this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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My parents always act surprised when I tell them I don't think I'd want to have children.... Maybe I'm being negative, but if I had to guess this is only going to get worse and will never be fixed. I genuinely don't believe the next generation is going to have a decent future ahead of them.
As soon we start worrying about things other than money, we might actually have a chance, but as I get older I have more and more doubt that'll happen.
Personal Opinion: This is as selfish (my child will save the world) and self centred as having a child to "save a marriage" is stupid.
Yup - the overwhelming odds say they'll both contribute and fall victim to the problem, not solve it.
We have ~7bn people alive today, and we can't muster the will to do what we know we is needed in order to survive. Instead, we'll refuse to make comparatively small compromises, and sign our children's death warrants.
What an abhorrent take. That's an insane set of expectations to place on someone who doesn't even have a say in the process of coming into being and, frankly, gambling with another person's life. "Welp, we couldn't fix it but good luck kiddo." Disgusting.
What if your kid lives in abject horror due to systematic failure of the environmental patterns that allow us to thrive
See, there's also a good chance that a random child might not be that person, and then that kid now gets to deal with all of this, despite having absolutely no input or fault in it. So, for me, it would be weighing the likely options.
A) Your child is luckily the answer to these problems
Or:
B) You've guaranteed that an innocent person has to deal with the effects of generations ignoring societal problems and climate change.
I can't say that I really blame young people for not wanting to create more people who would have to struggle with that life. I don't blame them for feeling insecure in their housing situations or for worrying about their finances, either. If they do anyways, they just get told that they should have thought about this stuff before having kids. Respectfully, fuck that noise.
WE need to make a solution. Continuing to cross our fingers that the next generation will fix things could easily kill us all. We have to actually start doing stuff ourselves. Previous generations also hoped for a future genius to solve climate problems, and look where that lands us today.
What will be do if there isn't a magical scientific answer, and we have to actually start living differently at all levels of society? Hypothetically in that situation, we'd be screwed if we put all of our eggs in the "next generation" basket. How can we know for certain that that won't be the case eventually? Global warming is already starting a feedback loop.
maybe, but very probably (overwhelmingly so) not. I'll take those odds