A lot of suppositions there. Two men with wives and kids saying men who purposefully chose freedom over being tied down want what they have. Rogan is clown.
Rogan's lucky he gets to have it both ways. He gets to have the family and cheat on his wife constantly. Brendan Sclobbo's words are he's "a bald dude slaggin' Richard!"
I’d like to contribute to this conversation from a related but totally different angle. My wife and I both are from Italian immigrant parents, who came to the country in the 50s/60s, our culture , as many do, has an unwritten rule that you look after your parents when they’re old. Last June, my MIL fell at her condo, it was the 3rd time in a month and she was deemed no longer capable of living on her own and by July she was living with us. We were just on the verge of becoming empty nesters and now we are sandwiched. It’s a lot of work, we are always on the watch of her to not fall again. In between her walker and wheelchair she gets around but extremely slow and a few times a month has not made it to the bathroom on time. WHAT IM ABOUT TO SAY NEXT MAY COME ACROSS AS SELFISH BUT PLEASE DO NOT JUDGE ME.
My wife and I are 58/57 , in the best shape of our lives, running , cycling, hiking , gym etc.,. We are also very frugal with our money and have turned average incomes into a very comfortable lifestyle that we would like to start enjoying now that our children are older but we can’t because of this situation. We’ve had to cancel vacations, cannot book vacations and really cannot leave the home for longer than a few hours and we certainly are not going to ask our 20 yearish boys to look after Nonna in the event she soils herself. I didn’t ask for this, I feel trapped and to be honest the Italian Roman Catholic guilt is weighing heavy on me as I even write this.
sorry to vent but there is no way I will ever expect my boys to put their life on hold to look after me!
We had a similar situation, and I feel for you.
I am sure you've considered it, but there is assisted living facilities and the like. For a while, one of my siblings moved back in with my mother, but after a while, had to go her own way. So we did the nursing home option, which lasted only about 4 or 5 months, if that.
If that isn't an option, maybe there are ways to get hired help on a part time basis in order to free you up a little?
Thanks for sharing, and I hope it works out. These things do tend to be of a limited duration.
It irritates me to no end hearing people talk endlessly about “people aren’t having kids so they’re going to die alone blah blah blah.” Do they not realize that many of us would like kids, but the current circumstances of our culture and society (so much of which OUR generation did not create) makes the prospect of having kids seem downright terrifying? I don’t want to being kids into a world where cost of living, healthcare, and higher education has become impossibly costly, social media, the internet, and all of its toxic effects are everywhere, where once they’re elderly themselves they may well have no social safety net in terms of social security because been burned up, and where I’d worry to death they’re going to get shot just going to school. I’d love to have a family, and I know the worlds not perfect, and I’d help them as much as I could, but there’s only so much I could do and it just seems that the odds have become so stacked against raising kids successfully and ensuring that they too can have a good life. Maybe it’s a strange way to look at it but for lack of a better word, to me it almost feels like it’s just so “unfair” to them.
Life has always been this way. I'm not sure if you're a troll or not but the good things you bring up have been around for a century or less. The premise of most major religions is that life is suffering - what do we do about it?
In history, the suffering was starvation, infection, war, rape. Now it's a different beast: social isolation, depression, lack of community, etc. There is no way of quantifying if one sort of suffering is worse than another. The fact is, it's part of life.
If you don't want kids, don't have them. But I don't think the suffering of the world is any greater than it's been throughout human existence. So I don't understand this argument against having children.
If you want to compare generation's ; mental illness is more prevalent now than it ever has been throughout recorded history. The world we currently live in is the most polluted in recorded history. Air quality right now is the worst its ever been in recorded history. The food humans are currently consuming is downright toxic and the most unhealthy in recorded history. We are the first generation to be exposed to extremely high levels of EMFs, to which scientists and governments "don't know" the long term effects of. Cancer rates are exponentially higher than even 100 years ago. Anyone who's had cancer and been through that system will know that as soon you get cancer more often than not you're screwed. Say what you want about the world a few hundred years ago but they had clean air to breathe and were only consuming healthy food and drink that was not actively destroying their bodies. The amount of nature and biodiversity was exponentially better at seemingly every point throughout human history than it is now. The top scientists in the world have made it public that factually the planet is dying and the way were living is simply not sustainable. Many say climate change will begin a decline in human health so that people will just die and the population will diminish. You mention war, famine, infection, all these things are happening in the world right now, just not where we live and are from.
Life has always been this way. I'm not sure if you're a troll or not but the good things you bring up have been around for a century or less. The premise of most major religions is that life is suffering - what do we do about it?
In history, the suffering was starvation, infection, war, rape. Now it's a different beast: social isolation, depression, lack of community, etc. There is no way of quantifying if one sort of suffering is worse than another. The fact is, it's part of life.
If you don't want kids, don't have them. But I don't think the suffering of the world is any greater than it's been throughout human existence. So I don't understand this argument against having children.
If you want to compare generation's ; mental illness is more prevalent now than it ever has been throughout recorded history. The world we currently live in is the most polluted in recorded history. Air quality right now is the worst its ever been in recorded history. The food humans are currently consuming is downright toxic and the most unhealthy in recorded history. We are the first generation to be exposed to extremely high levels of EMFs, to which scientists and governments "don't know" the long term effects of. Cancer rates are exponentially higher than even 100 years ago. Anyone who's had cancer and been through that system will know that as soon you get cancer more often than not you're screwed. Say what you want about the world a few hundred years ago but they had clean air to breathe and were only consuming healthy food and drink that was not actively destroying their bodies. The amount of nature and biodiversity was exponentially better at seemingly every point throughout human history than it is now. The top scientists in the world have made it public that factually the planet is dying and the way were living is simply not sustainable. Many say climate change will begin a decline in human health so that people will just die and the population will diminish. You mention war, famine, infection, all these things are happening in the world right now, just not where we live and are from.
Okay, but with life expectancy in the US dropping, maybe with a little luck, one could close the books before it reached a full-tilt tipping point.
Sarcasm aside, I do share your concern for the environmental degradation you speak of. And I definitely agree that our current path is unsustainable, not to mention the other issues, but I feel the future of the planet is perhaps paramount.
I try to make my choices with this in mind. Furthermore, our choice to have just one child rather than several took this as one of the factors in our decision, and it was a major one, frankly.
The "Sad reality" is that in a time when you have access, often for free, to listen to some of the most thoughtful, insightful, and intelligent conversations (and conversationalists) in the world, you're instead listening to Joe Rogan.
I had a child and never thought I would, but spouse and I decided to at a late age. I wouldn't have, but the spouse, who changed their mind, decided we should give it a try. And this is a shared decision.
What I want to say is I believe vehemently that it is fine not to have kids, and this doesn't even need to be argued.
But I will also tell you from personal experience that having kids can bring out the best in you. It can and often does. Why? Because children are a raging ball of love. It's amazing, and it's hard not to see it. So, bringing them up usually raises the parents to a new level of trying and consideration and selflessness. Yes, it's a challenge, and things can go wrong, but for God's sake, have some confidence in yourself and in the world and make a vote for affirming the good in yourself and the world. It just takes a little faith, and I don't mean that in the religious sense, though that might help, too. And it can change you to be a more responsible person, and often does.
Being a parent can be a wonderful experience. It can be among the very best in life. And there's no reason it couldn't be. So please don't think that you don't want to pass along your bad character or the world is too uncertain, etc. You make the leap because you believe you can navigate it together.
Again, I believe it's perfectly okay to decide this isn't a direction for you. But I want to say to not make that decision out of fear. Parenting may help you rise above all that and in so doing, elevate the world in which you reside.
Spoken like a male in a male-female relationship, is my guess here.
I had a child and never thought I would, but spouse and I decided to at a late age. I wouldn't have, but the spouse, who changed their mind, decided we should give it a try. And this is a shared decision.
What I want to say is I believe vehemently that it is fine not to have kids, and this doesn't even need to be argued.
But I will also tell you from personal experience that having kids can bring out the best in you. It can and often does. Why? Because children are a raging ball of love. It's amazing, and it's hard not to see it. So, bringing them up usually raises the parents to a new level of trying and consideration and selflessness. Yes, it's a challenge, and things can go wrong, but for God's sake, have some confidence in yourself and in the world and make a vote for affirming the good in yourself and the world. It just takes a little faith, and I don't mean that in the religious sense, though that might help, too. And it can change you to be a more responsible person, and often does.
Being a parent can be a wonderful experience. It can be among the very best in life. And there's no reason it couldn't be. So please don't think that you don't want to pass along your bad character or the world is too uncertain, etc. You make the leap because you believe you can navigate it together.
Again, I believe it's perfectly okay to decide this isn't a direction for you. But I want to say to not make that decision out of fear. Parenting may help you rise above all that and in so doing, elevate the world in which you reside.
Spoken like a male in a male-female relationship, is my guess here.
I’d like to contribute to this conversation from a related but totally different angle. My wife and I both are from Italian immigrant parents, who came to the country in the 50s/60s, our culture , as many do, has an unwritten rule that you look after your parents when they’re old. Last June, my MIL fell at her condo, it was the 3rd time in a month and she was deemed no longer capable of living on her own and by July she was living with us. We were just on the verge of becoming empty nesters and now we are sandwiched. It’s a lot of work, we are always on the watch of her to not fall again. In between her walker and wheelchair she gets around but extremely slow and a few times a month has not made it to the bathroom on time. WHAT IM ABOUT TO SAY NEXT MAY COME ACROSS AS SELFISH BUT PLEASE DO NOT JUDGE ME.
My wife and I are 58/57 , in the best shape of our lives, running , cycling, hiking , gym etc.,. We are also very frugal with our money and have turned average incomes into a very comfortable lifestyle that we would like to start enjoying now that our children are older but we can’t because of this situation. We’ve had to cancel vacations, cannot book vacations and really cannot leave the home for longer than a few hours and we certainly are not going to ask our 20 yearish boys to look after Nonna in the event she soils herself. I didn’t ask for this, I feel trapped and to be honest the Italian Roman Catholic guilt is weighing heavy on me as I even write this.
sorry to vent but there is no way I will ever expect my boys to put their life on hold to look after me!
We had a similar situation, and I feel for you.
I am sure you've considered it, but there is assisted living facilities and the like. For a while, one of my siblings moved back in with my mother, but after a while, had to go her own way. So we did the nursing home option, which lasted only about 4 or 5 months, if that.
If that isn't an option, maybe there are ways to get hired help on a part time basis in order to free you up a little?
Thanks for sharing, and I hope it works out. These things do tend to be of a limited duration.
...those values were born in a time when everyone had large families. What usually happens is the caretaking of the parents is split among their 6-7 children, not you alone.To add to that, divorce rates are ridiculously high so now even their spouses aren't around to help.
Tying back to the topic, what allowed some people to have kids was the fact that grandparents would do some childcare. Now kids don't live with their parents or they have kids when the grandparents are too old to help. Plus a whole slew of socioeconomic issues.
I mean people can still have 6 kids in a 3 bedroom, use the welfare system and scrape by with zero savings and no vacation. Who from a middle.class background really wants to do that though?
Middle class people want a house in a crime free area, retirement, and 1-2 kids. Pretty much unaffordable nowadays unless you're in a high paying, low stress career (because very few want the stress of a kid on top of work stress)
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