Be childfree
May. 14th, 2017 05:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alex_antoninThought this was worth repeating here.
A question from Quora: Why don’t I, a straight and healthy young man, like the idea of having children?
My answer:
It’s understandable. Infants are ugly, drooling little poop machines, like little senile old people, but young and empty-headed instead of old and senile. Also, they’re a drain on resources even before being born, and even in our modern era, being pregnant and giving birth is still only slightly safer for uterus-bearers than is tightrope walking over a pit of boiling lava.
Toddlers are basically infants that can say the same few words *ad nauseum* and run around chasing danger wherever it may lurk. It doesn’t help that they have very little sense of self preservation and constantly need to be stopped from killing themselves horribly. Trying to negotiate with toddlers is good practice for a career in hostage negotiation, because until they learn the basics of life in this world, they’re forever holding themselves hostage: “GIVE ME WHAT I WANT NOW OR I’LL KILL MYSELF!”
The only consolation with a toddler is they are, at least, beginning to approach being cute, even if they’re still not much better looking than they were when they were hideous little big-headed monstrosities with fat, useless little limbs. Seriously, what is the appeal of infants? I’ve seen cuter things in my toilet after taking a massive dump.
Kids only really start getting cute around age 5 or 6, peaking around ages 7 through 9, at which point they begin to go downhill. By around age 11 or 12, just as they’ve started to stabilize emotionally and mentally, along comes the puberty monster to turn them into larger and slightly more intelligent toddlers, but with raging hormones and the discovery of the libido, unless they’re lucky enough to be asexual. (Gods, I wish I had been asexual in my teens. I was hornier than an ankylosaurus growing up, with no outlet because I was a hideous and bloated monstrosity, possessing all the social standing of a dead sewer rat. But I digress.)
The teenage years are basically your body installing an entirely new lymbic system and setting it to MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. (In “Agents of Shield,” when Ada gets her new human body and goes apeshit with the overpowering emotions, that’s sort of the same idea.) Absolutely everything becomes earth-shatteringly important, life or death. There are more ups and down than a thousand people on pogo sticks that occasionally either shoot into space or down into the crust of the earth.
It takes a huge toll on the teenager, and probably an even larger toll on the parents who have to deal with the constant crises.
And so yeah, kids are a lifelong investment, costing thousands of dollars over time, and are emotionally exhausting. I haven’t had kids myself, but I was 9 when my sister was born, and she took about 10 years to grow out of her terrible twos. It was like a war zone in our house, I’m not even exaggerating. She could howl loud enough to be heard several streets away, and could do it for HOURS. I hope if she ever has kids, she has THREE just like her!
In conclusion, kids: don’t have them unless you have enough money, and the patience of a saint.
A question from Quora: Why don’t I, a straight and healthy young man, like the idea of having children?
My answer:
It’s understandable. Infants are ugly, drooling little poop machines, like little senile old people, but young and empty-headed instead of old and senile. Also, they’re a drain on resources even before being born, and even in our modern era, being pregnant and giving birth is still only slightly safer for uterus-bearers than is tightrope walking over a pit of boiling lava.
Toddlers are basically infants that can say the same few words *ad nauseum* and run around chasing danger wherever it may lurk. It doesn’t help that they have very little sense of self preservation and constantly need to be stopped from killing themselves horribly. Trying to negotiate with toddlers is good practice for a career in hostage negotiation, because until they learn the basics of life in this world, they’re forever holding themselves hostage: “GIVE ME WHAT I WANT NOW OR I’LL KILL MYSELF!”
The only consolation with a toddler is they are, at least, beginning to approach being cute, even if they’re still not much better looking than they were when they were hideous little big-headed monstrosities with fat, useless little limbs. Seriously, what is the appeal of infants? I’ve seen cuter things in my toilet after taking a massive dump.
Kids only really start getting cute around age 5 or 6, peaking around ages 7 through 9, at which point they begin to go downhill. By around age 11 or 12, just as they’ve started to stabilize emotionally and mentally, along comes the puberty monster to turn them into larger and slightly more intelligent toddlers, but with raging hormones and the discovery of the libido, unless they’re lucky enough to be asexual. (Gods, I wish I had been asexual in my teens. I was hornier than an ankylosaurus growing up, with no outlet because I was a hideous and bloated monstrosity, possessing all the social standing of a dead sewer rat. But I digress.)
The teenage years are basically your body installing an entirely new lymbic system and setting it to MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. (In “Agents of Shield,” when Ada gets her new human body and goes apeshit with the overpowering emotions, that’s sort of the same idea.) Absolutely everything becomes earth-shatteringly important, life or death. There are more ups and down than a thousand people on pogo sticks that occasionally either shoot into space or down into the crust of the earth.
It takes a huge toll on the teenager, and probably an even larger toll on the parents who have to deal with the constant crises.
And so yeah, kids are a lifelong investment, costing thousands of dollars over time, and are emotionally exhausting. I haven’t had kids myself, but I was 9 when my sister was born, and she took about 10 years to grow out of her terrible twos. It was like a war zone in our house, I’m not even exaggerating. She could howl loud enough to be heard several streets away, and could do it for HOURS. I hope if she ever has kids, she has THREE just like her!
In conclusion, kids: don’t have them unless you have enough money, and the patience of a saint.