i'll just say it: i think having a child is very selfish. i look around at my friends who've had children and i ask them "why'd you have kids so soon?"

"'cause that's what you're supposed to do. get married. have kids"

"man, that's stupidest thing i've ever heard!"

and i LOVE kids. of course, my question to him wasn't just about having kids, it's also about WHEN one should have kids. but that's besides the point of this post. i've spoken to many people about this Having Children issue and i've received many answers as to why they have or want children. here are some off the top of my head ...

• i need someone to take care of me when i get old
• kids are cool!
• i've got great genes so it would be prudent for me to procreate
• the relationship got boring, so we had kids
• it kept my wife at home instead of partying

listen to these people and their reasons! i mean, JESUS CHRIST!

personally, if i were FILTHY rich, and i mean like $15 million liquid or more, i'd probably want to have kids just as an experiment so i could toy with their lives. there's no way in hell i'd leave them all that money. i'd put away a trust fund that only allowed them to receive X amount a year (inflation adjusted) so they could live a decent life. the rest i'd give to Charities of my choosing. unless of course, i realized early on that my son or daughter was BRILLIANT, then maybe i'd leave them the money. wait, i'm losing my train of thought...

what do you think about having children?

what do you think of your friends who've had children?

what do you think of adoption?

So I don't want kids. I used to because I like them and thought that's what you're supposed to do but seriously - this world is more fucked up than ever and considering too many people are pumping out kids like there is no tomorrow? Well, they can continue on fucking up the world ... or with any lucky, save it.

I'm not going to make any friends with the following statements but this is how I feel....

I'll understand and give kudos to women who are single mothers from one marriage. But most unwed mothers and especially mothers who have three, four or more kids from different fathers should be sterilized. Get on some fucking birth control, please. The majority of them are uneducated and more often than not, on assistance and don't hold jobs. What an amazing example.

Now... for the families that are pumping out tons of kids - say anywhere between five and ten - this isn't back in the day where the survival rate was low and using their labor on the farm was the way to survive. It's great that you love kids but seriously... ten kids? If you really want that many ... adopt. But be able to support them.... that's all I ask. Some people find that being a "foster parent" is a great way to get lots of breaks but don't really do anything for the kids.

If you want to have kids because you want them or any of the reasons above, that's great. But you better be raising a good kid, not a freaking terror or one of those kids you hear about killing another kid over a twinkie. Then you should be sterilized.

Having kids isn't a right ... it should be a privilege.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars. ~ Khalil Gibran

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. ~ Mahatma Ghandi

You both raise excellent points which I agree with. Risky, all the reasons you mentioned that people give for having kids are selfish bullshit. I could not agree with you more about those. Sushi, I agree that it is our social responsibility not to overpopulate the earth, and therefore, to be prudent in matters of reproduction, and also to make sure, if possible, that we are going to set the best possible example for any kids we have (by being educated and such, and not hopping around from relationship to relationship) so that they will grow up to be responsible citizens.

As you all know, I do have one child, and she was not planned. I was stupid, and didn't do my homework on the failure rate of condoms, and one day, it caught up to me in the form of Erin. Now, certainly, I could have gone the abortion or adoption routes, since I was not in an ideal place in my life to have a child. I was 21 years old, in the Army, only a Private First-Class, and not done with my education yet. However, I did decide to keep Erin, and to make the best of my situation. I got out of the Army since I knew I could do better for her if I wasn't getting deployed all the time. I moved home to my parents' farm in Florida, and went back to school. I rearranged my life for that little girl, and I hope to god she looks back at all I've done and knows that I did it for her. I hope I am giving her the good example every child should have. I am the one who got pregnant, and I am the one whose duty it is to give Erin the best possible life. It is my absolute responsibility. The problem with a lot of people who have kids unplanned and "just because" is that they don't realize the ramifications, and try to live that old carefree life they had before, and do a piss-poor job of raising their kids. That is when problems arise.

Now, I also will say that I would like to possibly have one more child. Thak wants one, and I think I owe that to him for all he's done for me, and what a great father he is to Erin. I know that we will try our damnedest to raise our kids to be responsible and aware citizens of the world, and I don't think there's any problem with people reproducing (one to two kids per couple) as long as they accept the responsibility they have to have a positive impact on the next generation through their progeny. It is one hell of a responsibility, and sometimes when I am driving to school in the mornings after I drop Erin off at daycare, I wonder if I'm doing enough in that regard. I hope I am. I hope that I don't have it all wrong by trying to set the example of being educated, and becoming a more productive member of society, even though that comes at a cost in the form of time spent with Erin. What I'm going for is to be someone Erin can look up to, see that where there's a will, there's a way, that women can do anything, and that as long as she doesn't give up, she can achieve her loftiest goals even if "life gets in the way" occasionally.

In short, I do not think it is selfish to have kids as long as you accept the responsibility that comes with it. If you do not accept the FULL ramifications of your actions, then there is nothing more irresponsible in the world than to reproduce.

He's worth it.

HAHA! gewd lawd, ms. daisy.

the other day i was driving down the street to get lunch and i saw a young woman, she couldnt've been no more than 30, with FIVE kids walking down the street, and i thought to myself, "WHY???". i kept thinking that she was a Latina and perhaps Catholicisim forbade her from using condoms or getting an abortion(which is whole other topic and i may be wrong on all of this), but still, it seemed to me that although children do bring a sense of reward, companionship and love, but in her case it probably makes her life much more difficult.

ooh. that's an interesting take on it. Driving is considered a "privilege" when i think it's a necessity in many parts of the country, but if having kids is a privelage, how would one go about enforcing that? mandatory sterilization would probably cause a ruckus among constitionalists and the ACLU. perhaps monetary fines? i wonder how China goes about doing it? but if we did that, we'd become like China and only open the door to more laws and more removal of rights.

i guess ultimately it's about education on the part of people as well as local, state, federal governments and the media pushing for that type of education.

excellent comment, SG. you know, i posted what i did from the perspective of a single person, but having read your entry, i could definitely see myself in a loving relationship with a woman whom i think the world of and find myself slowly being lured into the idea of creating a child together. this may sound sappy but it would be like a symbol of our love and our life together. i could see myself feeling this way. of course, i'd be crazy paranoid as a parent thus become the greatest father in the world because of my undying paranoia.

but staying with the idea that i am single and getting older, i've also considered the idea of adoption as a very real possibility. i've actually done some research into this and, because i'm a single man, there's no chance in hell i could ever adopt a child. so maybe when/if i ever find a steady partner, i'd probably present the idea to her as a possibility. there are so many children out there without a parent it breaks my heart when i think about it.

here's something funny. i looked into adopting a child from Somalia(i.e. Angelina Jolie) and i found out that it only costs $10,000.00 USD! for a split second i caught myself saying, "Man, that's pretty cheap." gawd.

There is seriously no way we could enforce any of my "please be responsible" thoughts .... there will ALWAYS be the ones who breed because that's all their little heads know.

The truth is just to educate them and hope that one days the edumacated outweigh the wow, that's purdy kewl population.

This sums it up for us!

[URL="http://www.myspace.com/energistlight"][/URL]

Let me preface this by saying I want two children. I have always loved children. I love the way their minds work. I love watching them grow from a baby with little personality to young adult a rich, distinct personality. I love their thoughts on life. You can learn a lot from a child's simplicity if you only listen.

I come from a large family. My mother had five of us. I have two additional siblings from my father. My mother was one of five; my dad one of four. This, as you can imagine, means I have a lot of cousins as well. I am the eldest of all the children and have had the privilege of watching over all of them. (Well, I didn't think it was much of a privilege when I was younger. An aggravation was more like it.) I also got to watch them grow.

I love my family.

However, I do not agree with what they did. They were of a generation that viewed children as just the next step in life. You went to high school, went to college (if that was your path), got married and procreated. There was no thought in the planning of this life. It was merely something that you did.

People who have children because it's the "thing to do" are selfish and thoughtless in my opinion. Because you're "supposed to have children" is not a good enough reason to have children. Children are not commodities. They are not the next best and greatest things in your life. They are not an extension of you. They are cognate beings with their own thoughts and personalities and the greatest responsibility you could have in life is the care of a child.

Despite my family, or maybe because of it, I still want children. To me, there is no greater joy than helping a child find their path. There is no greater responsibility in life I realize, but I'm fully prepared to give my future children what they need to succeed -- for themselves, not for me.

Am I scared at the idea of having care of this life? Damn stra