It’s more that I’m deeply ambivalent about it and don’t want to be resented for the rest of time either way. I truly can make a case for going either way and be pretty happy with it.
your scenario is also the only one in which I’d consider having a kid, if it was necessary for my partner’s happiness. I’d guess a ton of people are in that spot
Of course, why else would a man have kids? So that they can wipe his ass when he gets older? That’d be a ridiculous reason.
Dude stop it doesn’t work the way you’re representing in this thread no matter what your personal experience is (and it’s just what you assume it’s going to be not your actual experience). Trust me on this my wife has spent her entire career in geriatrics.
Your ass gets wiped by capitalism while it’s systematically looting every cent you ever saved + anything you can beg/borrow/steal. It’s the same for all of us. I don’t care if you (extremely selfishly) had kids just so someone would wipe your ass.
And objectively jmakin is ENTIRELY right about the moral aspect of it. Having kids today is almost impossible to justify morally/ethically lol.
The non-selfish non-stupid line when you get to ass wiping time is to off yourself. I wasn’t kidding when I said that was the right plan for literally everyone.
Although that completely irrelevant to even think about as humans not just going to stop having kids.
The relevant question to this thread is the morality of helping parents. I haven’t looked for any data on this but I suspect providing for the welfare of children / parents actually has very little impact on the number of children people have and instead serves the very moral purpose of reducing suffering.
They aren’t going to stop having kids, and obviously some of us need to if we want the species to continue… but there’s no way to argue that the marginal choice anyone makes to have a kid isn’t a pretty serious environmental crime. I say that as someone who will probably do it anyway.
But I definitely think that society needs to take care of parents and kids better. Mostly because it’s an amazing investment for society, and if having kids is an environmental crime having kids that aren’t going to help push humanity forward is surely a much bigger one (same consumption no upside).
But the environment is not the only consideration, if it were then school shootings would be moral. But my whole point is this not all that useful of a thing to debate as birth rates are not driven by people who are consciously thinking about that stuff. But I think the initial debate of if it’s immoral to help parents is more interesting as I’m not even convinced it appreciably increases the number of kids people have.
You’re right birth rates are decided by things like what the economic outlook for parenthood is. Right now it’s a horrible deal nobody would ever take if it weren’t for brain chemicals.
At the macro level feels like it’s just another measure of how rich and educated the country is, like it’s pretty stunning that Niger birth rate is 700% higher than Japan. Guess would be interesting to see countries that are a huge outlier one way or other from what would be expected based on their wealth/education.
Non breeders having their social security and Medicare paid for by a generation that they did not personally invest in raising.
But I was mostly being a smart-ass trying to support and object to both sides of the debate.
That was a joke. Of course I had a child because my wife wanted to rather than any economic calculation/practical considerations.
The ass wiping is just a vivid illustration of the point that young people need to exist to support older people.
Good for you if you actually off yourself but alot of people talk a big game and then when the moment of truth comes they decide that they actually still enjoy living, at least when compared to final nothingness of death. If your mind still works and you don’t have unmanageable pain then can just continue your usual activity of posting here all day until you are 100. If your mind doesn’t work then who knows wtf you will decide to do.
hell yeah
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What about the olds that saved enough for retirement that they can pay for their own ass wipers?
And weren’t breeders? Prolly an insignificant fraction.
So, if in a relationship, how does the GF react to that?
And if not in one, how does it affect the chances of getting into one? My default assumption is that would hurt, but I have had more than a few married people tell me it actually draws more interest.
I don’t wear one myself, so I’ve got no personal experience.
I think not breeding greatly increases your chances of achieving that. If you stuck everything I spent on kids into Vanguard total market, come ass wiping time I’d have a yuuge amount of money from just that.
Yeah but it doesn’t work that way for us non-breeders. I wish I’d save more but instead we spend our money in travel and restaurants and other superfluous stuff like that.
Still we’ll be better off financially in the end than if we have had kids. But I’m probably going to spend all that saved money when I’m old and I don’t have my bredees around to provide that sweet free ass wiping labor.
You aren’t wrong for most people… but most people haven’t spent the last 15 years living with someone whose career is in dealing with the very concrete realities of the end of the road.
I don’t think I’ll have any trouble offing myself facing assisted living or a skilled nursing facility because I don’t think I’d have any trouble offing myself if I was about to be taken into the next room and tortured to death. It’s just a preferable outcome for me in every conceivable way and the fear of what is about to happen would make killing myself quite easy.
I’m terrified of the elder care industry in the kind of visceral way you would be afraid of wood chippers if you had seen a living human fed screaming into one feet first. That’s not me talking a big game that’s me telling you I’m more afraid of being a vegetable in a skilled nursing facility than I am of just about anything.
My wife was an excellent CNA, then she was an excellent floor nurse, then she was an excellent supervisor, and now she still picks up a few shifts a month to keep busy. The things she has seen and told me about are legit blood curdling. She has convinced herself that she’s helping make a bad situation significantly less bad, and on a micro level she isn’t wrong… but it’s been obvious to me for over a decade that she’s building sand castles on wet sand at low tide. As soon as she leaves the building everything immediately goes back to shit, and there’s not usually a neurodivergent as fuck nurse whose special interest is taking care of old people for some unknowable reason. Usually the people taking care of you are paid shit and don’t care if you sit in your own shit for a few hours before they get around to helping you. Why would they? You won’t remember and those kids you had basically never visit.
Even if by some miracle you got good care every step of the way it wouldn’t actually matter. The torture chamber is your own body and that last year is absolutely brutal pretty much no matter what. The experience of slowly dying is probably the closest thing to hell that exists in real life, which I’m sure you know if you’ve ever watched a loved one literally waste away in front of your eyes. The reason a lot of people, even people with pretty strong family connections, stop getting visitors during a long term stay in SNF or LTC is that they are extremely unhappy places literally no one wants to go to, and seeing a loved one in one isn’t going to do much but make you feel extremely guilty.
My big hope is that by the time I get really sick we’ll be treating people as humanely as we treat our pets instead of prolonging their suffering as long as possible for the money.
I’m a pretty unemotional person. I didn’t care strongly whether we had kids, but probably leaned yes. We have 2 kids now and don’t plan on having more.
There is absolutely nothing that compares to my love for my child.
But it is a shit ton of work. And atleast if you’re a good parent, you’re going to have to sacrifice some other things you enjoy, especially while they are young.