what’s wrong if a person don’t want to have children ?

Nothing is wrong with individuals deciding not to have children based on their personal situation or preferences but the fact remains that somebody must have children and have access to the resources necessary to raise them up to be productive adults. In the present system parents shoulder enormous economic burdens to create the future adults that will produce the economy that people like you will need. As the cost of raising children climbs, fewer and fewer people can afford to do so.

Those who follow a “live for today” ethos can only do so because someone else plans for tomorrow.

YES!!!!! That’s the best idea yet.

The more the government meddles, the more people feel entitled to control their neighbors’ behavior.

There’s no reason for me to care if you drink and smoke to much, as long as I’m not forced to pay the consequences of your decisions.

Why should you care if I was a bad financial planner my whole life, if you aren’t forced to pick up the tab and support me?

What difference should it make to me if you have a lot of kids, as long as you are paying for them yourself?

What difference should it make to you if I have NO kids, as long as there exists no Social Security that allows me to mooch off of your kids?

(Although hasn’t anyone considered the idea that if you have kids you are creating future drains on that system as well?)

Remove the government from ALL those aspects of our lives, and let people live as they see fit. Then we all do as we please, associate with whom we wish, and we all mind our own damn business, as things should be in a free country.

And what do you mean by ‘primitive’ societies? That’s most of the world. Most of the world doesn’t live at Western standards.
http://www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/
Easy breakdown of stats, both nationally and internationally.

As for your idiotic idea that things are better than they were 100 years ago, maybe true, but it’s not true for 50 years ago. And our life expectancy in the USA isn’t even in the top 10 worldwide. Our maternal mortality rate is a shame–but since it’s mostly poor, minority women doing the dying, I guess they just don’t count as much as YOU do.

MORE STUFF:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/ipvfacts.htm
http://home.cybergrrl.com/dv/stat/statgen.html
here’s some on maternal mortality
http://gentlebirth.org/archives/matmrtlt.html

Listen, sweetie, if you want to get married, live with a man, and then get beat up, I don’t care. You probably will since you seem to think it can’t happen to you, and as such, are far more likely to set yourself up. Of course, you’ll blame everyone but yourself, and insist that it’s not your fault, when in fact since you chose to connect with that man, it is your fault.

That’s what gets me about domestic violence, the women choose to be there, choose to stay, and then cry and whine when things get out of hand. That’s one of the things you missed–it’s up to the woman to stay out of harm’s way, and since we know there is such a high rate of abuse, any woman who stays around after the first slap has it coming.

It’s rather ironic that the move to create ways for women to escape domestic violence over the past 30 years has resulted in a drop in the rate of MEN getting killed by wives, but the rate of wives being killed by husbands hasn’t decreased.

As for YOU being unaware of standards of living going down, you must be very young. My parents’ generation could afford to own homes, have one wage earner, etc, and now, fewer and fewer ‘families’ can afford the basics we took for granted in the 60s and 70s. We weren’t a deficit spending nation back then, had a trade balance, and there were no homeless–we had cheaper rents and jobs. The platoons of homeless on the streets of america began in the Reagan years.

Your youth doesn’t excuse you from doing historical research, and simply asserting that you aren’t aware of a problem doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

My point was that the earth was producing enough food; at this point, the problem lies more in distribution and the use of food as a weapon.

Sarcasm doesn’t really carry your argument. If you want to believe that childbirth is a difficult and even painful experience, you are correct. That it is much less deadly than for previous generations (in all but the most primitive of modern societies) is also a fact. That it is, in fact, seldom fatal in modern societies is a fact whose importance we should all keep in mind.

My impression is that you are spending a lot of time trying to reassure yourself that the path you have chosen in life is not only your choice but the only good one. You might ask yourself what you need to prove – I don’t care if you make this choice intelligently.

Intelligently doesn’t mean buying into the hogwash you are peddling in these posts nor considering, as your earlier posts indicate, men as a separate and enemy species. That would mean you are losing many of the pleasures of this life which can come down to conversations and fellowship with your fellow humans.

No, I don’t see our standard of living as getting worse. Are you speaking of longevity, level of pain & illness, access to opportunity for education, material well-being? Are you even discussing wars & violent deaths in the world at large? In America? What are you talking about?

By most of those standards, an American – and indeed, inhabitants of the world – born this year is much better off than one born a hundred years ago.

Personal attacks are not convincing – whether aimed at the original writer of this post nor at me.

Trolling may give you pleasure but it is probably a waste of my time to respond to you. Remarks of extraordinary naivete uttered with such an unearned world weary sarcasm probably indicate that it is the world you need to experience and talk is not effective at this time in your life.

If you live – really live – you’ll find a much more complicated world than your ideology lets you see now. Good luck. Of course, you’ll find experiences that reinforce your opinions if you see the world through that narrow prism – but it won’t be a real life you are living.

Childbearing is a strain on a woman’s body, as any woman who had children can tell you. Only our species has a significant risk of maternal mortality, due to the large head size of the species, and the fact we’re bipedal.

Only American children are getting so fat, and if you had any medical knowledge, you’d know that a person can be malnourished and obese. The rest of the world still has lots of starving children, or those Christian children charities are all lying, as is Unicef.

Women who breed have a lowered life expectancy, and maternal mortality worldwide is far from what you describe. You need to pull your head out of your ass and realize that the real world isn’t like your little ‘burb . .. tell me, have you even gotten out of school yet?

Now, can you actually come up with an argument with actual proof? Like the FACT that the standard of living for Americans is getting worse, not better. Can’t you see what is right in front of you? Or are you so isolated from reality and history that you really don’t know?

You don’t seem to understand that men and women are of the same species. If you enjoy living your life alone, that is fine. That can be a fulfilling choice.

Most men, however, do not brutalize their wives. While women do feel that their children take from them much, they generally feel they give back more. When we live with others we give up some of our independence. Most of us intermittently feel that loss. Most of us more often feel that the others with whom we interact enrich our lives. You don’t have to believe that. And, for you, that may well not have been your experience. As those who live in a family should not consider your life empty, you might be wiser not to consider ours oppressed.

Your argument seems derived from a mind so captured by a narrow & cramped ideology that it can’t examine its own arguments. It is you who need liberating. Facts can make you free because they are solid – you can stand on them. YOu can’t stand on figments of someone else’s imagination. Again, your argument is not based on fact – from the rate of reproduction to the form of capitalism to human nature.

As far as carrying capacity, ask yourself why at this time are we more worried about obesity in children than starvation? Ask yourself why women live longer than men if childbearing is such a strain on our bodies?

Breeding is a ‘natural function’ but we are supposed to be rational, not driven by instincts and hormones. We can’t support the human beings here now, and we should be telling women that it’s in no ones best interest, especially the children’s, to add to the casualty list.

And yes, capitalism is a Ponzi scheme. A very elaborate and complex Ponzi scheme, since you can’t have unrestrained growth in anything.

As far for not understanding human relationships, you are way off base. I know them only too well. According to the TV ads, women have a 1 in 4 chance of being victims of domestic violence. Those are horrible odds. In fact, about 80% of the violent crimes in the USA are committed by cohabitants–the stresses of living together make a huge number of people lose it, which is why every person needs his/her own space. If a woman never cohabitates with a man, she has a 0 in 4 chance of being a victim of domestic violence. If you controlled for this by removing single women, then the odds of being attacked increase. Do the math.

The reason feminism failed is that you can’t have a union of scabs. Most women will gladly sell out other women, will gladly turn a blind eye to the abuse of other women, and thus, by going along to get along, help perpetuate this cycle.

Does the name “Quisling” mean anything to you?

Didn’t think so, Auntie Tom.

Do you have any sense that your diatribe is sexist? I’m not sure what “proof” you have that Shannon is a “woman-hating freak,” and am curious what prompted you to say that.

I wouldn’t agree with all of his arguments but they are not derived from sexism. That you would assume someone who respected and wanted to encourage child-bearing is sexist says a good deal more about you than him. That you would argue that bearing children, a natural function of our bodies, is equivalent to “attempted murder” is funny but reveals a disturbed perspective.

Your comments, however, indicate other beliefs that are less wrong than disproportionate. Yes, parents are more likely to kill their own children than are strangers. But your context implies you have little sense of the proportion of such acts and that you have even less sense of why most people would sacrifice themselves for their children.

At least your allusion doesn’t appear to reflect a belief that we, as humans, are cancers on the earth. I was waiting for that one. Sure, we’ll probably become extinct. I don’t think Shannon’s belief that reproduction should be encouraged is likely to have much bearing one way or another on that.

Capitalism is not a Ponzi scheme – though such aberrations may appear in capitalist society.

This seems to arise from the cheapest kind of anti-male bias as well as a weak & cynical understanding of human relationships.
If you were trolling to irritate, well, you irritated me – probably more than Shannon. If you are serious, then I am sorry you see life in such a distorted way. Your ideas are likely to subvert many of the pleasures possible in this life.

What a pity you never read The Martian Chronicles. The topic of species extinction is addressed. Another Bradbury story I loved was “The Small Assassin” which is the best story written by a man about the horrors of human reproduction to a woman.

Shannon, dearie, you are totally confused about causality.

Putting such intense societal pressure on women to breed is setting them up, since no one wants to talk about the dark side of family values, which is domestic violence. I noted that none of the breeders-uber-alles people mentioned that the leading killer of children are their parents, and this has always been the case, and not just in our species. Killing and eating one’s young is quite common in the animal kingdom. Once a woman has children, she is dependant on handouts from the husband and/or society. She can’t ‘regret’ her choice; she’s trapped.

Let’s not forget the very real physical price reproduction has on women. Even a “normal” childbirth is quite damaging to a woman–if a person did the same sort of damage to the woman, it would be called “mayhem”, “attempted murder” and all sorts of other nasty things.

But the greatest absurdity in Shannon’s argument is that it is based on so many fallacies. He is basically describing a Ponzi Scheme, which is what capitalism is. Too bad no one listened to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the Rebel Girl of the Wobblies. She preached to women not to have wage slaves for the capitalists, and that’s exactly what’s happened. We can’t house and employ everyone here now, so why promote breeding?

It’s rather a pity Shannon doesn’t know much about reality. Such as the fact that for every population, when growth excedes carrying capacity, there is a population crash. The fact that more and more resources are required to raise a child indicates that we’ve overgrazed our range.

For survival of the fittest to work, it means that the young of those breeders unable to support their own young are supposed to die. Our world now subsidizes the unfit, and the results were discussed in a study published in the journal Evolution a few years back. You see, there is a very, very strong correlation between early and frequent childbearing and low IQ in women. Women who have no skills or abilities feel that breeding children they can’t raise is somehow good–and if you’re a poverty pimp living off the misery of the results of breeding when one shouldn’t, I guess it’a a good thing.

I guess if one hates women and wants to keep them all subordinate, the best way to do that is to convince them that their only value is that of a breeding animal. And don’t forget that the leading cause of death to pregnant women in the USA is homicide–invariably by the babydaddy who doesn’t want to be. Laci Peterson would be alive today if Scott had gotten a vasectomy. This is no new thing. Didn’t you read Dreisers’ _An American Tragedy_ which was set at the turn of the last century?

“Unrestrained growth is the philosophy of cancer” Just as the cancer kills the organism that sustains it, we are killing our planet and making it unlivable for us. To doubt this reality indicates insanity.

Just as the fate of every individuals is death, the fate of every species is extinction. Overbreeding will inevitably result in massive death, because no pyramid scheme is sustainable. But go ahead, think what you will. Shannon, dearie, you are suffering from Delusions of Adequacy and obviously haven’t put much thought into your thesis. I’d say you’re just another woman-hating freak who wants to reduce us to being property. The attacks on abortion and contraception are signs our society is going the same way every war-prone society goes–a high birthrate leading to economic problems, thus motivating war and providing sufficient cannon fodder.

But why bother learning history; it’ll just repeat itself.

By the way, regardubg NPAs…what about the babies that grow up into NON-productive adults? Can we get a tax refund on what we spent on them? Paid for by their parents, of course. Surely you must agree that the parent of a NON-productive adult is far more of a drain on resources than the chilless people you call “freeloaders”? After all, they took both the regular tax dollars AND the generous child subsidies, yet still managed to raise rapists, murderers, or other felons. Surely even “free riding” childless people rank above those who produce criminals who need to be institutionalized at societry’s expense? Not that you’ll admit this, of course.

According to MSN money, in the United states a childfree individual pays almost double in income tax what someone married with 2 children does.

So the person without children ends up with less money than the parents? I doubt it. The big tax difference in the chart is actually not between parents and non-parents but between married and non-married. Two people filing jointly pay less tax than a single individual.

Various subsidies reduce the cost of parenting but they don’t come even close to offsetting the enormous cost. At the end of the day, you still end up with significantly more money in your pocket by forgoing child rearing.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Taxes/P148855.asp?GT1=8011

According to MSN money, in the United states a childfree individual pays almost double in income tax what someone married with 2 children does. How is that trivial? Oh wait, it isn’t.