I’ll start. I’m a 37-year-old woman, and I’ve always been indifferent about having children. I love peace and quiet, but at the same time, I wouldn’t mind having kids if my partner really wanted them.

I’ve been with my husband for 13 years now and married for 11. I’m his second (and final) wife. He has three kids with his first wife. She was supportive of him taking a second wife, with just one request: no more children. That solidified my decision not to have kids.

  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
    41·
    23 hours ago

    Lmao this is the issue

    Selfish people only think about who spawns more soldiers for a fantasy ideological war. Or for some sick fetish with spawning to perpetuate your oh so special genes and family name.

    People don’t fucking consider anything about the life their children will have to live, and then have the audacity to say “i love my child”

    Birthing children into poverty is abuse. At least just as abusive as a parent who can supply everything for their child but refuses to, because the effects of neglect are the same.

    • Surenho@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      1·
      15 hours ago

      I think people misunderstand how genetics work. What you say about a fantasy war is something that has been bothering me for a while, as this idea of “which genes get passed and which not” seems to stem from real phenomena, but are very poorly understood in its workings. Very few genes have high heritability, many are pleiotropic, many we have yet to understand what they do, and between humans we are absurdly similar to each other, yet as a population we have immense genetic diversity. The last two statements might seem opposing, but it is about the scope we look through. But once you understand this, any child is just like yours, and adopting becomes a better option ethically. This rhetoric of passing genes for selfishness and such are based on the ideas about genetics people tend to have but have little base in how it really works. The reality is much more complex, and nurture plays an absurdly large role in shaping us.

      I think it also bothers you as much as it does to me because the argument is used in a way to get people anxious about societal implications for their immediate choices based on things that nobody knows how they would play out. It is guilt tripping, and so it feels like a bad faith argument to convince people of making big decisions.

      That being said, I’m not against people having kids. People do what they want, but don’t do it for any population genetics duty notion that you think you should fulfill. There are plenty better reasons to do so imo.