Just in case you are thinking about having kids... (Long)

Posted by Techie

Just in case you are thinking about having kids... (Long)
December 25, 2007

Registered: 16 years ago
Posts: 3,454

I do not know who wrote this, but I found it here:
http://www.geocities.com/zpg1957/whynokids.htm

Good reasons not to have children:

1. There is no good reason to: Every reason for having children falls into two categories: grossly selfish or brainless.

a. About half of parents, when asked why they had children say “I don’t know.” In other words, they have undertaken a life-altering action of enormous magnitude, without sparing a single thought about it.

b. Those who have thought about why they had children cannot give a single reason that does not start with the words “I want….” Clearly to those who have thought about it, having children is entirely about filling their own needs, and the well-being of the children and of the rest of the occupants of the planet are never considered.

c. The chestnuts generally presented as reasons for having children (Your child may cure cancer!...Who will take care of you when you’re old!) are invariably stupid, selfish and unrealistic.

2. There are enough people, and more, on the planet already.

a. Every human decreases the already strained land, water and mineral resources available to other humans.

b. Every human damages and decreases the habitat available to other organisms.

c. Every human increases pollution.

d. Every human increases the intractability of the problems caused by overpopulation.

e. Children are major vectors of disease.

f. Every human adds to the disastrous changes in the planetary environment that are increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters, and that are increasing the severity of the effects of natural disasters.

g. Every human helps to use up the limited fossil fuels that allow us to have six and a half billion people on the planet, and that power the world’s economies.

3. Your child will contribute nothing of value.

a. There are so many people already that any discovery or improvement that can be made will be.

b. Opportunities for making contributions are decreasing because of the demands placed on the social system by increasing population. Tax money goes to build infrastructure and provide support for new people, not for research or philanthropy.

c. The chances of your child making any kind of major positive contribution to society are extremely slim - near to zero. Their chances of their making a major negative contribution are much greater. Three American-born scientists won 2003 Nobel prizes. That year around 100,000 Americans were sentenced to prison or probation.

d. When you have children, you breed your own competition for your job and increase the downward pressure on your own wages.

e. Opportunities for making contributions are decreasing because of the demands placed on rapidly vanishing energy and material resources by the exploding human population.

4. You cannot reverse the decision to have a child, and your responsibility may never end.

a. You cannot give up a child for adoption without the consent of the other parent. If they decide to keep the child, you will pay child support.

b. Your children can have children, without your consent, and you can be forced to support those children as well.

c. If you help to support a stepchild, you can be forced into ongoing support for that child.

d. If your child is disabled, you will support it for the rest of its life.

e. Economic hardships, coupled with early childbearing and irresponsibility send many adult children back to their parent's homes.

f. Incarceration, drug addiction and death of their children leave many people raising their grandchildren.

5. Children are financially destructive.

a. You will probably have no discretionary money left over once you are through paying for what your children must have, so you will work very hard and get to enjoy none of what you earn.

b. You will have a one in seven chance of going bankrupt because of the financial demands imposed by your children.

c. You will almost certainly be unable to save adequately for your own retirement. Early retirement is out of the question. Many parents work into their seventies and their numbers are increasing.

d. The financial demands of a sick or disabled child are crushing, and there is no way to ensure that you will not experience these. It is estimated that it costs around one million dollars to care for a disabled child over its lifetime.

e. Career advancement and earnings are decreased by children, particularly for the parent that does most of the childcare. Most of the gap between women and men in earnings is the "mommy tax" - the smaller amounts women earn because they can't travel, work late or work at home, because they're always exhausted and because they drop out of the work force. According to the Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Childless women earn 98% of what childless men earn. Women with children earn 73% of what men earn.

f. Lessened lifetime earnings means less retirement income for the parent responsible for most of the childcare. In the case of divorce, she may find it impossible to catch up.

g. Divorce of the parents frequently results in poverty for the parent responsible for most of the childcare and sometimes for both parents.

h. You have financial liability for the misdeeds of your teenage children, over whom you may have no control. You may also have to pay restitution in the case that your child engages in criminal conduct and even a reward to whomever turned in your child. Insurance rarely covers the financial consequences of willful or negligent criminal acts.

i. Children are destructive, and no one but you will pay for what they destroy. If your child burns down the house, you may lose your biggest investment because of your own child's bad behavior.

j. You will end up spending everything you make just to pay for your family’s needs, living paycheck to paycheck. This is an extremely expensive way to manage money.

k. When the expenses of the children outstrip your income, you will go into enormous debt for the toys and clothes, the medical care, the mini-van or SUV, and the house in the “right” neighborhood. This is the most expensive possible way to manage your money, will waste huge amounts of your earnings and will guarantee that you never have financial independence.

l. The increase in the cost of a college education has greatly outstripped inflation. A larger and larger portion of your income will be gobbled up by the cost of putting your child through college. If you cannot afford to educate your child, it will be substantially more difficult for that child to support itself.

m. You will be unable to save for emergencies, leaving you in a consistently terrifying condition of economic helplessness.

n. If you suffer economic reverses such as a job loss or a serious illness the ongoing nature of the expense of children will deplete your lesser savings much faster. Any reverse will immediately become a crisis.

6. You will be pressured to ignore your own needs in favor of catering to your child's wants.

a. Accepted child-rearing practice severely limits the ability of parents to discipline children, so if you want to raise well-behaved, self-reliant children who do not constantly demand entertainment from you, you will do so against constant social, and perhaps even legal, pressure to do otherwise.

b. Schools are unable to discipline children, so your children will be exposed to an environment in which they will learn to behave in ways you do not want them to. Nearly 8 in 10 teachers, according to the 2004 Public Agenda report, said their students were quick to remind them that they had rights or that their parents could sue if they were too harshly disciplined. More than half said they ended up being soft on discipline "because they can't count on parents or schools to support them." (NYT, 27Nov05)

c. Many of your children's friend's parents will be permissive, exposing your children to a disciplinary environment that they will pressure you to emulate.

d. Your children will be exposed to constant marketing for things you do not want them to have, but for which they will beg incessantly and which you will find it impossible to always deny them.

7. You are unprepared for the task of having and raising children.

a. There is no way to know if you will be able to do a good job of raising children until it is too late to back out of it.

b. It is common for people to be unequal to the task. News reports and the experiences of people around you demonstrate that it is extremely difficult to have enough emotional, physical and financial resources to raise children well.

c. You will be consistently and constantly lied to by everyone about the demands and rewards of having children: The demands will be minimized and the rewards greatly exaggerated. Even if your situation clearly contraindicates children, most people will deny or minimize your problems and urge you to reproduce anyway. As a result, you will have no good information on what the task requires.

d. People who complain of their own parents’ failures almost always repeat them themselves, simply because they have no other model of parenting. Unless your own parents were perfect, you don’t have the tools to do a good job yourself.

8. Having and raising children is emotionally debilitating.

a. Bearing children may activate mental illnesses in the mother, or may severely worsen an existing mild mental illness. Mothers of young children have worse mental health than any other demographic group. Newsweek magazine reports that 30% of mothers of young children suffer from depression.

b. Otherwise mentally healthy people will suffer ongoing worry about their children.

c. Mothers, particularly will suffer from a constant sense of guilt and inadequacy, compounded by social blame. They will feel ghastly about everything that happens to their children, whether it was within their power to control or not.

d. Sleep deprivation can place parents in a state where they no longer feel sane, where they have tremendous fits of rage, and where they may harm their children, their partners or themselves.

e. Women with children often become neurotically fearful, worrying about every little thing and emotionally smothering their children because of their endless anxiety.

f. 70% of women suffer from post-partum depression, which may merely make the first two weeks of a child’s life utter hell for the mother, or may result in permanent psychotic impairment. At best this is a miserable start to what is, peculiarly, universally presented as a glorious experience. At worst it can destroy lives in the ugliest possible way.

g. Women who have had a baby often become incapable of thinking through the consequences of having more babies. They’ll deliberately get pregnant when they are unemployed, when their houses are in foreclosure or when they’re facing bankruptcy. Nothing matters to them anymore except breeding. Similarly they’ll breed repeatedly with men who are irresponsible, drug-addicted, mentally ill and violent, then disclaim any responsibility for the horrendous consequences because nothing mattered any more except their irrational drive to breed. Like all mental diseases, this baby-rabidity leaves its sufferer in a terrible position where her irrational choices have ruined her life.

h. Parents in any stage of life have more symptoms of depression than the childless. “Unlike other major adult social roles in the United States, parenthood does not appear to present a mental health advantage for individuals, find sociologists Ranae J. Evenson, Vanderbilt University, and Robin W. Simon, Florida State University. Their article, “Clarifying the Relationship Between Parenthood and Depression,” appears in the December issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, published by the 100-year-old American Sociological Association.” Even “empty nesters” have been found to have more symptoms of depression than the childless, contradicting conventional wisdom that the years of grandchildren and travel are the happiest and that your kids “take care of you in your old age”. Perhaps they are too often the years of emotional upheaval for their children and kids returning home, grandchildren in tow?

9. Having and raising children is physically debilitating.

a. The probability of a woman having a disabling illness is increased if she has children.

b. A woman's life expectancy is less if she has children

c. About 10% of women who have given birth suffer from permanent urinary incontinence afterwards.

d. Women who have had children may have internal damage afterwards that can cause unpleasant, painful or disgusting results. Up to 20% of women who have had an episiotomy will have permanent fecal incontinence.

e. Women who have had children are much likelier to be overweight or obese. A University of Alabama–Birmingham study found that women retained anywhere from 11 to 20 pounds after giving birth to their first child.

f. It will be difficult or impossible for the primary caregiver to get enough exercise, particularly in the first years of the child's life.

g. Birth is extremely painful and, despite advances in modern medicine, still carries a substantial risk of death.

h. According to a study by Angelo Alonzo, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University doctors found that 81% of childless women were in "excellent to good" health, compared with 68% of women who had been pregnant. "Physically, having children causes wear and tear, and the stress and responsibility of having children take a toll as well."

i. Pregnancy is exhausting and miserable at best, life-threatening or disabling at worst. Many women spend months bedridden, and all suffer bloating and discomfort.

j. A woman’s body will be made less attractive by pregnancy – stretched out and marred.

k. Your children will bring home illnesses and you will constantly have the flu, stomach problems and colds as a result. This will impair your work life but in no way diminish your responsibilities at home.

10. The demands of child rearing will prevent you from enjoying many of life’s pleasures.

a. You will not be able to do anything spontaneously. You will not go to movies, go out for coffee, spend the afternoon shopping, take a bike ride, go out for a walk or read a good book.

b. Any social activity without children will have to be planned long in advance, may end up being cancelled at the last minute and will cost more because of the need for babysitting.

c. The expense and demands of children will prevent you from enjoying travel.

d. Many unusual and rewarding experiences will be closed to you. You will not join Doctors without Borders or the Peace Corps, sail around the world, trek overland across Africa or take a painting class in Florence.

e. Your social life will contract. Even other parents do not want your children around.

f. The agonizing hyper-vigilance required for at least the first 7 years of a child's life will prevent you from ever finishing a thought, sinking into your reading or relaxing for one second. You will always have one eye and one ear on the child and part of your brain will always be tracking how long it's been since you saw him and where he is. This is commonly cited as the worst feature of having responsibility for children.

g. Your tastes in food will be trumped by the macaroni and cheese, fish sticks and hotdogs (or the equivalent) your children demand. If you feed your children anything that deviates from this nutritionally and gastronomically inferior diet, they will whine, refuse to eat and sulk.

h. You will never take a vacation that you enjoy. Instead, all your vacation time will revolve around child-related activities. You will use up all your vacation leave on boring, repetitive and aggravating holiday visits to relatives and on tiresome child-centered “family vacations.”

i. You will never be able to take time off of the tasks of parenting if you are sick, exhausted or depressed. No matter how sick you are, you will take care of your children. No matter how exhausted you will not be allowed a nap. The children’s needs will always come first, and often even their whims will come before your most basic needs.

j. You will be unable to carry on an adult conversation, as your children will interrupt you to demand your attention.

k. Because you feel so guilty about your parenting, you’ll give your children the best seats and the best food and you’ll get the dregs.

l. When you go out or go on vacation, you’ll spend all your time making sure your children are enjoying themselves, getting enough to eat and having a good time, and you’ll be left with the ghastly knowledge that everyone else is living while you’re missing out.

m. You will lose your friends because the constant attention and catering that must constantly be lavished on a child makes it impossible to spend any time with them doing anything other than entertaining your child.

n. You never get a vacation from your children, especially when they are young. Few people have parents willing to babysit their 3 year old for as little as a weekend, much less the weeks needed to genuinely recharge.

o. You will probably have to curtail or eliminate your hobbies because you will no longer have the time or the money required to pursue them or because your children will be endangered by the materials you need for your hobbies.

p. You will lose your ability to have interesting adult conversations. All your discussions will center around the bodily functions and misbehaviors of children – all things of no interest, no novelty and no importance to anyone but you.

11. Children will destroy any quality of life you have left.

a. You will suffer through many years of sleep deprivation, with serious effects on your happiness and health.

b. Your children will scream, cry and yell constantly when they are young, stressing your patience and destroying your peace with their noise. As teenagers they will blast music (or worse, make it) with the same effect.

c. Your children will embarrass you in public regularly.

d. You will be blamed and ostracized by those negatively affected by your child's bad public behavior.

e. Being around children for longer than short periods of time is excruciatingly boring and grinding. Their pleasures are uninteresting to adults, and they constantly, tediously demand all their parents' attention at all times.

f. You will find yourself hating your children at times, perhaps all the time, and will despise yourself for feeling that way.

g. You will feel a constant sense of entrapment. Freedom is the first thing to go when children are born.

h. You will spend huge amounts of time in routine, unrewarding, mindless tasks - laundry, housecleaning, child care.

i. Your logistics will enormously expand. You will have to dedicate a very large amount of time and focus to once-trivial activities such as meal planning, appointment planning, and transportation.

j. Teenagers are typically abusive, rude, sullen and uncontrollable; living with them is consistently miserable.

k. You will be trapped in your job. You will not be able to just quit no matter how great the provocation.

l. If you are someone who enjoys a clutter-free, orderly life, you will find that you are overwhelmed with clutter and mess, as so many objects come with children, and as they refuse to keep their own possessions neat and tidy.

m. You will lose your sense of identity, regardless of how hard-won it is.

n. You will have no privacy and will ache for a few moments by yourself.

o. Your possessions will be used by your children and not put back, so you can never find things you need.

p. Things you treasure will be destroyed or lost by your children.

q. Most of the tasks you perform will be never-ending. You will chase after children constantly, cleaning up the things they spill, track in, drop and break, cooking and cleaning up endless meals and never feeling any sense of finality or accomplishment.

r. You will be constantly exposed to aggravating, mindless child-oriented entertainment such as cartoons, kiddie videos and music.

s. Modern parents are forced to provide constant entertainment for their children – endlessly playing games, accompanying them to any place the children want to go, answering questions and simply providing attention. Any deviation from this constant child catering will be severely criticized by other parents.

t. Your child will deliberately sabotage your relationships with other adults and even with their siblings by being most demanding when you are trying to pay attention to someone else. It’s axiomatic that a child will need something the minute you start talking on the phone.

u. A study by showed that women will tell researchers that nothing is as “rewarding” as taking care of their children, but that when a Day Reconstruction method of studying the pleasures of daily activities was used, mothers actually dislike childcare and find it even less pleasurable than doing housework. It is far less pleasurable to them than watching TV.

v. You will be forced into nagging. Children have to be nagged endlessly to get them to do tasks that absolutely MUST be done, and there is no way around having to nag them. You will hate doing it and hate listening to yourself nag.

w. You will be unable to make and execute plans, because children introduce so much chaos into their environment. Your once-orderly life will become frustratingly disorganized.

x. Your children will fight constantly, about everything, and demand that you referee these fights.

12. Children are ruinously hard on marriage.

a. Your sex life will be devastated by a combination of exhaustion, hormonal changes in the mother, and interruptions by children.

b. Children are skilled at pitting parents against each other.

c. Nearly all parents fight about child-raising practices. John Gottman at University of Washington estimates parents have eight times as many arguments after children are born.

d. The husbands of stay-at-home-mothers will feel burdened, terrified and overwhelmed by the responsibility of being the sole provider, and will probably deeply resent the woman who put them in that position..

e. The extreme demands of a difficult or disabled child will typically end its parents marriage, particularly if one parent didn't want children, but gave in. The probability that the parents of a disabled child will divorce are around 80%. Even aborting a clearly defective fetus often splits up the parents, who may blame each other for the problem.

f. The pleasures of marriage, such as going out, taking walks, and sleeping in, are disrupted or destroyed for many years by children.

g. The sexual equality possible prior to the arrival of children will almost always disappear, leaving the mother with final responsibility for everything, particularly the most disgusting, tedious and unpleasant tasks.

h. Mothers, particularly those who work, profoundly resent their husbands' failure to share childcare. Their anger is never-ending, and they whine and nag.

i. Husbands feel guilty at their own failure to do their share and angry at their wives for nagging them about it.

j. The most likely time for a husband to begin having affairs is when his wife is pregnant.

k. The most likely time for a batterer to begin beating his wife is when she is first pregnant, because he understands that she is now dependent on him.

l. Any problems that already existed in the relationship, including those with in-laws, will almost certainly be seriously exacerbated by the birth of the child.

m. Parents will cease to see each other as lovers, and view each other instead as co-parents, destroying the romance of marriage.

n. Parents are so inundated with childcare responsibilities that they can no longer provide the support that is one of the best features of marriage. The husband of a SAHM can’t express his insecurities about his work, his lack of enthusiasm about having to work for at least the next 30 years, or any other weakness, lest it provoke an angry and fear-laden reaction from his dependent wife.

o. Studies consistently show that marriages are happiest before the first child is born and after the last child leaves home. This is consistent with studies that show that childless marriages are the happiest of all.

13. Having children forces you into meeting social expectations you may despise.

a. Even the most honest person will find himself lying about the rewards of raising children.

b. You will almost certainly deliver your children into the kind of indentured servitude you hate in your own work.

c. Your children will demand material goods you know are not good for them, for society or for the planet, and you will find it impossible to always refuse.

d. You will find yourself attending religious services you do not believe in, participating in social practices you consider wrong, and engaging in activities you consider damaging, because your children insist on it.

e. You will associate with people you may dislike or despise because they are part of your child's life. This may include your parents or in-laws, who you will religiously visit on holidays, no matter how painful these visits are, because your children have a right to know their relatives.

f. Feminist women will find themselves giving up rewarding careers to become household drudges dependent on husbands, thus modeling this kind of subservience to their daughters.

g. You will be forced to put up with the friends of your children and with the parents of those friends. These may be people who disgust you or frighten you, whose values you despise, and with whom you would never otherwise associate.

14. It can go horribly wrong in a way that will completely ruin your and your child's life forever.

a. Physicians for Social Responsibility estimate that 14% of children will have a disability apparent by the beginning of their teenage years. Three percent of children will have a major, life-destroying birth defect. Parents of such children will be further insulted by social pressure to present their experience caring for these children as being as delightful as a trip to Holland.

b. An additional 2% will become psychotic as teens or young adults.

c. A large number will become drug, alcohol or gambling addicted. Some of these will ruin their own lives and those of others with their behavior. You will suffer an endless agony of guilt, fear, financial loss and public humiliation as the result of behavior you cannot control.

d. Some will die, or worse, kill themselves, producing ongoing guilt and anguish in their families.

e. At least 5% will suffer severe, ongoing anxiety or depression, causing serious worry and guilt in their parents.

f. Many will behave extremely irresponsibly, driving recklessly, having children out of wedlock, getting fired from jobs, causing their parents distress and incurring financial liability.

g. Some will become criminals, shaming their families, incurring expenses for their legal representation and for liability, and, commonly also victimizing their families.

h. Some will become extremely ill, stressing their families financially and emotionally.

i. Children attract predators and reduce the ability of their parents to defend themselves. If you have children, you are more likely to become the victim of predatory criminals, some of whom will victimize you in order to get to your children.

j. If you have children, predators can use those children to get to you, and you will do whatever the criminal wants in order to save your child.

15. Your children will experience a decreasing quality of life compared to yours.

a. Greenhouse warming is occurring; its long-term effects are uncertain, but so far major disruption of ecosystems and increasingly severe weather events are already underway. Sea level rise is likely, and a host of other, unpredictable and disastrous effects will certainly occur. The Arctic ice pack will vanish “within the lifetime of a child born today” according to the scientists studying it, and the consequence will be unprecedented changes in climate that dwarf the changes we are already experiencing.

b. Your children will never see the kind of wild lands or enjoy the uncrowded recreation opportunities you have.

c. Good jobs are disappearing, the result of corporatization, decreasing support of scientific endeavors and universities, and "offshoring." The decrease in value of American labor is ongoing. Your children will probably work at boring, low-paid jobs their entire lives, and be unable to retire.

d. Good homes are becoming unaffordable. In heavily populated areas your children will probably never be able to afford more than a 2-bedroom condo. The majority of areas within a short commute of good job opportunities now fall into this category.

e. Areas where there are jobs are becoming increasingly crowded. Your children will never know a time when highways are not crowded and rush hour traffic doesn't crawl; they will never know a time when they don’t circle parking lots looking for parking, and when public amenities aren't jammed with people.

f. Paradoxically, the others with whom your children will live in enforced close contact will be less civil and more likely to litigate your children than ever before.

g. Your children will live in a world where civil liberties are eroded by a combination of the fear of terrorist activity and by the placation of religious fundamentalists.

h. Your children will experience an education eroded by poor-quality teaching and by teaching philosophies dominated by "self-esteem" training and other unproven, untested psychological theories. Any teachers who demand quality work or inspire thought will be crushed or removed at the demands of the imbecilic parents of other children.

i. Your children will employ professionals whose ability to do their jobs is compromised by their own inadequate education and by fear of litigation.

j. Your children will be educated in schools where teachers spend an increasing amount of time dealing with the results of the inadequate parenting of the other children in their classes. There has been an enormous increase in children (now 10%) who are so unsocialized that they have tantrums and are violent in class, beginning in kindergarten. Because it is so difficult to deal with these children, good teachers are leaving teaching and finding other jobs, ensuring that your children's education will be compromised.

k. Your children will be living with the economic consequences of the reckless irresponsibility of the leadership of the U.S., in generating horrific national debt and enabling an enormous imbalance of trade. At best they will have to pay crippling taxes which will erode both the economy and their quality of life. At worst they will deal with economic collapse.

l. Increases in human population mean that people are now building homes and businesses in marginal areas avoided by previous generations. This means your children will be much more likely to be victims of natural disasters than were past generations. It is estimated that the 30m waves generated by the explosion of the volcano Krakatau in 1883 probably killed around thirty thousand people. The 10m waves generated by the earthquake of 26 December 2004 killed about five times as many. The difference was entirely the result of people living in disaster prone areas as the result of overpopulation.

m. Increases in human population have changed the environment in a way that makes it much more likely that natural disasters will occur and will affect humans. The loss of mangrove forests in Indonesia due to human activity contributed to the loss of life in the tsunami of 26 December 2004. Global warming ensures that more energy is available to great storms, which have already become measurably more frequent and more severe.

n. Fossil fuel production per capita peaked in the 1970s, and world petroleum production is peaking now. Your children will live on the downside of an economy based on cheap, easily accessible fossil fuel energy. It is hard to predict the results, but they will certainly include a smaller choice of goods, economic hardship and a generally lower quality of life.

o. Your children will be surrounded by children who are spoiled, entitled and vicious. These children are much more likely to bully or hurt your child than the children of past generations were, and their parents will defend them vigorously no matter how appallingly they behave, so you will have no recourse. You may have to homeschool your child or pay for private school to get them away from other children.

16. You will be rewarded with abuse.

a. Anything that goes wrong with your child, from not feeling good about himself to committing major crimes, will be blamed on you.

b. Your child is more likely to abuse your for the inadequacy of your parenting than to thank you for your sacrifices and efforts.

c. Your child will demean you and speak ill of you to others. Listen to what the people you know say about their parents. Even adults who believe they received good parenting are ruthlessly critical of their parents' faults.

d. Your child will probably live far away from you, and may avoid you and make no effort to see you or communicate with you.

e. Your child may communicate with you only in angry and impatient tones.

f. Your child is very unlikely to care for you in your old age; more likely he will install you in a nursing home and rarely visit. A study by the University of Florida showed that elderly people without children are as happy and suffer no more loneliness than those with children.

g. Your child will almost certainly disappoint and shame you in many ways. Fundamentalist parents will have gay and atheist children, liberals will raise conservatives, honest people will have to confess that their youngest son is in prison. People who prided themselves on their excellent parenting will raise children who despise, slander and avoid them.

h. Instead of taking care of you, your child may defraud and abuse you in your old age. Because you have spent all your money on your children, you won’t have the means to avoid the hellish nursing homes they’ll want to pack you off to.

i. Your child will likely form relationships with people you dislike and of whom you disapprove. Your child is likely to defend these people against you, and may allow them to cut off contact with you, so you never see your child or grandchildren.

17. You will turn into someone you don't want to be.

a. Lying and envious: You will lie about the reality of child-raising to others in order to get them to have children so you need not be envious of their freedom anymore.

b. Rude and inconsiderate: You will rudely barge into line, crassly bring children to places they don't belong, subject others to your children's bad behavior in public, subject others to disgusting sights and smells, leave trash around and justify it by claiming you deserve special consideration because you have children.

c. Demanding and whiny: You will whine for a bigger share of public money because of the difficulty of being a parent. You will complain when others don’t assume your responsibilities and financially support your choice to be a parent by providing gifts, money or services.

d. Greedy: If your children grow up and become self-supporting, you will complain about having to support the children of others, now that you are no longer the primary beneficiary of public money.

e. Selfish and irresponsible: You may produce more children than you know you can reasonably support because you enjoy the hormonal rush of childbirth, because you are too lazy to use birth control or because you want to entrap or control a partner.

f. Manipulative and needy: You will manipulate and pressure your children to give you attention they obviously do not want to.

g. Blinded: You will become expert at denial, against all evidence refusing to believe that your children are engaging in risky sexual behavior, using drugs or engaging in criminal activity.

h. Self-deluding: You will tell yourself that your poor parenting is actually adequate: that children are "resilient" and will easily get over the pain of your divorce; that you give your kids "quality time" when you actually spend almost no time with them; that your kids "just love" their brothers and sisters when you force them to do the childcare that you don't want to do; that "he'll love it when it comes" when you foist a child on an unwilling partner, that "You love your children very much and would NEVER do anything to hurt them" when a jury has found otherwise.

i. Defensive: You will attack anyone who does not praise and reward you for parenting your children, conveniently forgetting that having children was a choice you made to fulfill your own needs, and that you indignantly denied anyone else a say in this choice.

j. Child-hating: Most parents love only their own children and dislike those of others, sometimes to the point of injuring or killing the children of others as boyfriends and step-parents do to the children of previous relationships.

k. Self-absorbed: Most parents would not think of adopting a child, wanting only to raise their own biological children, and many oppose the idea of anyone close to them adopting.

l. Criminal: A young child is far more likely to be killed, kidnapped, beaten or sexually abused by his own parents than by any other person.

m. Sadistic: Parental resentment of the sacrifices they make for their children often expresses itself in subtle cruelties such as verbal needling and terrorizing perpetrated on those children. Nearly all parents do this.

n. Contemptible: In your zeal to exculpate yourself for your own failings as a parent, you will defend the indefensible conduct of other parents. Saying "She really loves you very much," "It's hard for parents nowadays," "She would never do anything to hurt you" or "Your father has suffered enough" to the victim of abuse or neglect is completely contemptible, and yet nearly all parents do this.

o. Judgmental: Even though you will have been subjected to and have resented the constant harsh judgments of others about your own child-raising choices, you will not scruple to pass equally harsh judgment on others for their own child-raising choices. Paradoxically, you will most harshly judge those who have escaped the immediacy of your censure by choosing not to have children.

p. Spineless: Those who have children can't afford to talk back to the powerful, because they've created their own hostages. That's why political activism is dominantly the job of the young - they're childless.

q. Moronic: You will persecute intelligent and original teachers because your child might hear something that conflicts with your own opinions or values, or which makes you feel inadequate.

r. Destructive: You will knowingly add to the problems of the planet by having additional children, even though you know nothing else contributes so enormously to pollution, loss of habitat and human misery.

s. Filthy: You will leave shit-laden diapers under plane seats, on park benches and in parking lots; you will take a child with diarrhea into a public pool or a child with a respiratory illness onto an airplane to sicken others, you will dump trash on the ground and walk away from it, you will leave repellent messes to sit in your house because you are so overwhelmed by the demands of child-raising.

t. Self-Centered: You will expect your children to fulfill the dreams and wishes you were too lazy, too stupid, or too ineffectual to fulfill for yourself. When they do not, you will be filled with anger and resentment.

u. Inconsistent: You will say you sure understand why Andrea Yates would kill her kids, and five minutes later will be extolling the joys of child-rearing to any non-childed person who will listen, and you will see no contradiction in this.

v. Moribund: Because you are trapped in the socially acceptable choice you have made, anything subversive, original or revolutionary will be incomprehensible to you. As a subscriber to the status quo, you will become one of its most ardent defenders. The hippies who protested the Vietnam war in the 1970s are driving their teens around in Humvees today.

w. Fatuous: You will declare to all who will listen that your child is special, a “crystal child,” possessed of supernatural powers of perception, an “indigo child” whose destructive behavior merits extra attention and praise rather than treatment and correction. You will exclaim that your child’s future is “so bright” you can hardly believe you produced this wondrous creature. All this self-aggrandizement and delusional thinking will demonstrate only your own lack of intelligence and common sense.

x. Ignorant: Your life will revolve around potty-training, baby-talk and meal preparation. As a consequence of this you will have no time to be informed, to think, or to discuss complex topics.

y. Irrational: You will make emotion-driven decisions without critically examining your own motives and the consequences of the decisions. Of course, the most irrational of these decisions will be the decision to have a child. You will then whine about the results of your decisions, and will get angry at anyone who points out that you could have foreseen these consequences by thinking prior to acting.

z. Hypocritical: You will mouth politically correct pieties about homosexuals and people of other races, but when your own child turns out to be gay or wants to marry someone of another race, you will not accept it.

A. Shallow: A researcher at the University of Alberta has shown that parents are more likely to give better care and pay closer attention to good-looking children compared to unattractive ones. Dr. Andrew Harrell presented his findings recently at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.

B. Complicit: People who would have turned in the perpetrators of crime and abuses before they had children will look away afterwards. They’re afraid that the fallout of resistance might negatively affect their children or their ability to support their children. One parent said of a child-abuser: “I tried to challenge him a number of times, but my choice was clear - to lose what little I had or be his confidante. Aware that I had a daughter to care for and nothing to my name, I lacked the courage to walk away and silence eventually became my awful contribution to his evil.”

C. Denying: Above all, parents lie to themselves. The one characteristic that defines parents is their ability to deny. They deny the magnitude of the problems their children will experience living in a damaged and increasingly overpopulated world in the face of a flood of evidence that contradicts their wishful thinking. They deny their own children’s bad behavior, limitations and problems. The unifying trait of the parents of schizophrenic children is that they delayed getting the treatment that could have changed the course of their child’s illness. The reasoning was always that it was “just a phase” or “just the child being a teenager.” After all, don’t all teenagers see demons flying out of the mirror at them? Above all they deny their own failings as parents, often by implicitly denying that having children in the modern world is a choice.

18. Those who encourage you to have children are not people you should listen to.

a. Those who encourage you to have children will always lie to you about it. It's never a good idea to do what liars tell you to do.

b. The media drenches you with unrealistically positive images of child-bearing and rearing and consistently negative images of childlessness. It is never a good idea to do what the media wants you to do.

c. If you say you don't want children, people will tell you that you don't know what you want or that you'll change your mind. It's never a good idea to obey those who condescend to you and patronize you.

d. These same people will become hysterically upset and angry if you get sterilized without first having children. It is never a good idea to obey those who hate the idea that you can control your own fate.

e. These same people will push you to have children even if it is obvious that your and your child's lives would be miserable as a result. It is never a good idea to obey anyone monstrous enough to sacrifice your life and another's life to satisfy their own need for validation.

f. The same men who pressure their unwilling wives to have babies quickly manage to be somewhere else when the baby cries. It is never a good idea to get into a project with someone who is guaranteed to leave you in the lurch.

g. Parents always seem to “understand” why other parents abuse and kill their children. Apparently there is no difference between the emotions of abusive and non-abusive parents: they’re both sick. It’s never a good idea to do something that comes with built-in sickness.

19. Observations of the lives of people with children show how unrewarding the job of child-raising is.

a. Historically men have almost never done childcare. Since good jobs have always been allocated to men, caring for children is obviously not "the most important job in the world".

b. Despite better job opportunities for women and despite the growing numbers of men who describe themselves as "feminists", very few men stay at home with children or do significant childcare. A feminist writer described her "feminist" husband's attitude toward the care of his own children as "time-wasting, faintly demeaning and better left to babysitters."

c. The tones of voice used by people talking to children can almost always be classified as: threatening, condescending, cajoling or bored. Nothing about this kind of communication indicates that the company of children is pleasant.

d. People who have children frequently say things to their children like "I can't wait until you grow up and leave home" that indicate how little they enjoy child-raising. These same people will suddenly forget how much they wanted their children gone when it comes to pressuring the childfree to have children. Then children are an unending source of enjoyment and fun.

e. Those desperate enough to have children that they endure the horrors of fertility treatments are fixated on one bodily function at the expense of jobs, relationships and health. This is obviously not mentally healthy.

f. One out of eight 42-year old women says she regrets having had her children. This isn't a measure of those who would not have had children if they had it to do over. These are women who specifically regret having the children they have.

g. Parents claim they have "The most important job in the world," but when they employ others to do that job, they hire people without education and pay them minimum wage.

h. The words most consistently used to describe the experience of mothering - even by women who claim to love their children passionately - are "sadness" and "anger". Indeed one British woman cited in the Guardian says of her feelings about her role in the family:"about twice a year, I get so angry, I can't sleep. I'm churned up. It seems so unfair."

i. Women who work with children, such as teachers and pediatricians, are less likely to have children of their own because they have a more realistic understanding of what it requires.

k. People who had a lot of responsibility for younger siblings are much less likely to have children of their own, because they know what childcare entails. Eldest children are most likely to be childfree because eldest children end up babysitting.

l. Mothers, and to a lesser extent fathers, believe they should be extolled for doing the tasks of child-raising, even though they made the decision to have children, sometimes against all advice. That sense of martyrdom clearly indicates how horrible a task child-raising is.

m. Parents complain about their children constantly, particularly to other parents. They say things like “How did I get myself into this” and “I love my kids but…” “I was going insane staying at home with them” and “I need a vacation from my kids.” (All of these are direct quotes).

n. Women who had little education and had children at an early age without any experience of work adjust far better to having children than do women who have lived as independent adults. Obviously child rearing suffers by comparison with child-free adult life.

o. The more education people have, the fewer children they have, if they choose to have them at all.

20. Children hugely complicate the task of ending a relationship.

a. You may end up constantly chasing an ex-spouse trying to get support payments.

b. As your ex discovers his freedom and gets a new girlfriend/wife/boyfriend/husband, you will have to explain to your children why their daddy/mommy isn't very interested in them anymore.

c. Single people generally do not want to date parents. They know that step-parenting is a trap.

d. You may have to continue dealing with a vicious, manipulative, or abusive ex because he has the right to see his children. Compounding the aggravation of this is the realization that you, yourself, chose to have children with this appalling person and therefore the blame for much of the problem is yours.

e. Abusers are much more reluctant to let go if there are children.

f. You will find it far more difficult to restart your life in a new location when burdened with children. Some states will not allow a custodial parent to move out of state without the permission of the non-custodial parent, leaving the custodial parent’s life in limbo until the youngest child is 18 and giving the non-custodial parent huge control over the custodial parent’s life.

g. If you have a relationship resulting in another child, you will probably prefer that child to the pre-existing children, and may feel enormous guilt over it.

h. If you are a non-custodial parent, you will have to endure separation from your children.

i. If you are a non-custodial parent, you will probably feel guilty as you discover that you are neglecting the children of your first family for more pleasant adult interests.

j. If you remarry, the stress of children greatly increases the likelihood that you will divorce again.

k. At the time in your life when you are in the most emotional pain, you will have to deal with the negative emotions of your children as well.

l. If your spouse remarries, you may have to deal with an extremely unpleasant, possibly abusive new wife/husband.

m. You will lose control over the environment your children live in at least some of the time, because your spouse, or their new partner will probably not have the same expectations you do in terms of moral values, cleanliness or children’s responsibilities.

n. You will very likely have to endure your spouse using your child as leverage in the divorce or as a tool to punish you. Some spouses file one court case after another, wasting the other spouse’s assets on lawyer fees, tying up their time and energy and causing them constant stress. Some spouses even descend to false accusations of child abuse.

21. Children reduce the quality of the home you live in.

a. You will buy a home because the schools are good, it has lots of bedrooms, and it's in a child-ridden neighborhood instead of buying one because it's beautiful and makes you feel good.

b. You will neglect the home because your endless childcare duties don't allow time for adequate maintenance and improvements.

c. Your yard will be ugly and unpleasant. You can't have gardens, trees or flowering shrubs with kids because you don't have time to garden, you need space for kids to play in, and any plant besides grass might be a danger to your children. You will end up with a expanse of scrubby, treeless lawn.

d. That ugly lawn will be covered with ugly plastic playthings.

e. Any plants you put in will be destroyed by your children.

f. You will live in an ugly neighborhood of marginally maintained homes without privacy, built close to the street and without trees or attractive landscaping, because that's where families with children congregate.

g. Your home may not appreciate in value as much as would one in a neighborhood with few or no children.

h. Your neighborhood will be less safe than one without children, because it is teens who commit the most crimes, and they commit most of them in their own neighborhoods.

i. Your home will be worn, damaged, cluttered and dirty, furnished with ugly furniture selected for its resistance to the damage children do, floored with cheap, easily replaced flooring.

j. It will take far more of your time to maintain and clean a home with children because it is so much larger than you would otherwise need, and because it gets so much more wear.

k. Because children have large numbers of possessions that they do not pick up and put away, your home will always have a cluttered and depressing appearance, and will be much harder to clean, since any attempt at cleaning must be preceded by a lengthy session of nagging and picking up.

l. When your children are young, your house will smell like diapers. When they are older, it will smell like dirty laundry.

m. Your children will damage your home, at great expense to you. In particular, children draw and paint on walls, break windows, and cause flood damage.

n. Your children will attract vandalism and other risks to your home. Many people have had to move because their children became victims of bullies who carried their harassment to your home.

o. Homes with children are more likely to be robbed because children talk freely about their parents possessions and schedules to other children, some of whom are criminals or involved with criminals. This is a major way that criminals discover potential victims.

22. You will be constantly judged and criticized.

a. You will be told constantly that your child-rearing practices are unacceptable by experts of every stripe, especially other parents and your own parents.

b. All the advice you get will demand that you ignore all your own needs, including your own sanity and health, to focus exclusively on your child's needs and wants. If you fail to do this, you will be labeled a bad parent.

c. All the images presented to mothers are of women who sacrifice themselves completely to cater to the whims of their children. Every time you see these you will feel inadequate.

d. Any interest by mothers in work (known as "career") at the expense of child-bearing and rearing is denigrated as unfeminine, foolishly short-sighted and morally unacceptable.

e. Mothers especially are constantly judged and found wanting if they exhibit any kind of self-determination.

f. You will find that admission into the “mommy club” comes at the price of being constantly examined and constantly, viciously criticized by the other members. Much of this criticism will go on behind your back.

23. You will assume that your experiences will be similar to the experiences of your parents, but their experiences actually provide you with little insight into the difficulty of the task you'll have.

a. When your parents had children, the tasks of the sexes were compartmentalized, so women did not have to perform a second shift of child and house care after a long day at work, and men were not nagged by exhausted wives about not doing enough.

b. Jobs offered medical insurance for a family, security and a pension adequate to support two without demanding 50 hour work weeks, work from home and constant availability.

c. Housing was far more affordable.

d. The expectation that parents must provide unending enrichment and entertainment - but no discipline - for their children did not exist.

e. Few people dealt with pregnant and drug-addicted teens.

f. Children moved about almost exclusively under their own power instead of being chauffeured everywhere by parents.

g. Doctors were less skilled at saving the lives of extremely ill and disabled babies, so many fewer people ended up caring for completely incapacitated children.

h. A college education, even at the best private schools, could be paid for with a combination of work and grants. Now it is impossible to afford an education even at a public school without help from parents and crippling loans.

i. Divorce was rare, and a woman who stayed home with children could be assured of lifetime support in the case of divorce. Now she cannot even be assured of child support, although she can be almost certain that she will end up with custody of the children.

j. People whose child-rearing responsibilities prevented them from adequately saving for retirement could always fall back on Social Security. It is estimated that around 33% of Social Security recipients have no other source of income, and 65% rely on Social Security for over half their income. People who are currently under 55 must plan to provide a much larger fraction of their retirement income, when their expenses are higher and their income no larger.

k. Parents were expected only to produce reasonably healthy and well-behaved children. Now to be an adequate parent, your child must be an academic star, physically perfect, eat only the healthiest food, and be engaged in multiple cultural and social activities. This requires almost non-stop activities which you will pay for dearly and drive to endlessly.

24. Having children traps women in sexist roles and expectations

a. When a baby arrives, the woman almost always ends up with all the responsibility.

b. That responsibility fractures the focus of women so their productivity disappears. It is easy to tell when a woman author has had her first baby. Her books become confused and unreadable. The only woman Nobel laureate in science of the modern age (of six) who has children is Rosalind Yalow. She notes in her autobiography that she had live-in help with her household until her younger child was 9 years old, and has said in interviews that she was able to do Nobel-prize winning research and keep up with her household only because she requires just four hours of sleep a night.

c. Even though a woman may be holding down a full time job AND shouldering the responsibility for child care, it is almost certain that her husband will claim that he does “half,” thus depriving her of the credit for her work.

d. Once a woman has children, she becomes disempowered, tolerating being relegated to the role of household help, avoiding confrontation and “giving in” on her feminist principles rather than risk negatively affecting the children. Susan Maushart says “motherhood profoundly increases a woman's conservatism ... The presence of children almost invariably raises the stakes, making compromise more acceptable and inequities easier to rationalise."

e. It is almost always the woman’s career that is allowed to suffer in order to provide child care – almost never the man’s.

f. Women who declared they would never put their fate in a man’s hands will become stay-at-home moms, taking a terrible risk, and putting themselves in the role of chattel to their husbands because it is the only way their children can be provided with adequate care.

g. Women who end up divorced after staying home with children are relentlessly shortchanged economically in almost every possible way. Their lifetime earning power has been eroded by their time out, their retirement savings have been severely affected, and they may not be able to go back to their former work if they are no longer current.

h. Women who end up doing all the childcare and household tasks model powerlessness and subservience to their daughters.

i. Women will have to watch their husbands enjoying hobbies and free time while they slave at the household tasks.

j. Women who were once activist will find themselves unwilling to challenge the status quo any more, because they have become dependent on it.

k. Women will shortchange themselves of a loving relationship, ignoring their own needs for love, appreciation and an equal relationship in order to keep the children’s father in their lives.

l. Women who end up divorced will petition for custody of their children even if they don’t really want them and even knowing how ghastly their lives are about to become because it’s expected and they will be brutally criticized if they don’t take custody.

m. A pregnant woman is more likely to be killed by her child’s father than to die from any other cause.

25. Having children traps men in sexist roles and expectations.

a. Once a woman is pregnant, the man has no say at all in the fate of his child. If the mother drinks to excess, causing the fetus to be damaged, he cannot stop her – but he will still be responsible for the support of the resulting disabled child. If the fetus is horribly deformed, he cannot force the mother to abort, and must go through the emotional trauma of the birth and the usual subsequent death. If the child is certain to be born with a non-lethal abnormality, he must accept that he is financially ruined and that his happy life is over permanently.

b. Women often criticize everything men do for their children. They end up feeling incompetent. Then they are criticized for not doing enough.

c. Women frequently shut their husbands out of their children’s lives. They act as though only they have final authority over the child.

c. Men still have a healthy sex drive after the birth of a baby, but their partners are rarely interested anymore.

d. A woman will commonly prevent the father from disciplining their children, or will undermine his authority, forcing him to live with a bratty, out-of-control child.

e. Women commonly allow their child to replace their husband emotionally, spending all their energy and attention and love on the child, and shutting the husband out. The husband may feel like he exists only to provide financial support.

f. Many regions allow men little or no leave or other support to take time with a new baby, thus ensuring they will be closed out of their child’s life.

g. Men who get fed up with a sexless, lifeless marriage, with having to live with badly behaved children, and with being shut out of their children’s lives will be severely criticized and often ostracized if they bail out of their marriages.

h. Women are encouraged to quit work and stay home with children. The father rarely has any input into this decision, and once the mother makes it, will be forced into a terrifying position of crushing responsibility.

i. Mothers of small children are almost always depressed, exhausted and unhappy, and take that out on their husbands. The homes they may have to work very hard to provide become places of unending stress and misery.

j. Fathers may be accused of child molestation by their wives as a way of gaining leverage in divorce, and end up with their lives ruined.