An Old Classic

I love having a kid, so probably not pointed at me. I loved coaching him and his buddies as they played their first year of basketball. I love playing the rogue like he's into. I love showing him how to train his body, how math can be awesome and fun, how characters in books can teach us about ourselves. I love teaching him how to clean the bathroom and that our family only works because we all work for each other. I hope I fill his day with love and acceptance and hope he can move himself even when times are rough. I hope he and I are friends when he's thirty and I've given him a strong mind to find a place in this harsh world. I hope he finds friends that get him beyond what he does and loves all the nooks and crannies that make us lovelably human. I hope he is strong to stand up for himself and his values. And, if he has some left over, for those not as well off as him. I hope that I can give him some of this. I hope his life is filled with beauty and joy and so much more.
And fuck... I am tired. But at least on Wednesday nights I get to roll some dice with some friends.
- Oh shit I had to make sure I didn't write this. Right down to the Wednesday night D&D.
  Right on man. Parenthood is both awesome and draining. I definitely concede that if someone doesn't really want this, they're going to be miserable.

You know what will really bring us together and save our marriage?
- Definitely not traveling, going on dates, or doing the things that used to bring us joy. Let's bring a massive bundle of stress back home from the hospital.
- A rabbit!!!!!
  
  Possibly more likely than a child

This post is weirdly judgemental.
If you like your child free life so much, why do you feel the need to comment on those that aren't.
- Check the sidebar - this is /c/childfree
  I'm guessing you came here from All and didn't seek out this community specifically?
  Scrolling through All provides a glimpse into the variety the Fediverse offers. Even when I find a community I don't agree with or care to hear about, I can simply block it. Meanwhile, I'm glad that those who do value those topics have a place to discuss things.
  Which is all to say that those who feel strongly about being childfree deserve their space to talk about it, regardless of your feelings toward their opinions. This is their space, and nobody's forcing you to be here.
  
  I liked this so much I posted it to Best Of. Cheers!
- Because parents comment on our "selfish" child free life all fucking day long, I guess
  
  Do we? Are these parents in the room with us now?
- Funny how we all celebrate when leopards eat the faces of those complaining about their own actions. But for some reason when it comes to the regret of having children, people clutch their pearls.
  I'm not judging all parents. I'm judging parents that didn't think about wtf they were doing while making life decisions. The same way I judge people that voted for a clown and were shocked when they got a circus.
  
  I'd argue absolutely no parent has any idea what they're doing when they have their first kid, because it's borderline impossible to know how all encompassing it's going to be. Mostly they're just grumbling because it is hard work a lot of the time. I say this absolutely without judgement on people who don't want to have kids.
  
  Comparing this to leopards eating faces is a little much.
  My point though is, why do you care so much? Their choices don't really affect you and you're just kicking someone when their down. ~~Love~~ Live your life and let other people live theirs.
  Now if they were constantly annoying you about not having kids and then complain how kids ruined their lives, then yeah, judge away.
  Otherwise, this is just shitty.
  Edit: Love to Live
- It reminds me of MGTOW, where men don't want to associate with women (no homo apparently) but every single thing those people say is about how they're so over women or something.
  Or I guess Linux communities that talk about Windows all day.
  
  I am a single man at the moment and couldn't care less. But the MGTOW community is just too funny and lack self-awareness! Precisely why they are single, because they lack self-awareness that there is something more about them that turns off women!

I tend to attribute the fatigue and existentialism to the crumbling society my family lives in. It is a hell of a lot easier to raise kids for a future when there's a future to raise them for.

Since I was a toddler, my mother always told me: Don't have children, you'll regret it. They ruin your life. My life was so much better before you two came asking. I never wanted to have kids. Having children was your father's idea.
My sister had decided not to be 4 years old.
- My sister had decided not to be 4 years old.
  Huh?
  
  I guess she died at 3 and the mother was mourning?
- Jesus, that's so unfair to both of you. So sorry for your loss.
- I always knew I ruined my parents' lives, but they never resented me for it. They knew it wasn't my fault, I didn't choose to be born, they were the ones that had the birth control fail and then chose to not get plan B / an abortion. They didn't plan on having a baby so young, but they did, so they buckled down and did the best they could.
  I'll always love them and do anything for them for that. They had so many other life plans that just went unfulfilled because of me and my siblings, but still they were always good and loving parents to us. And we don't have to do that silly thing where they pretend that all they ever wanted in life was to be parents. We all know what really happened, and we all made the best of it together.
- I definitely had a mom that resented me. Looking back, I was treated differently for sure. I have no doubt in my mind that when my parents found out that their second child was going to be twins, my existence was cursed purely by being the second born twin. Oh well, I can only move forward. I'm glad she's dead.

I guess i must've had a child without knowing
- CapitaIism has similar symptoms.

Because some people, for one reason or another, thought that the purpose in life is to procreate. It could be their instinct, or it is through social conditioning.

This meme is pretty tame compared to other Childfree memes I’ve seen. 😂 Anyway, if it doesn’t describe you, then it’s not referring to you.

The poor kid who has to deal with this bullshit will unfortunately grow to feel guilty for their parents’ predicament that they put themselves in.

I guess the point is that you should have kids if that's your calling in life and your partner feels the same. If that's not true or you're not sure, skip it and enjoy your life without kids.

Is this childfree or parent hating? Some introspection might be in order - just saying
- Never seen a child free community that wasn't about hating on parents and children. Seems like a bitter adolescent thing tbh. What a strange way to live.
  
  If you have ever told people IRL you don't want kids the level of personal attacks you get are fucking wild.

Hurts. :(

The urge to procreate is instinctual, and having children is essential not just for the survival of our species, but also for the continued functioning of society, let alone the economy. Governments should, among a great deal of other things, be supporting parents. At a minimum, parental leave and tax incentives are essential under capitalism. Otherwise, yeah, it's easy to feel beaten down by a society that expects you to take care of multiple people with an income that is increasingly barely enough to take care of yourself, and also expects all of your time to do it, so you must choose between taking care of yourself or your family. Then to add insult to injury, they hate you for it, make memes mocking you, and devote entire forums to discussing how entitled you are.
- All of that is true, with the backdrop that while we do need to have some children, we probably actually need fewer humans on the planet. The fact that society is structured so that we need to keep increasing the population is a problem that we need to admit exists and solve, but we aren't because that also involves examining if capitalism in its current form is really the best way to run society and the billionaires have a vested interest in making sure the general populace doesn't realize that it is not.
  
  And there are also cultural things in the way to reasonable child rearing. There is nothing stopping people from making communes where groups of parents share responsibilities for a flock of children (it takes a village and whatnot) but we've somehow gotten to a point where it's all on the nuclear family and both parents work and if and only if they're lucky grandparents chip in. It's insanity.
  Edit: and I agree that making mean memes about parents is silly and counterproductive.
  
  I don’t necessarily disagree, and I definitely don’t think we should keep increasing the population without limits. But rather than jumping to extreme solutions like limiting births or promoting depopulation, we should first rethink how we structure housing, family systems, and resource distribution. Right now, we’re trying to fit humanity into an economic system that prioritizes profit and hoarding over sustainability and well-being.
  The truth is, we could support the current population, and likely even more, using far less land and fewer resources if society wasn’t organized around individualism and competition. According to the UN, a third of the food produced globally is wasted, and the wealthiest 10 percent are responsible for nearly half of global emissions. The issue isn’t raw population numbers, it’s how resources are controlled and distributed.
  As you pointed out, there is a vested interest in keeping people convinced that scarcity is natural and that we’re all to blame just for existing. Media narratives often push this idea, especially through social platforms, that subtly frame nihilism and depopulation as common sense. Meanwhile, the wealthiest few continue to hoard not just wealth but the power to shape public discourse.
  The idea that we’ll have more if there are fewer people serves only those who already have the most. It diverts our frustration away from the structures of exploitation and toward each other. We should be asking why we’re being told to stifle nature and make do with less while billionaires accumulate enough to support entire nations.
- There are already 8 billion humans, countries have destroyed 80-90% of their forests to put plantations to feed animals to feed ourselves and our children while we waste a big chunk of it. Not to talk about the tons of rubbish we create in the process and a pollution that may already doomed us.
  And we want more and more. When will be enough? At 20 billion? Or do we make infinite children? Maybe actually stopping having children before it's too late is the essential for the survival of our species.
  And for the continued functioned of society and the economy? Yeah you are right here. But again when will be enough? At 20 billion? Or do we make infinite children for infinite continuation of the economy? The economy is slowly collapsing already.
  
  Overpopulation is not the cause of global collapse. That way of thinking always leads to the poor people getting blamed for even existing. We can sustain more people. What we can't sustain is our wasteful Western materialistic way of life. Let's start by eliminating industrial scale cattle farming.
- I don’t see the survival of our species as a great selling point. We’ve basically fucked everything up.