> to continuously drain your body and mind intentionally for the sake of a child's well-being.
This is gonna sound a little facetious, but... aren't you also doing the same?
> it's so incredibly selfless
Perpetuation of one's genes is far from selfless. (Unless perhaps one views one's genes as the important entity, and oneself as their mere vessel. But that's too deep for this post.)
I've heard an emotionally immature would-be mother say that pregnancy and motherhood is basically her license to be selfish. ("From now on I get to only think about myself", were her words. Personally, I'm not OK with anyone raising children while holding such mentality, as I believe they would not be able to empathize healthily with the needs of the child. I strongly advised her to reconsider, and got a response that she "wished she lived in a jurisdiction where abortions are illegal". This is your brain on patriarchy!)
I'm happy that you and your wife find it worthwhile to raise children. More power to you! But I responded to:
> Can you think of anything feminine that takes more strength than motherhood
with: remaining childless. So I think your counterpoint misses the mark.
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On a related note, the discussion in other subthreads largely focuses on the role of "good" and "bad" father figures in the emotional growth of young men. The loss of good role models is lamented, and the men of the past are idealized as "the men of a a more cohesive society" or smth as if the 20th century was an idyllic utopia lol.
But wasn't the previous generation of men even less in touch with their emotions? And wasn't it more accepted in past generations to solve problems through violence and destruction? So why weep for this cycle being broken, instead of inventing something better? Last time I checked this was Hacker News, not Curmudgeon News ffs
I believe we should more openly consider the possibility that some percentage of males grow up fucked up because it was their mother who was not a decent person. Or perhaps she was a perfectly decent person who made a bad choice in the given circumstances, resulting in a poor environment for an infant to receive initial limbic calibration.
Because hey, nobody is infallible, not even childbearers. Crazy I know. This is a huge blind spot of our culture: being a mother is a tremendous responsibility, and we just sort of decide that there's no way for it to go wrong?
At the same time, virtually everyone means well to mothers and children. Nobody wants to make mothers more anxious, because that might just unleash a self-fulfilling prophecy. Which is the last thing anyone needs in this climate. So it's a really touchy subject - with which I unfortunately have a smidgen of experience - so I'll allow myself to elaborate for diversity's sake.
You know how in some traditional societies, people are considered mature and ready to start a family soon after puberty? While in our hi-tech utopia we remain infantilised throughout our 20s (which are prime reproductive age, biologically speaking), for the sake of an education that may or may not bring the promised benefits?
So there's an ubiquitous mix of vaguely contradictory cultural and biological factors that strongly pressure women into motherhood. Whether they want it or not. Whether they are in fact mature enough to make this decision or not.
This pressure is generally stronger than the willpower of an individual human being. Therefore, it takes considerably more fortitude to resist it, than to go with the default.
It's institutionalized misogyny on the deepest level: our society's self-perpetuation depends on this cycle of morally sanctioned self-delusion, and good luck unrooting that one without conceding ground to even harsher ways of life!
Many (most?) young women have been conditioned throughout their lives that their ultimate "purpose" is to be mothers, and that their validity as human beings depends on their child-bearing potential. In the meantime, just like young men, they are deprived of opportunities for maturation and personal growth, and only offered a shallow existence in a maliciously confusing environment.
And this is how you end up a whole lot of very broken children who subconsciously wish they have never been born. Those children then grow up as insecure assholes who cause suffering for themselves and others while they blindly stumble to independently achieve the sense of personal safety and integrity that their caregivers failed to bestow upon them. (Source: am one.)
Men being pressured into parenthood by women who are themselves pressured into parenthood, is how you end up with absent, abusive, or ineffectual fathers. It's far from the only factor - but without this secret ingredient, they'd just harmlessly do their thing till they die, and not perpetuate their immaturity into the generations.
See also: rise of abortion bans, survivorship bias, falcolas and Pigalowda's posts.