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Daddy isn’t coming back

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Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.

Also social pressure and expectations. How many people would feel comfortable saying "Sorry mom/dad/friend/potential partner, I'm not going to have kids because I'm worried I might not be a good parent or maybe even take my own life"?

You could simply state that you've lived with depression your entire life and that it's not something you'd wish for your offspring to inherit... or something along those lines. Just make sure to point out early that you're not interested in kids, you can bring up your motivation for that once you're comfortable enough to share it.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#52

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

You’re not a bad person for thinking it, there’s a surprising about of nuance in the handling of life, things like “mom’s suffering brings us no comfort” and then mom’s long term hospital stay is reduced when she dies quietly in her sleep. But nobody seems to discuss it.

Well, then, thank you both for discussing it!

I, for one, would like to normalize what is often called "dying with dignity" but could also be described simply as "intentionally dying." It's not suicide in the traditional sense, it's choosing your end of life with the same sort of assertiveness that most of us wish to have in all the other aspects of our lives. I understand why it's difficult. I still think we should be able to be in control of our own termination sequence when many of our subsystems are already doing so of their own accord.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.

Perhaps a good reason to keep elevating the socially approved age to reproduce? By the time you're in your 40s, you likely have a good idea of whether or not you're a stable enough mind to commit to the minimum 20 years required to uplift a new human adult.

Not sure our biology is great at that, but paradoxically as an almost 40 year old... I have the resources to support a bunch of children. Maybe the change to make is change the dynamic between men and women to introduce more age differences for child rearing.

My parents fought about money all the time, but if they had delayed then they would have been better off. If they were better off then maybe my mom wouldn't have killed herself...

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.

Perhaps a good reason to keep elevating the socially approved age to reproduce? By the time you're in your 40s, you likely have a good idea of whether or not you're a stable enough mind to commit to the minimum 20 years required to uplift a new human adult.

I would think that there'd be a threshold where the elevated risk of birth defects would place a ceiling on how old parents should be.

25-35 seems to be the ideal window, where the parents have had ample opportunity to get to know themselves as individuals, and the risks of a severe disability aren't particularly elevated. Afterwards, the risk seems to climb very quickly.

https://www.med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/10/older-fat... https://www.ivf1.com/age-birth-defects/

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#55

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

> Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if there is some truth to it.

In the criminal justice system, this is essentially what pleading insanity recognizes. Many of these people are placed in long term mental-health institutions.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#56
post #9

Knowing that you're at high risk of suicide or have other serious mental health problems is also a good reason to avoid having kids. This isn't directed at the author of the article or their partner; it's how I think when I plan my own life.

There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.

Not even mental health. If this level of self-awareness/planning would be universal, we'd reach complete societal collapse within 3 generations.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#57

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

When you say "fixed", I assume you mean that the traumatized brain is returned to a state where a person can learn and experience positive emotions. In most cases, I would argue that it's probable, yes, but I'm not an expert in this area, though I spend a lot of time trying to understand abuse (to remove it from my own language and actions) and trauma (so that I can help my children recover from it).

It is my very slightly educated opinion that given a place of psychological, emotional, and physical safety, it is possible to train a person to gain resilience. I will also say that places that meet these criteria are rare in the United States, at a minimum. Our society is highly competitive and attacks people who do poorly, even though that's largely assigned at random, or is based on already existing/trained resilience, which is not well taught in most schools in the US, at least not to the extent that it needs to be. Emotional intelligence is the primary toolkit for dealing with these kinds of issues, and it can't just be taught as a one-and-done. It is something that requires constant practice, similar to sports or music preparation.

I would even go as far as to suggest that the entire media system, for all that it does well, strongly encourages reductions in emotional intelligence. Advertising is designed to get us to relate to emotions like pride (buy a brand new vehicle to be your own person!) or fear. Facebook pushes anger at us regularly. The fundamental attribution error is so rife and abusive in our society that now we identify ourselves almost completely via the categories and labels that are tossed around so lazily, inducing category error, outgroup bias, and a whole slew of cognitive errors that reduce emotional regulation and empathy, key tools in maintaining a healthy mental state.

Given all this working against us, on the other side there needs to be understanding that safety isn't enough. Abusive language is incredibly common in the US (I don't have insight to what the media really looks like in most of Europe, or Asia). There are positive actions that can be taken to help people around you to heal, and to heal your own mind if you are concerned about hieghtened anxiety or depression, but they probably require counseling (hard to access and expensive), meditation and or pharmacology.

I would recommend understanding NVC (Non-violent communication) as a strictly non-abusive method of communicating with others, understanding abusive language patterns (name-calling, dismissing, condescension, etc.) which are easily found online, and also reading books like "Trauma and young children: Teaching Strategies to support and empower" by the NAEYC. The understanding of trauma, how subjective it is, and how often it is associated with thinking patterns and how to modify them, is key in helping people recover from trauma.

As a side note: I have had to do a lot of counseling because the 750k dead in the US from Covid caused me a lot of secondary trauma. I have a tendency to think in the empathetic, and updating from empathy to compassion freed up a lot of room for new ways of thinking. However, I have access to the necessary health care. People who are under intense pressure (month-to-month pay, homelessness, bullying, etc.) will not be experiencing what is called "toxic stress", which alters the brain and practically eliminates the ability to build good connections in the prefrontal cortex.

I guess what I'm saying is it can be done, if we reorganize society for mental health, or if you have the money.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.

Perhaps a good reason to keep elevating the socially approved age to reproduce? By the time you're in your 40s, you likely have a good idea of whether or not you're a stable enough mind to commit to the minimum 20 years required to uplift a new human adult.

[deleted]

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.

Perhaps a good reason to keep elevating the socially approved age to reproduce? By the time you're in your 40s, you likely have a good idea of whether or not you're a stable enough mind to commit to the minimum 20 years required to uplift a new human adult.

[deleted]

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#60
post #10

I have schizoaffective bipolar disorder, and aspergers. I was making $130,000 a year as a network engineer at Cisco in 1999 before I became too sick to work anymore. Right now I am homeless living in my van with a transmission about to go. I have attempted suicide three times already. I keep thinking about doing it again. No one wants to provide me the best medicine, stable housing. I make $1700 on disability but I c…

> The fact that I cannot get housing just proves no one cares. All it proves is that there is a big housing shortage. Have you tried taking your van somewhere where housing is dirt cheap? I hear small poor towns are better at taking care of the downtrodden too. Walk into the church poor people go to, and see what happens.

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