No kids at 35.

WaywardRider – Member

Kids give meaning and purpose to your life.

More toss, I find I have meaning and purpose in my life without kids

Meaning and purpose? Sod that – having a kid means I just spent a week’s holiday playing crazy golf, building sandcastles, poking about in rockpools and tickling in public. Try doing that kind of stuff without a child

Theres an idea, if I have a kid I can buy it a bike and then get away with doing far more riding than I should by using the excuse “but the kid wants to as well”

You have convinced me my good sir.

having a kid means I just spent a week’s holiday playing crazy golf, building sandcastles, poking about in rockpools and tickling in public. Try doing that kind of stuff without a child

Why ever couldn’t you?

Okay, you could, but you’d get some pretty funny looks. And ticking someone else’s child isn’t really socially acceptable, sadly.

Again, your criteria involves children.

If I tickled my wife no-one would bat an eyelid. If I had children because I wanted to tickle a child I’d probably be locked up.

If I had children because I wanted to tickle a child I’d probably be locked up.

Why? It’s great fun tickling a child.

Ok, do you want to bring yours round and I’ll give them a fondle?

I don’t understand where you’re going with this, so I’m off to bed…

Where I’m going with this is that all your examples of why kids are great are actually examples of why life is great irrespective of whether you have children or not.

bencooper – Member
…It makes more sense for people with children to worry about the future of the planet.

Why?

Your kids will only have half your genes. Your grandchildren will only have 1/4. Then 1/8, then 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, etc.

After only a few generations, ‘you’ will be little more than background noise. The idea that one is part of a ‘line’ is wrong – unless you intend to branch off as a new species. In terms of the future, you and your genes* are irrelevant.

(*your genes exist in billions of other people. Their future is assured as well as it can be. It’s only a unique combination of genes that makes you you, and when you die that combination will be lost forever, no matter how many children you have)

In summary: you don’t need kids to have an interest in the survival of the species.

I think the point would be that is it gets too stuffed up your kids will have a shit place to live and a much more unstable set of world politics to deal with like in this documentary

anyway most of this is just a bit 🙄 for me

Inheritance is about much more than genes as any fule kno

So, just on the last page we’ve had it claimed that parents are better at sharing, less selfish, that their lives have meaning and purpose (seemingly not possible for non-parents), that they care more about the environment, and that they get to do loads of awesome things you can’t do as a non-parent.

But there’s no tendency towards superiority/smugness amongst parents (on STW at least), perish the thought!

All this talk of regret too… Regret is one of the most pointless and negative emotions that we have. Yes it’s hard to avoid sometimes but there’s lots of people here who seem to be actively promoting it. There’s no point regretting anything – what’s done is done.

I must say,to counteract the smugness, I miss a hell of a lot about not having kids.