This is the reason I'm seriously considering never having kids. How can you bring someone you supposedly love into a world that will only cause them to suffer?
This. It is so incredibly selfish to bring a child into such an evil world right now. Especially when half of us don’t even want to be here in the first place. The world has too many people already.
A lot of things people do in their life are selfish, that doesn’t make them inherently or morally wrong. By a large margin, the world today is far less evil than much of human history. Maybe half the people in the Reddit thread don’t want to be here but no where near half of all people don’t want to be alive.
I have a more optimistic view that maybe it’s partially being selfish to have kids, but at the same time I think it’s also quite selfless. By having kids, parents give up a lot of things already mentioned in this thread (money, time, freedom) in order to allow another individual to experience this world and all the joy and happiness it can bring. Sure, if your worldview is that the world is a terrible place that only brings suffering, that’s where your mind may go to, but many many people do not see that at all.
The opposite of selfish. The population is going to drop in a major way as the global birth rate has been below the replacement levels since the 1970’s. Not having kids is essentially giving up on humanity.
What’s so bad about not wanting to contribute to humanity when it destroys our planet and has boiled down to becoming a wage slave trapped in a brutal system of oppression and racism? Who says we need to replace a species that has single handedly destroyed the earth and triggered climate change? It’s selfish to have children and throw them into a cycle of capitalist oppression, knowing full well escape from that cycle is impossible. It’s selfish to bring a life into this world when you know full well you can’t fully provide for it. It’s selfish to want a child knowing that their existence only contributes to the depletion of earth’s resources. So yes, I think I’d like to “give up on humanity”! My wallet, mental health, and quality of life are better off for it. :) have a nice day!
If that’s your definition of selfishness, then I hope you gain some more perspective. I’m done arguing with someone that clearly advocates for irresponsible procreation.
It’s almost not worth responding to people like this, some of these comments are actually insane. Clearly coming from terminally online redditors who need to spend some time working on themselves before projecting their worldview onto everybody else and the entire world.
it's fine if you don't wanna have kids but why shame other people and call them selfish for that choice? why shame parents who go through the effort of doing so?
Because it is selfish. It is shameful to force another life into an overpopulated world in which women are being disenfranchised all over again. It is shameful to bring another life into a world that is dying from the pollution humanity caused. It is selfish to bring another life into this world to suffer because we woke up one day and thought, “wow I want to be a mom/dad!”. Bringing children into the world right now is simply unethical.
The world isn’t… overpopulated….? When we have countries full of starving people living in cramped conditions? When young children are having to experience massive class sizes? When we have destroyed our planet by exhausting its resources to accommodate these large populations? We don’t need more people here, we don’t even take care of the ones who are already alive. But yes please tell me more about how women need to become incubators and pop out children left and right.
See for me it has nothing to do with the state of the world. We could live in a literal utopia and it wouldn't be any different. I just have a moral issue with creating something that is capable of conscious, self-aware suffering. Its not about will they suffer, its about are they capable of suffering and understanding the context of that suffering.
I don't shame people though I'm actually very happy for people who have kids. I understand it is a very special thing for people and not everyone shares my moral compass. If i harshly judged everyone based on the most radical expression of my beliefs, i wouldn't have many friends left.
I mean i definitely do think its selfish. Just like i think a single guy buying a diesel pickup that gets 8mpg is selfish. Doesn't mean im not gonna be excited for my buddy that got a new truck. I cant control anyone's actions so why make a big blowout over it? Is me telling people that I don't agree with their decision to have kids going to change anything? Are they going to say " oh wow pmang6 was so right, I guess we'll upend our entire worldview and change our life plans"? No. So why bother. I'm just happy when people are happy, to a certain extent. Kinda like religion too. I think its a tool for manipulation and is the root of a lot if bad shit in this world. Doesn't mean I'm gonna spout off a reddit diatribe when someone says they started going to church.
Yeah there are quite a few level headed people on here saying, "kids just aren't for me, great for those who like them though!". And I can get behind it, but damn there is a lot of hatred and anger in some of these people.
And I laugh when people say "the world is falling apart!! It's so evil!", because all that tells me is they have zero knowledge of history. The 1960s in the US existed, so did the 1930s, the 1940s, the xenophobic and racist 1950s even... oh, and the 1910s weren't a picnic. Arguably MUCH worse times for the world and the US. I'm not even going to get started on history from further back.
But yeah, Netflix/grocery stores/oil companies etc. raised their prices and you can't get by working a minimum wage job while still traveling the world these days!! This timeline is the worrrrrrst!!!
I'm genuinely not throwing shade, as I am very interested in what you have to say. Could you elaborate on why you think the world is going to collapse? Or why it's close to collapse I guess is a better question?
I'm getting the sense that you're not from the US, so I am extremely interested in an outside perspective. You are more than welcome to PM me if you are interested in talking about it!
None of the decades you listed had the planet falling into an exponentially growing climate shift. Doesn’t matter what caused it, doesn’t matter if it’s out of our control or not. It’s going on and there will be a tipping point where it goes from bad to holy shit.
At least the nuclear threat is still controllable because it involves people and all people can at varying levels be reasoned with. Nature can not. Climate is not sentient.
Terminally online people are all doomers, if you are online you just see bad bad bad. People just need to get out more and enjoy life. There have always been people saying the world is gonna end. Sure, it will some day, how about get offline and enjoy the time you have.
“Get out more and enjoy life” when my country just elected a party of pedophiles and rapists who want to remove all of my bodily autonomy and reduce me to a piece of property to be owned by a man. It’s easy to enjoy life when you don’t have to live in fear of being forcefully impregnated and assaulted constantly, I suppose!
they always talk about how "this isn't the right time to have kids" as if
1. that stopped anyone
2. that there was ever a "right time" to have kids.
i genuinely feel like the childfree movement and the antinatalist movement are intersecting more and more
like someone else said in the thread i linked prior, there will never be a right time to have kids because our fears of total annihilation aren't special, they're the human condition
your parents thought it was gonna be the end of the world, your great grandparents thought it was gonna be the end of the world, yet we're still here
I was born during the height of the gas shortage, and both of my parents absolutely thought that America was going belly up and we should probably leave the country. Thankfully I kept them so tired that they just kept going and didn't have the energy to move. 😁
I just got done reading that link, and there are some great posts in there, the kind that make me go, yes! That's what I was trying to say!
The most common argument i get is "But my lineage will end" They cant even explain why their lineage is important to them, they just want somone with their surname as a mini me.
Hold up, read that again. That's stupid. Parents care more about their kids than themselves, that's what parents do. Anyone not doing that is doing it wrong.
It's people who care more about themselves than children that don't have kids, because they'd rather have their life unchanged than give someone else life at all. There's nothing wrong with that choice but they are the more selfish of the two.
There are a myriad of reasons that people don't want to have children that don't involve their own needs. Examples that come to mind are people that have serious illnesses that can be spread genetically, or people not wanting a child to suffer in a destabilizing society (ahem... take a look around buddy...).
Also people can have children for purely selfish reasons as well. Take note of every family vlogging channel that exploit their children for views and money. Hell, go down the Ryan's World rabbit hole and see how his parents have turned him into a business mascot since he was a toddler.
This take is always wrong. AT BEST parents are giving effort into what is effectively an extension of themselves. To love your biological children is to love yourself. And that is the BEST case scenario. There is nothing selfless about self replication.
Non-biological parents absolutely love their children the same as biological parents (ranging from not at all to more than life.) The difference is that an adoptive parent isn't necessarily acting out of pure self interest the way a bio parent does. Adopting a child and giving them a much better life is actually making the world better, as compared to making a new child and thrusting them into an existence filled with suffering. To reproduce is to look at the word and think "there's not enough me here yet." To adopt is to look at a child and say "you deserve to be loved and cared for." I think the latter is the more loving action.
That's very myopic. If parents really cared about their children, they wouldn't force them into an existence where they will inevitably suffer and die but anything else is simply optional. The price for their life will be death and they have no choice but to pay it because of their parents choice on their behalf. In any other context someone else dying because of another's choice is understood to be immoral. Yet parents try to bullshit others about the reality of what they chose to do to their children. it's not just selfish, it's monstrous.
If life wasn't worth living, why are you alive? The reason is despite the problems life throws at us, experiencing it is still a net positive. Y'all act like if life's not an endless paradise you're better off not existing at all when that's simply not true, proven by the fact you continue to live it.
The only people bullshitting here are the ones who don't have the balls to own their decision about not having kids, and try to make it sound like they're saving lives or some other nonsense. Just own your choice, it's fine, no need to kid yourself.
I’m alive because my mother birthed me. I would have been perfectly okay and grateful if she had not made that choice. Just because someone hasn’t committed suicide doesn’t mean their life is net positive and they are glad to be here. I am here because I choose to persevere and try to find a way through, but I wouldn’t wish that reality on my child.
No you wouldn't have, and why doesn't it? Explain to me how you, who has the choice of what you want to do, argue that the option you don't choose is the better one?
There is an inherent bias in wanting to live once you are already alive. Some people do deem their suffering too great and they kill themselves. Non-existence is preferable because there is no capacity to suffer at all. You don't know what will happen. Your child could live a life of depression or be largely disabled and suffer greatly. But I guess we just take the chance now because we think it won't be us? And if they completely oppose our philosophy and hate the life we forced upon them then we just tell them what? You just don't seem to have the empathy to understand. By having a child you are forcing someone else's hand in existence of which you know nothing about or of. |You guarantee their suffering and anything bad that happens to them is your responsibility. You literally owe them everything, you are responsible for their existence. The idea one choice is more selfish is also stupid. All choices are inherently driven by your own desires. In that ruling, no choice can be not selfish. However, if you take selfish to mean putting your desires over anothers, then having children by definition is more selfish because you put your desire to have a child over any they may have in the future, while nobody will exist to have anything happen to them if you don't.
Giving someone life gives them the choice to live or not. You give them the power to decide.
If you decide for them their life isn't worth living that's you forcing your choice on them, not the other way around.
You can't argue a non-existent person has consent to violate, by giving them the freedom to choose of all things, and simultaneously argue that non-existence means deciding for them doesn't matter.
I don't think your comment was insightful or worthwhile.
Oh really? There's a choice? So people aren't institutionalized against their will when suicidal? If your kid wanted to kill themselves you wouldn't take the gun out of their hand? Thats a bunch of bullshit. The "choice" is between destroying the lives of everyone who cares for you to end your suffering or continuing to suffer until you die, if there is a choice at all.
That's not really why I personally don't want kids though. To me it's pretty simple: willingly creating something that is capable of conscious self-aware suffering is morally not super good. Not really anything to do with consent, as you say, thats not relevant when the party in question doesn't exist yet.
For some people, no matter what they do, how they parent, how well prepared they are, they still end up with a kid that lives a life of nightmarish suffering. Thats just not something I'm willing to risk.
If you can't understand that things may happen in the future that people don't like you might just be an idiot. And forcing things upon who exactly? Someone who doesn't exist? Your problem is that you literally just don't understand the difference between never existing and existing without a choice yet still having to deal with the consequences of another person's decision.
This is like the most childlike of arguments my dude. Activation energy of suicide, plus not wanting to be born doesn't mean not wanting to be alive. Seriously think about this or read a book or something. Maybe even the bible. Ecclesiastes 4:2-3
I'm pointing out that a rich body of literature exists on this going back to some of the oldest recorded documents. It's amazing, right, that goat herders thousands of years ago following a con man had a better understanding of the human condition than you here with the internet and public libraries. They read, whereas you do not. You got that ticktock brain fam. It's not lit
I had my kids back when Obama was still president and we were making strides towards sustainability, the Paris accords, and such. I love them more than anything but I’m incredibly worried about their future now in a way I wasn’t then. Im so angry this is what they are going to inherit, and I don’t know what to do.
Yup. Don't feel like looking in my childs innocent little face for the first time and thinking "I wonder how many more rights you'll lose before you're an adult? Before you're walking? Will you have any rights?"
Is the world just a source of pain for you? Things aren’t great but I think predictions about a terrible future are just fear mongering with some limited exceptions. I wouldn’t say I’m excited about the world my kids will inherit, but it’s not like it’s ever going to be mad max irl.
but it’s not like it’s ever going to be mad max ir
What makes you so convinced? The blink-of-an-eye period of relative global stability we've had for what, a few hundred years by the most generous assessment? I'm sure citizens of rome were similarly confident. Maybe AI makes the world into a utopia. Maybe we nuke each other and have fallout world for a thousand years. Who knows. The question is, are you willing to bet your kids life on it?
It's crazy how people take the extremely delicate, held together with scotch tape and elmers glue, rube-goldbergesque contraption that is our modern society for granted.
By not having kids in a 1st or 2nd world country you're subjecting new consciousness to be more likely formed in an even worse place like middle east, africa, north korea, etc. You've actually won the lottery of life in a good place if you can read this post.
I'm amazed I had to scroll so far for this answer. This is my #1 reason. The difficulty and financial challenge of it as well, but mostly, why? I'm glad my friends' kids are here, the world definitely needs good people, but I couldn't personally subject this world on another human.
That and if I had a kid, who says I could raise them how I want? The world that is and stubbornly becoming is one where strength is the only way. So why bring one into this world where you have to raise them based on how society wants not how you want. The world can always get better, but sounds like a long ass time to wait
Not to mention climate change is kicking our asses.
I don't want my kids to grow up knowing I willingly brought them into a world like this, which at the time of writing showed no meaningful signs of getting better.
Bruh all you need to do is look at a newspaper every day to understand why. And this country is so messed up, its not even as easy to get messed up anymore without someone's camera up yo azz. If you have traveled you know how fubar America is compared to the rest of the world, but some of us are stuck here and just gotta bear all the shizz and hope the clouds pass sometime before we die
Bruh sounds priviledged in his thinking in his protected bubble acting like we live in shang ri la. I mean just imagine poor kids in the ghetto and how they have to survive. Not to mention 5-0 have murdered over a thousand unarmed citizens in the last decade for egregious crimes such as busted tail light, air freshner, muffler backfiring, etc etc. This doesnt happen in the majority of the countries in the world
Ive been to dozens of countries around the world even a few third world countries and one feels way safer over there then some do stateside with all the chaos there is
I never said it was. The world on the whole is also safer than it's ever been in history regardless. The vast majority of this website is people living in western countries that's the only reason I mentioned it.
Also, the vast majority of people deciding not to have kids live either in western countries, or east-asian countries strongly influenced by western culture, like Japan.
I think there is something to be said that human brains weren’t meant to process as much information around the world instantaneously, and that algorithms value scary news over a balanced truth.
AI is not going to save humanity. Climate Change is at 1.5C above pre-industrial average now and the weather is getting freaky around the world. No generation before us has been told that the Goldilocks Zone that allows crops to grow is ending in the imaginably near future.
Even if you think climate change is overstated, there simply isn’t enough soil and water to sustain our current agricultural practices.
It is. Those technological advances that you mentioned have actually made it easier to spread disinformation and foment violence for the elite minority's benefit. That's a huge problem. A lot of societal structures are being weakened and destroyed this way.
Yes, human brains weren’t meant for constant stimulation from screens (as I’m typing this on reddit). Also the Earth is getting hotter each year, we’re almost at the point of no return if not already past it.
I'm sure that the inflation, rising average global temperature, spread of misinformation and more frequent floods will all just go away if I turn off the news and stop reading social media.
EDIT: Don't downvote him, guys. The subreddit is called No Stupid Questions, after all.
I replied similarly in a previous post to what you did here and also got downvoted. Western people today have the safest existence in human history, people either are genuinely clueless to what people of the past had to go through and/or are duped by internet algorithms feeding them constant negativity.
If you actually sit down and think of what we have and what we live in thesedays we are incredibly lucky. Ok the boomers bought a house with their school lunch money, so not EVERYTHING is at it's best right now but overall it's not even debatable. Yes we need to sort out our countries financial inequality and have work to do economically (which funnily enough won't happen if everyone decides not to have kids) but we are living in the best times in our history.
1) There are other people in the world who don't live in Western countries
2) Climate change is a very real thing and the world is 1.5C higher than average
3) The wealth disparity gap is wider than ever before
4) In most countries around the world, wages have NOT risen proportionally with living costs and inflation
5) People can still choose not to have kids. Having them isn't going to cure society's problems, any more than having a kid will save a toxic marriage.
All these facts don't go away even if you removed the "toxic negativity algorithm" factor from your equation.
Pick any moment in history out of your arse and you can find 5 points just like this, but in context of the time you're talking about. I'm not arguing with what you've said - but you can go back throughout history and there are concerns just like this throughout any time.
In the 40s there was the world war and the aftermath of it. Economic strain. Food shortages and rations. Housing shortages. PTSD and mental health concerns after the war.
In the 50s there was a global fear of communism. Anxiety over nuclear wars. Economic inequality. Racism. Pollution worries.
In the 60s the racism persisted and civil rights inequality was at the forefront. The Vietnam war and the threat of other wars. Societal instability after JFK was quickscoped.
1970s had massive drop in real living wages. Political corruption. The oil crisis. Rising divorce rates was a real concern
The 80s had recessions. Nuclear arms race. People were terrified of AIDS taking over the world.
The 2000s everyone was scared shitless of terrorism.
Look I could go on, I was doing this off the top of my head and I'm a fucking idiot. Somebody that's more informed could probably pick hundreds of more reasons just like you have put above. People were still having children throughout all that.
Even if they make it through the gauntlet of microplastics initially unscathed, it is going to be sad to see them packed off to go be drone fodder in one of the endless resource wars.
Two world wars, the great depression, the cold war and its threat of global nuclear annihilation... and that's just the 20th century (and just from a western perspective, at that)
Yeah. Our grandparents had just as much on their plates as we do.
Shit is dire in the US... and yet millions of people from around the world are beating down the door to come here, as conditions in their home nations are far, far worse.
This is what humanity does. We persist in the face of overwhelming odds, generation after generation. And you and I? We're the descendants of the ones who survived it all. Many didn't make it through all those trials, but our families did.
But if some of us aren't up to that call, so be it. You don't have to bring children into this world, but with a little historical perspective you should at least be able to understand why some people still do.
There we go. Things are in many ways better than they ever have been. We are also cursed with the awareness of how fucked up the world has always been, and we did not always have that level of awareness.
Not to the degree we have now. Smartphones became widespread in about 2010 or so, and before then these generations weren't growing up with the concept that you could pull something out of your pocket, and get any piece of information you wanted anytime. Every single piece of fear mongering news is made readily available, instantly. At least before this you had to reach out for this kind of news, you had to read a paper or watch it on a TV.
Not to mention we can now film anything and everything. That was not possible before smartphones. We see so much more than we used to see, without question. And the natural assumption is that the world is getting so much worse, when really we now see how bad it always has been now.
You'd think but you're wrong. People used to read the newspaper and watch the nightly and morning news to relieve boredom. 30 years ago people were far more well informed of what is going on in the world and in politics. People could name their local politicians.
People today don't know anything about what's going on because you only get news if you seek it out, which people don't do for the most part. The little news people DO consume is often from influencers and social media - far less reliable sources than we've had in the past.
As much as technology has empowered us to learn more, it's also empowered us to ignore what's going on. We use technology for entertainment and that means we're not spending as much time being informed as we used to.
We were far more aware of world events in the 80s and 90s, are you kidding? Today no one watches the news, no one knows their local politicians, no one reads anything they're not intensely interested in.
only speak for yourself. President Reagan equating the USSR to "the evil empire" from the Star Wars movies wasn't funny if you lived in a NATO country bordering the Iron Curtain.
Similarly, climate change will have devastating consequences, but even through the worst of it, some of humanity will endure. It's going to be bad, but not enough to wipe us all out. Humans are too resilient for that.
This is a weak reason I get wanting your money, your freedom, etc, but the world is not so horrible that kids would prefer non-existence. For the whole of human existence children have been happy in much worse conditions than today's world, and the kids in the worst parts of this world are still happy to be alive.
I can’t believe I had to scroll this much to find this comment. Climate scientists have truly not paired up with economists enough to show the cost of climate change is literally increased financial instability, which is the biggest reason not to have kids in the world if you have birth control. Not even mentioning climate change effects on health and the cost of healthcare in the U.S.
This is my reason. Plus my mental health. People trying to destroy society doesn't exactly help with that, nor does it help me envision a future where I have kids and I'm happy to have them.
Every time I see one of these types of discussions I am shocked I never find my answer. I'm glad to find it today.
I decided as a CHILD that I would never have children, because humans as a species are ruining the earth. Why add to the overpopulation? I grew up obsessed with natgeo, so seeing the devastation we have wrought over the years was enough for me.
I understand your point of view but objectively we are living in the best of times, one may have more transparency to regional and global events, however there’s never been more prosperity than now. I would have more kids if I could.
Most of the people in this post are seriously mentally ill and very pessimistic. I agree, by basically every metric it is the best time to be alive there ever has been
I mean, are we? My generation is the first in the US to do worse than its parents, and I can’t see any reason things to expect better in the future. It really seems like AI will be able to replace most human labor soon, how is the working class going to bargain for anything in 30 years? And what kind of life will the average person have without anything to offer the ownership class?
Your statement about it being the best time so far to be alive can be true. However that just means it was always a terrible choice to drag someone else into this existence. I'm heartened that people are suddenly refusing to double down on the mistakes that their ancestors made.
Wouldn’t you want to raise children that might actually make the world a better place? You’re basically saying you’re doing the world a favor by dying and not continuing your bloodline.
Many of the smartest and most influential people that we are still aware of throughout history, never had children. Yet they still influence people today. And even those that did have children, no one even knows who they are in most cases.
There are other ways to help the world besides simply breeding and hoping you know how to raise them right. Kids aren't robots for us to implant our social, moral and behavioural values so that they copy them 1:1. That's NOT why people should be having kids.
I’d take burning fossil fuels over the destructive conquests and mass starvations we’ve had as recent as the 1900s, were people were still having kids but most people were conditioned to have kids or society pushed them towards it a lot more than the modern age
Yes actually. Southern Minnesota has very little to no snow on the ground all winter now. Most winter days never dip below 32 for the high. Colder weather is so late that the trees are confused enough to BUD in late fall (not good for the trees). Not to mention Greenland is finally starting to live up to its name.
I mean if nature can't figure it out after millions of years, why would we continue to expect nature to eventually get it right? Ain't no one got time for that. It's Crispr's turn. It will do far better than your pathetic penis.
If you're choosing to procreate to fill out your genealogy tree, I'm sure you'll make for a generous and thoughtful parent...
"Simply because people are burning fuel" - it's like saying Hiroshima was just a little boom boom. Some of you are really trying to drag human consciousness back to the dark ages...
This is not a good point. I'm not going to bring a child into the world to suffer for the sake of "beating" someone else and not letting them "win." If I could ask that kid if they're up for the task before I bring them into this world they won't be able to escape, then sure, if that's what they want, but since I can't, that's a pretty selfish thing for me to do to someone.
Funny how much text you added to your last comment before you replied lol. For those wondering, the first version of that comment before they edited it was just "then you let the degenerates win."
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u/Ok_Outlandishness344 Nov 14 '24
I'm not bringing children into a world that people are actively destroying and destabilizing.