Does anybody ever feel like they really need to make a point to the world, but what they're trying to say goes
so far against everybody's programming that it'll never get through to anybody because when you say it everybody just looks at you like you're crazy? I feel like that a lot of the time. Reading these posts about people who want children so badly makes me feel like that, because my views on this are so out there in comparison to the way everybody else thinks and the response I get whenever I try to put them across is just complete opposition and judgment.
Basically the way I feel is this: I feel like we're all in a factory somewhere and everybody is just riding the conveyor belt through their lives. They go to school, go to college, get married, have children, watch them grow, retire, grow old and die - and that's enough for them because as long as they have children, nothing else matters. And it seems to me that everybody is being fooled into thinking that this is what they actually
want for themselves. So everybody is just on this conveyor belt in blissful ignorance that that is where they are, and there is a giant wall of soundproof glass. I'm on the other side of the soundproof glass, running alongside the conveyor belt, just screeching at the top of my lungs, "STOP! EVERYBODY STOP! IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS! JUST JUMP OFF! IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY" but nobody can hear me.
But I feel like I would just be
so satisfied if I could get through to one person. If one person just really
heard me and I could make them come to their senses and think "hey yeah, it really doesn't have to be this way".
Does anybody ever feel that way?
Anyway, if you'll all bear with me I'm going to pick Kiyoshi's post apart. Kiyoshi, I'm not picking on you, it's just that your post has a lot of things I've heard one million times that I don't agree with. It's just easier to quote what you're saying than to think of all the individual points myself :P
when everything boils down, you have what you consider family. I don't want to be the old man just sitting there, doing something dull, while everyone in his family has drifted away or died. What if my siblings die before me? My parents will be long gone. And once my husband goes, if he goes first, who do I have left to connect to? Friends? What if I don't have any? Even if I do, they have their own family and personal problems. I don't want my problems just piling on to theirs. I don't want to force someone to care about me while they're experiencing their own twilight years.
There's an old saying that says something along the lines of "you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family," but I've always believed that that is a pile of crap. Of course you can choose your family, the one great thing about this life is that you can do whatever you want. Because of this, I really disagree with the idea that the options are either have children or die a lonely old burden. What you do is fill your life with people who love you and would do anything for you, and you make them your family. If that means children for you then that's fine, but it doesn't have to. It seems to me that this idea that you have to have children or some sort of blood relation is a fear tactic that the older generation try to plant in our heads to get grandchildren – whether they say it outright or pass it down with the way they live their lives.
it'd bring me closer to my husband, wouldn't it?
No, if anything it drives couples apart. Couples with children divorce all the time because the stresses of life (one of which is children, like it or not) begin to eat at their marriage until they can't live with each other anymore. Even if you disregard that, from what I understand when you have children your whole life and your whole heart becomes all-pervasively consumed by them. It brings you closer to your
children, but it doesn't bring you closer to your husband. It can't, because what it does is it makes your love for each other secondary to your love for them. It makes your love for
everything secondary to your love for them.
This is known because parents say it all the time: once you have children, they become the center of your universe and nothing else matters. And the disturbing part is they say it in a way that suggests that it is a
good thing and everybody else seems to take it that way! Meanwhile I'm just looking on in disbelief, wondering how the hell not even
one other person finds that concept utterly horrifying.
What makes that so disturbing when it comes to children specifically is that it's different from forming that kind of love for anything else. When you love and value your partner above all others, for instance, you know that there is a reason for it; they've spent time together and grown to love each other and it has been
earned. But in the case of children, it's practically glandular. It happens automatically and merely by virtue of their existence. Honestly, how is that not a repulsive concept? How is that thought not distressing to anyone else?
Besides the fact that my husband would be 150% hotter by being a good Dad too.
I totally recognise that this one is just my bias at work, but I really don't see that either lol. People seeing the father in the park picking up his crying child to comfort it and immediately wanting to tear off his clothes and do him right then and there. The way I see it, the way you be hot is by being hot – but people seem to think nurturing instincts are sexy. Is this an aspect of our conditioning that has just skipped me altogether?
You have to remember what I said above, too – no matter how hot it makes him, he will never be that way with you. You will always be secondary to that child that makes him so hot.
Perhaps having kids and a family to be apart of in my adult life would rip out that bit of material selfishness I have in myself, too. It's a learning and improving experience for everyone
Is material selfishness really that negative a trait? I've always thought of the ability to be materialistic is one of life's greatest luxuries, and why somebody would actively want to draw that out of themselves is just beyond me – particularly since it's so unnecessary. Materialism is often associated with being shallow, but that is so far from the truth. You can enjoy having nice things and still have a completely meaningful life, it isn't a one-or-the-other type of situation.
So it might change you, but in my view it's more of a lateral move than an improvement. And if you take into account the fact that when people have kids they talk about nothing else other than kids, it might be a demotion :P
And I'd like to pass on my last name, too.
This! THIS IS WHAT BAFFLES ME BEYOND ALL ELSE!
Just… WHY? Why the hell is that so important to people? It's a
name!
I'm the only person with the power to pass on my family's name and I'm not having children whatsoever. And I am absolutely fine with that. I just don't see why it's such a big deal to everybody.
/rant
Well, thank you for bearing with me through that outburst, I feel a lot better now XD. I didn't post that to try and change your minds about having kids or anything, it's just really frustrating when you see something that's messed up and you try and talk about it and everybody looks at you like you're the messed up one so I just want to see if there's anybody who gets even a little bit what I'm trying to say lol.
Also, I'm bringing this up to you guys because we can't have kids naturally so if we're gonna have kids we have to
really want them because we have to go to extraordinary lengths to have them. That means that as gay people generally we should feel less pressure to have kids, so I feel like if anybody is going to get what I'm saying, it's gonna be one of you guys.
