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.
Sure. But choice and logic also exist in human beings, and those more than anything else are what set us apart from other life forms. “We’ll figure it out” is not a plan, it’s an almost surefire way to fuck up your kid one way or another.
Grow up. There is no meaningful “choice” or “logic” under capitalism. People serve capital or they starve.
Yeah, my parents didn’t “just figure it out,” they put a ton of planning, care, and money into raising me. I’m grateful and my life has been pretty awesome. But, since I make so much less money than they do, don’t own a house like they do, etc, it would be difficult-to-impossible to repeat. So I don’t.
Well by that “logic” no one should have kids, because you can’t control everything. You can’t control if your country goes to war, or if your spouse dies (or if you both die), you can’t control if you get bankrupted by surprise medical bills or if your community is devastated by a natural disaster. When I was already pregnant my husband’s company (and others in his field) had mass layoffs. He ended up moving out of tech and into a trade when there were no positions open. It’s been some awfully tight years while he’s been apprenticing, but our kids are thriving. We’ll figured it out mentality is actually the most important thing when having kids.
It’s people who don’t plan to figure it out who shouldn’t have them.
Hardships and challenges can also build character, drive innovation, and lead to many unpredictable things.
The previous gen of my family grew up in public housing and in poverty but are now multi-millionaires (8 digit networth).
Anyone who succeeds in an environment like that would have succeeded even more in a more positive environment. Hardships are never a good thing. Some people flourish anyway, in the same way that some folks don’t let chronic illness or disability stop them. It doesn’t mean we have to celebrate the chronic illness or disability (or poverty). We celebrate the people who achieved greatness in spite of it.
I spent years of my life in hard situations. I got out of them eventually, but it just made me want to do better by other folks. There is no magic “shitty situation makes you a better person,” lots of my peers became deeply selfish & bitter.
Go back to LinkedIn. Nobody cares about your greedy little family.
Hardships and challenges can also lead to addiction, abuse, violence and death.
That’s great and all, but you need to acknowledge that isn’t normal or achievable for most people in that situation.
If my parents didn’t say “we’ll figure it out” I probably wouldn’t have existed for very long and neither would have my mum. They did however try and succeed in figuring it out and we’re all doing fairly great these days.
Being financially well off should never be a qualification for having a child. That’s incredibly elitist.
What’s much more important are parents that love their children and want them to have it better than they did. And there are probably just as many of those among people barely making rent than there are among millionaires, if not more.
What we don’t need are people having children than don’t want or don’t care about them. Because that’s a surefire way to fuck up kids, no matter their financial and social background.
This is the crux. I’m reasonably well adjusted, I like to think I would love my theoretical kid. But it’s hard to overcome the fact that the whole society is getting way harsher and so many people are poorer than their parents were. My life has been a lot more difficult than my parents’ life was, and it seems like if I had kids, their lives would be even more difficult than mine has been.