If any woman or man isn’t strong enough to withstand the pressure to reproduce and continue to add to our overpopulated planet, perhaps they should simply go with the flow. Have babies. The rest of us childfree will just tell the Nosy Parkers to butt out and mind theirs.

In the past few days I have had an addition to my family, another teenage girl (16) who had no place to go. I met her parents at their home the other day and my only thoughts are just how did this child survive, the abject poverty, the emotional blackmail, the verbal attacks of never being good enough. While I have felt that I wasn’t a very good parent, I have come to realize that there are parents out there that should never have had any children. While poverty isn’t abuse, neither is filth to some extent, but the parents are home all day long and the family is on Public Assistance, and still can’t seem to take care of the kids in a proper manner. The girl that is now living with me has two older half siblings (girls that were raised by their mother in a different state), two younger brothers (13 and 6) and two younger sisters (9 and 6). The youngest two (boy & girl) are twins and the boy has mental retardation and physical issues, but the girl is bright and smart. The oldest boy appears to be a little slow, but has no physical disabilities and the other girl is smart and bright. Now I am being burdenned with thoughts about how the remaining children in the home are going to survive.

To me this is a case in point where sterilization might have been a better choice, or for someone to decide to not have more children. However, this girl that is living with me doesn’t want to have children either. I think that children who have seen the struggle, and are driven to make something of themselves are more likely to not want children nor have children. It isn’t selfish to think of yourself or to put yourself first, it is your life not anyone elses.

If I never have any grandchildren that is fine with me, my life is complete without grandchildren, and I wish that my children do what is best for themselves, because in the long run it is their life and a life that makes them happy and complete is all that I can wish for.

-Trouble

you may “convince” her to have a kid eventually, with enough pleading and cajoling and arguments that she’ll come around once she has the kid and sees that life is different from her family history. but if she really never wanted kids, she’s going to resent the heck out of you and the kids both.

lots of people think that the “maternal instinct” will take over once the woman is pregnant and/or sees the actual baby. but this is a truism that isn’t true at all. there really are some women who don’t have a desire to have kids. and if you can’t accept that, then you’ve got a recipe for disaster if you force the issue.

if you do stay together and manage to convince her to have a kid, be prepared yourself for what might happen. you will wind up being the kid’s primary caretaker and source of emotional support. your wife may react in a way that is like the traditional 50s style husband: interacting with the kids for a few hours on the weekends and maybe a little while every day after work. but if she has to give up her interests and time too much for the kids, expect resentment, sullenness, and arguments as you try to get her more involved and she resists.

i knew my wife didn’t really want kids and despite the fact that now they’re here she does love them in her own way, i knew from the beginning that i would be the primary caretaker and source of emotional support for them. so expecting that from the beginning, we have an arrangement that works for us. sure, i wish she’d be a bit more involved, and there were a few rough months when the 4 yr old didn’t understand that mommy has do be gone pretty much most of every day of the week. but that eventually passed and she’s accepted that mommy has to work & go to school and have outside solo activites. i do insist on one family activity day per week, or at least a major part of that day. not that i particularly care, but for the kids to see that their mom is involved in their lives.

yes, she’s become more accepting and involved as the years have passed since our first daughter was born, but that was only through the fact that i put no demands on her to be involved and let her involvement with the kids develop at her own pace.

so unless you have a clearly discussed plan for childrearing and you are 100% ready to accept whatever she decides, you’re best off leaving the relationship and finding someone else who wants the same kind of family life you do.

It’s called “college”.

Shorter version: I’m glad that there are women who are fine without having babies and that we have access to contraception (despite people trying to take that away), but we got to remember that the fundies are breeding like rabbits.

I read the comments here and I think the women here are very eloquent and I so wish I could say what some of you guys say, and I’m not sure if I am getting this out clear. If the smart, clever women who fight the status quo don’t want to have kids can we make like a stealth Feminazi unit that kidnaps daughters (and sons) of the fundies in the middle of the night to some secret commune so that we can have troops to fight the Patriachy?

I think worries about high taxations has nothing to do with goods and services to people (child care nursing homes etc)but rather injustices and corruption in governments that spend money where it is not intended or overtaxing people to make up for taxes they wasted or used for their wealthy friends or whatever. let’s not forget the politicians have their pet projects that have nothing to do with the common good of the tax payers and legal ways of stealing taxpayers money.

someone having a child or not is irrelavent in that regard, especially since the government keeps cutting services to the poor and middle class anyway.

it is an inescapable fact that what we do effects others directly or not, and there is no way to avoid it, or even minimize it, there is no way to change laws or times or seasons to avoid that, and taxes inevitably will be used for things that we dissapprove of, such as child care benefits to working people, or nursing home care for the poor or schools etc.

I don’t have children and don’t mind paying taxes for schools, I just don’t like the way they fund it, but that is something you deal with, one’s property should not ever be used to fund anything, that is what income taxes, sales taxes etc are for.

anyway I bet it gets annoying when people bug you about children, wish people could learn to not ask questions that don’t pertain to them.

RR

Really, NYMOM? Tell that to all the countless children who were abused and murdered by their own mothers - natural and best guardians my foot! The best guardians for our children are the caring adults (with or without children) who take the time and effort to educate, feed, love and support children. Be it their natural parents, their adoptive parents, their childless aunts, their childless teachers.

NYMOM sounds like she has a chip on her shoulder. Perhaps the men in her life were losers. Perhaps NYMOM envies that women made choices and she just decided to have kids because that was “just the thing to do” and is envious of all the other women who chose otherwise.

I am a mother and am ashamed of your ignorance. You do not represent mothers - definitely not me! You are not only a disgrace to motherhood, but your close minded prejudices and ignorance make you a disgrace to women in general.

When I started getting annoyed, the inquiry, “Why don’t you have children?” would be answered with, “My kind eat their young.”

Good answers to “Don’t you like children?”

“Yes. Other people’s.”

“Yes. Boiled, roasted or fried.”

Good answers to general breeding inquiries: “Why on earth are you so interested in my reproductive capacities???”

OTOH, there’s one thing I really can’t deal with at all: the well-meaning suggestions that my co-workers make to each other about their childrens’ gender. For example, after one colleague came back from maternity leave, one woman asked her, “So was it a boy or a girl this time?”

The colleague responded, “Another girl”, with a comically disappointed expression on her face.

“Oh dear”, said the woman. “You’ll just have to keep trying”.

What is this, the middle ages? Trying to ensure a succession, are we? What is there about the genitalia of my colleagues’ two daughters that make them unacceptable to the office sense of satisfaction? Bah.

Wow. Do you really not understand that this doesn’t mean anything? I’d thought it was completely obvious.

You aren’t interested in discussion at all. You haven’t addressed my questions. You haven’t commented on what I’ve said that both I and other feminists believe (as if you, anti-feminist, know more about it than all the feminists here). You haven’t supported your opinions in any way, shape, or form, not with facts or even other opinions. You haven’t said anything beyond that one sentence, over and over and over.

I feel like I’m trying to hold a conversation with a brick wall, and I have no further interest in wasting my time.

I decide when this post “dies,” as Amp has given me the authority to close down a thread when I feel like it. And if people want a thread to “naturally die out” then they’ll stop posting comments. Which means if you want this thread to stop then you too will have to stop posting comments as you, NYMOM, are the one who started the anti-feminist/pro-feminist flame war within the replies. All on a thread that was SUPPOSED to be about all the bullshit women get whenever they say they don’t want children, or they don’t want children until a certain point in their lives, or when society gives them crap about “not being the perfect mother“.

No, the last dozens upon dozens of comments have been nothing but of your bashing of feminists, bastardization of the women’s rights movement, and over-generalization of what feminists supposedly did or didn’t do in regards to child-custody issues and Family Law. Or what “all feminists” supposedly believe when it comes to motherhood and raising children, as if we “all” think alike. And other comments have been from women defending made by feminism/women’s rights movement and it’s gains for women.

Damning feminism/women’s rights movement won’t fix the fucked up state of Family Law and child-custody issues. Participating in activism within the legal system will. You’re just adding momentum to the F/MRAs’ viciously misogynist movement and “arguments” against women period. Which for their “arguments” pretty much sums up to; “blame those feminist-bitches for everything that has gone wrong in Family Law and child-custody cases! Discredit them and their movement with hateful rhetoric, and force the Legislature to discard all the things they have given women!” Such as more legal and political power than ever.

You can’t damn feminists and MRAs, and have it both ways. If we keep bashing feminism/women’s rights, shaming professional unmarried childfree women for being so (ie: calling them “selfish”, “unfeminine/unwomanly”, “whores”, “immoral”, “family-hating-bitches”, etc.), use feminism/women’s rights as a convenient scapegoat for all of life’s problems, we’ll just go back to the days when women practically had little or no say in what happened to her children and her rights as a parent. And when women had little say about pretty much everything else.

Sorry for the long comment, but it had to be said. Now, continue with the discussion……..

Then stop trying to get the last word in, and let it die. Stop with the “I wish you would all shut up but you force me to speak” crapola.

Feminists aren’t asserting that men and women are the same. We do insist that individual men and women not be held to fascist essentialist standards. In other words, we aren’t out to revoke the “real woman” cards of women who enjoy working out, or the “real man” cards of men who enjoy baking cookies. You are free to limit your own talents and opportunities, but feminists prefer that everyone be given free rein to develop all their talents and abilities rather than be required to stunt their intellectual and creative growth.