More Smutty Than You: TSR's Hall of Shame

[Darqstar]

Yes, but by that very definition, if you don't -want- kids, then you wouldn't make a good parent, because you'd be unhappy with said kids, since you didn't want them.

Yes, but remember, it's always different when they're your own!

That's one thing I never understood about fanatical parents vs. childfree (Please note I said fanatical.)  Fanatical parents try to talk childfree into having kids.  When childfree says, "Nope, I don't have the patience for kids, I'm afraid I'd hurt them."  Fanatic loves to tell Childfree that it's different when its your own (Which sorta says to me that all those kids abused by their parents are just a myth. 

I'm a bit of a cat fanatic.  I adore cats.  I think everyone's life is incomplete without cats.  However, if anyone ever told me, "I don't want to have a cat.  I'm afraid I'd abuse it," my reaction, and the reaction of every other cat fanatic is along the lines of, "Oh, okay.  Glad you don't have any then."

If children are more sacred than cats (which they are to most people and I assume then, even more sacred to the fanatical childfree) why do people try to guilt others into having them?  If every child deserves as happy a life as can be provided, why in the world would you want someone who's admitted that they might possibly abusive towards kids to have them? 

I haven't found a fanatical parent who's been able to give me a decent answer that didn't involve, "Well, there's this hormonal rush when you give birth to your very own child..." or even, "I can't explain it, I just know that once you have a baby, it's different.  The moment the baby is born, you just want to protect it, provide for it."

If a hormonal rush, started by the process of birth, is needed to spark motherly  love, then that means adoption is useless.  (Same if the "it's yours" is hinged on your genetics in another human being) 

And again, that doesn't explain why there are abused children in this world.

[SoggyFox]

Exactly - I was a planned kid, but from about 10 on, I was abused by my mom, while my accidental sisters weren't.

[dusdeedawn]

I can't remember the name (shame on me), but there's a brain chemical that's produced during childbirth that causes a woman to bond with... someone. Generally the child, or even the father of the kid. Actually it's produced during trauma in general, but childbirth being what it is and all... The problem is, they don't always bond with the child. My stepson's mother never had that bond, with either her kid or her husband. She did, however, leave them for someone who looks remarkably similar to the delivery doctor. My point is, though, that the whole 'Hormones!!1!' thing is not a very good arguing point for having kids. Not only can it backfire, but that chemical wears off after a few or so years. And I have to question whether a person who needs chemicals to be a good parent is really the best person to have children, anyway.

[queennocturne]

*QN swashbuckles in*

Darqstar- totally agree.  Different people are different parents.  Dusdeedawn is right, though science has proven there is a hormone rush at birth and during breastfeeding that bonds a mother to a child, it's only one factor.  In the case of a parent who didn't want to have the child but did anyway, it probably won't help at all.  And Fanatical parents who try to force childless adults into having kids aren't doing any favors for the adults or the children.

I wonder if those Fanatical parents are actually being good parents to their children.  My parents said they were ready to have kids when I was born...but, well...my therapist can explain the situation with more sanity than I can.

[Pescado]

I can't remember the name (shame on me), but there's a brain chemical that's produced during childbirth that causes a woman to bond with... someone.

Maybe, but knowledge is power. If you know it's happening, you can resist it. We have a word for people who yield to every random hormonally induced urge: INMATES.

[Paden]

You know, Pes, all this talk of spawning makes me exceedingly glad that you've resisted. Good on you!

[eifslitc]

Exactly - I was a planned kid, but from about 10 on, I was abused by my mom, while my accidental sisters weren't.

Aw, that's really unfortunate. I've never heard of a case like that.

[queennocturne]

I can't remember the name (shame on me), but there's a brain chemical that's produced during childbirth that causes a woman to bond with... someone. Generally the child, or even the father of the kid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin

This was the one honest thing I learned in American sex education.  When a woman has sex, gives birth, or breastfeeds, her body releases oxytocin that helps bond her to the sexual partner or child.

[SoggyFox]

Yeah - My dad was sent away, stationed in Korea for a year, my mom picked up -ione- thing from the 60s, and in her frustration and my being a...difficult child, I got the crap.  I did not have normal 10 year old problems.  I wasn't worried about boys and makeup and developing - I was in a different world of problems.  Nowadays, I'd probably have some fancy name.

Went from group counselling to counselling with my mom and me - and the doctor said it was her fault - so we quit going.  I liked that guy.

[neriana]

I am quite sure I would not abuse a kid. I think I'd be a pretty good mother. I just don't want kids, and it's extraordinarily tiresome that people assume that means I had a bad childhood, or that I'm afraid I'd abuse children or whatever. And I've known quite a few people whose kids were central to their lives who were absolutely horrific parents.

http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2003/05/06/breeding/index.html

[eifslitc]

I didn't read that article or even this thread in full, but as a whole, it's seemingly like some people look at having children as a financial/emotional/physical burden.

[Darqstar]

I didn't read that article or even this thread in full, but as a whole, it's seemingly like some people look at having children as a financial/emotional/physical burden.

And it isn't?  Every single parent I've ever met has complained to me, primarily, about three things:

1: Kids are expensive.  ("Jesus, a can of FORMULA costs 18 dollars!  And have you seen the price of DIAPERS?" Then, when out of those stages you get, "Five dollars for this, ten dollars for that.  50 dollars for a band uniform... it's like they bleed you dry!")

2: Kids give you as much heartache and anguish as they do happiness and joy.  ("I'm gonna throttle that kid, guess what she did today?"  "You're not going to believe it, but my son tried to flush the cat down the toilet!"  Even,  "Jessica is sick and we don't know what's wrong."  "Bobby had a flu of 102, we were terrifed we were going to lose him."  Even if the reasons is entirely not the child's fault, anguish is anguish.)

3: Kids wear you out, put a strain on the relationship, and physical strains on the parents.  ("I haven't had a full nights sleep since our oldest was born, and she's now ten."  "I get home from work and I have to do the laundry, start dinner, then I have to go to here and pick up Johnny, then to soccer and pick up Jessica.  And no, I don't have any free time on the weekends either, I have to take the kids here and there, and catch up on all the choirs I didn't get to do all week, because I'm working for a living.  Which I have to do, because we need both of those incomes to raise the kids." )

I'm not saying that to many, the good far outweighs the bad, but basically, having a kid is a huge responsibility, if you want to do it right.   And when someone suggests that having a kid is just too much work for them, they should be congratulated, because too many parents start out thinking,  "Oh, a baby will add so much to my life.  A baby will solve all our problems.  A baby won't be that much trouble!"  That's the parent that's going to crash and burn.

[Pescado]

1: Kids are expensive.  ("Jesus, a can of FORMULA costs 18 dollars!  And have you seen the price of DIAPERS?" Then, when out of those stages you get, "Five dollars for this, ten dollars for that.  50 dollars for a band uniform... it's like they bleed you dry!")

I blame this on poor fiscal management. None of these things are necessary and people managed for thousands of years without them.

2: Kids give you as much heartache and anguish as they do happiness and joy.  ("I'm gonna throttle that kid, guess what she did today?"  "You're not going to believe it, but my son tried to flush the cat down the toilet!"  Even,  "Jessica is sick and we don't know what's wrong."  "Bobby had a flu of 102, we were terrifed we were going to lose him."  Even if the reasons is entirely not the child's fault, anguish is anguish.)

Some people seem horribly indecisively like that. If they're such a problem, is losing them a bad thing? They died because they were weak. It is nature's way of weeding out the unfit.

3: Kids wear you out, put a strain on the relationship, and physical strains on the parents.  ("I haven't had a full nights sleep since our oldest was born, and she's now ten."  "I get home from work and I have to do the laundry, start dinner, then I have to go to here and pick up Johnny, then to soccer and pick up Jessica.  And no, I don't have any free time on the weekends either, I have to take the kids here and there, and catch up on all the choirs I didn't get to do all week, because I'm working for a living.

Pssh. Kids these days are spoiled. In my day, kids were expected to actually DO all this themselves! Or you would be shot! And we had to WALK to school, through the snow, uphill and against the wind BOTH ways, while the Japanese would try to bomb us...and WE LIKED IT!

[Darqstar]

Pssh. Kids these days are spoiled. In my day, kids were expected to actually DO all this themselves! Or you would be shot! And we had to WALK to school, through the snow, uphill and against the wind BOTH ways, while the Japanese would try to bomb us...and WE LIKED IT!

You sound an awful lot like my Dad, Pescado. 

[SoggyFox]

I think I'd be a good mom - until I got caught up in something and it distracted me from their needs.  I can be really obsessive.  I know I wouldn't abuse a kid, and I think a child of mine would turn out well.  But would I want there to be emotional scars from those times I spent 3 days working on making something?