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Post by devilschaplain2 on Apr 14, 2009 15:58:05 GMT -5
OK, here's what I don't get, and I'm asking this without any sense of anger, just confusion. For those of you who claim you "hate" children, what on earth makes you say that? It sounds like you're basically saying you "hate" humanity in general. What is innately wrong with children? How is that any different from saying "I hate old people" or "I hate Mexicans" or something? I have no plans on having more children, and my husband, who is not my child's biological father, also has no plans to have biological children. But we don't hate kids; in fact, we're very supportive of the neighborhood kids, even though we don't want any (or more in my case) of our own. We're supportive of other people's kids, and we take time to try to impact their lives in some way--for one thing because they grow up to inherit the jobs of the world. These are your future doctors, teachers, politicians, etc. You get what you put into them. I don't see how not wanting to "breed" and being nice to kids (which you're implying you're not, if you say you "hate" them) are mutually exclusive concepts. Children annoy me, I don't find any benefit to actually having them (no I don't mean a benefit to humanity, I mean a benefit to myself). They're too much work to have to raise and feed and clothe, and they cost too much $$$. Doesn't mean I'm always mean to children or something, they're just a pain in the ass and not worth my time to have and raise.
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Tina
New Member
Posts: 8
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Post by Tina on Apr 14, 2009 16:17:47 GMT -5
People who simply don't want kids I can understand. It's child-haters I don't like and scare the hell out of me. The fact that there are so many at this site is disturbing me and making me want to get outta here... Like I said, not wanting kids is fine. But a HATRED of them... there just seems to be something really wrong with that and all this hatred toward children is as much making me lose my faith in humanity as fundies...
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Post by erictheblue on Apr 14, 2009 16:31:33 GMT -5
This is going to make me unpopular, but I would support a government program that licensed people to breed. I've seen FAR too many BNPs (thanks for the new abbreviation) to think this would be a bad idea. I've often joked about needing to license people to have kids. The foreign language teacher at my high school joked that there is "something in the water" every time another girl turned up pregnant. My answer was "well, they already add fluoride to water. What if they added something like birth control pills. Those who are authorized to have children can buy special bottled water!" (Please note I said I joke about it. I am well aware of the civil rights and privacy issues involved. I also know that adding something like birth control pills to commercial water would cause medical issues in men.) For those of you who claim you "hate" children, what on earth makes you say that? I don't "hate" children. Children in general make me uncomfortable, but that is me. (I spend Christmas avoiding my cousin's kids.) At most, I am neutral to children. For the most part, kids have no part of my life and I ignore them as much as possible. I don't mind hearing my friends and co-workers talk about their kids. I obviously notice kids if I pass them, the same way I notice adults. Where I start having problems with kids is when they become brats. Throwing temper tantrums in public when their parents make no real effort to silence them. Being stupid and abrasive and their parents making no effort to correct them. Which comes down to, as I and other have said before, kids themselves aren't the major issue. It's brats who have been entitled by their parents that make me want to drop kick them into a river. (I would, of course, follow that up by drop kicking the parents.) As I said, I just don't know how to act around kids. I've never learned, and I have no real interest in learning. But that is just me. I do know of CF people who are teachers, or volunteer with youth groups.
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Post by Aqualung on Apr 14, 2009 16:32:04 GMT -5
OK, here's what I don't get, and I'm asking this without any sense of anger, just confusion. For those of you who claim you "hate" children, what on earth makes you say that? It sounds like you're basically saying you "hate" humanity in general. What is innately wrong with children? How is that any different from saying "I hate old people" or "I hate Mexicans" or something? I have no plans on having more children, and my husband, who is not my child's biological father, also has no plans to have biological children. But we don't hate kids; in fact, we're very supportive of the neighborhood kids, even though we don't want any (or more in my case) of our own. We're supportive of other people's kids, and we take time to try to impact their lives in some way--for one thing because they grow up to inherit the jobs of the world. These are your future doctors, teachers, politicians, etc. You get what you put into them. I don't see how not wanting to "breed" and being nice to kids (which you're implying you're not, if you say you "hate" them) are mutually exclusive concepts. Children annoy me, I don't find any benefit to actually having them (no I don't mean a benefit to humanity, I mean a benefit to myself). They're too much work to have to raise and feed and clothe, and they cost too much $$$. Doesn't mean I'm always mean to children or something, they're just a pain in the ass and not worth my time to have and raise. This. And a few more reasons: -They're loud and obnoxious -They scream for no reason -They STARE at me all the damn time. Maybe it's on account of my glasses, but WTF is so weird about glasses?! -They do mean things to animals (remember the thread about the teenagers who tortured the puppy?) -They're mean to each other (Yes I was bullied in school a lot.) -They're fucking EVERYWHERE. Cant' get away from them!! -They're messy. The other night at the store a mother came with her two small children to get cookies, which I gave them, and their faces were all dirty. That shit isn't cute, it's GROSS. -They break your shit. I realize they do a lot of these things just because they don't know any better, but that doesn't mean I have to LIKE it! I'm sure there's more. That being said, my hatred is not limited to toddlers and small children. I do consider myself something of a misanthropist; I like most animals more than I like most people. I probably am fucked in the head, but I really don't give a shit.
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shrike
Junior Member
Polyamorous Atheist
Posts: 56
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Post by shrike on Apr 14, 2009 16:32:19 GMT -5
I hate the way many kids act because many parents tend to be overly permissive, pushover panseys when it comes to their kids, and it turns their kids into ungrateful little brats. It probably doesn't help that my patience in certain areas isn't exactly great. Some kids aren't like this. My girlfriend has three great kids which convinced me that kids aren't all bad. For me, I'm 31 years old in less than two weeks, and I've never lived a day in my life wanting kids of my own. I knew I didn't want kids from the time I was a teenager, if not younger. It never fails that everyone that tells me "you'll change your mind" always wanted kids in the first place. I've had people who didn't want kids and got pregant accidentally tell me that they are happy they did, but I've never had anyone be so condescending as to tell me what I really wanted other than people who think everyone is supposed to love their little snot machines as much as they do and just can't imagine anyone not wanting one of their own. They come off sounding exactly like fundy Christians to me.
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Post by dantesvirgil on Apr 14, 2009 16:34:06 GMT -5
What bothers me more is the classification process: as in, I hate children. Not noisy children, poorly raised children, nor rambunctious children. But all people who are under the age of 18. That seems almost ... pathological in some way. I am NOT saying that people who don't want to have kids are psychotic or sociopathic, so don't even go there. What I am saying, is that when people tell me they hate kids, as in the millions of people who happen to be under 18 or whatever age they deem to be "appropriate", that seems highly irrational to me. It's a blanket generalization that makes about as much sense as saying, "I hate adults." Okaaaay. People are highly varied, obviously. You can both not want to have kids and still not hate kids. I understand the mindset of not wanting kids, actually, as I said I don't want any more and my husband wants no biological children.
But think about what you're saying. You're saying you hate an entire demographic. Substitute any other demographic and see if it means anything different.
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Post by devilschaplain2 on Apr 14, 2009 16:35:27 GMT -5
Children annoy me, I don't find any benefit to actually having them (no I don't mean a benefit to humanity, I mean a benefit to myself). They're too much work to have to raise and feed and clothe, and they cost too much $$$. Doesn't mean I'm always mean to children or something, they're just a pain in the ass and not worth my time to have and raise. This. And a few more reasons: -They're loud and obnoxious -They scream for no reason -They STARE at me all the damn time. Maybe it's on account of my glasses, but WTF is so weird about glasses?! -They do mean things to animals (remember the thread about the teenagers who tortured the puppy?) -They're mean to each other (Yes I was bullied in school a lot.) -They're fucking EVERYWHERE. Cant' get away from them!! I'm sure there's more. That being said, my hatred is not limited to toddlers and small children. I do consider myself something of a misanthropist; I like most animals more than I like most people. I probably am fucked in the head, but I really don't give a shit. I second everything you just said
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Post by dantesvirgil on Apr 14, 2009 16:38:20 GMT -5
Aqualung, you must know from a purely logical standpoint that your blanket generalizations of what all kids are like is not true.
There are plenty of adults who are loud and obnoxious. Children rarely scream for no reason. Not all children stare--plenty of them have glasses of their own--and plenty of adults do stare at people. Very few children do mean things to animals. In fact, I would go so far as to say that many children are more sensitive to the needs of animals than adults can be. One fucked up teenage torturer does not a general classification make. After all, there are a lot of teenagers on this very site--are you saying that most of them are also animal torturers? Not all kids are mean to each other--most of them are not. Besides, plenty of adults are mean to each other, too. I realize that you're being partially facetious here. But think about what you're saying. It just doesn't make much sense to me.
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Post by Aqualung on Apr 14, 2009 16:41:56 GMT -5
You can both not want to have kids and still not hate kids. Of course. There are lots of childfree, probably the majority, who don't hate kids. But some of us do. And? Some people hate cats. But most people wouldn't think they're fucked in the head. (Though I personally don't trust people who say they don't like animals.)
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Post by dantesvirgil on Apr 14, 2009 16:43:47 GMT -5
You're kidding me, right? You think there is no difference between hating an entire group of human beings and hating cats?
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Post by Aqualung on Apr 14, 2009 16:44:10 GMT -5
Bah. The good ones I see are too few and far between to get me to change my mind.
I never said they were ALL like that, I'm just saying that's why I don't like them.
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Post by Aqualung on Apr 14, 2009 16:45:13 GMT -5
You're kidding me, right? You think there is no difference between hating an entire group of human beings and hating cats? No.
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Post by devilschaplain2 on Apr 14, 2009 16:45:16 GMT -5
I dunno, toddlers and babies are all the same: whiny and loud. At least adults have developed personalities that I can judge.
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Panthera
Full Member
Here kitty kitty...
Posts: 229
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Post by Panthera on Apr 14, 2009 16:51:17 GMT -5
-They do mean things to animals (remember the thread about the teenagers who tortured the puppy?) And it's not just small helpless animals they torture, either. When I was at a small wildlife park last summer, I watched a group of children tormenting a young female leopard - loudly rattling the fence around her cage, hooting at her, throwing rocks - while their fat slob parents (and, presumably, other relatives) laughed and cooed because "Isn't that so CUTE?!" (To which I wanted to respond, no. No, lady, it most certainly is not "cute." How would you like it if that was your kid in that cage, being tortured like that? Oh, and if that leopard found a hole the size of a football in her cage, she'd have squeezed out of there and at least one of your precious little bundles of joy would be disemboweled and dragged up into a tree for her to eat.) To be fair, though, I can't say that I hate children - more that I hate stupid parents who won't reign in their children or who, in fact, encourage misbehavior (and, yes, I do see that a lot.) I can say that I hate some children... but as for the vast, vast majority of he rest, I just dislike them, try to avoid or ignore them if at all possible, and feel absolutely no desire to have any of my own.
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Post by dantesvirgil on Apr 14, 2009 16:52:06 GMT -5
But the problem is it sounds more like you hate bad parenting (which everyone should hate), and you're transferring the bad skills of some parents onto an entire demographic of people. Or you're choosing not to see that the reasons you don't like kids are also equally applicable to adults, but somehow kids get more blame for it. It seems...petty. I guess. I'm not sure how to explain it, and I might withdraw from this thread entirely if I can't figure out how to explain it. But my godless, you're classifying an entire demographic based on the hasty generalization logical fallacy! Think of it this way. If someone said "black people are too loud and that's why I don't like them," what would a reasonable person draw from that sort of statement about the mindset or character of the person who said it? How is a person supposed to conclude anything different about the person making the statement if you just switch "blacks" with "kids"? This next statement may be offensive, but I'm going to preface it by saying just think about it and I'm not calling you this, but it fits the definition. A "bigot" is often used to describe a people who are stubbornly determined to maintain their prejudices in the face of something that challenges their views or when their views are shown not to be generally true--or even false. How is what you've said about kids any different from the behavior of a bigoted person? I have a lot of respect for you, so please don't think I'm trying to pick a fight, OK? It just truly confuses and disturbs me.
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