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.
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.
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.
Thinking about childrens’ futures breaks my heart
Instead of making posts about poor people shouldnt have kids, why not direct that towards criticizing capitalism? or criticizing the education system for not teaching them about safe sex? I swear these childfree coms are always the same.
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.
This was a better point (in the US) before Roe v Wade got overturned honestly
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.
Well poor people should NOT have kids, because kids are not a good that you have to suit your needs.
Growing up poor stunts you severely. Make a good nest egg first.
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.
“Poor people should go extinct”
Mr. Strawman, is that you?
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.
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.
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.
The problem is that when parents have children in their teens and 20s, the children are much more likely to be healthy, and if the parents have children in their late 30s or 40s, the children are more likely to be sick.
So couples who decide “well, we’re broke, but we’ll figure it out” tend to have healthier children because they have them at younger ages.
At the risk of being controversial and making people angry, this happened quite a bit in the USA and it caused tension: many white people went to college, dated around, joined the work force in their mid 20s, married in late 20s and then got a home, and then had children in their early 30s. On the other hand, immigrants who didn’t go to college and did jobs that immediately resulted in decent wages but were not white collar or prestigious, often had children in their early 20s. I believe it was part of the reason for the racist backlash that happened with Trump’s election: it wasn’t just too many immigrants, it was too many and they were doing too well and somehow thriving.
The again, this is my personal view without data. This could be tested by looking at things like autism and disability rates of children of young parents versus older parents.
This isn’t about race; instead I am saying this idea that having children at a young age is bad because it’s financially irresponsible goes against instinct and is often a bad choice for the children. Better to be a poor healthy child than a sick rich child.
Also, the average human has something like 7-11 genetic defects, so it’s normal to have a certain amount of genetic errors. But children of older parents are likely to have more.
One of my kids is a genetics scientist and she explained this as - it’s not that older women have a higher rate of conceiving sick kids, but our immune systems do a worse job of figuring that out and aborting them. So 22 year old gets pregnant, embryo is not healthy, body yeets it before she even knows she’s pregnant. 42 year old body doesn’t screen as well and it might stick.
Anecdotally - I had one set young & one in late 30s and there is no difference in their health or intelligence. The one difference I think the older ones got was watching me go to school and get a better job, they were around for that economic arc and sort of internalized the belief it can be done. Well, and the second set were bigger because I was, as the midwife put it, better nourished as we were not so poor.
And I cannot with confidence say that my kids harmed my economic situation as they were the reason I had to get a better job. Probably wouldn’t have bothered otherwise.
Geriatric sperm also increases likelihood of various developmental conditions and diseases.
Yes. Schizophrenia for one. But that’s old old guys I think, not 35-40 year old guys.
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.
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.
