PS: The point here is NOT that poor people shouldn’t have kids, it’s that no one should be having kids without having the basics of childcare covered, which necessitates widespread systemic, societal, and economic change so that no parent needs to worry about those basics, and kids can grow up in secure, healthy environments. I completely forgot to mention this when I originally posted it, and that’s my bad.
Having children is biologically safest for parents and children at younger ages. Having children young isn’t the issue. Having a system that hoards wealth for a master class at the expense of society is. We need to abort the billionaire class - it shouldn’t exist. Resource hoarding creates poverty.
Well the main reason you shouldn’t have kids is because this world is going down to shit at an accelerating pace.
Between climate collapse, life extinction, resources exhaustion and AI dystopia, where do you see your kids in 20, 30, 40 years? Dead from starvation? Enslaved by oligarchs? Can you see a good life fort them in the horizon?
My kid is a teenager and I already feel like she’s living the best of their life already. From their adult life, I can only see it go down.
Personally, I think future generations are fine as long as they apply themselves and hobby hop and as long as we reinforce and appreciate the tenacity behind their hobby hopping.
When I was growing up there was no 3D printing, you weren’t able to just make a dropshipping hobby and advertise on youtube like it was fucking nothing, I think twitch was just becoming a thing but the amount of money and influencers wasn’t like it is now, hell influencers weren’t a thing. It also looks like people adapt easily in today’s world. I’m not worried about anything, they all have their adaptations and ways of doing their lives and that’s fine.
I think it’s good to leave a door of hope open for the next generations.
But as I’ve always said: What could get worse, can always get better. 😀
your kids
From their adult life, I can only see it go down.
Gotta keep the whimsy going
i think a good question to ask yourself is: would you like to be born in today’s time? if not, then probably neither does your child.
Feel free to end it i guess. Oh no? Oh ok, but you want to decide for others?
first of all i never wanted to decide for others; i just proposed a question to help people to decide for themselves.
Suicide ain’t equivalent to never existing in the first place.
You suck
It’s not ending a life, it’s not breeding
You’re a classic example of a stupid breeder, incapable of anything more than a childish, knee-jerk reaction bereft of thought
Lmao. Talk about dragging the ladder up after oneself.
Many people have and we have the most depressed people ever? Thanks for the shove to them I guess? Just because the people who haven’t don’t want to doesn’t mean they want to grow up in current times. Would I rather exist or be tiktok obsessed depressed and ai-addicted? Legitimately hard to say. Lucky for me I’m none of those, but it would be a near unwinnable battle for my kids.
Thinking about childrens’ futures breaks my heart
PS: The point here is NOT that poor people shouldn’t have kids,
You may not think that’s the point, but that is the ultimate effect of your words.
I’d see it more like “Poor people shouldn’t exist”.
But as in “We need a society where nobody is considered poor and everybody is provided for”
No, this interpretation is too convenient for them.
Stop creating lives you’re knowingly unprepared to provide for.
This is a personal indictment, not a systemic one. It specifically treats births as the problem, not wages.
I do not have children, nor do I plan to—I have way too many video games to play. However, I am not so stupidly suicidal as to suggest that it is morally superior of me to be a zoo panda—or to pretend that it is global warming stopping me from participating in the same desperate struggle for life that my great ancestors did when driving their feet through mud and soil to chase antelope.
So the most selfish thing that people can do… is only available to the impoverished?
The most selfish thing that the system can do is let children live in poverty.
Fuck this billionaire bootlicking bullshit.
Stating that it’s fucked up to bring a child into this world that you cannot materially provide for is not billionaire boot licking bullshit. I’m guessing you’re one of the poor people that’s having kids that you can’t materially provide for or you wouldn’t be taking it so personally. If you cannot materially provide for your children you’re an unfit parent. Why are you advocating for unfit parents to have children? Why do you want children to suffer?
You specifically need to pay higher taxes.
Yeah and fund social services.
I think community is missing. You can provide material things and the child still be neglected.
“Poor people should go extinct”
I mean considering the alternative is they don’t have access to food, housing, healthcare, and are essentially forced by circumstance to either become criminals or throw themselves into the meat grinder.
Now I don’t even like arguing this anymore since reproductive rights in my neck of the woods have gone away, but you can’t seriously think that giving a kid a miserable, painful life is better than not having a kid at all
I can, actually. Mostly because even growing up in poverty is rarely just a “miserable, painful life” even somewhere like Burkina Faso but also because collectively providing for the next generation is a thing that we should be constantly pushing for, culturally and publicly. Because without a future there is nothing to fight for, without youth there is nobody to care for the old, without fresh eyes there is no passion for change.
It’s not someone else’s responsibility to provide a reason for you to fight / live, care for you when you’re old, or help you change things you don’t like. None of those things benefits the kid being born.
Having kids is morally wrong.
It’s not someone else’s responsibility to provide a reason for you to fight / live, care for you when you’re old, or help you change things you don’t like.
It’s called society, the thing we all live in that only works because of collective will and effort.
None of those things benefits the kid being born.
Giving up now is worse for them.
Having kids is morally wrong.
Morality has nothing to do with it. Not a single atom in the universe consented to its own existence.
I can’t help it. I’m glad to be infertile. Children born right now would inevitably face the extreme results of a climate crisis, depleting fresh water stores, the global sociopolitical breakdown currently happening in favor of far right fascists funded by billionaires, and everything that comes with that.
I feel we are past the point of no return and am confident that I will probably die before the absolute worst of it, but my generation’s children would not. I have never been more afraid for children in my life, and there are many in my own little village. I just do not and cannot foresee a future where this gets better, with as powerless as we are against surveillance and military technology. As nihilistic as it sounds, we are speedrunning extinction and the guard rails are gone. I do not want to see children suffer for it, and especially not my own.
If you truly believed that everything can only get worse from here I don’t know why you’re still here, frankly.
Edit: I’ll elaborate. You will die before the worst of it. We all will. I went to school for ecology, I know how grim things are. Worsening climate crises are going to push desperate people out of increasingly hot and arid regions into places with more fresh water and that will cause terrible conflicts. We’re driving a mass extinction event that’s making the leaderboards. (I don’t think we’re hitting K-T numbers without nuclear war but it’s gonna be bad.)
But we also, as a species, bounced back from a 98% population loss that lasted a hundred thousand years. And that was Stone Age technology. I have the utmost faith in our adaptability and I’m pretty confident humanity will survive our own bullshit. Further, I don’t think morality enters into it. Life is amoral. Existence is amoral. The ability to contemplate the nature of existence does not elevate us above that amorality. So I’m not throwing in the towel.
Whew that’s a windy way to tell me to kill myself huh, and to your elaboration: someone else’s kids can get knocked back to the Stone Age to repopulate the earth if we’re as like cockroaches as you believe. Not mine though.
No like why are you here, why bother with society if it’s doomed and miserable? Why make connections that will amount to nothing? Why not live as a hermit or descend into unbridled hedonism?
You mean why am I here if I’m not going to shit out babies and force them into an impossible situation? Why are you here asking fucking moronic questions when the community is labeled childfree? We all make choices
“Poor people should expand.”
One way or the other isn’t that the goal? We should lift people out of poverty right? Why should poverty persist?
We absolutely should but that’s a conversation for a future-minded community.
Unironically, yes. So should rich people. If we do that one first we can do the other one pretty easily.
Fuck off eco-fascist <3
I’m anarcho-stupid thank you very much.
Mr. Strawman, is that you?
This is far too much “breeding is a privilege for the rich” for my tastes. Touch too much Eugenics.
“Just don’t have kids” is a horrible solution.
“fix the system so people can make their own choices about having kids” is the actual solution.
Thats the point of the post. The user calling out “selfish is doing too much work” is saying that its not the individual who is to blame, its society.
if you look at destructdisc’s post history that is definitely not the point. they are a childfree instagram edgelord hot take monger.
Not the lemmy user, the actual image they posted. That phrase is in the graphic. Seems like the lemmy user didnt actually understand the image they posted then, but i dont follow users like that, im just looking at this one post
unfortunately they post like 90% of the content here so it’s hard not to notice.
lol ‘don’t have kids you can’t afford’
what a hot take
Yes, it is a hot take. At best, it’s capitalist victim blaming, and at worst it’s social darwinism.
You are blaming poor people for wanting a family when it should be a basic right for those who want it. We as a society should be ensuring our children are taken care of with healthcare, nutrition, education, etc.
To be clear, I am 100% child free myself, but I acknowledge that we collectively need kids from all backgrounds for a healthy society to persist.
I mean, yes but… at the same time the people that already have kids that are insufficiently fed /housed mayyyybe shouldn’t be shooting for #5 and #6 etc.
sure, you can cherrypick extreme examples of any human behvavior to get angry at.
It’s not that extreme, and I mainly just it as an example because it’s something I’ve seen often enough for a variety of reasons (religion, Gov’t cheques, etc).
That said, stuff like Elon and his quest to artificially impregnate at many women as possible with his progeny is just as messed up.
For those of us that aren’t crazy rich arseholes, having one’s first kid is often a trade off between an age when financial security is more likely, of prime birth/parenting years when one has a lower chance of complications/defects/etc, and then the issue of age gap between offspring after.
Yes, it is a hot take. At best, it’s capitalist victim blaming, and at worst it’s social darwinism
it’s not a hot take to admit we physically cannot support the current human population much less continue to grow
You are blaming poor people for wanting a family when it should be a basic right for those who want it. We as a society should be ensuring our children are taken care of with healthcare, nutrition, education, etc.
don’t put words in my mouth
my personal stance is in agreement with you and an actual first world community that valued children would help those willing to have them afford to do so
i just don’t think parenthood should be winged otherwise, it only harms the child
To be clear, I am 100% child free myself, but I acknowledge that we collectively need kids from all backgrounds for a healthy society to persist.
sure but until we put money into that all we do is create suffering
I mean, yeah, I agree. A kid should be one of the most serious choices a human can make. And the ability to safely make that choice (especially the choice to skip it) should be our civilization’s clearest priority. The fact that it’s treated with such utilitarian callousness by the billionaire class is unequivocally sociopathic.
Like… fuck, being a parent is hard work. The right to take a step back and give it some thought and prep is just a no-brainer.
It’s not a “hot take” in a world violently controlled by the disgustingly privileged.
idk the wealthy seem to be plenty pissed about the poors not breeding enough. Seems like good leverage.
You can tell who is from the USA and who isn’t in here.
The USA ain’t fixing shit anytime soon. People here are still trying to figure who gets to pee in which bathroom and if teaching is a real job.
Where does that mean I’m from? 🤔
long as you fix the system before having the kids i ageee
And now we’re back to eugenics.
population control is a must, the only question will be how messy it will be and how fucked up things will be when we finally are forced to do what we should have long ago
What’s simpler
-
Just don’t have kids and cope with the face that it’s not the best solution
-
fix the system
The real solution is acrually this:
- Dont have kids because you must cope with the fact that the majority of humanity is OK with this stupid , inhuman system THATS why most humans have not risen up substantially to change the system.
Youre welcome 😁
That depends on how much someone wants kids.
Either one could be very complicated.
-
The rich want poor to have kids so they have more chattel. I don’t think it’s eugenics at all, the rich wouldn’t know what to do with fewer wage slaves.
Skip having kids, even if you want to, just to own the rich? 🤔
Gonna be honest, I had hoped there would have been a revolution by now lmao. In this current society? Yeah, I’m not having kids just so they can grow up and have to work for assholes.
well ya.
If I told you that I was gonna hire a politican or group of politicans to ‘Epstein’ and rob your child every day that they worked for me(YES even after theyve become an adult) … why in the fuck would you have that child?!
THATS literally the world we live in today.
AND also better yet , after Ive ‘Epsteined’ them and robbed them…I can just blow them up instead if I feel like it! We see thst happening with abandon all over Colombia , The Congo, Sudan, PAlestine , Lebanon, Iram, Yemen, Syria, etc… (theblist is almost endless)
AND better yet, after Ive done all those horrible tjings to them , how about I also destroy their life and livelihoods with climate change. Ill be fine in my multipurpose military yacht or my spaceship or my militarized mansion on the mountains . The IPCC has already confirmed that even if we stop using GHGs as I type tjis we shall live im an nearly. apocalyptic world for the next 50-200 years!
Okay… But there’s so much more to life than that.
People work jobs they enjoy, have relationships, have experiences and generally love living.
To arbitrarily deny someone existence because of a shadow focused view of the world or an imagined joyless experience is at best pessimistic and at worst a projection of the parents fears onto the imaginary child.
I shouldn’t exist. Due to medical complications during pregnancy my mother was advised to abort me. She gave birth to me and instead raised me badly 🤣
I’m glad that’s the way it happened. Life is hard sometimes but it’s also wonderful a lot of the time.
The issues you name are real, as real as the joys and pleasures of existence.
There’s a reason even mad Max fights to survive. Because even that world is better than not existing. If he wasn’t born, he doesn’t get to make that choice.
To inflict the pain, anxiety, and suffering a childhood in poverty brings on a person because you wanted unprotected sex is pretty fuckin selfish. You are who the meme is talking about.
OK it was JOYFUL for YOU
YOU can go on with your life and be joyful with YOUR joyful life. Have fun buddy I guess 🤷🏿♂️
As for me? Ive been robbed, shot at, socially isolated due to the color of my skin and my poorness , left broke even after working long hours, and other awful things that have made me very bitter , and very VERY deranged. A person like me cannot be happy in a world like what we have created today and bbecause Im not happy I feel that my child will also be as unhappy as I am(and seeing as how I am actually surprisingly poorer than my parents ? Im pretty fucking sure that Im fucking right)
Also knowing how idiotic I am? I cannot guarantee that child will be alive by the time theyre an adult . I have done many stupid things that havve almost granted me a Darwin Award… So what would happen to my child if they accompanied me on those things?
And there are people all over the planet just like me … And youre tellling us tto put a child under our care?..
So YES I am clearly justified in denying my aethereal child from suffering all the BS I have suffered or that they could suffer under my care. And also denying my aethereal children from suffering of all the awful shit I have read of on the news.
Also its been shown that unhappy people like me tend to not have children anyways : https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5505668/
…Also …mad max is a fucking movie…it doesnt apply to real life…wot?!
Dude go to therapy instead of spreading your pathetic life story all over the internet.
Stfu and log off instead of spreading your ignorant privilege all over the Internet.
Well I am in therapy.
I’m sure there’s a few weirdos that think this but it’s not generally true.
Kinda wild to go on a childfree forum and be surprised people primarily talk about not having kids for various reasons.
And yes, being unable to afford them is a good reason to not have kids. Yes, eugenics also targets the poor. A broken clock is right twice a day.
It’s not “surprise” so much as disgust.
So…poor people should have kids they can’t afford? And this is something other than stupid in your mind?
Would you advise people to buy cars they can’t afford, or houses they can’t afford?
Yes but this is an antinatalism propaganda sub.
This discussion is hard and society is still not ready for it.
There are absolutely a lot of people that should not be bringing children into this world.
If as a society we’re going to say “it’s a fundamental right to breed”, then we need to fucking fix society so that every child brought into this world is guaranteed the opportunity for success. That means universal public healthcare, universal public education through college, universal access to nutrition…just to start.
Our current system is nothing like that. Once a kid is born today, if their parents suck then they’re just fucked, and maybe that kid should have tried being born to better parents.
In a system designed to opress, and only function on oppression, is it really the parents fault for being trapped in said oppression? And I wouldn’t even fault them for choosing to have a child atm, because that’s mostly been removed as a choice.
I would.
If you willingly make someone suffer through a system you know will oppress them, that’s abuse.
I mean because abortion is being restricted and denied. There’s no option, in that case.
I dunno. I’m sure there’s a tall building nearby they could fall from.
Or is that too bleak, do you think? Is it nicer to imagine they never wanted to live in the first place?
deleted by creator
This was a better point (in the US) before Roe v Wade got overturned honestly
Ever notice these conversations always center around the poor. Articles and comments never scold the rich for not providing loving or mentally and emotionally healthy environments for their children. They can produce little affluent sociopaths all day every day and it’s cool because they have money. As long as they aren’t actively and visibly abusive to their children they’ll never lose custody (and sometimes not even then). But the poor regularly have their kids taken for not having enough resources while we tisk tisk them for the crime of not being born privileged.
The point here is NOT that poor people shouldn’t have kids, it’s that no one should be having kids without having the basics of childcare covered
That’s just false. It’s literaly what the last sentence says. Otherwise they would advocate for child welfare instead.
I’m pretty sure it is advocating for child welfare. Like, that’s the whole subtext of it.
That is not the subtext of it. That is a Motte OOP would retreat to after being challenged on their anti-poor-people advocacy.
It literally specifically says they’re not advocating against poor people having children and specifically that it refers to people that knowingly have children that they cannot materially provide for. Then started that systemic change ought to occur to prevent this nonsense discussion in the first place. It’s the subtext of the sentiment and the plain text of the follow-up. The intention is plainly stated.
Are you referring to this?
PS: The point here is NOT that poor people shouldn’t have kids, it’s that no one should be having kids without having the basics of childcare covered, […]
First of all, these two sentences mean the same thing. If anyone is supposed to wait, then we’re talking about discouraging poor people from having kids.
Secondly, this text is not from the image. I have fuck all to say to this reposter on Lemmy—at least I think. They want more welfare, I want more welfare; it seems like we agree. I have no beef with them.
Come on. They literally state “love does not pay for childcare” instead of advocating free childcare. And the subtext is falsely trying to reframe it, which was my whole point.
No I understand it. Thinking further than yourself and thinking that government assistance and family will help you out. Diapers and formula are expensive. School, school supplies. The clothes they need as they grow, the food they’re gonna need, the potential therapies that may be needed. Doctors appointments that sometimes insurance a doesn’t cover. Then you might have a child born with an incurable disease that you might give your whole financial being trying to treat.
The amount of emotional availability that’s needed, the patience and god forbid they die!!! Plus it’s a lifetime thing it never ends they don’t turn 21 and leave you forever it’s a forever thing. If you’re still in contact with your parents, how many people are in their mid 30’s who are still on good terms with their parents? Who do you still call or go to when all goes to shit?
Like fuck man!!!
No I will not attempt to provide a life to something. Hell I can hardly afford myself. If I could provide financial reliability and if I wasn’t in the living situation I’m in now, maybe but even still, I don’t have that emotional expenditure and I know I’m not meant to raise a human and I’m okay with that.
I like being able to do whatever I want whenever I want, spending money on myself and I am a very detached person sometimes… I wouldn’t ever want to create an offspring only to know the life I would be able to provide isn’t of sufficient quality.
I don’t think poor people should have kids because I don’t think anyone should have kids because all humans should just agree that this shit sucks, and then throw a massive global rager until the world runs out of drugs and booze and then we should blow up the planet and be done with it.
This is literally the best solution for everything I’ve ever heard.
Or maybe just off ourselves - not the planet. Ducks and dogs and such seem like they have a grip on living. It’s us who can’t just find an equilibrium with the natural world that sustains our existence. We are the psychos creating systems that destroy and oppress to appease non-biologically necessary delusions like ego.
