You’re not your ancestors’ only descendant
This is kind of my family. My brother and I have not fathered any children, he’s a step dad, with no intention to have any of his own, I’m happily in a childfree relationship.
The only (sort of) exception is that my eldest brother (of three), had four kids… All girls.
So our biological lineage will continue, but our family name ends here, since once my niece’s get married, our family name will be dead.
The closest continuance of our family name is through my one male cousin on my dad’s side. I don’t keep in touch with him enough to know if he has kids or he’s planning to have kids, or to even be informed as to whether or not those children would be boys or girls, etc.
After that, you would have to go back about 3 generations to find someone of the same lineage that’s actually continuing the family name. Second or third cousins… I believe. I’m unaware if my grandfather had any siblings, or cousins… So that part of my family tree is a complete unknown.
For my brother, he wasn’t in a stable relationship long enough to get married and have kids (though, he’s on his second marriage, the first did not last very long… It’s a long story as to why)… And since his second wife (his current wife) already had children from a previous marriage, he has no interest. For me, I never cared either way, and stuck to the philosophy of “I’ll let my wife decide”. My current, and longest, relationship, under which we’ve been together for nearly a decade now, is with a beautiful woman who has been very childfree for a long time, and I support her in that. I also wouldn’t be able to financially support children, which is why I kept waiting for marriage before kids. I at least wanted the illusion that someone was going to stick around before making that commitment.
My oldest brother got married pretty young and to his credit, they’re still together. I’m mostly estranged from him, but I’m aware of some of the details of his life. His children are at the age where they can start having kids of their own now (which should give some indication of how old I am… I’m “great uncle” age). I don’t have any pressure to have kids at this point because my SO doesn’t want them, my breeder brother is estranged, my father is dead, and I’m estranged from my mom. The only time I even hear about kids is either from my sister-in-law taking about her (now post-teen) children, and from my SO’s family, who we see online only a few times a year at most.
I don’t feel like I’m missing out.
I asked my wife if she wanted kids and she just waved around and said “look at this shit, do you really want to put a someone through this?” Yep, the world is screwed. But I believe people have to make their own, conscious choice. No sense in forcing them to either have kids or not.
Do you want to have kids?
We had a long talk about it and the above statement is just the gist of it. If we lived in better times, sure. But not in this timeline. We both came to that conclusion and it is perfectly fine.
Not to butt in your business, but if that’s your only reason to not have children, and you’re otherwise financially capable and willing to raise kids, have you two considered adoption? Instead of bringing someone extra into this shit as you put it, you’d just be helping one of the people who’re unfortunately already in it.
you wont catch me raising children both because im a mess, and i refuse to raise children in a dysfunctional society that hasn’t got its shit together.
At this point I think I’ll just adopt. Plenty of kids to go around, no need to make more.
Vasectomy is up there in the top 5 best things to happen in my life.
Highly recommend if you are sure you want to go child-free. There is nothing quite so worry free as shooting blanks instead of using condoms and birth control.
Perhaps they should have set up a world where its possible to have kids without ruining yourself financially.
fuck around and find out economics were NOT fucking around, and i am NOT finding out
Or set up a world where it is not cruel bringing a kid into because you know their life will be even more fucked in the future
Also, I said this before as a parent and I will say it again- please do not have children unless you really want children. No child deserves to go through their childhood neglected and unloved. Which is going to be a major result of the end of Roe v. Wade in the U.S. and why abortion rights are vital.
No one should have to be a parent unless they absolutely want to be a parent.
Ah yes, see someone who might become unhappy, just checks notes murder them?
Who is being murdered?
In an abortion, the unborn child. In a partial birth abortion in an unbelievably brutal way, involving a drill to the base of the skull as the baby is writhing in pain. But even with earlier methods, it’s still murder. I know, you’ll say you’re fine with it, like to call it something else, pretend since it hasn’t breathed on its own it’s not a child. Deep down though, you know.
Do I know deep down? Or do I not give a shit whether or not it’s considered murder by you because no one should be forced to give up their bodily autonomy for someone else and if you consider it murder, then it is a person using someone else’s body for their own personal gain against that person’s will. Which is slavery. And you’re fine for that.
Either it is not a person, so it isn’t murder, or if it is a person, a slaver killing the person enslaving them is also not murder. Not in my world.
That anger comes from knowing deep down you’re on the wrong side of this, it’s the inner conflict. I’m very sorry you’re too entrenched politically to listen to your conscience. I’ll leave you alone with your enemy, yourself.
What anger? I’m not angry that you are fine with slavery. But I am amused at your silly attempts at armchair psychology.
