echidna

OK, it’s in MFP (a) for continuity and (b) because judgementalism etc are moral questions. I hope PB doesn’t object to replying as a new thread, but …

Oh look, this is a very sore point with me at present. My demographic has just entered the "squeezing out babies" phase & the transformation has been quite remarkable & not entirely good IMO.

No I’m not married, or even attached at present. I was being chastised for this last night AAMOF. I think I subscribe to the engineer and the talking frog principle that a kiss would transform her into a beautiful princess, but a talking frog would be kinda neat as well, and not as much heartache either …

But back to friends, yes there seems little duller than infinitely proud parents. Let me list my gripes :

1. You’ll never believe, but little Aiden actually walked 3 steps yesterday (etc etc for 25 minutes).
2. Oh but you HAVE to breast-feed, ALL the studies prove that babies who aren’t breast-fed will have problems (etc for reading, swimming lessons, foods, music, yadda yadda yadda).
3. Of course you wouldn’t understand because you don’t have kids.
4. And as for Patricia, well fancy feeding potato chips to her kids, I always knew she’d never be a good mother.
5. Did you wash your hands ? Don’t go giving her germs now.
6. But are you really happy ? I mean you don’t have children after all …

I mean, kids are great & stuff. In fact I’m leading 12 disabled kids for a steam train trip tomorrow as part of my volunteer work / hobby, and it’s great fun.

But I also have a wild and heretical theory, that one can actually lead a fun and full life without ankle-biters as well.

Personally I blame it all on hormones.

(PB didn’t need to be in the title any more)

[ March 03, 2002: Message edited by: echidna ]</p>

WWSD

Originally posted by echidna:



Oh look, this is a very sore point with me at present. My demographic has just entered the "squeezing out babies" phase & the transformation has been quite remarkable & not entirely good IMO.


I too, have found myself surrounded by baby producers, and it is a sore point with me as well.
I am even near someone who continues to remind us that her colck is ticking. She is now telling us about the plans she has for her children AND THEY DON'T EVEN EXIST YET! To make matters worse she insists that they are going to attend private Catholic schools for thier entire education because, according to this person, Catholic schools are the best.



No I?m not married, or even attached at present. I was being chastised for this last night AAMOF.



This is another sore point for me as well. I am single and not wanting a relationship to screw my life up with, yet the baby producers insist that I need to be in one. Doggedly insist at that. I guess I am just a loser since I don't have a girlfriend.



1. You?ll never believe, but little Aiden actually walked 3 steps yesterday (etc etc for 25 minutes).


I get poop and puke stories as well.
And this makes me want to have children why?



3. Of course you wouldn?t understand because you don?t have kids.



Or, "its different when they're yours." Heard 'em both.



6. But are you really happy ? I mean you don?t have children after all ?



Relating back to my lack of a relationship. How can anyone be truely happy if they're alone?
I cannot say I am happy in my current situation, but I think I'd be even less happy if I had a relationship and even more unhappy if I had offspring. And why should we all have kids anyway, just to add more humans to this already over used earth? Great, lets just see how far we can overpopulate our world. GRrrrrrrrrrr...



But I also have a wild and heretical theory, that one can actually lead a fun and full life without ankle-biters as well.



You are insane if that's what you think. Obviously you can never be truely content if you don't have two or more children running around giving you thier pathogens and costing you money. Sure, they're cute. When they're QUIET!



Personally I blame it all on hormones.


You and me both. Its all about our evolutionary drive to make babies. It is undeniably one of the strongest drives we have. It all starts with our urge to find a mate, one that makes us depressed if we fail, and then its on to kids. If god did this, he is a prick.


So if you haven't figured out my answer from the above, then yes, yes they are annoying. Very annoying.




[ February 28, 2002: Message edited by: WWSD ]</p>

alek0

I have a hard time to decide who is more annoying: new parents or my own family. I hate that sort of talk "Do you know what happened? baby just cut his first tooth!" and this goes on for half an hour. But what I hate even more is when my parents and what's worse younger sister who is married and has a kid start with "when are you going to get married and have kids? Even if I would get married (which is highly unlikely" I don't want kids and that's that.

Equally bad as insinuations that one cannot be happy without marriage and kids (if that is a rule, I'm an exception, and considering many cases within my own extended family it doesn't seem a valid rule) is that "You'll change your mind when you get older/are over 30" with frequent addition "but it may be too late and it'll be heartbreaking". Well, I am 30 now and if anything I feel more strongly than before about not wanting kids.

crab juice

I'm coming at this from another angle...I have 2 young kids, and it seems that nobody thinks I have any interest in anything besides my children. They won't talk to me about anything else. I had a baby, not a lobotomy, for Jebus' sake. I can't even ride on the fucking bus without someone trying to paw my kids or asking me all sorts of questions about them. Unless you are a close friend or member of the family, I assume that you couldn't care less about sleep schedules, diaper contents, or the malapropisms that my toddler comes up with. My kids are very important to me, but that doesn't mean that others feel the same way.

Before I was married and had kids, I got the same kind of pressure many of you are getting, and if I wanted to be polite to whoever was asking me, I'd smile and ask them, "You do realize, don't you, that you are asking me personal questions about my sex life"? If I wanted to be rude, I'd tell them that living in sin was waaay more fun and quote John Waters' Polyester, "Children would get in the way of our erotic lifestyle".

I think it's sort of like religion, actually. Those that are secure with their decisions are the least likely to try to push their beliefs onto others. Why is it that the folks who try to encourage others to pair up and reproduce generally are in crappy relationships or have bratty little kids themselves (of course no kid is good all the time)? I want to see people getting married and having kids only because they really really want to...then again, peer pressure never really worked on me.

Pomp

I guess I should say something here, since my name is in the title.

My demographic has just entered the "squeezing out babies" phase & the transformation has been quite remarkable & not entirely good IMO.

Ha! Mine too. I would love to be able to play with/take care of a friend’s child without being told repeatedly how wonderful I am with children and how I should have one of my own soon.

1. You’ll never believe, but little Aiden actually walked 3 steps yesterday (etc etc for 25 minutes).

“She’s using sentences now!” “She knows where her nose is now!”

3. Of course you wouldn’t understand because you don’t have kids.

I hate this one most of all.

5. Did you wash your hands ? Don’t go giving her germs now.

The first of my friends to have a baby turned her hands into chapped, bleeding wrecks because she washed them every 5-10 minutes in the first few weeks after bringing her son home. I am not exaggerating.

I mean, kids are great & stuff. In fact I’m leading 12 disabled kids for a steam train trip tomorrow as part of my volunteer work / hobby, and it’s great fun.

Hell, yes. I’ve been coaching local soccer teams for years. Had I finished college, I would have been a teacher. None of this means I want the constant responsibility of raising my own kids!

But I also have a wild and heretical theory, that one can actually lead a fun and full life without ankle-biters as well.

Blasphemer!

Personally I blame it all on hormones.

I’d go half hormones and half conditioning. You’re supposed to have kids. Once someone has their own, I think it’s more that they want their friends to be in the same situation so they can relate.

tronvillain

Well, my peers are just barely starting to get married, so I've obviously got a while before the "squeezing out babies" phase. There was an article I was reading yesterday, possibly in the Georgia Straight, about organizations for people who've decided not to have children.

1. You’ll never believe, but little Aiden actually walked 3 steps yesterday (etc etc for 25 minutes).

Actually, I don't mind these stories at all.

2. Oh but you HAVE to breast-feed, ALL the studies prove that babies who aren’t breast-fed will have problems (etc for reading, swimming lessons, foods, music, yadda yadda yadda).

Well, being in favour of breast-feeding myself, I don't see a problem with this one.

3. Of course you wouldn’t understand because you don’t have kids.

It's possible I suppose, but it seems unlikely.

4. And as for Patricia, well fancy feeding potato chips to her kids, I always knew she’d never be a good mother.

Yes, that's unwarranted - potato chips can be an important part of a balanced breakfast.

5. Did you wash your hands ? Don’t go giving her germs now.

I agree that being needlessly overprotective is annoying.

6. But are you really happy ? I mean you don't have children after all ...

That would definitely get annoying, especially if the only reason you're not "really happy" at the moment is people pestering you about not having children.

My current girlfriend and I aren't especially enthusiastic about children, though we do think they're cute.

[ February 28, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

echidna

Purge purge purge. This has really been bugging the shit outta me for the last couple of years.

For a New Year’s Resolution I promised to organise a toddler-friendly bushwalk for friends. And can I just say the organisation was exhausting !!! The grown-ups were impossible, whinging about the weather, how much they’d need to carry, don’t have tents, etc etc etc. Every step of the way they wanted an excuse why it was all too hard, and always was the "oh but you don’t understand, you don’t have 3 kids" – quite demoralising.

"You KNOW little Sami hates walking !!"
"That’s OK, I’ll carry him. We’ve got a spare carrier."
"OK, but he’ll want to go home as soon as we start you know."

And yet I persisted, did their shopping, borrowed and organised their camping gear, even when the morning began with drizzle, I plucked up the courage to lie "there’s good weather coming through".

Somehow we got all 10 of us there on Saturday afternoon. The heavens smiled and gave us blue skies after all, and the 5 kids had a great time. NO ONE needed to be carried (save maybe one of the mothers). Sami’s parents were simply amazed & they’d never seen him like it before. Smugly it’s exactly how I was hoping they would take to the outdoors.

In the end, one mother decided that her youngest had had enough. Only a quick enthusiastic question to little Jemahl was enough to reveal that Jemahl still wanted to walk, but that it was Mum who had had enough. Little Alana was so absorbed by the trees that she cried every time she was picked up.

Needless to say I’m under request to plan another weekend for March or April. And I’m also very pleased with myself.

I love being an honorary uncle, but for being a father, who knows ? although it’s anathema to a parent, I don’t believe that parents are the sole authority on their children, and we uncles and aunts, despite no formal qualifications, are not completely miserable dunces.

echidna

By the way crab juice, a close friend’s daughter is now 3 months old, and for a long time we’ve talked about the social changes which children bring.

She’s actually quite sensitive that not everyone is so obsessed with their children, and pledged prior to her pregnancy that she would not join the "mothers club". True to her word, she is little changed and little phased by the experience. No less love for little Rhiannan, but she is less judgemental of those who are not blessed either by choice or by circumstance. And still very determined to enjoy the same things with a baby as she did before.

But it’s not an easy time & the social dynamics can be quite disruptive for everybody.

Unfortunately babies do make an even easier topic of discussion than the weather. There's a school of thought which suggests that babies are what happens when the relationship runs out of conversation.

(Funny, I was explaining the definition and etymology of "malapropism" only yesterday at work, not the most common word one comes across.)

Ms. Siv

echidna, Its been a little more than a year since I got married and the pressure is intense for me to start breeding. We dont plan on doing that for at least 1-2 more years and I bet some people are going to think something's wrong with me or my husband. Oh well.... cant be helped

And there's this recurring argument I have with my sister (who has 2 kids and has given up a wonderful challenging career for them, at least for now!). She says family is what life is all about. Getting married, having kids, taking care of them. The "breeding and rearing" cycle. Sure, thats what our genes want us to do. But thank goodness we've been able to overcome our genetic propensities to a considerable extent.
I try and tell her that there's more to life than breeding and she'll immediately shoot back : "Like what ? Science ? You think everything is logic ?" (why do skeptics always get this response, sooner or later?).
The other point on which we argue is whether or not a woman should give up her career for her family. According to her any moral woman would (Grrrr... dont get me started on this!) and in my opinion - "NO WAY!!!".
Its quite tiresome actually.

Thats a myth. Earlier, the standard advice if you were having a troubled relationship was to have a baby. Now the advice is "Please dont ever think of having a baby before you sort things out!".
Babies can break an already strained relationship.

- Sivakami.

Pomp

Sivakami,

...me or my husband...

For some reason, I had you pegged as a guy. I hate it when I'm wrong!

I'd add more stories, but this is quickly turning into a Rants thread...quick, anyone have a way to relate this back to Moral Foundations?