No Kids - No Debt - No Regret

[DeschutesRiver]

167. Has been nothing to "understand", until this post and the last paragraph explained your real issue

Last edited Mon Dec 31, 2012, 04:45 PM - Edit history (3)

Had you been more clear on what is really bothering you, we could have dispensed with a lot of this, except it is interesting to think about all these issues as they relate to our aging population, and what we think of them, and how we respect our elders (or not).

So I get it - elder care is not the issue about which you are concerned.

Rather it is that you find childless people who think they are in any way benefiting society as much as you did when you had children to be "down right irritating." I will take your interpretation of post #79 for the moment, as I can't find it up thread & my dialup is very sticky this morning due to cold weather. Here are a few alternative explanations off the top of my head:

Valid reasons other than smugness for believing that not having children is a great service to society:

1. Some people believe that not contributing to overpopulation is a benefit to society. One thing I know as fact is that the U.S. population wasn't 313 million when I was born or growing up.

2. Some people believe that climate change is real, and that one way to mitigate our impact is to have fewer people. Not enlarging one's carbon footprint in this way would be considered a benefit to society.

3. Some people believe that to not have a child when you have a heritable mental illness that is life altering results in a benefit to society. Same would be true if one made the childless decision due to alcoholism, drug addiction that has not been resolved and could result in a child being born with a fetal syndrome, etc. Can not see how this is not both a great benefit to society and a noble personal sacrifice by someone who desperately wants a child but who consciously chooses to make this tough call (because there is no guarantee that the child would have had the illness too, for example, in the case of mental illness in the family tree).

4. Some people believe that not having a child because you do not want to have a child is a benefit to society. One could argue that at a minimum whatever societal services may be needed by that child as it is raised or after it grows up will not be incurred by society, which is a benefit.

Valid reasons for why childless people can pay for services that others choose to use their children to provide to them for free:

1. Those who have, as you state, "a whole hell of a lot more time" often choose to spend it working, which benefits society.

2. Those who have, as you state, "a whole lot more money", probably have the exact same amount of money you have. But since it will not cost them the "hundreds of thousands of dollars" that it cost you to raise children, they will deploy those same "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to providing jobs to children that other people like you raised. Not just in elder care areas later in life, but throughout their lives. Maybe they take the extra money they can make in the time they don't spend raising a kid, and use that too for their needs. Maybe they donate it to charities and philanthropy of any size, large or small. And it resulted from their decision to not have children. Our entire economy relies on jobs, which are performed in the main by people who were "raised by other people". I cannot see the evil in this, and would count it as another societal benefit. It is different from how a person with children contributes to society, but it is not a failure to contribute just as much even though childless.

Childless people who raise awareness in others of how it can be just as beneficial in some cases to not have kids as it would be to have raised kids aren't necessarily being smug, any more than are parents who point out their sacrifices and contributions to society by having had kids. Nor is someone who points out the societal benefits of their decision to not have children taking away those other societal benefits made possible by the decision to have children. It doesn't take much effort to think of hundreds of examples of potential benefits to society by making either choice. Anyone who believes this is a one way street is mistaken.

And if everyone decided to not have children, getting old would not be a horrific experience. Getting old would not exist in the first place. Of course, there hasn't been an instance of a total refusal to procreate occurring globally in recorded history, and it would have to happen globally to be of any significance. If I have missed an example, lmk. Otherwise, I can think of localized historical examples, such as populations who send their young ones off to wars from which they do not return, leaving the older ones behind who can't repopulate. But in those cases, they either find people (say they raid other tribes for slaves or children, for ex. after devastating war situations) or they die because they can't meet their needs. And in the meanwhile, their part in civilization comes to an end, while the rest of the world chugs on procreating.

So unless this instance of no one having children goes global and occurs simultaneously, it isn't an issue.

ETA: Do you perhaps live in an area where either younger or older or retired childless people do not volunteer in their spare time, so maybe you aren't aware of their contributions in that regard? Or are not aware that childless people of all ages pay school district taxes either directly through home ownership or indirectly through rent payments, thus helping to fund the future of those younger people that you state shouldn't have to take a job working for people who refuse to birth their own caregivers? Or never thought about how people without kids may be the ones who have the time to fill in for co-workers who have child related emergencies and issues, or who are on parental leave that isn't given to the childless, who may be caretakers for their own elderly parents or relatives? Are none of these things a benefit to society?