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To Breed or Not to Breed?

nytimes.com

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Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#31

Post by Auracle »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

I've heard this kind of commentary a lot, but I still believe it's much more of a case of "people not wanting to have kids and then giving climate change as the reason" than climate change actually being the deciding factor in not having kids. I think in most cases it's more akin to virtue signaling. The modern world, especially in the US, is quite unfriendly to having kids. Both parents have lots of other opportunit…

A common thing I’ve heard is people saying “I wouldn’t want to bring a baby in to THIS world,” which I think shows that we really need to do a better job teaching history. It’s literally the best time there’s ever been to bring a child in to the world. There’s no constant threat of nuclear annihilation, no giant world wars, a large portion of childhood diseases have been eradicated, the chance of the mother dying in childbirth is incredibly low comparatively, and the list goes on and on.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#32

Post by Zababa »

jjj123 wrote: post #27
Zababa wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this may be mostly signaling, because the logical conclusion from the argument that more people means more climate change would be to either have your existence reduce climate change (which most people don't do), or to remove yourself from the equation. Or maybe the argument is about the relative impact, and not having kids allows you to take the plane and still feel good about your actions because your t…

I don’t think we should hold people to “the logical conclusion” of all of their beliefs. We are not robots. We are capable of believing something without willing to go to the ends of the earth to be consistent with that belief. For example, I believe it’s good to go to protests for causes I care about. However, I don’t go to even a fraction of the protests near me. Does this mean I don’t actually believe protests are…

We can believe something, and believe that this belief influences our actions, but that doesn't mean that it's true. For example, I don't heat my appartment. I could say that it's for the planet. But the reality is that it's not for the planet, it's that I don't need to heat my appartment for it to be at a confortable temperature for me. The consequences are still good for the planet, but this is a consequence, not a reason.

If you think children are a massive pain and your rationalization for that is that it's for the planet, there's nothing wrong with that. That may be also a thing people say so they won't get asked too much questions. I've heard that people can put a lot of pressure on other people to make children, the planet argument might be a good justification/counter to avoid being constantly questioned.

> We are capable of believing something without willing to go to the ends of the earth to be consistent with that belief.

I think my point here is that there's a notion of "intensity" or "importence". Having children is a strong belief in many people, and to counter it, you often seem to need a strong belief of the type "climate change is very important", instead of a less strong believe in the type of "I just don't want to".

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#33

Post by User23 »

polalavik wrote: post #19

A whole article about people grappling with whether to make little copies of themselves when there are tons of kids that need adopted. The whole idea of having a kid just seems like a weird selfish ego trip. I know there’s underlying primal instincts at play - years of evolution driving you to breed, but we have the brains to take a step back and say is this the best choice I can make if I’d like to love and raise a…

I can assure you that you will not make a little replica of yourself. It will be a new and different person that inherits some of your traits, but by no means all of them. That you're thinking of a child in that way suggests that you are right to not have one, at least until your thinking on the subject matures.

I don't see any point in arguing with the child-free types, I just see it as evolution at work in the modern world. The future is going to be dominated by those with the desires-to-reproduce phenotype. That's just a scientific fact and no argument will change it.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#35

Post by bckr »

bwestergard wrote: post #30
tharne wrote: post #9

These types of movements never really go anywhere, in large part because their proponents remove themselves from the genepool. It's the same reason that people having been saying for generations that religion is going to disappear, but it never actually does. Non-religious cultures tend to have below-replacement rate births while religious ones have higher birthrates. The main thing that not having children does is e…

At what rate do the children of Traditionalist Catholics remain Traditionalist? At what rate do the children of haredi Jewish parents remain haredi? What about grandchildren? I'd be curious to see some of the demography here. My intuition is that in the U.S., these subgroups are growing their share of religiously identified persons (e.g. a larger fraction of Catholics are traditionalists today than in 1970) but they…

> At what rate do the children of Traditionalist Catholics remain Traditionalist?

Also, at what rate do apostates produce other apostates?

Living a happy life outside the mold of what you grew up with sets an example for others. Making babies is not a surefire way of producing like-minded people, nor is it the only way.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#36

Post by bradlys »

polalavik wrote: post #19

A whole article about people grappling with whether to make little copies of themselves when there are tons of kids that need adopted. The whole idea of having a kid just seems like a weird selfish ego trip. I know there’s underlying primal instincts at play - years of evolution driving you to breed, but we have the brains to take a step back and say is this the best choice I can make if I’d like to love and raise a…

As far as I know - there’s no lack of adoptions for babies. The lack of adoption is for people past toddler age. Which makes sense - at that age they’re never gonna be just the product of your nature. They’ll always be a product of whatever came before them.

People like to start with a fresh slate. If they didn’t - they’d run a foster care.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#37

Post by langitbiru »

Auracle wrote: post #31
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

I've heard this kind of commentary a lot, but I still believe it's much more of a case of "people not wanting to have kids and then giving climate change as the reason" than climate change actually being the deciding factor in not having kids. I think in most cases it's more akin to virtue signaling. The modern world, especially in the US, is quite unfriendly to having kids. Both parents have lots of other opportunit…

A common thing I’ve heard is people saying “I wouldn’t want to bring a baby in to THIS world,” which I think shows that we really need to do a better job teaching history. It’s literally the best time there’s ever been to bring a child in to the world. There’s no constant threat of nuclear annihilation, no giant world wars, a large portion of childhood diseases have been eradicated, the chance of the mother dying in…

Even if this world is not ideal, it's still fine to breed or bring children to this world.

"Never feel sorry for raising dragon-slayers in a time when there are actual dragons," unknown.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#38

Post by engineer_22 »

jah242 wrote: post #21
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

I've heard this kind of commentary a lot, but I still believe it's much more of a case of "people not wanting to have kids and then giving climate change as the reason" than climate change actually being the deciding factor in not having kids. I think in most cases it's more akin to virtue signaling. The modern world, especially in the US, is quite unfriendly to having kids. Both parents have lots of other opportunit…

'you want to be more selfish with your time and money' - from my perspective having children is up with the most selfish things an individual can do - you are spending a huge amount of time and resources replicating yourself (to as greater degree as possible with current technology) and then usually trying to give that replication as much advantage over other people's as possible. From my experience parents are often…

I think you should reflect a little bit more on what a society is and it's goals.

To my point, a society is made up of people. They must be born before they can be useful to society.

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#39

Post by DiggyJohnson »

jah242 wrote: post #21
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

I've heard this kind of commentary a lot, but I still believe it's much more of a case of "people not wanting to have kids and then giving climate change as the reason" than climate change actually being the deciding factor in not having kids. I think in most cases it's more akin to virtue signaling. The modern world, especially in the US, is quite unfriendly to having kids. Both parents have lots of other opportunit…

'you want to be more selfish with your time and money' - from my perspective having children is up with the most selfish things an individual can do - you are spending a huge amount of time and resources replicating yourself (to as greater degree as possible with current technology) and then usually trying to give that replication as much advantage over other people's as possible. From my experience parents are often…

Can you give some examples of this trade off? I have a different perspective: that non-parents have less incentive to build and maintains communities?

What sort of activities do non-parent adults engage in that is lost in this trade-off?

Re: To Breed or Not to Breed?

#40

Post by bckr »

User23 wrote: post #33
polalavik wrote: post #19

A whole article about people grappling with whether to make little copies of themselves when there are tons of kids that need adopted. The whole idea of having a kid just seems like a weird selfish ego trip. I know there’s underlying primal instincts at play - years of evolution driving you to breed, but we have the brains to take a step back and say is this the best choice I can make if I’d like to love and raise a…

I can assure you that you will not make a little replica of yourself. It will be a new and different person that inherits some of your traits, but by no means all of them. That you're thinking of a child in that way suggests that you are right to not have one, at least until your thinking on the subject matures. I don't see any point in arguing with the child-free types, I just see it as evolution at work in the mode…

> The future is going to be dominated by those with the desires-to-reproduce phenotype

"dominated", for sure, and yet we also have a tremendous number of gay people. It's not quite so simple.

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