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napoleonherselfThe following is my comment to this post, only expanded a bit to become a post in its own right, kind of.
I am totally behind the curve on this one, but YES.
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wing_zero_ew and I see way too many parents these days who seem to think that it's not only their right, but their DUTY to pop out as many kids as they physically can -- whether or not they actually have the time or energy to give those kids the attention they need; whether or not the money is available to properly support them. And, naturally, once they've done the world the huge favor of having those kids -- why, they've got no obligations left, have they? They don't need to teach their children how to behave. Let the schools do that. Let the neighbors. And if the schools and neighbors and society won't do the hard work, it's certainly not the parents' fault when their kid turns out to be a thug. They already did THEIR part, right?
I also get tired of my roommate's mom telling me that I will never be a complete person until I have children. I'd like to think that my status as a PERSON is defined by, um, ME. Not by the presence or absence of small screaming things that share some of my DNA.
There should be a test you have to pass to be ALLOWED to procreate, with questions such as the following:
If you take your small child to the grocery store at 10 at night, and he throws a tantrum, is it
A) His fault, so yell at him and snap at him and threaten to leave him in the store if he doesn't stop.
B) The media's fault, because of all those awful awful video games that it's a damn crime for them to make, that you buy for him because you can't be bothered to read the cover and see that it's marked M for Mature and therefore wholly inappropriate for your child.
B) YOUR FUCKING FAULT FOR EXPECTING A SMALL CHILD TO BE AWAKE AND NOT CRANKY AT 10 AT NIGHT YOU IDIOT
Or:
R-rated movies are:
A) Totally acceptable for little Timmy. Sure, he'll get scared by the spooky bits or the loud noises, and start crying, but still, nobody should dare suggest that you and Timmy leave the theater.
B) Okay for little Timmy as long as you are there to loudly reassure him throughout the entire movie that everything is fine.
C) NOT OKAY FOR A SMALL CHILD WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING
And of course:
Teaching your child how to act in society is the responsibility of:
A) The schools! Even though you hate paying more than a pittance in taxes to provide the salaries of the people who you expect to raise your child for you, and the tools they need to do the job.
B) The child himself! He's too young to understand now. He'll get older and figure out on his own that screaming "I WANNA GO BATHOOM MOMMY I NEED GO BATHOOM AGAIN MOMMY PLEASE MOMMY MOMMY" in a crowded restaurant is not appropriate. You don't need to react in any way to this.
C) YOU. Because it is YOUR CHILD. IDIOT.
If you can get these questions right, you get to spawn. Otherwise, you get spayed or neutered.
For more thoughts on this topic, see the comment that mecha will no doubt be making when he sees this post!
I am totally behind the curve on this one, but YES.
wing_zero_ew and I see way too many parents these days who seem to think that it's not only their right, but their DUTY to pop out as many kids as they physically can -- whether or not they actually have the time or energy to give those kids the attention they need; whether or not the money is available to properly support them. And, naturally, once they've done the world the huge favor of having those kids -- why, they've got no obligations left, have they? They don't need to teach their children how to behave. Let the schools do that. Let the neighbors. And if the schools and neighbors and society won't do the hard work, it's certainly not the parents' fault when their kid turns out to be a thug. They already did THEIR part, right?I also get tired of my roommate's mom telling me that I will never be a complete person until I have children. I'd like to think that my status as a PERSON is defined by, um, ME. Not by the presence or absence of small screaming things that share some of my DNA.
There should be a test you have to pass to be ALLOWED to procreate, with questions such as the following:
If you take your small child to the grocery store at 10 at night, and he throws a tantrum, is it
A) His fault, so yell at him and snap at him and threaten to leave him in the store if he doesn't stop.
B) The media's fault, because of all those awful awful video games that it's a damn crime for them to make, that you buy for him because you can't be bothered to read the cover and see that it's marked M for Mature and therefore wholly inappropriate for your child.
B) YOUR FUCKING FAULT FOR EXPECTING A SMALL CHILD TO BE AWAKE AND NOT CRANKY AT 10 AT NIGHT YOU IDIOT
Or:
R-rated movies are:
A) Totally acceptable for little Timmy. Sure, he'll get scared by the spooky bits or the loud noises, and start crying, but still, nobody should dare suggest that you and Timmy leave the theater.
B) Okay for little Timmy as long as you are there to loudly reassure him throughout the entire movie that everything is fine.
C) NOT OKAY FOR A SMALL CHILD WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING
And of course:
Teaching your child how to act in society is the responsibility of:
A) The schools! Even though you hate paying more than a pittance in taxes to provide the salaries of the people who you expect to raise your child for you, and the tools they need to do the job.
B) The child himself! He's too young to understand now. He'll get older and figure out on his own that screaming "I WANNA GO BATHOOM MOMMY I NEED GO BATHOOM AGAIN MOMMY PLEASE MOMMY MOMMY" in a crowded restaurant is not appropriate. You don't need to react in any way to this.
C) YOU. Because it is YOUR CHILD. IDIOT.
If you can get these questions right, you get to spawn. Otherwise, you get spayed or neutered.
For more thoughts on this topic, see the comment that mecha will no doubt be making when he sees this post!
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Date: 2006-05-10 01:09 pm (UTC)THIS IS MY COMMENT
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Date: 2006-05-10 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 08:14 pm (UTC)That just doesn't make sense to me.
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Date: 2006-05-11 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-11 07:04 am (UTC)In the good old days they were a lot cooler, of course. Jousting, that mayan game where the losers were beheaded, gladiatorial contests, etc. We still have fencing and the martial arts, naturally, but everything's so pansied down.
Even some of the wussiest sports have their origins in war! Polo is obviously a calvalry training exercise, and lacrosse was used as wargaming by some of the Native American tribes.
So, yeah. Baseball. What's up with that?
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Date: 2006-05-10 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 01:37 pm (UTC)I've run across several brain-dead idiots who, when I tell them NO I DO NOT WANT BRATCHI'DREN OF MY OWN, think that spouting that tired old "well, when they're yours you'll feel different" will automatically change not only my mind, but my biology. I enjoy watching their faces fall off when I tell them, no, the reason I don't want bratchi'dren is I will catch The Dead if I birth them.
What pisses me off is that it has to get to that level before people leave me the fuck alone about this. I don't want kids. Does the reason why really concern you, random person on the street/acquaintance/fiance's frat brother? No. So stop bugging me.
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Date: 2006-05-10 05:42 pm (UTC)Sure, once upon a time, you would need to have lots and lots of kids so that at least a few would be left to help you on the farm. We also had a huge expanse of mostly-empty land to the west just begging to be filled with copies of us, which meant more spawnin'. Plus, of course, it didn't used to be as wonderfully optional as it is nowadays. But now we don't have to worry about most of our kids dying before they hit their fifth birthday. We don't have miles and miles of land that "need" to be "tamed" by our descendents; in fact, it's pretty damn full up now. So what logical reason remains? Inertia is not a logical reason.
It's a nasty world out there, full of suffering, OVERfull of people who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, and yet somehow it's not allowed to say "hmm, I don't want to bring anyone else into this mess".
There are kids in the foster system waiting their whole lives to be adopted, but somehow the logical response to "I just love children" is to ignore all the needy ones that EXIST, and make a NEW one.
There are kids whose parents popped them out and decided they didn't want them; I've met a little girl who's probably going to spend her whole life in The System, because she and her sister were abused horribly by their shitfucks of parents and are now both irrevocably broken at the ages of I think 8 and 10. But by God, their parents just HAD to have them! And indeed they would have been lax to do otherwise!
And of course on a more personal note, my father was a monster and my mom is a good person but made a pretty mediocre mother. I have trouble just getting by myself in the world, let alone trying to teach someone else how to be a functional human being. What kind of parent would *I* be, given that? Gee, I guess I just better get to birthin' and find out the hard way! What could possibly go wrong?!
Basically it is all a giant vat of WTF, along with some other things that technically belonged in the main post instead of this reply to your comment, except that here is where I thought of them.
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Date: 2006-05-10 07:30 pm (UTC)My parents were actually fine human beings who did a great job raising three very exasperating girls. My sisters are following suit, partly because they married fine human beings who are also doing a good job raising their kidlins. I am not them. The Gnome is a fine human being, but his dad wasn't around much and his mom was an abusive bitch whose grave I would like to set fire to. Hell no, we ain't having kids. I don't have the patience for them, having had to use it up on myself and my problems, and Gnome wants to break the cycle at the root. We have pets. I have three nephews and a niece that Gnome can play with. We have neighbors with two little girls next door who have a crush on Gnome. That's all we can handle.
And don't get me started on the "controversy" of providing condoms/IUDs/RU-486/what have you to horny teenagers so they don't add to the overpopulation of the world. We'll be here all month if I do that.
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Date: 2006-05-10 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 08:47 pm (UTC)Bah, I say. Bah.
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Date: 2006-05-11 02:58 am (UTC)I have friends who come from large families; they help their parents with the younger chitlins and they are quite happy as far as I can tell. You must meet more idiots than I, or somethin'. I don't get out a lot so I guess that's not surprising.
um, hi, random stalker.
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Date: 2006-05-11 07:12 am (UTC)Wanting to have a large family could be diagnosed as a mental illness in and of itself (it seems irrational and self-destructive to sublimate one's one life completely to the goal of creating a horde of new life on an overpopulated world which will only decrease the net standard of living for the entire generation that your children will be cohorts of, thus inflicting, however indirectly, pain and deprivation not just on the offspring that you are presumed to care for, but their entire society as well).
Setting that aside, insisting that your large family be composed of your genetic relatives is an obvious narcissistic ploy when, as mentioned above, so many children go unraised, unloved and uncared for in the first place. Assuming you can't find another way to productively occupy your time, that you have to have a large family in order to feel complete somehow and counseling is ineffective, the logical question to ask is why you insist on adding to, instead of subtracting from, the net generational rearing costs for society. That's without even addressing the issue of the cost on the social welfare net assuming you die, lose your job, become tragically ill or disabled, etc, and your children became wards of the state.
Then there's the point of having one set of intermediate children help raise another set of younger children. If your kids have to raise themselves as a group, isn't that a sign that you've had more than you're capable of raising in the first place? Happiness is relative and experiential; just because someone thinks they're happy, that doesn't mean they a: actually are, b: are relative to other people, c: are objectively living in a safe and comfortable environment or d: are participating in a socially responsible lifestyle.
Just a few thoughts.
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Date: 2006-05-11 02:24 pm (UTC)And of course my complaint is not with people who have a bunch of kids AND ARE GOOD PARENTS; I'm still not sure it's entirely responsible to add to the population that much, but I'm not going to start picketing or anything. My problem is with the type of people who leave eleven-year-old Jimmy-Bob in charge of his half-dozen little brothers and sisters, because it's Friday evening and a trip to the bar is in order. These are the ones that need an application of the beatstick.
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Date: 2006-05-11 08:17 pm (UTC)Coming from a Christian homeschooling family unit, I have come into contact with several large families(7+), and I'm sure they'd have a lot more to say on the subject than I could ever hope to articulate. I am fairly certain there is more involved in their decisions than "We must populate the Earth with God's children!" though. And I certainly hope there is more to it than their mothers ragging on them.
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Date: 2006-05-11 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 03:42 am (UTC)I mean, come on. It never ends, and no one ever calls them on it. It's patently absurd and everyone pretends not to see it. There's some kind of collective insanity going on and it drives me absolutely mad, every single day.
Like, here's one for you. People who take diaper clad children into public restaurants. That's bad enough right there; if I brought a bucket of my own waste with me to a restaurant, to sit open and exposed, emitting foul odor and germs, would I be allowed in the door? I'd wager not. But then they take this disease carrying, typhoid mary, subject zero, living incubator and they put it ON THE MOTHERFUCKING DINING TABLE THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE TO EAT THEIR FOOD FROM. AND NOBODY CALLS THEM ON IT. I'm told once, my sister did in fact get the manager of a restaurant to make them take their filth-waif off the table because it violates a health code, but it should violate a health code to bring them in in the first place! Here we are, rightly, I might add, banning smoking in restaurants as a health risk, and we have shit piss spit vomit germ spewing petri dishes that only stop screaming, mewling, squirming and crapping to BREATHE sitting in our GOD DAMNED PLACES OF PUBLIC FOOD CONSUMPTION. WHAT THE HOLIEST OF FUCKS IS UP WITH THAT ONE?
Argh. As I said, angry, not pessimistic. I can't bring myself to be pessimistic, because the universe is so damned cold and heartless and uncaring that I can be sure that, if humanity doesn't shape up within a reasonable time frame, we'll all die in some grotesque expression of cosmic power. Every time astronomers discover a new way that we could all die, in fire, in horrible abrupt nuclear searing flame or impact, I smile a little, because now I'm sure, either way, everything will be all right in the end.
See? Not a pessimist. How could I be, when Gamma Ray Bursts exist? Those suckers can exterminate all life in a 10,000 light year straight line from their parent star. All life. Gone. Crispy. It's like there was a God, and he thought lightning was far too blaze for the ultimate smiting. Look those suckers up. They rule.
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Date: 2006-05-12 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 09:52 pm (UTC)...I have been playing way too much We Love Katamari lately.
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Date: 2006-05-13 05:14 am (UTC)So they keep jumping the gun, out of their eagerness for news to report, and the species' collective paranoia about death. The same insane, clinging, fearful avoidance of the subject of mortality that leads to church attendance and bizarre ritual leads to people expecting to be wiped out by whatever the cause du jour happens to be.
Patience, random internet stalker. The oblivion of our world will come, sooner or later. If not by some catastrophic impact or calamity beforehand, then certainly when the sun goes through its slow, inevitable death.
Actually, long before that. The sun's luminosity increases every year as the heavier elements accumulate and increase its fusion output. Each and every year the earth absorbs an incrementally greater amount of solar energy, and becomes a tiny bit less ideally inhabitable. Long before the sun goes through its death throes, this entire world will be a searing desert, devoid of complex life.
That makes *me* feel a lot better.
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Date: 2006-05-13 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 03:47 am (UTC)Are you trying to shield the nice LJ people from me, filthy roommate?
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Date: 2006-05-12 04:14 pm (UTC)Haha. :(
Date: 2006-05-10 03:41 pm (UTC)I have fond memories of my grandmother putting CRITTERS on, when I was a tot, and we watched it together - with her laughing about the toothy little fuzzballs and their eating people.
..and I turned out just fine! No clown phobia or anything. ..yet.
Re: Haha. :(
Date: 2006-05-10 05:27 pm (UTC)Seeing a lot of not-technically-age-appropriate movies when young is one thing, there is some discretion that can be applied. But then you've got situations like when we went to see Alien Versus Predator, and some idiot had brought his little boy along, couldn't have been more than four. The boy started getting really freaked out when people started dying, but daddy didn't seem to particularly care. A smart parent would've thought "hmm, Junior is obviously not ready for this movie, I guess I will now PUT MY PARENTING DUTIES BEFORE MY ENTERTAINMENT and take us both to the park or something instead!"
Boards with nails in them: the cause of, and solution to, all life's problems.
Re: Haha. :(
Date: 2006-05-10 07:32 pm (UTC)Re: Haha. :(
Date: 2006-05-10 08:45 pm (UTC)Personally I think that kid was a wimp.
Re: Haha. :(
Date: 2006-05-10 07:46 pm (UTC)People who bring babies to movies or bars rank right up there with the women who carry their toddlers to every doorstep on Halloween, trick-or-treating for them.
YOUR BABY IS FIVE MONTHS OLD, BITCH. It will not eat those jujubees. YOU WILL. Go buy your own candy, you cheap hussy!
ahem.
Anyway, yeah. All of these problems will be solved when I figure out how to make an EMP device that works on people.
Re: Haha. :(
Date: 2006-05-10 07:46 pm (UTC)I thought I was logged in.
Re: Haha. :(
Date: 2006-05-10 08:43 pm (UTC)Hmm... an EMP that works on people. An electromagnetic pulse... that triggers a machine... that lets loose a boxing glove to punch the offending targets in the face! Eureka!
Actually I have just seen too many bizarre cartoons I think.
Re: Haha. :(
Date: 2006-05-10 08:50 pm (UTC)Re: Haha. :(
Date: 2006-05-10 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 08:42 pm (UTC)I myself have virtualy indestructible tooth enamel and some kind of resistance mechanism to plaque forming bacteria. I have to brush my teeth once every few weeks while maintaining minty fresh breath, I've never had a cavity, I can chew on metal for fun (and have) etc. It's a fairly lame superpower, but it beats getting a root canal.
I guess what I'm getting at is, I'd have to estimate the percentage of the adult population who are suitable candidates for actual child-raising to be vanishingly small. Human beings as a whole are so profoundly defective it boggles the mind that they should be allowed to create additional sub-units at all, but it seems necessary for the time being due to that pesky mortality thing.
In the interim, I wish we could beat idiots with aluminum bats until they behave themselves and rein in their screaming, mewling children.
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Date: 2006-05-10 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-11 08:33 am (UTC)There are many dark gods that, if they exist, would surely appreciate a blood sacrifice, after all.