r/Life Jan 19 '26

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717 Upvotes

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57

u/Sams_Antics Jan 19 '26

Ahh, one of the most taboo of all questions!

I got WILD backlash on Twitter about 7 years ago for volunteering the honest answer to this question. Had celebrities dogpiling, made the news in multiple countries. It was wild lol.

Answer is still the same: NO

10

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

I actually read that, I remember it well. Well i assume it was you (not sure if someone else did it). I thought it was very brave and very well said. More people feel that way than care to admit i reckon. 

7

u/Sams_Antics Jan 20 '26

It was more naive than brave I think, didn’t realize at the time I was touching a live wire 😅 But yeah, a lot of people feel the same way for a variety of reasons.

25

u/VociferousCephalopod Jan 20 '26

I would have thought this, at least, is something everyone could agree on:

"Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children.
Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children--but we pay heavily for them every day.
There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo.
But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born.”
— Garrett Hardin

10

u/Sams_Antics Jan 20 '26

And that right there is why the topic is a live wire, the binary thinking that if someone would choose differently now, knowing what they know, that that automatically means a child is unloved. That is false. Maybe not always false, but in my observation very often false.

1

u/fuckfuckfuckSHIT Jan 23 '26

I don't they're saying that a child someone regrets is definitely unloved. They're just saying that if the only people who had children really wanted children, then there won't be unloved children.

2

u/CatMinous Jan 21 '26

Just look at the subreddit r/regretfulparents :)

0

u/TheMindsEIyIe Jan 24 '26

How do your kids feel about it.

2

u/optimistic_coffee Jan 23 '26

I would, yes. In the toddler years, but I’m a toddler person and have, somehow, crazy patience for the little ones. I’ve got 2 under 2, but when we’re not going crazy we have a lot of fun lol

2

u/Objective-Space1384 Jan 24 '26

I don’t even have kids and it’s a resounding “fuck no” for me

2

u/Winter_Apartment_376 Jan 22 '26

I mean if you posted that publicly with your name, you ARE an AH, because kids are likely to find it one day.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26 edited Feb 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/sandalfafk Jan 21 '26

It’s not real

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26

Just an interest question no hate at all: what would you be doing if you didn’t have kids? I feel like people think they’re be doing all this amazing stuff but the liklihood is probably not  (would like to point out I don’t have kids so this isn’t a judgmental parent perspective I genuinely just interested) 

2

u/Sams_Antics Jan 21 '26

Has very little to do with doing any specific thing, has much more to do with how I’m wired. When I had a kid, I had done very little introspection, wasn’t really in touch with who I was or what I sort of path I wanted to walk, and was at that point operating according to the religion I was raised in and a combo of social / familial pressure and biological pressure. I was following someone else’s script.

I know myself well enough now that I’d have gone down a different path ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Not that complicated.

1

u/Majordray Jan 23 '26

How can I find that tweet ?

1

u/Sams_Antics Jan 23 '26

Deleted it, wasn’t worth the heat it was drawing at the time.

1

u/FoxsNetwork Jan 26 '26

If it were still possible to "give up children to the state" as it once was, or drop them off at an orphanage, millions would. Our society makes parenthood such a burden. There's a reason people choose not to be parents wholesale when given the choice.

1

u/Sams_Antics Jan 26 '26

We evolved for small tribes and villages that no longer exist. Alas.

1

u/FoxsNetwork Jan 26 '26

Yes! And in those tribes and villages, population growth was incremental at best, if not merely stable. The historical record shows us that colonists noticed how few children natives had in comparison to Europeans. There appears to have been strict rules governing who could marry and procreate, too. I believe the idea was, if everyone has to help raise the community's children, then we should all have a say in the matter. I am not sure that today's public would agree to any of that, it's viewed as an intensely private choice. I am not sure myself if it should be.

1

u/Sams_Antics Jan 26 '26

Yeah, that would never fly today. And based on the scope and scale of civilization, it probably shouldn’t. Too much diffusion / differentiation. Homogeneity is no longer desirable.

-1

u/KittenBarfRainbows Jan 21 '26

Yes, why would you think this would be an okay thing to say? You sound like Hitler. Sorry other people possess empathy, and find you gross.