41–50 of 201 posts
I have 4 kids. Running my own business helps because of the flexibility. But the costs of living is something i did not expected to be so high. 3k per month for daycare/afterschool. Memberships, food, clothing, electronics etc. expensive housing, insurances. We easily spend 8,10k per month without saving anything. Nevertheless I love to have kids. Best investment ever.
I can imagine. For me it's the reason also to not want kids. I want to enjoy my life. But it's good for environmental reasons to not have kids anyway.
People who don't care about the environment are breeding like rabbits. Their children, too, won't care about the environment. The best thing you can do for the environment is to find someone as passionate as yourself and create a large family of conscientious, thoughtful, active environmentalists.
The absence of people with bad ideas won't help as much as a surplus of people with good ideas. Since even if we had half the people they could still pollute like crazy.
I've three kids. It's wonderful, it's exhausting, and it's often terrifying. Being a parent is a painful experience, but so is living life. Would my life be easier and less painful without them? Yes. Would my life be better without them? No, just different. I respect antinatalists, but I chose differently. I chose to bring laughter and joy to this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit, even if for a brief lapse. Is i…
It's interesting to note that you consider having children a selfish choice, because in some cultures, not having children is considered selfish.
I've three kids. It's wonderful, it's exhausting, and it's often terrifying. Being a parent is a painful experience, but so is living life. Would my life be easier and less painful without them? Yes. Would my life be better without them? No, just different. I respect antinatalists, but I chose differently. I chose to bring laughter and joy to this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit, even if for a brief lapse. Is i…
Life is what any of us make it. The antinatalist position is fundamentally fatalistic. It’s a total negation of the one redeeming feature of the universe: anything could happen. I respect not having kids. The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense.
I love my son, but it's also easily one of the hardest things I've ever done and will continue to be so for the next 18+ years. I wouldn't recommend having children to anyone: it's a singularity, and there's also no undoing it. You need to be very sure it's what you want. It will be expensive, it will limit what you can do in all sorts of ways, because it is relentless in a way which exposure to it as an aunt or uncle or friend simply won't communicate adequately (heck: even parents with older children seem to rapidly forget what having younger children is actually like, as I've experienced).
I've three kids. It's wonderful, it's exhausting, and it's often terrifying. Being a parent is a painful experience, but so is living life. Would my life be easier and less painful without them? Yes. Would my life be better without them? No, just different. I respect antinatalists, but I chose differently. I chose to bring laughter and joy to this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit, even if for a brief lapse. Is i…
Life is what any of us make it. The antinatalist position is fundamentally fatalistic. It’s a total negation of the one redeeming feature of the universe: anything could happen. I respect not having kids. The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense.
We're in a world where we constantly told that we have to give up meat/dairy, powered transport, heating/cooling, and a whole lot more to avert climate catastrophe.
I'm surprised there's so few mentions of the incredible destructiveness of having kids (e.g. vs. owning an ICE car or taking a few flights per year)
You could also just work less, or let yourself spend less time and energy on your kids. I get that most people recoil in horror at the latter one. I think they're silly. The fact of the matter is the world is a safer and more prosperous place than ever before. You should be able to invest less into your children than your parents did before you and still have them lead happy lives. If you have a child, and your own l…
For those of you who decided not to have kids in your 20s-30s, and are now in your 40s+, when changing that decision now becomes increasingly more difficult: did you regret it? Did your position of “I want to live my life, I don’t want the hassle or the cost, or there are too many humans already, or something else”, did that position change or weaken? Asking for a friend :)
Our decision was really my wife’s decision, I was always indifferent, which may explain the feelings described above. Wife remains staunchly committed to a child free lifestyle and couldn’t be happier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Life is what any of us make it. The antinatalist position is fundamentally fatalistic. It’s a total negation of the one redeeming feature of the universe: anything could happen. I respect not having kids. The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense.
It's weird how a whole bunch of parents jump into threads like these to tell us all about how totally awesome having kids is. I love my son, but it's also easily one of the hardest things I've ever done and will continue to be so for the next 18+ years. I wouldn't recommend having children to anyone: it's a singularity, and there's also no undoing it. You need to be very sure it's what you want. It will be expensive,…
I can imagine. For me it's the reason also to not want kids. I want to enjoy my life. But it's good for environmental reasons to not have kids anyway.
The environment is not intrinsically worth protecting, the reason we need to take care of it is so that the people that come after us can enjoy it. If humanity has to go extinct in 40 years might as well tear up all current climate agreements.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Life is what any of us make it. The antinatalist position is fundamentally fatalistic. It’s a total negation of the one redeeming feature of the universe: anything could happen. I respect not having kids. The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense.
It's a selfish thing to do. Nonetheless nothing I condemn. At the end of the day it's harder not to have kids and stop this cycle than not, thanks to evolution.