From "Pets deserve worship, whatever the Pope says/Having dogs or cats instead of children isn’t selfish: it enriches our existence" by India Knight (London Times).
I think Pope Francis meant to reject exactly that "perfectly reasonable approach." That's not the meaning of life, to be prudently responsible and to wait until all your material conditions will make children comfortably manageable.
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89 comments:
There is NO way to guarantee you'll be irritated for a child. If you're going to apply the precautionary principle to the question, you will NEVER have children.
But a pet can be "re-homed" if you decide it's just too much trouble.
So, what IS the meaning of life anyway? I don't think the Pope has a clue.
I'm surprised that the not-wanting-children gene is still present in the gene pool.
"Rescue dog" only became a common phrase recently, didn't it? Sort of like "service dog"? I had the two confused for a second and wondered why a young couple would need a dog to rescue them. "Shelter dog" may or may not be a more common phrase, but earlier we would probably just have called them dogs and then used a few more words to explain if someone asked where they came from.
Many conflicts are state of life questions, involving what one does or finds appropriate at different periods of one's life. I don't think the pope was referring to couples who use a pet as a starter baby to practice on. He was more likely talking about those of us who never have kids. Of course he fits into that category too, so maybe he's not the one to criticize.
I'm surprised that the not-wanting-children gene is still present in the gene pool.
Probably overwhelmed by the not-being-able-to-prevent-conceiving-children gene of our ancestors.
Families with children are generally good for the church.
Childbirth seems miraculous and inspires religious feelings.
Parents with young children attend church more, and sometimes they enroll their children in church schools.
Young people in the congregation enliven the church and promote an impression that the church has a future.
A church comprising members who are childless and/or are old looks like a dying church.
this is silly
Why waste your time/money/love on children? [Sure, this part makes sense]
but then why waste your time/money/love on pets? [that's JUST AS DUMB]
SPEND your time/money/love on HEROIN
Only HEROIN will love you back, the way You Deserve
Only HEROIN can Provide TRUE MEANING* to your Life
Only HEROIN can give you that warm nothingness feeling that HEROIN gives you
[This Message brought to you by the HEROIN Corp of America]
{HEROIN Corp is a wholly owned subsidiary of the China Fentanyl Division of the CCP}
TRUE MEANING* obviously, the True Meaning of life; is Getting More HEROIN
If everyone waited until they felt that they were correctly positioned to have children before they had children, there would be a lot less children around. Also, I've known people who weren't planning to have children, but became better parents because they had to care for pets. Another important fact to take into account is that if someone really does not want to be a parent, they probably wouldn't make a good parent.
'You can’t go dropping babies everywhere just because you’re fertile, and, besides, women aren’t brood mares.'
Has she been to any large city in America?
Didn't think so.
That is why the Pope loves Africa so much- they have so many kids that they cannot feed, so the kids die. Wonderful advice from a Marxist Pope.
I get my dogs from breeders.
The people who own the London Times don't want people who make rational thought out decisions to have children.
They want people who "Just drop babies everywhere because they are fertile" to have children.
And they want those people to immigrate from other countries.
The people that own the London Times are very interested in replacing the population of the UK with people from the 3rd world.
It is the same thing the elite is doing in the United States, and really everywhere around the world.
I am 55 and, as far as I know, I have no children. It is the biggest regret I have for my life to this point. My feeling is this- there is no other point to life than procreating the next generation. If you haven't done that, then your life really is a failure at the most basic level- you will have left nothing of lasting value behind when you die.
Culling the herd is a good thing.
Cat first, baby if and when the time is right is a perfectly reasonable approach.
22: "I'm just starting my career, and I haven't found the right guy, so I'm just getting a cat."
*five years of dating and partying later*
27: "I'm at a point in my career where I can't afford to stop working. Once I get this promotion, and Trey gets finished with grad school and finds a job, then we'll get married and start a family."
*five years later*
32: "I don't want to rush into anything. I wasted six years of my life with Trey waiting for him to propose, and I don't want to make that same mistake, so I'm taking it slowly. Besides, I have my two kitties and I still have plenty of time."
*five years later*
37: "Dating sucks. All the men in this town are trash. I just want to be the 'Cool Wine Aunt' and travel and I don't need all that patriarchal crap."
People in America might have a distorted sense of what is sufficient income to support a family. I think it has something to do with advocacy groups and the government pushing the poverty line up and up and people perceiving that they cannot afford kids. That might have been on purpose. 10 years ago the blogger spouse and I made 55k a year with 4 children. We did not need to go to the food banks or get housing assistance or other government services. Of course, that was 10 years ago, so we weren't really bad off with Media income in the west at 55k. But it is less than twice the poverty rate (30k), so would would have been eligible for government assistance.
Today's poverty rate for a family of 3 is: 22k, so 44k would be enough to make it. I think a vast majority of breeding age couples have at least one person making that much, so the "not enough money" excuse isn't relevant. Mostly it is perception, I think.
In grad school my ethics teacher tried to discuss how tough it would be for a single person to make it on minimum wage, trying to prove it is impossible by trying to show the costs of car, apartment, and other expenses. He did not like it when I pointed out that when I was young and making minimum, I didn't have a car and I shared an apartment, and still could afford to pay for school. One can make lots of choices beyond living in a median level 1 bedroom apt with a newer car and a smart phone with a $100 a month payment and $130 cable bill. He didn't like my rebuttal. The issue here is not that people can't afford kids, it's that the elite want people to think they can't afford kids or be able to live on lesst that $80,000 a year.
The Pope may be a commie, but in this case he's correct.
God made man dominant over the Earth. He also commanded us to be fruitful and multiply.
Replacing children with pets violates both: it raises up a lesser creature to the level of a human being, and it rejects the Lord's command to us, an act of defiance.
Even if you don't believe in God, there are practical reasons not to wait. First, your options for a mate are better at 22 than at 32. At 42 they're practically non-existent. This is doubly so for women, who are competing with 22 and 32-year-olds once they're in their late thirties.
Second, early marriage and family formation allows you more chances to have a child, and if there are fertility struggles it is better to find this out at 23-24, when you have time to try different options, rather than discovering it at 34-35, when you're racing a rapidly ticking clock. And no, adoption isn't always the answer. Everyone I know who went through the adoption process described it as emotionally, mentally, and financially brutal. This isn't going down to the shelter or the breeder to pick up a puppy. It can be a long process on par with fertility treatments. And since the vast majority of parents want to adopt an infant, for valid reasons, they still have the issue that adoption in your late thirties makes you older parents, with all the downsides.
Finally, early families mean more time later in your life to advance in your career, travel, and enjoy life. Have a kid at 25, and by the time you're 45 he's out of the house, and you are still young enough to dive into work, travel to Europe, take up a new career, etc. Having a kid at 45 means that by the time he's grown, you're looking at retirement.
"lack of affordable housing, usually"
I very seriously doubt the lack of affordable housing is the usual reason why people don't have kids. Maybe in NYC, but not in the real world.
They're shuttering the production facilities that turn out new Catholics. Pretty soon the maternity ward will look like Youngstown, OH with rusty stirrups and gang tags all over the incubators.
When I see people treat pets like kids, I think they are whacked out. There's a TV commercial where people claim they are "pet parents." No, you didn't give birth to your dog. Sloppy and imprecise language leads to crazy things.
There's an obit in the OWH today with some guy holding his dog. Idiot.
Ann is absolutely right.
I'm OK with lefties not propagating. At one time it was referred to as "Roe Effect" since abortion enthusiasts tend to avoid children.
Personally, I have five but I figured somebody had to make those taxpayers.
The hand that cleans the litter box...
Didn't we just beat this very topic to death here two days ago?
Wa St Blogger: Amen.
I’ve always felt that:
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
We are thrilled that all three of our children have multiple children, while my wife and I are still relatively young (62 and 63). Being a grandparent is fantastic, and based on our grandchildren's reactions when we spend time with them, they get a lot out of it, too.
"Another important fact to take into account is that if someone really does not want to be a parent, they probably wouldn't make a good parent."
I doubt it. Normative judgments of parenthood (or personhood even) are mostly imaginary and the child development process is robust enough, for reasons of natural selection, that what your parents do after you're born doesn't matter that much.
"I'm surprised that the not-wanting-children gene is still present in the gene pool."
Evolutionary mismatch with modern environment.
Of course he fits into that category too, so maybe he's not the one to criticize.
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could he be setting the stage for a future where priests can have children [church vows optional]
"Families with children are generally good for the church."
Weirdly, in spite of this obvious fact, the modern church (or at least the mainline Protestant one I attend) doesn't seem to think all that hard about where families with children come from. While the institutions of civilization that help facilitate this fall away, the church is busy spending huge amounts of energy tearing itself apart over irrelevant minutiae of how to treat same-sex unions.
"I think Pope Francis meant to reject exactly that "perfectly reasonable approach.""
Correct. Question: how, or to what extent, did feminism promote the "perfectly reasonable approach" to procreation that detracted from our common humanity?
@ Mr Wibble @ 11:03
The plot of 'Idiocracy.'
Who'd have thought the pope and Diana Fleishman would end up on the same team?
We had our children before we were financially comfortable. If we had waited until we were “comfortable,” we may never have had children or had fewer children. We also had pets, and there was no conflict.
If you want more children, return to the time when children were an asset to the family instead of luxury liability and bring back child mortality so that you need to have a lot of kids to get a couple into adulthood. Modernity spread around the world post-WWII and modernity permits parents to avoid poverty and invest more in fewer children since we've beat back mortality as the population control.
The mid-20th century was an anomaly in human history where the Baby Boom was when having a lot of kids under the old mortality population controls was supplanted by having fewer children with fertility controls. Down side is that the socialist programs were based on the high birth rate/low child mortality "glitch" in history.
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"Putting it simply, in an embedded peasant economy, when the unit of production and consumption is the family household, it is sensible to have as large a family as possible, to work the land and to protect against risk in sickness and old age. To increase reproduction is to increase production. Yet as Jack Caldwell and others have shown, when the individual becomes integrated into the market, when wealth flows down the generations, when the cost of education and leaving for an independent economic existence on an open market occurs, children become a burden rather than an asset.23 In other words, capitalistic relations combined with individualism knocks away the basis of high fertility, and if this is combined with a political and legal security so that one does not have to protect oneself with a layer of cousin, the sensible strategy is to have a few children and to educate them well.
"A low-pressure demography means that a society avoids the situation where extra resources are automatically absorbed by population expansion. As Malthus argued, the only force strong enough to stand against the biological desire to mate and have children, was the even stronger social desire to live comfortably and avoid poverty. This is exactly what seems to have happened in England from at least the late medieval period."
The Invention of the Modern World, Chapter 8: FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP AND POPULATION
By Alan Macfarlane.
We had our children before we were financially comfortable. If we had waited until we were “comfortable,” we may never have had children or had fewer children. We also had pets, and there was no conflict.
We had our children before we were financially comfortable. If we had waited until we were “comfortable,” we may never have had children or had fewer children. We also had pets, and there was no conflict.
We had our children before we were financially comfortable. If we had waited until we were “comfortable,” we may never have had children or had fewer children. We also had pets, and there was no conflict.
We had our children before we were financially comfortable. If we had waited until we were “comfortable,” we may never have had children or had fewer children. We also had pets, and there was no conflict.
I know that we're no longer supposed to admit we think John Cleese is funn, but I strongly recommend everyone watch "The Meaning of Life." (Not Python's best work, but most of it is hilarious.)
Why are we talking about dropping fertility rates?
Our aristocracy:
Joe Biden – […] “I’m not an economist, but I’ve been doing this a long time. But here’s the way to look at it. If car prices are too high right now, there are two solutions: You increase the supply of cars by making more of them, or you reduce demand for cars by making Americans poorer. That’s the choice.
Biden has instituted policies that:
- reduced the supply of cars
- made cars more expensive to operate
- reduced employment and wages
- massively increased the money supply
We know what choice Biden made.
This is merely an extension of basic biology.
When resources are plentiful every organism on the planet reproduces more.
When they are restricted they reproduce less.
The aristocracy knows exactly what it is doing.
I started parenthood late but I'm glad I did. What is the point of working hard and saving to only wind up in the end giving what you have to strangers and the government?
The reason expressed by so many as not yet able to afford having children now is not unreasonable. Not mentioned is how much government is responsible for even if unintended, for the difficulty for young people to afford having kids, especially if they don't want to be aid depended.
My first kid came along when I was 35. I didn't feel at all ready, even though we had planned the pregnancy. After William was born, I learned the secret: no one is ever ready. You don't have to be ready. If you are capable of love, you will do just fine.
The people who own the London Times don't want people who make rational thought out decisions to have children.
Who are those people? What else do they own?
The people that own the London Times are very interested in replacing the population of the UK with people from the 3rd world.
Perfectly understandable I suppose -- if Australia counts as third world.
That's what I used to tell myself, that for everything i didn't chance (marriage and kids) I was being "responsible", because i wasn't making enough $. When the truth was, living la vida loca was costing me $ and precious irreplaceable time.
Link to video analogy short lecture
Blogger Yancey Ward said...
I am 55 and, as far as I know, I have no children. It is the biggest regret I have for my life to this point. My feeling is this- there is no other point to life than procreating the next generation. If you haven't done that, then your life really is a failure at the most basic level- you will have left nothing of lasting value behind when you die."
Strongly disagree.
Not with the regrets part. I'm lucky enough to have three (young adult) kids, who have truly given my life meaning. In that, you're correct. There's a lot of satisfaction to be had there.
But you're no failure if you have done anything - even attempted anything - that will eventually leave kids (or just people) better off than we are today.
It's a group task. Some people have the kids, others help the kids have worthy lives. The people having the kids get most of the immediate rewards, but the merit still exists for all who try to improve things.
My husband thought he would be a terrible father. He had a terrible father and no positive male role models growing up, so unbeknownst to me, he worried all through my first pregnancy (which, as I have alluded to elsewhere, he acceded to in order to keep me around) about whether he would love his child, since he didn't want kids and had clearly not been loved by his own dad. His mom told him of course he would, but up until the moment of birth he wasn't sure.
He is an outstanding father of our three kids and gets choked up whenever he considers that our youngest graduates from high school this year.
In other words, you may think you're not cut out to be a parent, but you can't know for sure. And, you can decide to be a good parent, to work through or overcome your own childhood's shortcomings (his were significant). It is more honest, I think, to admit that you don't want to be a parent - not to say you can't in good conscience bring a child into this fallen world (my brother-in-law - until his wife told him she was going to have a child with or without him, taking my example to my bemusement), not to say you're doing humanity a favor by not having a child you "can't support" or "would be a bad parent to," not to say you "wouldn't put your wife through that" (my college roommate's husband). Just own it. Don't try to get virtue points for it too.
Excepted from this opinion of mine are, of course, all those whose only options are adoption or extreme fertility treatments. Both are super-expensive from the outset. If you can conceive a child for free but decide not to - that's the "owning it" I'm talking about.
(I also don't believe I deserve virtue points for being a breeder.)
Also, "pets deserve worship"? What the hell?
“Parents with young children attend church more, and sometimes they enroll their children in church schools.
Young people in the congregation enliven the church and promote an impression that the church has a future.
A church comprising members who are childless and/or are old looks like a dying church.”
When we had our kids in the parish school, it was notable that overwhelmingly most of the children at the Anglo Sunday Mass were also students at the school. With their relatively young parents in attendance as well, natch. Once their kids were done with the school, the families were seldom, if ever, seen at Mass again. And I doubt that the young-ish childless go to Mass much. It’s certainly rare to see single adults who aren’t elderly.
OTOH, my son informs me that the UW Newman Center has Masses that are full of fervent young Catholics, so who knows? Maybe once the Church can put the child molestation scandals a generation or two in the past, it can regain some ground.
Speaking from personal lived experience, and given requisite authority, I would issue a decree that no adults should take on a pet (especially a dog) unless and until there is already a child in the household ready to learn (and take) responsibility for a fellow creature's well-being.
Lassie, My Friend Flicka, Flipper, Rin Tin Tin, Fury, "D.C." (That Darned Cat!), "The Black (Stallion)" ...
Note that in these examples the family's animal takes on reciprocal responsibility for the well-being of the family's child.
"32: "I don't want to rush into anything. I wasted six years of my life with Trey waiting for him to propose, and I don't want to make that same mistake, so I'm taking it slowly. Besides, I have my two kitties and I still have plenty of time."}}}}
Eerie---my daughter's good friend, age 32, thought she was going to get a ring this Christmas after dating Julian for 5 years. She didn't get a ring; instead she got broken-up with AND now suddenly has to find another place to live.
She very much wants to have children, too. Tick tick tick.
One thing Children of Men got right was how quickly civilization would collapse if we stop having children. It would only take about 15 or 20 years for things to fall apart. I wonder how good India’s cats will be at taking care of her when she’s old and frail.
What kind of moron thinks it’s a good idea to attack pet owners? This seems like a pretty crappy Pope as Popes go, and that’s considering the other bad ones.
I don't think a man who has taken a vow of celibacy should be lecturing us on the importance of procreation.
Regarding the recent trend of referring to pets as "rescue" dogs, unless you extracted said animal from a burning building, it is an adoption. The use of "rescue" is yet another form of faux-heroic virtue signaling.
Finally, am I the only one here who thinks Loren is a Laslo alter-ego?
Althouse Said "That's not the meaning of life, to be prudently responsible and to wait until all your material conditions will make children comfortably manageable."
That described to some extent my wife and me when we were in our mid-30s. Then I went for a physical for the first time in ten years or so. The doctor, a sole-practioner in his middle-fifties, took my medical and family history, and asked how many children we had. When I said none, he asked why, and I answered sort of along the line that Althouse laid out. There was a pause, and then the doctor got a bit worked up and went into a Dutch uncle mode, giving a stern lecture on decreasing fertility, regret, no perfect time, etc. Long story short, our first baby was born nine months later. His willingness to give unvarnished advice changed our lives. I think many people have moved away from family in their 20s and live amongst other young people and there is no one in their life to act as a Duch Uncle and state some hard facts about age, etc. We were lucky.
Mike: "A church comprising members who are childless and/or are old looks like a dying church."
It's not just churches. A nation comprising members who are childless and/or are old looks like a dying nation. A culture comprising members who are childless and/or are old looks like a dying culture. A species comprising members who are childless and/or are old looks like a dying species.
As someone with a young child, I can say it is not overly expensive. So many Buy Nothing Groups and Kid trading groups, you rarely have to pay retail for anything. Most of the time we pass clothes, boots, and other items among our friends and neighbors. I cook basic meals, we plan, budget, and go on camping trips. So many free resources at the Library and in our township. Your heart and finances always can find a way for kids. We also have two stray cats we adopted.
Have kids when you are young and poor and stupid.
Older people with money to do other things than kids are smart enough not to have kids.
The introduction to Idiocracy is of course perfectly applicable here.
Her genes won't be missed.
"I can only assume that Francis didn’t have any pets as a child, which must have been sad for him. If he’d had a trusty family dog, he might better understand the happiness they bring." No one can really disagree with me.
Eerie---my daughter's good friend, age 32, thought she was going to get a ring this Christmas after dating Julian for 5 years. She didn't get a ring; instead she got broken-up with AND now suddenly has to find another place to live.
She very much wants to have children, too. Tick tick tick.
About two years ago I was at a birthday party talking with a young women in her mid twenties. She talked about her boyfriend and how she hoped that he'd pop the question soon. I asked how long they had been dating. Three years. I may have been an asshole and told her, "he doesn't want to marry you."
My sister is 35, six years into a marriage with a sort of geekish guy, libertarian politics, etc. Not bad, just... she dominates him. Dad apparently made a remark early last year about when he was going to see grandkids and it did not go over well. Last I heard sis went to Dad's house for Christmas, and my brother-in-law did not.
Some days I'm glad I'm 39 and single. I don't even date anymore. It isn't worth it.
why no discussion of welfare state and 2 income families to achieve lifestyle goals
-------
are not 2 income families are paying for the welfare state of other people having children.
We had our first unplanned child right after we were married and dirt ass poor. I was putting myself through school with a side gig and she stayed at home sight the kiddo. We found church groups to help and family to help.
It was magical, our finest times together. I can remember working on homework and the son crawling up to my chair, beaming and pulling himself up like it was yesterday.
Our pooch is a 'rescue' in that we got him already grown from old friends who 'fostered' and 'adopted' dogs for Coast-to-Coast Dachshund Rescue for many years. At times they had eight or nine, mostly dackels, in the house.
He was fixed at an early age, so we'll never have grand-wieners.
Any self-respecting cat would prefer that you start with a human child and only move up to a cat after you've made all your mistakes and learned from them.
" lack of affordable housing is the usual reason why people don't have kids."
What they mean is lack of affordable housing in trendy downtown neighborhoods nearby to high paying jobs.
People don't know how to have cats now. Cats would rather risk their lives outside and get to hunt than to be locked up in the house with their claws removed.
Yeah, at least a teen age dog won't sneak out of the window at 2 in the morning,steal Dad's car, rob a Seven Eleven, get involved in police chase and hit and run and use half a tank of gas in the process.
Most dogs just love you forever, always glad to see you, and then die and make you feel bad for a couple of decades.
"...wait until all your material conditions will make children comfortably manageable." Anybody see the opening minutes of Idiocracy?
I don't think a man who has taken a vow of celibacy should be lecturing us on the importance of procreation.
Great insight! So original. And you thought that up all by yourself? Impressive . . . and witty!
Replying to Lurker 21 who asks: "rescue dog only became a thing recently". I don't think that's right. I got my first dog in 2013, from the local pound, who had been picked up as a stray dog. As I introduced him in the local dog park, many people referred to the dog as a rescue dog (as in "Oh I also got a rescue dog.")
My own experience with children: I married not explicitly to have children, but to have a stable committed love relationship, and a relationship that would probably lead to children. Which it did. But I didn't exactly plan my life to have children (though I admit my wife may have made such a plan). We had children. It never occurred to me that we were making sacrifices (though I was aware of the literature on costs of bringing up children). I am glad I have grown up children now that I am in my 70s.
The public schools have revealed themselves to be ineffective, unreliable, and woke, so the responsible parent must include the cost of private schools or home schooling. It just got a lot more expensive to responsibly have kids.
The public schools have revealed themselves to be ineffective, unreliable, and woke, so the responsible parent must include the cost of private schools or home schooling. It just got a lot more expensive to responsibly have kids.
Having worked as a camp counselor when I was in college, I say have children young - you'll need the energy to keep up.
"you have to be financially secure and established in a career before you can think about having children".
Another feminist lie swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
>>If everyone waited until they felt that they were correctly positioned to have children before they had children, there would be a lot less children around.
As a young man, I asked my dad "How did you you know you were ready to have children?"
His reply, echoed by others here, was "If you wait until you are ready, you won't have any."
I vividly recall standing outside the hospital with our first child, who was 1 day old. Mrs. DtM and I had never felt so unready for something in our entire lives.
>>I don't think a man who has taken a vow of celibacy should be lecturing us on the importance of procreation.
Can you give us your insight on whether or not bears do indeed shit in the woods?
My mom was pregnant with her third when my dad getting out of the Navy with no job. Both 25. Things worked out fine, although they had six kids and never knew economic security. That was the RC way then.
This plays on two important stereotypes about Britain so delightfully:
Love cats and dogs.
Hate the Pope.
"The use of "rescue" is yet another form of faux-heroic virtue signaling."
In my life, I have adopted four dogs. Two are still with me. Variously, I have described them as "adopted" or "rescues", with no particular effort made to choose one description over the other. There's no signaling intended, just an attempt to distinguish them from having been acquired from a breeder as pups for any who are curious as to where they came from.
Just sayin'. :)
Its cultural. Too many people no longer value children or not enough to make changes in their life. While, I definitely recommend waiting until you're in a stable relationship and past your teens, I know many people who had kids too young, but made sacrifices and became great parents. Certainly that's not always what happens, but there's too many people waiting for everything to be perfect to have kids. I wish I would have started trying earlier. Having children is more important than getting your dream job, though some are lucky enough to get both. Then, there's people who just don't want kids at all. I know a couple, wife a nurse, husband a pharmacist, they take in special needs dogs. They had one with a trach! They'd be great parents, they have enough money, but they don't want kids. That's the example that baffles me the most, but I know many other couples, even some Christian ones, who just don't want kids.
There's also this discussing some people's negative attitudes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2021/baby-shortage-pregnancy/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
My wife and I had our son after nine years of marriage, and much sex for years before that. She traded her RC-upbringing for the free BC at the campus student health clinic while we were students.
We didn't get married in order NOT to have children, but OTOH we didn't plan for more than a few at most.
I was just shy of 33 when we had bambino; by their mid-30s, my parents had had two of their four sons already. Wife's family similar--and all living on one male's income.
Even if my wife and I craved more children--we were delighted by the one--our two incomes would have been stressed. That's just fact.
In some orthodox Jewish traditions, even though there is an enormous value placed on having children, there are several permissable reasons not to, including maternal health and well being.
One reason that is not accepted for avoiding or delaying children is money.
Even if my wife and I craved more children--we were delighted by the one--our two incomes would have been stressed. That's just fact.
Respectfully, Narr, that's what we thought after Kid #1. And Kid #2. After Kid #3 (when I was 37) we were thinking more about how old we'd be when the kids all left, so we upped our birth control game until I closed up shop. But we agreed in our late 30s that if we'd started earlier, we'd have 4 or 5 - and that was with me either not working for money or working well outside my professional field and only part-time.
You never think you can afford kids before you have them, just as you never think you'll travel after kids are born. We've had so many "last great trips"... generally with an increasing number of children, from one in the belly to one running and one in the belly, to one in a scooter, one running, and one in the belly, to three going in different directions, to two adolescent and one in college, to one working, one in college, and one having achieved his majority but still in high school.
I think, overall, that people make the best decisions they can, and end up with the 'right' number of children for them.
It was pretty frenetic with just the one, and I didn't get a decent job until I was in my early forties. Small house, used or hand-me-down cars, unpredictable income, nights-and-weekends grad school . . . Not to mention various unwell and/or elderly women who sapped our energies mightily.
The moving finger has writ.
I got married when I was 21. We didn't have a kid until 9 years later. We didn't own our own home until 13 years after we were married and our second child was born. Before that we were renting a house built just after the Civil War with no central heat or A/C - in fact I heated it in part by chopping up and splitting wood and burning it in a metal fireplace that I installed and connected to a chimney that had been being used by a gas space heater.
We didn't wait until our "careers were established". We did wait until I finished grad school and had two incomes, but it's not like we were living a comfortable middle-class life.
"About two years ago I was at a birthday party talking with a young women in her mid twenties. She talked about her boyfriend and how she hoped that he'd pop the question soon. I asked how long they had been dating. Three years. I may have been an asshole and told her, 'He doesn't want to marry you.'"
You were right. But then, Trump was right a lot and people thought HE was an asshole. With good reason - he was. But he was still right.
My cynical take - the Pope's comments were aimed at helping the ChiComs with their internal messaging. He's trying to expand the RC church in China and a year or two ago agreed to let the ChiCom government have a say in elevating - if not outright choosing - prelates for leadership posts. The timing of this little speech is very closely timed to the push by China to overcome their baby deficit caused by their brilliant little One Child Policy. I think he's just doing them a solid so he can keep to his target strategy in the PRC.
All the commentary in the West about cats vs dogs vs kids is just for our own amusement. We weren't the target audience. But we do always think things are about us. We're self-centered that way.
Which also explains our baby deficit.
Jamie,
"just as you never think you'll travel after kids are born. We've had so many "last great trips"... generally with an increasing number of children"
Heh. On our "first great trip" -- to live in the rural/subsistence farming Fourth World -- we were accompanied by our oldest, who was 18 months old at the time. Our second child was born in Africa, though not at the remote place we were living.
The sort of overpowering safetyism that has brought us helicopter parents, followed by parents being arrested for living there grade school kids play in a nearby park, was just starting to get off the ground... A few of our friends our expressed amazement at our "extreme bravery", but it sure didn't seem that way to us.
Franky, the noise of little kids drives me nuts. Also, barking dogs drives my blood pressure through the roof. Thankfully, I have a dog that rarely barks.
I know myself well enough to know that despite my best intentions, I wouldn’t be kind to a kid that was containing making noise.
So, by not having kids, I’m saving those kids from suffering.
How is that anything but the kinda option I have?
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