Your child is not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

[napoleonherself]

The 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.

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!

Comments

[wing-zero-ew.livejournal.com]

We get out as little as possible because we run into almost nothing BUT idiots with children. It's hard to imagine a world that's otherwise, quite frankly, but then again I've been out of university too long.

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.