Baraka_Guru

I hope for their sake that their debt load doesn't exceed their annual income.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

FelixP

The biggest personal reason I would never have kids is simply that I don't like them, and would probably mistreat them as such.

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Free will lies not in the ability to craft your own fate, but in not knowing what your fate is. --Me

"I have just returned from visting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world." --Douglas MacArthur

Natural manhood

The point is, men don't really need any right in reproduction. Reproduction is out and out a woman's job. A man's job in reproduction, in the wild (at least for mammalian males) is to be a supplier of sperm.

But that should be completely alright. There is more to life than reproduction.

Eilonwy

Personally, I don't know if I want kids, but I usually lean toward no for all the reasons mentioned above... cost, time, lack of sleep, lack of being seen as a person and instead just as 'mom' (okay, I added that last one).

Also as said above, everyone has the 'right' to reproduce, but I don't think everyone should... there are definitely ways in which forced sterility could benefit society. Someone up there basically said that perhaps upstanding citizens have the moral obligatin to reproduce so their offspring can support the next generation of degenerates... wouldn't the more logical sollution be to stop the degenerates from being born in the first place?

However, in this PCified western world, nothing like this would be allowed to happen... and in places where it does happen, like China, it's taken too far... which begs the questions of who would set the rules... who would determine which people were allowed to reproduce... etc.

Actually, the first post in this thread sounds to me more like someone trying to justify not having kids to themselves (most families, friends, etc... including mine... push people close to them to 'give me grandkids' or whatever). I definitely think no one who doesn't really want kids should have them... that's just not fair to the kids. I don't think not having kids needs any kind of justification.

Honesty

Something about that statement doesn't ring true for me.
There is more to life than reproduction... hmmmm, like what for instance?
Without reproduction there is no more life, at all.
Life ends without reproduction.

As if to say, well, I was born, I have my life now, the future doesn't matter, the next generation is not of me, therefore it doesn't matter.

To me that sounds disrespectful to life itself, and what kind of life is there if nobody respects it?

In my view, the current situation, where men have no rights to reproduction is really quite gross and inhumane.
To make matters worse, I feel I'm the only person in the world who sees things this way.
I respect life, birth, virginity, marriage, womanhood, sex, and love.
But nobody else does, at least, I've never actually met anybody who does.

It seems sad to me that the world cannot honor family unity enough to care about the next generation of life on this planet.
In the middle east, the women have no rights over reproduction.
Men will impregnate 12 year old girls and force them to have babies.
In western culture it's the opposite, women go about aborting children like reversing unwanted boob-jobs.

ittaylorc

Theoretically, I agree with that. Although I believe this came to be for good reason. Women have been branded as society's caregivers. This generalization has slightly changed over time but more often one hears of the deadbeat dad leaving the mother high and dry than the other way around. Also women must carry a child for nine months. That alone is reason enough. It's her body, no one should have control over that.

In regards to whether one has a right to reproduce, I believe everyone does. Overpopulation and ignorance are problems but taking away a right is a slippery slope. Especially a right as basic as reproduction.