Why do people have kids?

[Kenickie]

The only reason I feel less than negative about having a child is because of this project my aunt has undertaken. She has compiled the family history from the 1400s to now - a massive endeavor that's swallowed a whole wing of her house, two computers and three desks. She never had children (she's a lesbian) and is a phonetics teacher. The overture has been made that when she dies I'll take over this massive, sprawling attempt. I've been maintaining and adding to it remotely from here in Atlanta, and collecting information from relatives across the world when I make it there, like this summer when I visited my cousin in Paris. That kind of weight sits with you, in a way that goes a long way past "Am I a fuck up?" or "Are my parents disappointed in me?" It's got all these complicated words like 'legacy' and 'history'. It kept me up for over a week while she showed it to me. We'd get up, collect wood for the wood stove, make breakfast, and build histories, all day until we ran out of wood and had to go get more. I cried a lot, looking at it. Holding little drawn portraits of people who shared my blood - before The Enlightenment!

Am I comfortable with leaving the legacy of the family up to my sisters and cousins? Am I fine with the legacy heirs not coming from my branch? Can I trust the New York Sadovskys? The Texans? The Californians? Do I want to? Simultaneously clinical and dehumanizing to tell your lover - "I need to have a child so that we aren't erased by the Georgetown family. Also they have to be named Sadovsky.* Sorry Pander." Modern financial instruments and Catholic ex communications and several wars have wiped out my men and most of the wealth the family had been accumulating since the late 1880s, but it's not about the money or the heirlooms that aren't on loan to some museum or something, it's about the principle of the thing. It's about preserving the name and the stewardship of the family in the face of questionable decisions and bad wives.

I am more than happy to take on the position of Collector and Archivist when my aunt passes, and I think the only thing that will push me to having a child is some really bad internal forces within the family that can't be righted with a modern financial instrument or ex communication or suggesting some son join the marines. That or citizenship purposes for a foreign country. This makes me sound like a terrible person, but at least it's a reason of some kind, instead of 'I was incredibly irresponsible and I guess I should just have a baby.' Talk about listless.

Strangely, racism and the way I feel about my own mixed race status has had no impact on my to bear or not to bear thought process. They would be so light (quadroons) that they would be almost passible. In a different way that makes me feel bad but I live in a city where most couples my age I see are interracial with little Obama babies. Cops will continue to kill black bodies with impunity, white men will continue to fetishize and objectify yellow and red bones, nothing I can do or my further mixed child can do about that.

 

[socko]

""
That's cool that you're interested in your family history, and you found a lot of good things about your family. I was interested in my own family history for a while, but all I had to do was scratch around a little and found out we were the scumfscks of humanity. My grandfather was an ax-murderer who fled punishment in Sweden and came to the USA and started a new life. My other ancestors generally weren't any better.

I've done all I could to distance myself and escape from that. So has my brother. We were the first to get a college education. He's a particle physicist (PhD level) at CERN. I'm doing something equivalent in my own field.

Like you, my brother and I we will be the last in our line. In addition to the other reasons mentioned, I don't know how strong a genetic component there is to the misbehavior of our parents and other ancestors and how much of their evil wasy are learned, but I don't want to find out

 

[Kenickie]

""
That's cool that you're interested in your family history, and you found a lot of good things about your family. I was interested in my own family history for a while, but all I had to do was scratch around a little and found out we were the scumfscks of humanity. My grandfather was an ax-murderer who fled punishment in Sweden and came to the USA and started a new life. My other ancestors generally weren't any better.

I've done all I could to distance myself and escape from that. So has my brother. We were the first to get a college education. He's a particle physicist (PhD level) at CERN. I'm doing something equivalent in my own field.

Like you, my brother and I we will be the last in our line. In addition to the other reasons mentioned, I don't know how strong a genetic component there is to the misbehavior of our parents and other ancestors and how much of their evil wasy are learned, but I don't want to find out

I won't be the last of my line - my half sister Layla has two boys (14 and 18 ), and my sister Jessica is due in December. We both have the name Sadovsky (my father conceded that it was more important to my mother than his generic last name) and they all have the name Sadovsky too. I just don't think I trust them enough to...be as concerned as I am.

That's unfortunate about your grandfather. We've got unfortunate people in our family but we just blot them out, unless they are too important (several women with 'companions' remain in the family in the 1900-1930s despite being lesbians) for some reason or another.

I'm extremely interested in genetically engineering pregnancies. From a religious standpoint - isn't this the way to get God to pay attention to us? Start breeding the men we want to be? I think that it's going to radically change the future in a way we can't even imagine. No more babies with no brain stems. No more babies that live for three years in agonizing pain and then die miserable deaths. Eugenics? It sounds like a dirty word when it shouldn't be. If I had the money and stronger desire to have children I'd be very specific about it. The first boyfriend I had where children even came up was obsessive about it. About the potential of genetically modifying children. He also had some frightening ideas about race and revenge fantasies that I didn't really want to be a part of. He was very pretty though, and very smart. I just didn't like the idea of using children as a weapon against a systemic force that was stacked against both of our races (he was hispanic). He made me think about it, anyway.

 

[socko]

I'm interested in genetic engineering too. It's not my specialty, but I work with that technology to some extent. I think it offers a lot of hope. It's routine to build genetically modified cell cultures and even animals in the lab to study diseases that occur in humans. Some labs have even built "smart" mice and "super" mice. IIRC, these mice were created to study potential therapies for autism and other neurological disorders. They have been genetically modified to be smarter, faster, stronger. It's only a matter of time before it can be transferred to humans both as therapy and as enhancements. I think it's going to be common for prospective parents to be able to choose things like height, body type, hair/eye color, intelligence, provided they're rich enough to afford it and they are able to travel to a country where it can be done legally -- or a secret genetics lab in the Amazon rainforest if it's illegal everywhere.

 

[Kenickie]

I'm interested in genetic engineering too. It's not my specialty, but I work with that technology to some extent. I think it offers a lot of hope. It's routine to build genetically modified cell cultures and even animals in the lab to study diseases that occur in humans. Some labs have even built "smart" mice and "super" mice. IIRC, these mice were created to study potential therapies for autism and other neurological disorders. They have been genetically modified to be smarter, faster, stronger. It's only a matter of time before it can be transferred to humans both as therapy and as enhancements. I think it's going to be common for prospective parents to be able to choose things like height, body type, hair/eye color, intelligence, provided they're rich enough to afford it and they are able to travel to a country where it can be done legally -- or a secret genetics lab in the Amazon rainforest if it's illegal everywhere.

I don't know how close we are to anything like that - but I take things like modafanil - just as a thing. I'm amazed it's not treated as something basic like a multivitamin here in the states. It's a very American modifier.

But I'd be much more interested in children if I could 'wash' some of these high risk genes out of their DNA. Appearance - thats something that doesn't concern me. I'm attractive enough for both of us to guarantee pretty children, it's more about them not having a bunch of high risk factors for addiction or schizotypal disorders. Until then, meh.

 

[kingme]

sounds a lot like the premise of the film Gattaca.. which is also a good movie so perhaps an interesting watch for eugenists out there....

@Kenickie - there is a fine line, real fine, between doing away with the really dangerous genes and just deciding which genes are proper and which arent. It also creates another dillema - what if your perfectly engineered children do not grow up to be what you expected them to be like?

a person is a lot more than simple genetics...

 

[Kenickie]

@Kenickie - there is a fine line, real fine, between doing away with the really dangerous genes and just deciding which genes are proper and which arent. It also creates another dillema - what if your perfectly engineered children do not grow up to be what you expected them to be like?

yeah i addressed something like that here:

It's not something I feel strongly about one way or another, just kind of a cold ambivalence. I don't like children, for their monstrosity and their delicateness. They can kill people and die from falling off their bicycles. Simultaneously way too fragile and way too dangerous. It's incredibly high risk, having a child. The best genes & parenting can still fail and give you a child dead of cancer at 5, or a sociopath who shoots up a sorority house, or kill the mother during birth. The chemicals and rewiring that happens to a woman's brain during pregnancy and labor is on the level of permanent brain damage, which also makes me extremely wary. I don't like the idea of an irreversible, permanent avoidable brain rewiring. I guess typing it out sounds a lot more against it than just ambivalent.

there is a fine line, which i think most people cross at the aesthetics. beauty standards of today say that european features are prettiest, and african features are the ugliest, except for when they are meshed with european ones. i have a hard time believing that we couldn't come to a consensus that says genes that harm people and the public are bad. including genetic disorders (we already screen ashkenazi jews before they get married for creutzfeldt jakob disease), risk factors for cancer, obesity, etc. stuff still happens to peoples brains once they leave the womb that is impossible to control for, but that's not reason enough to not try and make healthier, smarter base tableau. it's coming, whatever we feel about it. the future is inevitable.

 

[Waffle Sock]

beauty standards of today say that european features are prettiest, and african features are the ugliest, except for when they are meshed with european ones.

(beyonce)

Even though that statement could be interpreted as racist, it is accurate as far as Westernized standard of beauty, especially portrayed in media by socialites, celebs, ads, entertainment, etc.... wherein the below pictures, a conveyance of the non-anglicized full embodiment of African features, are unacceptable as the global representation of beauty.. with emphasis on darker hued skin.

 

[maxmaxCity]

Having a child is creating beauty. It is the only thing that you can create with another human being out of love and compassion. You will learn a lot about life raising your child, and I know it makes a lot of grandparents happy to have a very fruitful family. To each their own though! If you don't want to have kids- nobody will force you to

 

[bit_pattern]

TL;DR:
1. Some people have children because they get pregnant and don't believe in abortion/don't want to abort.
2. For those who conceive on purpose, it's mostly a selfish act. They are bringing a LIFE into this world solely based on their own desires... Not only this but they're bringing a life into a pretty fucked up world. It's a hard thing to roll the dice on but people do it all the time because, well, a lot of us just want what we want.
3. Biology has hardwired us to want babies. Many find things as simple as a baby's smell to be intoxicating (I know I LOVE my son's scent) or simply feel a physical need to carry a child.

'Nuff said

On a fetish level, the idea of cumming in someone and getting them preggers is pretty hot but that comes under #2 - the selfish act (and probs #3 too).

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Because we're fallible.

/close thread

 

[baggerr]

Because they want to. Having kids a purely selfish act.

 

[Smoky]

Why do people not have kids?
Might be a better question. As most do have kids.

 

[MissBehavin'_416]

Kids are not for everyone. I hate how somebody brings a child into this world and abandons them. People feel the need to have children. It's instinctive. They want a product of their own. To make a life as they want for someone.
Personally I would never had a child of my own, but would love to adopt one.

 

[ahint]

I don't know, I don't understand the desire to plan to get pregnant if adopting is available to you (which I understand it isn't for everyone). I'm guessing a lot of it is instinct.