I don’t have kids but I still like to wonder about where planes are going
To get to the other side!
Father for 12 years here, never have I ever said anything even remotely close of this sort to any my non kids / single friends, is it an American thing?
American father here. Not as far as I know. I tell folks don’t have kids unless you’re 100% sure. Even then, get a pet first. I love my kid. But boy, do I sure believe folks should get all sorts of tests before they decide now.
Kids are hard man, especially if you didn’t have a good example growing up.
I hear you man, I was just always curious how often actually the issue comes up in a normal chill time with friends or even in a normal conversation with coworkers, unless people ask me specifically for advice, or ask about my kids, it’s not something that just comes up naturally…I’m here aren’t I? Trying to enjoy my time with you, nothing more, If I wanted to air out my frustrations, there’s definitely a time and a place
it helps to be enslaved to a system that forces you to spend an average of 8 hours a day working only to be classified as part time while getting no health benefits whatsoever despite there being essentially no government healthcare
*I’m including excessive commute and non-paid work as “working”
It’s a childless person thing. Very much an outsider “I only see my friends when they’re looking for time out” perspective.
If you want to see this in spades, you can go through the back catalog of Penny Arcade. Pre-kids, there was a ton of this “Oh no! Kids are the worst! They get in the way of all my drunken debauchery and time-consuming hobbies.” Post-kids, its a tidal wave of “Look at what my son can do! Look at what my daughter is into!” and they’re going out of their way to make life as fun and fulfilling as possible for the next generation, because that’s what they know they craved at that age.
I’ve heard similar from people, usually the “you’ll change your mind when you find the right person”. I am from the US.
The worst was a conversation I had with coworkers. I mentioned I didn’t want kids because it would be really hard on my body to be pregnant after a near fatal car crash (back broken and lost a major organ). One gal said she thinks all women should have a baby. So I said, if I change my mind I can always adopt. She said “I think all women should have their own baby, it makes you a real woman. Adopting isn’t the same as having your own, there is not the same level of love there”. Worst part, she said this in front of another coworker who was adopted from a not great situation into a very loving and supportive family.
She was a misogynistic asshat about other things too.
Wow, that’s just messed up, never really understood why people don’t just mind their own business, even if you 100% in great health and decided to not have kids, it’s absolutely still your own decision…why should you or anyone if that matters be judged for it.
I 100% agree with you. I’m extremely happy for friends who want and have kids and I’m extremely happy for friends who don’t want and don’t have kids. I do not keep people like her in my personal life and I was so happy when I switched teams.
She was very much into, you can only be a Real Womantm if you follow these guidelines:
- Make babies from your own body
- Marry a man
- Have long hair (she was even weirder about this part)
She would always say weird shit like that when looking directly at me; an unwed by choice, childless by choice, woman with a mohawk. She was just a bitter dick about a lot of stuff and big mess. In my experience, stuff like that usually comes from people who are generally unhappy with something in their own life, thankfully it’s not a common occurrence.
Maybe it’s cause they don’t get as much time off work to care for their kids as Europeans do?
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I’m starting to just be the person they want us to be because screw them. Like you said I’ve never seen any comic or media rubbing in the face of people with kids like these people without kids love to cry about. It’s watching a guy in the cuck chair cry. You put yourself there, quiet down.
Humans were never meant to take care of babies as couples or alone.
Research suggests that given the tradeoffs of our evolutionary path, we had to shift towards a collective parenting (call it tribe, clan, extended family, etc.)
The modern “individualization” of the person is what has convinced us that such parenting form is “normal” and bearable, and that if you feel overwhelmed, there is something wrong with you.
I dont know where i heard it, but “children should not have only 2 parents”. Meaning the grandparents, uncles, everyone else should parent the child somewhat.
The cliché quote is “it takes a village to raise a child” and I agree. In Western nuclear family culture, that “village” has largely been forgotten.
Most people who are “childfree”, or even anti-natalist, don’t hate children. In a more cooperative society, many would definitely slot into that mentor/cool adult role; myself included.
Honestly as a father I agree that being a parent is the hardest thing I’ve done in my life but, I’m also so fucking tired of the “it’s hell” joke.
My older dughter is now a teenager with all the trouble that entails and the selfishness she has but still there are no words to describe how much she helps when needed, how hard of a pilar she is to me, how caring and loving she is…Oh wait there is one…
Family
🥹
Nuclear families are intentionally isolating because it makes women and children more vulnerable.
The best birth control is other people’s children.
I gotta say, it’s been the exact opposite for me.
One couple has kids, and everyone passes around the baby making cooing faces. Six months later, half the block is pregnant.
Add in that there’s this reflexive desire in a big community of like-aged friends/family for our kids to be friends, too. My wife has eight or nine different cousins who are all her age. And we all had kids within a year or two of one another.
I used to agree but my hormones tell me otherwise.
Clapping ovaries, eh? That’s the noise that IT’S BABY-MAKING TIIIIIIME!
That’s “klapperende eierstokken” in Dutch, BTW.
I absolutely adore my kiddo and find meaning in my role as a dad that I did in very few other things I’ve done in life.
That said, it definitely does change your life in a way where you will not be able to prioritize the things that are just for you anymore. I am both deeply happy to have become a parent and simultaneously very glad that my wife and I waited and got our finances in order and traveled and lived our life as a couple for almost a decade before we decided to be parents. For parents whose story wasn’t quite as deliberate, I can imagine a lot of conflicting feelings.
Naw, kids are great fun
With a statement like that, there’s no middle ground. Either you’re a unicorn of a parent who can deal with it all or you’re leaving someone else with most of the burden.
… so tell us, precious, which is it?
“skiing is great fun”
With a statement like that, there’s no middle ground. You must be a one in a million natural athlete.
Just because it’s fun doesn’t mean it isn’t work and you don’t fall down many many times.
“deal with it all” is the falling on your behind repeatedly and not being discouraged by it. If that requires being a one in a million athlete, sure, that’s what I’m saying.
Things can be fun and difficult. Just ask any athlete. It can be fun but requires work and practice.
People who find difficult things fun are unicorns in my book.
You play video games?
Are we really going to compare video game “difficult” with real life “difficult”?
What absolute nonsense, plenty of people like to challenge themselves.
Maybe I’m just old and neurodivergent but going out and partying sounds like a miserable time to me. I’d take changing diapers and being a human jungle gym for my kid any day.
I’m also old and neurodivergent. Kids sound as much a nightmare as going out and partying.
I like kids but I do not want my own.
I think people should be OK with other people making their own choices.
Telling someone to “grow up and have kids” like in the comic is really shitty just like how telling someone they made a mistake by having kids would be.
Idk why the argument is "everyone should have kids or nobody should have kids. "
I feel like the internet has ruined many people’s tolerance for ambiguity or difference.
I would recommend reading the Baby decision to people. It’s a very open minded examination, despite what the title might implicate also very open and supportive for childless/childfree mindset. Even touches topics like, just because you like kids, doesn’t mean you have to have them, you can teach, volunteer for after school activities, etc.
I think the single most important take away from it is that whether you decide to have kid(s) or not, you give something up.
You also have to go into it responsibly and it’s also okay to reevaluate as you go along, e.g. just because you wanted 3 kids before getting married, doesn’t mean you can’t take a moment to reevaluate after the first if you still want that.
Even touches topics like, just because you like kids, doesn’t mean you have to have them, you can teach, volunteer for after school activities, etc.
Plus parenting is a lifelong role. Your kids are gonna be 50 one day, and you’ll probably be alive for that.
Personally, I’ve never liked children (the age group), but I have always admired some of my friends’ relationships with their parents, and have always wanted adult children (that is, the relationship) of my own, so I had kids. And although my kids are pretty cool, I still mostly think other people’s kids are annoying, and have only softened my views on that front a little bit.
I do wonder if there’s ever been a generation or ever will be a generation of kids that grow up and don’t go, well at least I’m not going to make the mistakes of my parents.
I think everyone thinks everyone else’s kids are annoying because everyone else’s kids were brought up by parents that were trying to compensate for different traumas. The hands-off parents are trying to not be helicopter parents, and the helicopter parents are trying to not be absent parents.
In my experience annoying kids are always the fault of the parents.
I ended up garbling my comment on an edit, but I’ve fixed it now.
I meant to say that I admired the relationships several of my friends had with their parents, and I have always had a pretty good relationship with my own parents, so the idea of parenting has always been based on positive examples and role models in my life.
How would you define an annoying kid and what age range are we talking about?
I’m in a relationship with a woman that seems to have a healthy relationship with with both her mother and father, the two still being married after all these years.
I know that’s the way it’s supposed to be, but in my experience marriage is a very temporary thing, and rarely happy.
Meh, there’s enough of a biological drive to have children there’s no need to pressure people into it socially. It’s condescending to assume someone else will follow your same “growth” trajectory.
evolution has given us a drive to have sex sure enough.
but my impression is that there’s not a lot of biological drive to have children per se, as shown by a lack of children the moment that women can actually decide whether to have them.
Some of my women friends have shared that they definitely felt a need/pang/drive to have kids. Not all of them listened based on the other things they decided to do with their lives or their bodies’ ability, but it doesn’t mean the feeling isn’t there. I wouldn’t conclude from my anecdotal information that that drive extends to all women, but I would guess that many women feel it given how prevalent the discussion is.
The choice of whether to have kids at all is important, but doesn’t rule out the presence of some evolutionary biological drive. Although, it’s possible it’s not some genetic instinct and is instead some cultural thing that becomes more powerful during certain hormonal shifts that occur across a woman’s life cycle. I’ve never studied such things, but I’m open to different possibilities.
It’s probably difficult to prove that it’s genetic but at least anecdotally the biological clock is a thing.
And there are societies that exist today with relatively young first birth ages. But this is impossible to determine how much genetics vs culture contribute.
I feel like this cartoon was drawn by someone who doesn’t have kids. Or didn’t want them but got them.
Be fulfilled without kids or with them. Don’t be fulfilled by judging those who have chosen different from you.
My interpretation of this comic was that it is making fun of the parts of having a kid that they don’t tell you about, not that it was being judgemental towards anyone.
Sure, it is being hyperbolic, but hyperbole is common feature of humor.
when I see a cute baby smile at me, its like a sims moodlet. “I need one of those. Why dont I have one of those”. After 24 ish hours I remember babysitting and caring for my sibling and cousin, and quickly go back to normal. 30 and childless.
Real talk. I said the exact same thing and didn’t plan to have kids. My wife and I didn’t have kids until she was 36.
Babysitting a cousin is not the same as parenting your own kin. It’s completely different.
Depends heavily on how indepth that “babysitting is”. When that Abby sitting involves cooking two meals a day for them, taking them two and from school, changing their diapers at 3am and taking them to the doctor.
All because their parents are too drunk and at the bar instead of home… Well
I fucking babysat my cousins and it was more raising them then anything their parents did
It’s not about what you do that makes the difference. It’s just having your kin changes the dynamics.
With my son, I’m imprinting him with everything and teaching him how I want to. The random tasks(like diapers, feeding, etc) that needs to be done is just a requirement for this imprinting.
My entire life’s from how I was raised when I was a kid to adulthood is solely on my shoulders. Every decision is no longer about me. It’s for them. My entire life’s purpose is to have my kids grow up how I want them to grow up.
With babysitting someone else’s kid, it’s just a task. A snippet, a small part of the entire process.
At 47 and my wife recently birthing our 2nd child, my only regret is not having kids sooner.
Offtopic, but after reading these comments, I’m so glad I first opened Lemmy today rather than Reddit. Thoughtful, varied discussion, instead of sifting through a ton of samey “joke” comments to maybe (if ever) find some nugget of humanistic or original thought, or get bored, doomscrolling and lose hope in humanity.
I just love this community, thank you all for being here.
basically, the parents who are fulfilled with their kids, versus the ones who probably needed a 1 year course on how to parent before being granted the privilege to have a child.
I say this, as a parent.
I’m not planning to have kids. In fact I have a Dr. appointment today for a vasectomy referral. But if such a class were offered I would 100% take it before having a kid.
I resent your implication that just because I have a great relationship with my kid and I find my family relationships fulfilling that I must know wtf I’m doing.
you resent the fact that someone assumes you’re knowledgeable about raising a loving child?
I’ll just assume you possess qualities that any good parent should have, like patience, the ability to communicate clearly, etc. . . . . these are the type of things I mean when I mention parental knowledge. People learn these over the course of their lives, so it’s likely ingrained in you, not like knowledge you gain from any class.
The funny thing is that I was joking and I am actually HYPER aware of the qualities I model and try to instill in my son.
I guess that’s the one benefit of a lifetime of masking.
there are several books available. If you child is healthy, it’s actually a pretty easy learning curve; you have time to read chapters based on the age of your child, and newborns are actually pretty … uninteractive. They slowly develop and you’re there to check the milestones they should hit during that time period and help them reach those milestones.
If your child is sick, disabled etc, good fucking luck. also if both parents are working.
I would be absolutely destroyed if I had dumb little copy of me that I was required to take care of.
I understand now why my dad was so distant and eventually went away.
Having an insane mother helps, too.
