Reply #229: They pay for our Social Security, fight our wars, infrastructure, etc

[mntleo2]

...children are our future. It is more global than just about "me."

Unless we can find a way to dig up that plumbing line with our canes, or change our own adult diapers when we can no longer do it, or drive ourselves to the doctor when we've gone blind, fix our roads, and run our country when we are too old to do it, someone from a previous generation will do it, so the next generation, whether our own kids or someone else's WILL care for us. They all will also pay our Social Security as we have paid for the previous generations. If we spend our lives considering child raising as merely "taking" from society it is no wonder our children grow up taking too, because they have not been taught they are precious and valued for the future they hold. After all what good were they except some millstone around adult's necks?

Believe me, I had the same attitudes, and bought the crap that the "only" way to contribute to my society while raising my kids was saying, "Do you want fries with that?" This was wrong, wrong, wrong! They became secondary to work that, truthfully was *not* my family and *not* anyone to put my faith and expectations into because well, when your employer is done with you they just throw you away and get a "new" one. If I had had the encouragement and the support to put the same effort into my family as I have done for paid work, I believe we would all be better off.

Without becoming a multi-millionaire, none of these things can anyone do alone. Raising kids is the most important thing you can do for your country, if you want it to continue after you are gone. While choosing not to have kids is considered noble, it is merely taking care of yourself, and while this may be a fine thing, the truth is somebody younger than you, whether you pay them or not, WILL be the ones to love and care for you when you can no longer do it.

The saddest part about all this is that, people seem to think care giving is not work. It is consider to be like some sort of hobby or something. The only way to "contribute" to our society is to work for some corporate CEO so he gets richer. Meanwhile poor families languish and struggle because, well they are not "contributing" like that rich CEO and his worker bees do. We all need to support ourselves and our families, but the problem with this thinking is, while we work and consume all that energy, resources and fleeting paycheck, we are merely leaving pollution, depleted resources, no community support, and eventually experience our own poverty and illness because of that work. Our best and most hopeful "renewable" resource is the future generations.

Care giving of our children is doing something for our future. Care giving for our elders is honoring our past for the work they have done. Neither are well supported in this country while other more civilized nations honor this work and support it because they know and recognize our need to go on. They are not just about "me" they see that this work not only takes care of "me" but "we." Paid or not, if we want decent, educated, caring people to care for us, then we need to support care giving so that the next generation will have the moral incentives to take care of our past and future and continue to create a good society where all benefit because of the "other."

Cat in Seattle