate
Buddy, if it wasn’t wired into most people, there wouldn’t be over 6 billion people in this world.
That was an example. You can look at survey data for the full picture: of those adults in my country who don’t already have children a full 45% want to, and only 28% don’t want them.
This isn’t controversial - it was just surprising to me hence I brought up the anecdote.
did you ever want to be a hunter/gatherer. being a hunter/gatherer is coded in us.
That kinda sounds ideal, actually.
Until one bad weather summer means you can’t gather enough food to see you through the winter.
Bad weather is worse for agricultural communities than hunter/gatherers. We’re sedentary, currently seeing crop failures and artificially inflated grocery costs.
I’m a forager and my BFF is a hunter. You can absolutely fish and hunt and forage in the winter.
No-one is keeping you.
I mean, yeah? I think a lot of my traits are hard-coded caveman traits that I’ve adapted to the modern world.
I think you magically give men the ability to survive comfortable and never work again, 85%+ uptake. Desire != Ability.
I am in my fifties and a significant number of my friends and family opted to not have children. The children conversation use to come up a lot, mainly because parents refuse to believe that other actually do not want to become parents. Almost without exception, the reason those friends and family members opted to not have kids was because they did not want to. Only one person has ever given a nihilistic reason like “I don’t want to bring a child into this fucked up world”. Almost every said that they just did not want kids. Simple as that.
“I don’t want to bring a child into this fucked up world”
I hear this most often from people who do have kids.
At least I have a selfless reason.
Along with “I just fucking can’t keep one alive”
Fair enough, but I think many also regret it. So it’s not an unfounded question to ask someone
There have been a number of quantitative studies done on this topic, your perception is irrelevant unless you’re an epidemiological researcher on this. I was going to link some, but there are SO many. Just spend like 10 seconds searching the academic papers.
Many also regret having kids. Are you going to rub that in their faces as well?
By your logic, that means it is coded into us not to have kids. All kids just happen by accident when the parents just want to fuck. Which is how it happened thousands of years before we knew how it worked.
If they don’t regret not having kids, your question is annoying and has been asked and answered countless times, to the point that you could easily find the answer online. If they DO regret not having kids, all you’re doing is rubbing salt in a wound.
It’s an obnoxious question. Stop asking.
I’m not going around and asking random people if that’s what you think. But like if you are close with someone I guess it’s a reasonable question in certain situations
I’ve chosen not to have kids because I really don’t like children. If a family member or friend kept pestering me with “You may regret it” I would absolutely cut all contact. All you’re doing is saying you don’t think I’m able to decide how to live my life, because my needs and wants are different from yours.
What makes you think people don’t already know there’s a chance they’ll regret it? Why do you think so little about their intelligence? Don’t you think there’s a bigger chance they’ll regret having children, if their starting point is not wanting them?
No, it isn’t. All it does is drive a wedge between our closeness.
What makes you think that?
I got an update that removed that code.
“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”
Being a parent is coded into us.
If that were truly a universal natural imperative, then you’d think gays & lesbians wouldn’t exist.
Many gays and lesbians still adopt
Yes, which only goes to show the disconnect between the two sets of preferences.
Gays and lesbians have their own kids all the time. Not wanting to bang the opposite sex does not equal not wanting your own naturally born children.
But I agree, being parent isn’t coded into all of us. It just has nothing to do with being gay.
God speed with this take. Getting this place to admit that most people want kids is an uphill battle you can’t win.
Over the years, I’ve changed my take on this. So what if a woman regrets it. She’s the only one affected. Her decision. Her choice. A man can decide at any age to procreate so he is not as affected. Wife/partner doesn’t want kids, he can find a woman who does. Versus having child(ren) that aren’t wanted or supported who regret their own lives and have parents who regret they were born. Lots of regret all around. As to the grandchild loss and grandparent regret, there are plenty of kids out there who like having surrogate grandparents. Go for the least regret possible.
no rugrats, no regrats?
It’s never too late to become a banker.
You know what? You’re right! I will! Thank you!
Not really good at biology but as a guy I sometimes think: if I dont want kids i should maybe still freeze some Sperm for later if I change my mind.
What about Women tho? Isnt it feasible for them to freeze some eggs or Idk?
I’m curious as to why some would go this route at all, I don’t understand the reason to want a genetic child if the goal is to parent. As a man, is watching the natural birth something you know you’ll need if you decide to ever have children?
Nah, I suggest you try the dirt bag method. Start by getting a couple of ladies pregnant under a fake name and then go to a different country and break all contact (even better if you can fake your own death). If you ever change your mind about being a dad then go look for your kids. This is a lot cheaper than freezing sperm. As for women, idk either.
at some age a woman, even with frozen eggs, has a lot of difficulty getting pregnant.
a 90 year old fart can still get a woman pregnant.
that’s why there’s less pressure on men for this specific topic.
If I can’t be a banker, I don’t wanna live.
You must be a banker!
You just can’t do both.
Road Not Taken and all that.
