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Abso-fucking-lutely.
There are so many things wrong with the pressure to get married and have kids - first, society is mandating one way to live a happy, successful life; secondly, we don't need more people on the planet; thirdly, a kid is a huge investment of time and energy that no everyone wants to make and forcing them to make it is just going to screw up their children.
For years I said I didn't want kids and I am so grateful that no one ever told me 'Oh, you'll change your mind.' Sure, I did, but it wasn't written in stone that I would. And no one should think about what they do or don't want and be told that they'll change their mind or see the light or that they're being selfish for not picking one specific option.
It's not selfish to not create a child that isn't wanted. (Double negative, I know.)
And having a kid just so someone will take care of you when you're old is a terrible reason to have children and a rationalization that comes up a lot.
Abso-fucking-lutely.
There are so many things wrong with the pressure to get married and have kids - first, society is mandating one way to live a happy, successful life; secondly, we don't need more people on the planet; thirdly, a kid is a huge investment of time and energy that no everyone wants to make and forcing them to make it is just going to screw up their children.
For years I said I didn't want kids and I am so grateful that no one ever told me 'Oh, you'll change your mind.' Sure, I did, but it wasn't written in stone that I would. And no one should think about what they do or don't want and be told that they'll change their mind or see the light or that they're being selfish for not picking one specific option.
It's not selfish to not create a child that isn't wanted. (Double negative, I know.)
And having a kid just so someone will take care of you when you're old is a terrible reason to have children and a rationalization that comes up a lot.
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Personally, I want a guy, kids, a job, the whole she-bang, but it's not something I would be so arrogant as to require of everyone around me.
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It totally is.
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I think that applies in this situation as well.
While there are a lot of people, there are not so many children/youth. A big problem, at least here, is that we have a growind elderly population and a smaller workforce to replace them. Understandably, fewer women are having kids.
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Exactly.
And while I agree that there is a problem with having more elderly than youngster, i think that is a problem who fixes involves restructuring how pay for things like social security, not encouraging people to have more kids.
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On a side note, because I have Dollhouse on the brain, this is one of the reasons why I love Adele so much. She's not just the stock character of the Shrew. She's awesome and badass and single. Even if I like her Season One Hair better.
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Not where I am. Where I am, most women HAVE to keep working after their kids are born for economic reasons and a large majority WANT to.
this is one of the reasons why I love Adele so much. She's not just the stock character of the Shrew. She's awesome and badass and single. Even if I like her Season One Hair better.
Total word to all of that! She is very much NOT The Shrew. She's quite clearly the HBIC. And her season one hair was much better.
Also, I wanted to add that Adelle has a very, very interesting and fucked up parent/child dynamic with Topher, which I think is interesting. She recruited him, and he trusts her, and even when she says he's a horrible person there is this 'but I care about you' text/subtext twisted through her speech. It's chilling.
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having a kid just so someone will take care of you when you're old
Plus, your kids probably won't do that. They'll probably dump you in an old folks home and visit you a handful of times a year.
Personally, I love kids, but only in small doses. Having one live in my house and depend on me 24/7 sounds like not very much fun.
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Trufax. Although, admittedly, they would probably also be paying for it.
Personally, I love kids, but only in small doses. Having one live in my house and depend on me 24/7 sounds like not very much fun.
*nods* I like kids one on one, but in groups it gets crazy-making.
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Agreed. I think there are a lot of people who just bow to the pressure to have kids or really just wanted a dog, who end up having children, which i think is a real shame.
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I told him that the possibility of me having kids is sixty to fifty, because while I like kids by themselves, I don't want one for myself. He told me that I'll change my mind eventually, that I'll find a man I like, and then he goes on about this story of his friend of his who valued his independence so much that he pretty much avoided relationships right up until his late forties and now he wants to find a girlfriend to be with and so on and so forth.
(At that moment I felt a sudden urge to tell him that I'm bisexual and my choices in mates can go either fucking way - but then I realized that I'm struggling with my own bisexual identity anyway, so I decided to keep that in the dark for now. )
I told my parents that I most likely am not becoming a mother, and they told me that's fine, no pressure. They did told me that there's that possibility that I might change my mind later on in my life later on. The way they said it makes me feel better, because I didn't detect any sort of passive-aggressive pressure of "but we really like to have grandkids anyway" in their tone.
It's around that time did I realize that I really didn't care about the opinions of my aunts and uncles and cousins - or anyone else for that matter - when it comes to kids. I know it sounds devaluing what you, others, and myself I have said, but when my own parents told me that it is a-okay for me to not to have kids, that's it is my own choice,I feel that everybody else can just sod off.
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In other words, no thanks. I ain't going to let myself get pressured into this until I myself decide that I want to go through with it. And so far, I don't want it.
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Though sometimes it's the person who puts the pressure on themselves. A friend/former roommate is having her kid sometime in march of 2010. Her main reason above all others for wanting this kid is a lash out towards her ex. They were dating for roughly 7 years and he was hell bent about never wanting kids. Three years, I think, after they broke up, he starts dating this girl and after a year of dating gets her pregnant by what he calls 'one hell of mystery'. 'WHAT? SEX MAKES BABIES?'.
With mounting debts from college, her current boyfriend paying off her credit cards, government funding, paying for food, rent, everything in general, she somehow concludes that having a child would be a great investment. Messes with the birth control to make it happen. You know, to show how great of a mother she is, a lame attempt at trying to one up her ex. What it ended up boiling down to was who was the most successful after their relationship ended.
For years I said I didn't want kids and I am so grateful that no one ever told me 'Oh, you'll change your mind.'
Had someone tell me that in high school, think I was 17 at the time. The girl was 16, on her second child.
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I hear that and I think his girlfriend was messing with her birth control too
God, that whole story just depresses the hell out of me. Why the fuck do women think getting 'accidentally' pregnant will somehow make their relationships better/ that the boy will someone want a kid if it's just sprung on them?
Had someone tell me that in high school, think I was 17 at the time. The girl was 16, on her second child.
Oh, that is fucking terrifying.
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So shit hits the fan, former room mate makes him her ex and the ex dates the lesbian for a few months and the best friend starts dating former room mate. Time passes, everyone moves on until the ex starts dating his current girlfriend... the REAL kick the pants here is that the current girlfriend is the girl he cheated on my former room mate with so I suppose that looking at why the former room mate would want to try to one up him could be viewed from that stand point. Still, with the amount of booze, crack and std's that went around that group... I dunno... maybe I should choose my friends better. If the former room mate's boyfriend wasn't my best friend, maybe I could just leave it alone. Oh, and she's also my 3rd cousin and likes to throw that around whenever we have a disagreement 'blood runs thicker than water', but there are plenty of good reasons why she's the 'Former Room mate.'
Oh, that is fucking terrifying.
What's really terrifying is that the high school I attended is the only school in the district to have a daycare on premises. It's advertised for teachers when in the 3 years I attended I've only seen one child there that belonged to a teacher... out of the 8 newborns and toddlers that belonged to students aged 16-18. Now, at one point, the school did have a continuing education program and offered night schooling and I don't know if at some point those attending the programs were actually using the day care for there own kids but in a school of 1500, you pretty much know who did who and the side effects and to my knowledge, I don't recall any of those who I had met doing the courses having kids that went to the day care. I dunno, maybe I'm too opinionated or just a little naive when I think that it's common with small towns. You graduate, get married, pop out two kids and maybe go to collage afterward if you feel up to it. The first three mostly happening before 24. Not saying that this the norm for every small town or that's what everyone is doing it where I live but with lack of jobs or any sort of activities to do it just seems easier to go along with what everyone else is doing and it seems that it's either option a)Marriage, baby and happily ever after with the man you love (or desperately trying to find ONE of those) or option b) Sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Dang it, that was long.
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.....
I think I need a flowchart to keep that mess of relationships straight.
As for the childcare in the HS... scary.
And I've heard that about other small towns - that the only thing to do is have sex.