- 8,332
- 216
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2011
[h1]Why do some humans not want children?[/h1]
Isn't the purpose of all living organisms is the propagation of genes to the next generation, and let the natural & sexual selection work its way. How does this fact/truism reconcile with question above? Isn't that going against basic biological urge/impulse/wiring?
[h3]Some Answers[/h3]
Jonathan Brill, Distribution is Everything
68 votes by Joshua Engel, Shane Kittelson, Garrick Saito, (more)
I'm going to talk you out of having kids. Before I do, I should mention that I have two beautiful children and feel that I am better at being a father than anything else I've ever done, and there's some stuff I'm pretty good at. Also, everything that happened to me before I had kids seems compressed, to the point where its still kind of there, but almost like it happened to someone else. And that was only three years ago. So anyway, here we go:
9 Comments • Jun 15, 2011
Jae Won Joh, sleepy medical student ^__^
45 votes by Lacey Rae Trebaol, Adora Cheung, James Yang, (more)
Possessing a relatively gimongous prefrontal cortex which allows us to plan, think, and shift gears adaptively lets human beings uniquely suppress instincts and use logic. Granted, there are certain cases when this goes awry, such as in panic attacks when the amygdala (fear center of the brain) runs wild, but broadly speaking, you can train even the horniest of idiots to use rubbers, so I don't find it at all surprising that some people choose not to have children. A few possibilities, all of them legitimate justifications:
* made note to self: find a very, very patient woman, and spoil her silly to make up for it
14 Comments • May 27, 2010
Dheera Venkatraman, Graduate student at MIT
19 votes by Tracy Chou, Steven Grimm, Eunji Choi, (more)
Agree with other answers, but I'll add one thing:
The difference between human civilisation and the natural wild is that your legacy is defined no longer by your genes, but by what you have done in life for others. Some people don't mind that their genes don't get passed on, but that their projects, compassion or work do get passed on.
7 Comments • Jul 16, 2010
Roo Shaw
18 votes by Jeff Mishler, Murali Veeraiyan, Phil DiNuzzo, (more)
The theory of natural selection does not attribute a "purpose" to organisms. Organisms exist today because their ancestors' genes caused those ancestors to reproduce. While those genes tend to make the organism reproduce, it is not an ironclad guarantee that the organism will try to reproduce under all circumstances.
Humans and other organisms may in fact not have genes that cause desire for children per se. They might instead have genes that cause desire for pairing and for sexual behavior. In the past this generally would have resulted in children, whether or not they were desired a priori (genes for nurture of infants would be stimulated more by the presence of an infant than by the fantasy of a future infant).
Today birth control can limit reproduction independent of pairing and sexual behavior, so the genetic urges for the latter can be expressed without consequent reproduction.
1 Comment • May 26, 2010
Steven Grimm
17 votes by Jae Won Joh, Christine Choi, Anon User, (more)
Some of the answers here are pretty insightful but I think many of them are far too intellectual and abstract. The real decision is made on the basis of emotion, like most other major decisions people make in their lives. I'll talk about why I'm not having kids. These reasons are unlikely to be unique to me so, I hope, can help provide some broader insight.
Neither my wife nor I have ever wanted to have children, and I can say that it's not for any high-concept reason: she and I just plain don't like being around children, even ones who are close family relations. For me, at least, this has pretty much been a lifelong thing; even when I was a little kid, I far preferred the company of people older than me.
I don't find babies inherently adorable or small kids cute or charming. I recognize that others have this gut reaction but those wires are just not connected in my brain: when I see a baby that everyone else in the room is fawning over, my reaction is more or less, "Yep, it's a baby," and that's about the extent of my interest, aside from being happy for the people who are happy about it being there.
Were I to find myself with a child, I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't make a very good parent. I'm really not interested in contributing to the already-too-large quantity of horrible parenting in the world.
Now, one can certainly make arguments that all of the above is ultimately biological in origin (and I'd agree!) but thinking about it in those terms isn't too useful if the goal is to understand how people come to this decision.
As for the decision being selfish (which is an accusation all childless people are pretty accustomed to hearing whenever the subject comes up) of course that's a term that can mean nearly anything the speaker wants it to, but I'll point out that me not wanting children was the downfall of nearly all my romantic relationships until I met my wife, and thus led directly to a great deal of misery for me for many years. As selfish acts go, it's a bit counterproductive.
5 Comments • Jul 16, 2010
Mike Leary, From silicon computers to Bio-compute...
11 votes by Anon User, Heinel Wong, Miguel Paraz, (more)
There are a number of thoughtful answers on here. A few patients reasons have been shared with me over the years are:
from postcards.
Add Comment • Jun 17, 2011
Some food for thought. LINK
Isn't the purpose of all living organisms is the propagation of genes to the next generation, and let the natural & sexual selection work its way. How does this fact/truism reconcile with question above? Isn't that going against basic biological urge/impulse/wiring?
[h3]Some Answers[/h3]
Jonathan Brill, Distribution is Everything
68 votes by Joshua Engel, Shane Kittelson, Garrick Saito, (more)
I'm going to talk you out of having kids. Before I do, I should mention that I have two beautiful children and feel that I am better at being a father than anything else I've ever done, and there's some stuff I'm pretty good at. Also, everything that happened to me before I had kids seems compressed, to the point where its still kind of there, but almost like it happened to someone else. And that was only three years ago. So anyway, here we go:
- Raising two kids costs us about 4k a month. Not counting college, and any savings, etc. That's just childcare, clothes, toys, books, and a swim class or something. You can lease 2 serviceable Mercedes' for $1k per month. A pretty good rate on a $700k house with nothing down and a 30 year fixed is like $4k per month. You could fly to Maui two weekends a month, every month, and stay in the Grand Wailea, or some such, for $3k per month.
- If you love your spouse as much as I love mine, you should enjoy the time you have together now, because that decreases at an alarming rate once you have kids. No f'ing joke. If your kids aren't talking yet (or if they're just mute I guess) it's not as noticeable, but once they hit about two, your meaningful conversations are relegated to naptime and bedtime.
- If you have some hobbies or maybe a job that requires a lot of travel and long hours, you're going to have to choose, every day. You have 18 hours in a day. How much of that time are you spending with your kid? How much is not enough? If you're working 8-5 and their bedtime is 7:30, you've probably got an hour in the morning and maybe two at night. That's three hours a day, minus eating, dressing, bathing, etc. So you have maybe 90 minutes of quality time with your kid. If you have two and they're on different schedules (common when they're young), decrease accordingly. But you have them on weekends, right? Sure, but you're not the only one who wants to see them. And you've got house chores, errands, etc. Your time is no longer your own, and you never have enough for them, much less anything else.
- You like traveling? Ever been on a 26 hour flight and been annoyed at the screaming kids in the row behind you? Well now those kids are yours. Traveling with kids in their first years can be without tragedy, but never optimal. And always requires your normal amount of administration (planning, packing, etc) x4, not to mention cost and sacrifice of stuff you just can't realistically do anymore. If this is on your bucket list, better start checking them off now.
- Remember the first time you had your heart broken? Remember how you wanted to die and nothing ever hurt that much after? Having something happen to one of your kids is many times worse than that. I am blessed, but had a scare with one of them and it was the most traumatic thing I've ever been through. If you live a comfortable life where you're insulated from the highs and lows that come with emotional attachment, having a small human that's completely dependent on you for survival and loves you more than you could love anything in your adult life might not be for you.
- My oldest kid gets up at 6am. Every day. She doesn't get up like we get up either, like she needs time to get going or anything. She literally bursts out of her room every morning like sunlight cresting a mountain. She goes from sleeping to full OMGWTF adrenaline in a nanosecond. She wakes up motivated, like a miniature female version of Patton. Whereas later in the day she's polite, in the morning she commands people. "It's time for you to get up and make oatmeal, dad." Like a boss. What time do you get up on weekends? Ever sleep in? I kind of remember sleeping in. It actually hurts to try and remember it. Like if I lost the sense of smell but could still remember fresh baked cookies.
9 Comments • Jun 15, 2011
Jae Won Joh, sleepy medical student ^__^
45 votes by Lacey Rae Trebaol, Adora Cheung, James Yang, (more)
Possessing a relatively gimongous prefrontal cortex which allows us to plan, think, and shift gears adaptively lets human beings uniquely suppress instincts and use logic. Granted, there are certain cases when this goes awry, such as in panic attacks when the amygdala (fear center of the brain) runs wild, but broadly speaking, you can train even the horniest of idiots to use rubbers, so I don't find it at all surprising that some people choose not to have children. A few possibilities, all of them legitimate justifications:
- financial: admit it, having kids is crazy expensive (two words: college tuition), and some people just don't have the means to support a child, so they choose not to procreate.
- emotional: a child is a huge investment emotionally, and some people are not comfortable with the idea of supporting another human being in this regard.
- medical: some men/women are incapable of having children, or pregnancy would put them/the fetus at significant risk of fatal complications, or they possess a genetic disorder they do not want to pass down to a fetus.
- they just don't want to, dammit: if you ever witness a live delivery (not C-section), I'm pretty sure it will at least make you reconsider kids. As a dude, it made me wonder if I feel comfortable putting a woman through that ridiculous physical/emotional experience*, and multiple female classmates of mine have sworn they'll never have kids after seeing the bloody, painful ****show labor can be as an 8-lb mass comes out of a lady's hooha.
* made note to self: find a very, very patient woman, and spoil her silly to make up for it
14 Comments • May 27, 2010
Dheera Venkatraman, Graduate student at MIT
19 votes by Tracy Chou, Steven Grimm, Eunji Choi, (more)
Agree with other answers, but I'll add one thing:
The difference between human civilisation and the natural wild is that your legacy is defined no longer by your genes, but by what you have done in life for others. Some people don't mind that their genes don't get passed on, but that their projects, compassion or work do get passed on.
7 Comments • Jul 16, 2010
Roo Shaw
18 votes by Jeff Mishler, Murali Veeraiyan, Phil DiNuzzo, (more)
The theory of natural selection does not attribute a "purpose" to organisms. Organisms exist today because their ancestors' genes caused those ancestors to reproduce. While those genes tend to make the organism reproduce, it is not an ironclad guarantee that the organism will try to reproduce under all circumstances.
Humans and other organisms may in fact not have genes that cause desire for children per se. They might instead have genes that cause desire for pairing and for sexual behavior. In the past this generally would have resulted in children, whether or not they were desired a priori (genes for nurture of infants would be stimulated more by the presence of an infant than by the fantasy of a future infant).
Today birth control can limit reproduction independent of pairing and sexual behavior, so the genetic urges for the latter can be expressed without consequent reproduction.
1 Comment • May 26, 2010
Steven Grimm
17 votes by Jae Won Joh, Christine Choi, Anon User, (more)
Some of the answers here are pretty insightful but I think many of them are far too intellectual and abstract. The real decision is made on the basis of emotion, like most other major decisions people make in their lives. I'll talk about why I'm not having kids. These reasons are unlikely to be unique to me so, I hope, can help provide some broader insight.
Neither my wife nor I have ever wanted to have children, and I can say that it's not for any high-concept reason: she and I just plain don't like being around children, even ones who are close family relations. For me, at least, this has pretty much been a lifelong thing; even when I was a little kid, I far preferred the company of people older than me.
I don't find babies inherently adorable or small kids cute or charming. I recognize that others have this gut reaction but those wires are just not connected in my brain: when I see a baby that everyone else in the room is fawning over, my reaction is more or less, "Yep, it's a baby," and that's about the extent of my interest, aside from being happy for the people who are happy about it being there.
Were I to find myself with a child, I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't make a very good parent. I'm really not interested in contributing to the already-too-large quantity of horrible parenting in the world.
Now, one can certainly make arguments that all of the above is ultimately biological in origin (and I'd agree!) but thinking about it in those terms isn't too useful if the goal is to understand how people come to this decision.
As for the decision being selfish (which is an accusation all childless people are pretty accustomed to hearing whenever the subject comes up) of course that's a term that can mean nearly anything the speaker wants it to, but I'll point out that me not wanting children was the downfall of nearly all my romantic relationships until I met my wife, and thus led directly to a great deal of misery for me for many years. As selfish acts go, it's a bit counterproductive.
5 Comments • Jul 16, 2010
Mike Leary, From silicon computers to Bio-compute...
11 votes by Anon User, Heinel Wong, Miguel Paraz, (more)
There are a number of thoughtful answers on here. A few patients reasons have been shared with me over the years are:
- They have already raised children. They were the oldest child, usually a girl, and put in charge of the other kids while mom was busy with something else or mom left and dad worked.
- There is a familial disease. They would not put that on another, especially their own child.
- Worried they will mistreat their child. They were abused by their parent, (mentally, physically, or sexually). They are worried they will do the same to their child.
- They feel cheated out of their childhood. They want to have a version of it as an adult with no restrictions.
- World calamities. They are afraid of the state of the world and are unwilling to bring a child into the perceived pending disaster.
- It is a way at getting back at the parent/s. This is an extension of "You can't make me", oppositional behavior to get back at them.
- They are control freaks. Children are noisy, messy, and irrational. Nope!
- Economic. There is no way to bring a child into our home and get it the things it would need with our income.
- Lifestyle. A child would definitely impact on their life in such a way it would never be the same.
- They are insecure of doing it wrong. So much time, so many possibilities, and it is all on the job training. It is impossible not to make a mistake
- Priority. Having a successful career is way more important than having a kid.
- Forgot. There are a lot of people who thought they would have time and it ran out either biologically or never got a relationship at that level.
Add Comment • Jun 17, 2011
Some food for thought. LINK
