From a pretty early age I decided I didn’t want to get married or have kids cuz both my parents seemed utterly miserable. For a long time I found it weird anyone wanted to do it at all, why would you want to be trapped with someone you hate who you get into screaming arguments all the time?
And it’s not just me, you see a lot of jokes online about people like playing that one scene from Marriage Story while playing old N64 games for nostalgia.
I think the experience of seeing our own parents be so miserable maybe soured a lot of us on starting families.
This isn’t just a boomer thing, having kids just sucks. The weird pro-natalism / breeding fetish that some dudes on hexbear have only exists because they tacitly assume they will do the usual thing and unload most of the burden of parenthood on their wife.
this is a really weird, flattening PoV to take
i feel like i’ve seen enough women here lamenting their lack of uterus to say that this doesn’t reflect reality at all?
I know there’s trans women who get extremely dysphoric about this, but i gotta be honest here, i’m glad i don’t have a uterus. Being a mother sounds like a nightmare and it creeps me the fuck out how defensive people get about this.
i mean it’s fine and good to be glad you don’t have something you don’t want (i’d personally rather get stabbed once a month than deal with periods) but it does appeal to other people and they’re not all men looking to dip out on the parenting
kinda makes sense that people get defensive when you characterize it that way ngl
I’ve never heard the weird stuff from trans girls dysphoric about this issue, the iffy to problematic takes have exclusively come from men.
Is this talking about something specific or just the fact that hexbear doesn’t allow anti-natalist posts?
I’ve seen people here get extremely weird about this issue. Just look at how this post has blown up. And honestly, i’ve seen much, much worse than this, outright entitled incel shit like “a society were women routinely choose not to have kids seems threatening to me.” Any time birthrates and parenthood come up, people crawl out of the woodworks to start this endless litany of how they’d have tons of kids if material conditions were better and … i don’t know how to say this kindly, it’s complete bullshit.
When you look at AES countries, places that had the best childcare in human history, absolute job security, super low costs of living, then no, it doesn’t work like that. The DDR is a perfect example. Everybody who has experienced it misses the childcare and education system of the DDR, they had a lot more women in the workforce than west Germany, raising kids was so much safer and easier and they still had lower birthrates than the west. People made a lot of use of the free and easily accessible abortion clinics and honestly, good on them. It’s not just economic insecurity that keeps people from having children. A lot of people genuinely do not want this. And given how much women in particular get pressured into seeing motherhood as a necessary condition for a happy and fulfilled life, i think it’s still not enough people who choose this.
Hexbears have to get it out of their heads that “anti-natalism” is a rightwing stance. In fact, “anti-natalism” is a nazbol dogwhistle to smear queer liberation and free abortion, people like Haz have used it this way for years and it still just gets thrown around here willy nilly, it’s sickening. The whole “ecofascism” thing people on here get workedup about is obviously abhorrent and eugenicist, but it is also an obscure, irrelevant position, an online oddity that has no real-world impact. Coercive pro-natalism is much more prevelant among reactionaries and is actually driving policies in imperial core and post-soviet countries. It’s time we course correct on these takes.
there’s a few things that get smushed together and hexbear usually isn’t always interested in disentangling them
ideological anti-natalism isn’t necessarily malthusian
not wanting to have kids usually isn’t grandly ideological
having a “normal” amount of kids usually isn’t grandly ideological (whatever normal means)
pronatalism is quiverfull shit and elon mailing his cum to people
there’s no moral imperative toward a certain human population number (unless you’re a voluntary extinctionist, 0, or a capitalist, infinity)
i could continue but my food is ready
Makes sense. I would bet the influence of religious and other societal pressures to have a kid are far more influential than economic stability. Personally I can’t imagine having any kids before 30, I didn’t, and it’s still considered very late. How any of these 20-something parents I meet manage I’ll never know.
I personally think the blanket ban on the topic is a relic of when it and childfree were subreddits that, in typical reddit fashion, became cesspits that used the term ‘crotch-goblin’ and such. I wasn’t aware of the nazbol connection as I don’t interact with that stuff at all but it is a troubling connection to consider.
If I had a kid I’d call them my “crotch goblin”.
Late GDR actually had higher birthrates than West Germany.
that rule is written because there is some depressing bozo philosophy called anti-natalism, which is not the same thing as being “against the hordes of natalists asserting you secretly want to have a baby or you’renot a real person”.
Who around here has ever said that if you don’t secretly want to have a baby, you are not a real person?
I didn’t say people were doing that here
Ah, my bad.
It’s hard. It’s tiring. It involves a lot of self reflection and emotional regulation. Stressful as all fuck. Annoying, too.
I wouldn’t say it sucks, though. I also certainly haven’t offloaded my share of the burden onto my wife, either.
The feelings of love and joy I have felt because of my offspring are stronger than any I felt before.
Not for everyone, though, of course.
Facts. I have one life that has already been delayed enough by waiting to transition. Why would I willingly sacrifice more of my life now that I’m on my own?
I want to spend this post transition era of my life with the people I care about and seeing more of the world. Adding kids into that equation is of no interest to me.
IMMENSE SAME
I think this needs some nuance. Having kids in the US especially is certainly very hard. On the whole though the positives dramatically outweigh the negatives. For me at least it is the greatest joy in life. But not without its drawbacks. My wife and I spend less time together. My health has suffered as I have less time for fitness.
Doing this without community support however is extremely difficult if not impossible. Taking care of a family consumes all your free time, and marriages suffer. No two ways about it. The relationship needs to be really strong to shoulder the burden alone.
If you have family to help that burden lightens considerably. Obviously if you are a single parent it’s much harder as well. It truly does take a village and in the US we have no village.
Still I wouldn’t trade being a father for anything in the world. I love my kids and raising them is my life’s most noble purpose.
I mean I’ve met some people who genuinely do seem to love parenthood. They exist. But it does suck in a lot of ways and I don’t blame people for wanting to op out of it.
What the fuck are you talking about? I would kill to be a house-husband. Kids are grotesque little demons and I love them so much.
That said, I worked far too many hours, kept my professional distance, and during my twenties was on rotating shifts, far too much to be able to meet someone and have kids. I could have just had more unprotected sex I guess, but I would kinda like a plan when doing this long-term stuff.
If I could unload all the burden (pregnancy) my partner and I would already have kids. I’m NEET from disabilities and would love to have a kid around to love/teach, but no uterus. My partner doesn’t want the body strain which is totally fine, but it’s gonna be several years before we will look adoption capable on paper. It sucks the most 'cause we’re living with parents currently and that’d be ideal for baby years but life doesn’t work out always.
for me its the pro-eugenics arguments, Ive never really used the term “anti-natalism” because the issue to me isnt the lack of desire of having kids, but the contempt for children in general and ire towards those having kids. Especially mutliply marginalized people, who get the brunt of “well maybe you shouldnt have kids if you cant afford one!” or “dont have kids if you’re disabled” to me, is a failure on a societal level – and also eugenics.