As a parent, I would never "generalize" and suggest having kids. Obviously it would be wiser to prepare and make a rational decision. Having kids is a big deal, both positive and negative depending on how you tally the score card. It changed me.

Does not having kids and being free to be a traveling hobo have real positive merit? Yes.  Parenting can definitely be over rated as mostly positive. Fortunately for the kids, by our human nature, most are glad to be parents. 

Please think it over first, and I support early abortion. I just wish science would improve and be better used universally at eliminating unwanted pregnancy, and all std. 

I love my 23 yr old beautiful kitten, and she loves me, young at heart, old Dad of 57.     Wanted more but mom ran off. Had I been really rich, seems a fair guess I may have had a harem of willing wives, many happy servant helper friends (with families too), and bunches and bunches of kids ..... me bad ?   Whatever , I try to tell no lies.  

My pleasure.  And thank you for ensuring that when you die, there will be one less atheist in the world.

The Saint

A wise prophet of "Love and Oneness", the good honorable doctor Hamby, is doing our world a big help with his healing messages,  and parent or not,  is in fact adding to the number of atheists, many of whom will have kids.

Religious folks are sick and in need of healing, as atheist Jesus called himself a doctor, and the followers of the temple church "hypocrites" ... All is ONE , all is GOD ... Equally.

   Thanks Hamby and RRS

...and YOU have just reminded me of the statistics about the religious...the more religious a person is more more likely he or she is:

1. to be an an asshole

2. to be obese

3. to smoke cigarettes

4. to be an alcoholic

5. to have children as a teenager (this is actually #1!)

6. to drop out of high school

7. to cheat on a spouse

8. to to commit a crime (prisons are just SO full of atheists!)

9. to commit incest

10. to have more children than he/she can afford...and let the state pay for it over and over and over and over and over again!

11. and this (how ironic)...the most likely to use birth control!!!!

(and just a little side note about abortion quoted from the abstract of one paper:

"Being Baptist or Catholic appears to have no significant influence on the abortion decision, and the same is true for Baptists and Catholics who are religious (attend church more than two times per month.&quot

There are so many studies re statistical correlations of negative behaviors associated with religion that I could spend the rest of my life citing them.

DISCLAIMER: I do not consider abortion to be bad behavior.

Holy crap correlation does not equal causation. Healthy women are ABLE to have children. So women who have already been able to have children are healthier. Not surprising.

Gee, Will...

It's 1:18 AM, and you just flipped my brain over by pointing out the obvious.  Now my brain's going to run amok for at least another hour.  Thanks a ton. 

Seriously... it's so simple, and I never thought of it.  Granted, medicine has made it a lot easier to be unhealthy and have kids, but this is certainly an obvious problem with the correlation of health data to reproductive success.

It is not a difficult point to understand. We know that having children requires much more work and lifestyle sacrifices than not having children. Therefore, we would expect that people with kids would report significant decreases in wellbeing relative to people who do not have children. But instead, we see the two reporting nearly equivalent levels of wellbeing. This suggests that there is some large, offsetting benefit to the wellbeing of people who have children.

And you can dance around claiming the scientific high ground all you want, but the fact remains that you are throwing out anecdotal garbage as evidence that women hate being mothers.

Of course good studies are always planned and designed and I never suggested otherwise. The question is whether any given study is a good one or not, which we can't know from a quick glance at an abstract.

Sure. For instance, I can tell very easily that the Ann Landers stunt was not anything that should even be called a survey.

This is different than the parenting question because it is asking the subject about his present state of mind and offering a very clear-cut scenario: magically bigger boobs. The question about what you would do in the past given a huge number of different variables is many times more complex and therefore a poorer indicator of anything.

Again, rooted in the present and with a constrained number of variables to consider.

Even easier and more direct, since there is no question as to the process for winning the lottery.

This is not hypothetical at all. It is asking if a person has a direct memory of a real event.

No hypotheticals here.

This is actually a terrible survey question because it asks the respondent to make a potentially embarrassing admission. The results will always be skewed by uncertainty about how many respondents lied. There are also bad variables skewing the results here: practically-minded men might equate this question as asking if they want enlargement surgery, and answer no even though they really do want a larger hook.

A few too many variables to be a good question. Are you talking about having a different job that makes more money, or doing what I do now? Still, it is better than the parenting question because it is directly querying the respondents present state of mind.

I agree. And I would bet that many of those studies produced bad data because they did not adequately control for the variables they introduced with those questions. However, in each case, your hypotheticals are better than the hypothetical we are discussing because they ask the respondent a direct question about his present state of mind. It is much easier and more accurate to comment on how you feel now than to remember how you felt in the past, and way more accurate than to comment on how you MIGHT have felt in the past given a purely imaginary scenario.

Sorry to inform you, my smug little feminazi, that I would answer several of those questions "no", but perhaps I am not typical. I must say that I wonder what the reaction would be from you and others f I took as many gratuitous swipes at female character as you have felt free to take at men.

Or drawback. Looks like a stalemate, with the social benefits tipping the balance in favour.

I don't see any mountain of similar results. I see poor studies, non-studies, studies with political agendas and studies that makes statements like this:

When the study says that the differences between childless people and parents are "not statistically significant" that means there aren't any differences. If your only attempt here is to tell me that no study has found a positive benefit to parenthood, then I'm going to say that the right study has not been done and I can still claim there is one, since I and everyone I know who are parents feels that there is. It is like the God of the Gaps argument, except in this case the theists have actually seen God and can describe him.

Chicken. You know damn well that Dr. Phil won't say that parenting is a bad choice for people. Because it isn't. On the contrary, it is a positive and socially responsible choice.

You realize, of course, that theists make up the overwhelming majority of the population and therefore any study of them is going to be not much more than a snapshot of the population as a whole. On the other hand, atheists are a minority and therefore tend to fall into a number of niche categories, including being better educated, wealthier etc than the general population. These statistics actually point to how atheists are different rather than theists.

It's a good thing you are not trying to make a living as a scientist.

First of all THIS is WRONG:

The list I made was from many different studies. NONE of them were comparison studies between religious and non religious. That list is a PERFECT example of the AVERAGE American. Right down the line. You seem to have a problem with these studies and the results. You want to...skew them to fit your world view. I guess if you were an expert in that academic field, I would consider your opinions. Thus far, you just seem angry that such a study (pick any of the ones I mentioned) was undertaken and are very unhappy at the results.

I can't believe you would make such statement that it was "not much more than a snapshot of the population as a whole.". All scientific studies are "snapshots." It is impossible to study an entire population! You aim for a sample size that you hope will add some power to whatever test you are making.

I hate to break it to you, but just because you don't understand the scientific process, the statistical methodology and analysis, or the hypothesis/reasoning for the study doesn't make it less valid. But it isn't rocket science.

Now let's get to what you wrote earlier:

We do? Prove it. Show me that people with children have done "more work" and have made "lifestyle sacrifices" that those without children have not made. I think the assumption is  arrogant.

Now we wouldn't. I see no logic or proof of any kind that the above statement is correct. And you have spent an incredible amount of energy trying to tell those of us who don't have kids how GREAT it is to have kids, for a number of reasons.  If having children is so wonderful, one would expect that people with children would have a higher sense of well-being over a lifetime....and it just ain't so. Clearly.

No it doesn't. It suggests only that there is no statistical difference in well being between the 2 groups.

It's not anecdotal and I don't recall the words "women hate being mothers" being used.

I both disagree and agree with you on this one. The abstracts are written purely so that those of us who are doing research and reading the literature can decide if it is pertinent to what we are studying. Do I want to cite this article in anything I publish and is there any information that I can use in my study? So, I agree that if it wasn't a good study, I wouldn't cite it or use any information from it. But you should get a good idea from reading the abstract. Sometimes we cite studies because they suck, too.

I won't deny that there are a lot of bad studies out there with information that isn't correct. But, one has to start somewhere and that is what science is all about.

The Ann Landers study (NOT scientific) was at a time (I have a feeling you weren't around then..I was) when Womens' Liberation was just getting up to full speed. That Ann Landers was tuned into this is very important. From there, we did silly things, like want abortion to be legal, we wanted to have reproductive choices, we wanted to have the right to choose to get married or not to get married, we wanted (and still want) to get paid the same as a man (and to THIS DAY WE ARE NOT).

You can slam Ann Landers if you want, but I'm not getting your justification for doing so. Let's just look at the literature...the science.

Absolute rubbish. It was a perfectly valid question with easy answers. And, you don't seem to be getting this...the question wasn't really about the past. It was about the NOW. Would you have kids again (knowing what you know now?). How is that in any way NOT a valid question? You make decisions every second based upon the past.  For just about everything that you do! EVERYTHING!

And BTW, the questions I asked were yes/no questions. Your comment that there were "too many variable" is not accurate.  There are 2 answers. Yes or no. I chose the questions and am not interested in your opinion of the quality of my question. All were "hypothetical."

Oh! So you DO get it?

Exactly. Women who had children know NOW how they feel about it. Apparently a large % of them didn't like the experience. And they wouldn't repeat it if they had the chance. And it's not just women. It's men, too. The question had nothing to do about how they felt in the past. It's about how they feel now, based upon x number of years of experience with childbirth and child rearing.

It is a great question and obviously being studied from all directions.

Oh. Now I am a "feminazi?" You are assuming that the questions were negative and somehow insulting to men? Why? I could have the same exact questions and given them to women (and said that estrogen could be causation)! You have inserted emotion that was not there nor intended to be there.

OK. I'll put the word out to all the people in that field that they didn't do the right studies because you were not happy with the results and thus are having a hissy fit. 

BTW, I think we already agreed that passing on genes is a positive benefit.

What seems to piss you off is that some women don't want to play the roles that YOU want them to play! The damn Feminazis!

Sure is. I might suffer your complete lack of perspective on this issue.

But you said the list describes theists. So I guess you are agreeing with me that a study of theists will look just like a study of average Americans. Don't see where I was wrong about anything.

Actually, my problem is with the conclusions that you are drawing from them.

You have no idea what I want or do not want. Is there a point to your pretending to know things you don't?

Then why aren't you discussing this on a science board? It seems pointless to post this material on a discussion board if you have decided in advance that you are not going to consider the opinions of the people there.

As long as you are making up emotions that you imagine I have, I'd prefer you pretend that I am deliriously happy with everything.

Thus my criticism of your list. You said it was a list about theists. I pointed out that studies of theists lack the power you are talking about because they necessarily draw from too large and diverse a sample.

I hate to break it to you, but so far I'd say I have a much better grasp of these things than you. Which is scary.

And I think your suggestion that it might not be so is so patently ridiculous that it doesn't bear further discussion.  Seriously, I'm just going to let that statement sit there and make you look silly.

You just can't get it can you? OK, I'll try one more time. You do have to accept my irrefutable statement that having kids is more work than not having kids, all other things being equal.

A person who has kids has more work that they must do.

An increase in the amount of involuntary work that a person must do in a day is likely to reduce feelings of wellbeing.

But people with kids report equivalent levels of wellbeing.

Assuming that other factors have been controlled for, there must be something about having kids that adds to feelings of wellbeing. If there were not, we would expect the people with more involuntary work to report lower levels of wellbeing.

Wrong.

The Ann Landers crap is anecdotal at best. Most of it was probably wild exaggerations in an attempt to get printed.

If you are not trying to make the case that women hate being mothers then what is your point?

I think it was just great that Ann Landers got the message across to women that they did not have to have children and that they have a choice. But the fact that it was not science means that it has no place in this discussion where you are trying to claim that science shows that having kids is not a good thing to do.

Wait a second. Wait just a second. Are you saying that the question was "Would your have kids again NOW, knowing what you know NOW"?!?!

No parent on earth would answer that question in the affirmative past a certain point in his life! I myself would answer that question no! I'm done having kids. There is no way that I would start again now to start a family. If that was the question, then I am not surprised at all that almost everyone said no.

My assumption (which is all I have to go on since I can't see the study you are talking about) was that the question was "Knowing what you know now, would you have kids again IF YOU WERE DOING IT ALL OVER AGAIN." This is completely different and does certainly call upon the respondant to take an imaginary journey into the past and try to put himself in his shoes of ten or twenty years ago.

Therein lies the problem. Collapsing too many variables into a yes/no question is a famous source of error in surveys because you don't know what the person is answering yes or no to.

"Knowing what you know now, would you have kids again if you were doing it all over again."

Does a yes mean that the person has not learned anything they didn't know before, or does it mean that they haven't learned anything that would prevent them from having kids? Or does it mean that they are so committed to child rearing that they would have had kids no matter what they know? Or maybe they only remember themselves this way and it isn't even the way they feel now? Or maybe their first child was an accident and they are really telling you that what they knew or didn't know was irrelevant since they didn't have a choice. Or maybe they are saying that having kids has been so wonderful that they would love to do it again.

Does a no mean that having kids has been such a terrible experience that they would never want to repeat it? Or does it mean that if they knew everything they know now they wouldn't be in the job they are in and never would have met their spouse? Or does it mean they would never have chosen to get married to their spouse? Or does it mean that they would have done it later or earlier? Or does it mean that they had a child that was particularly hard to care for and for that reason they wouldn't have kids? or does it mean that one of their children died and they wouldn't want to repeat that experience?

Some of this stuff may seem off-base but it is not nearly as off-base as some people get when they are answering surveys.

Yep. Except that I don't think your question is of this kind.

Bu they don't know how they will feel tomorrow. Has anyone every asked them to predict that?

Are we talking about childbirth here? How old were the kids of the women answering this? The fact remains that neither these women nor anyone else know what they would do if they were actually in the position of having to decide again whether to have a family.

It's like money. Ask retirees whether they would have worked so hard and spent so much time away from home knowing what they know now. I bet most would say no. But that is easy to say while they are sitting in the comfortable house and driving the nice car that all their work and sacrifice bought. These women should have been asked if they would have kids again IF IT MEANT THAT THEIR KIDS WOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED. I bet you'd get a different answer then.

That depends on what the actual question was. When you are asking people to tell you what they would do if they had a chance to live their lives again, you most definitely are asking them to project their imagination into the past.

I think it is an idiotic question that addresses big hypothetical irrelevancies.

Don't give me that shit. How am I supposed to interpret your insinuation that all men want larger boobs, larger penises and more money? It is straight stereotyping. If I made the suggestion that all women will want more shoes, more soap operas and more babies, how would you take it?

You are sliding in little anti-male sneers wherever you can because you assume that I am a male chauvinist who's real agenda is to promote child rearing in order to keep women in their place. If you were paying attention, you will notice that I have been careful to talk about "people" and "parents" rather than women, except where a specific example is necessary. I have two daughters and I'm all about women doing whatever they want. Preferably free of pressure from '60s throwbacks like yourself who equate motherhood and child rearing with bondage.

Another dismal failure on your part to understand my point. I'm tiring of having to explain myself to you three times. The point is that "the field" has found nothing significant, which means there is no scientific counter to my argument that parenting has benefits to all concerned that have not been measured by science.

Then I rest my case. You have a stack of studies showing that wellbeing rates are the same for parents and nonparents. So that's a wash. But passing on genes is a positive benefit. So, objectively, it is better to have kids.

Straight projection coming right out of your own issues and having nothing to do with anything I have said or insinuated. You are wrong in every clause of that sentence. I am not pissed off, I don't ask women to play any particular roles, I have been careful to include men in everything I say because I think the benefits of parenting go equally for them. The feminazi dig followed your blatantly anti-male shots about penis size and testosterone.

Yes, uh huh. It is so clear that I have made up all this stuff just to piss you off. But my opinion, as a woman, fits right into the middle of the bell curve when it comes to these subjects. I'm not looking at the data and throwing them out because I don't like them.

The list I made was from a number of different studies that showed positive correlation ONLY between religiosity and other factors. If you compare these religiosity studies to the US Census studies, which don't have "atheist" as a category, I think you would find that atheists "fit" in  (to the average American thing) more ways than they stand out. I know plenty of atheists who are overweight, who smoke, who drink, etc. Clearly, education is an important variable, but the studies do not show causation.

I think we are all familiar with the studies that show negative correlation between level of education and belief in god. But there are plenty of academics who believe in god. What is/are the confounding factors? I don't know (well, I think I know but that's another subject). All we can do is speculate or come up with a test to study it.

They are not "my" conclusions.

Yes I do, I know exactly what you want. You want a different test that has results that validate your opinion...that there is some emotional benefit to having children that those who don't have children can never understand unless a child is produced...plus you don't like the tests, don't think they are scientific, don't think they have been conducted properly, they weren't the "right" tests, you don't like the verb tenses in the questions, and you don't like Ann Landers because she pulled "a stunt." (that's just the short list!)

I like large. And I like diverse. It gives me a good "snapshot" (to quote somebody) of the population of which I want to study. I can do further tests on this population! The power of the test is evaluated by determining the probability that the test rejects the false null hypothesis (determined in advance). For our population, we assume that the distribution is normal, that the variances are equal and that our samples are random and independent.    

I'm not going to get into a pissing contest over this statement, which is arrogant on your part. I have worked hard all my life and made sacrifices. So have other people who have not had children. The only thing I will agree upon here is that we do not agree what the definition of "work" and "sacrifice" are. You think a person with a child (or more) works harder or sacrifices more. I do not necessarily agree.

Prove it.

If you enjoyed it, why would you have reduced feelings of well being?

Define these other factors please. You are not talking about passing on genes. If having children is so magical, the well being would be off the charts and the childless would NOT have the well being that they have. They differences would be statistically significant.

Offsetting benefit...perhaps...but maybe it is the other way around? Maybe it's an offsetting benefit to the well being of people who don't have children, who really don't care if they have not passed on their genes. I'm pretty sure that people without children (by choice) are happier...but we aren't fit because we didn't pass on our genes.

MY point is that having children is not for everyone. 

The links, abstracts, that I provided indicates that many people regret having children (not that they HATE their children or hate being mothers) and that--despite all the lectures (that the childless by choice get almost on a daily basis) from people like you-- the scientific studies indicate that there is no emotional or overall health benefit to having children.

Er...no...we know exactly what the person is answering yes or no to! No variables were damaged in the process.

Are you related to Donald Rumsfeld?

Past behavior is an generally a good predictor of future behavior.

No, childbirth wasn't part of the questions or studies. But now that you brought it up, I chose for YOU to give birth.

NO! It's not like money! HA!

You know, now that I think about it, you have just paid me one of the highest compliments...thank you!

I don't know about soap operas, but I can answer for the others. We want more shoes and OBVIOUSLY less babies. Why would I have a problem with that? It is true.

I made no "anti-male" sneers, but you are a male chauvinist. You seem to have a real problem with the questions. You seem to think they are anti-male. So, I will change around the test and make it for women...and I will answer the questions HONESTLY.

Here we go!

Would you like to have bigger boobs? YES

Would you like to be thinner? YES

Do you wish you could win the lottery? HELL YES

Do you remember the first time you had sex? YES

Was it a pleasurable experience for you? NO

Do you wish your husband/boyfriend had a larger penis? YES

Do you wish you made more money? YES

I predict that a large proportion of women would answer similar to the way I did and...would go out on a limb and say it has something to do with estrogen.

Is it an anti-women test now? I DON'T THINK SO! Can you assume I have little boobs or that I am fat? I am a size 4 and have great boobs. I'm in better shape now than I have ever been in my entire life. But alas, I always wanted bigger boobs.

And one can never be too rich or too thin. It's Manolo Blahnik's' fault! Also, American white women are infamous for our poor body images.It's probably your fault, but that's another topic.

Does my husband have a small penis? Nope. I just like big ones. At least I am being honest. First sexual experience for a woman usually...not good...usually painful and...too short. Ya gettin' my point here?

But...the study didn't address these issues. It merely asked questions. Another study can be developed and those who answered differently can be asked other questions or be tested in other ways...NOT rocket science. But...SCIENCE.

There you go again...ignoring the data!

Maybe for you.

Wow. I think you have issues with penis size, among other things. As for testosterone, women have it too, you know. Just not quite as much.

I would be surprised to see that only a small percentage of parents enjoy parenting. I guess it would depend on the definition of "enjoy." Nonetheless, parenting requires a significant amount of sacrifice in every aspect, and parents are still human beings with needs and desires. Does it suck to lose sleep, sexual freedom, and the ability to just pick up and go out for the night? Sure. Do I think it's worth it, especially considering that childhood is temporary? Yes. That being said, I have no disdain for the childless. I am happy to see people making a responsible decision about how they want to live their lives.

As far as the pregnancy and birth process, I quite enjoyed it for the most part. I found it fascinating that my body was capable of producing another human being and being able to feel that process in action. Now, I had relatively easy pregnancies and births with the exception of my first whose birth was traumatic. (Long story.) But my second two were exhilirating experiences where I was in complete control and wouldn't even consider painful until the last 15 minutes or so. But that's just because I'm a fucking badass.

Kelly, you is fucking good  !     

My best friend also has 3 (she's 10 years older than me) and she tells a funny story about her first. She said that she was told all along that she was going to have a girl, and when she was delivering the baby, the doctor told her it was a boy. She was all drugged up and got into an argument with the doctor.

"OH NO!" she yelled, "PUT IT BACK, YOU TOLD ME IT WAS GOING TO BE A GIRL!"

She told me all the details of the birth many years ago, including those about the episiotomy, which she had with no epidural.  She says she doesn't remember the pain, but I certainly remember every detail of the story!

Now her kids are having kids, and they have entire families (brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers) in the room while the mother is giving birth....and MULTIPLE video cameras. I think this is weird. 

Now that she has about 10 grandchildren (with more coming all the time) she wants me to see the videos. I REFUSE!!! I refuse to see her daughters' (er, not at the same time) multiple digital vaginal birth videos taken by gawd knows which family member (it could be 1 out of 12), as they were all falling over themselves, cameras in hand...trying to see who could get the best video! YUK! 

Love is so yukky good !  ( btw, Adoption works ) 

This conversation can serve no further useful purpose.

Thanks for the discussion, Ent, but I think we've presented everything we have and now things are just descending into personal slurs.

 My mom had six kids and GOT breat cancer. She went into recovery for a few years but it came back in a different part of the body and killed her. Actually, it was the chemotherapy that killed her.

Yet another reason for comprehensive sex education, especially sociological aspects.

 I'm an atheist with a baby. Ever see Idiocracy? If you don't have a kid it's gonna be just like that but with religious freaks in charge. Yup, that's you in the first ten minutes. Great topic.

It is up for debate whether Kelly's listed benefits of better eyesight and mental stability outweigh the risks associated with having kids.

Some of us have several reasons not to have kids:
 

The world has treated us very poorly, and we would not wish this on anybody else.
Not all of us can map our futures with any certainty, and dragging kids through poverty is embarrassing for everybody.  How great the lack of certitude must be, before it justifies not having kids, is a very subjective assessment.  If a woman doesn't want to have kids because she is too frightened of the possibility that they may be abducted or killed in an accident, that's perfectly valid reasoning.  Talk to any woman that has lost a kid that way; they are scarred for life.
 

The OP did not address whether the woman's increased eyesight and stability of mind was the proper and good tradeoff for the complexities in life that come with having children.
Many women complain that sex after giving birth, not just immediately after but years after, is not as stimulating because their vaginas got stretched out and didn't snap back to normal.
Is she willing to have a more boring sex life in order to have kids?  Will she start telling the dad that he is too small?
 

We need more women in leadership roles in government, unfortunately, kids make this near impossible.  You cannot be a good mother and run governments of larger size.  Mothering is far more than sending kids to school and hiring a babysitter while you work overtime every night planning city projects.  If you didn't have kids, you could more effectively govern.
The evolutionary impulse driving us to have kids was not programmed with an eye toward having a career and independence.  It was formed millions of years ago as the way small groups would survive, and women's jobs were always in the house or near the camp, and the men were always taking care of the bigger issues.  Evolution doesn’t care whether you have a career, it only cares that you continue to propagate the species.  Men are quick to agree that evolution did not care about their stability in life when it programmed them to want sex with as many hot women as possible.  Guys want sex most when they are in their teen years, and that's exactly when they are the most unstable in mind, body and career.  We should be just as willing to accord evolution some mistakes in creating this instinct as we accord it mistakes when it causes new species to appear, or causes entire populations of animals to die.
 

And then there is the problem of convincing retarded and criminal people not to produce kids, depending on what level of pressure on the existing welfare system you think is appropriate.  I prefer going back to courthouse hangings on the front lawn, and every person legally allowed to carry a firearm.  Survival of the fittest.  You cannot create a utopian society that completely avoids the risks of criminality.  But I'm quite sure if you allow the good folk to be legally armed just as much as the criminal, they will be happy to relieve the state of financially supporting a criminal the rest of their lives at tax-payer expense in prison.
When somebody breaks in my house and tries to steal my stuff, I think they deserve the death-penalty, how about you?  What are criminals most likely to do when they discuss hitting a neighborhood where the good folk shoot first and ask questions later?  Is their life really worth that iPod?
 

Then there is the problem of whether a woman's desire to have kids is more or less important than her current state of affairs.  She may view having kids as her ticket out of poverty, because it will put her in contact with other mothers and thus make her more acceptable to other people who might have more resources for her to use than if she just stayed childless. Is it worth the risk?  We would all agree that the poverty-stricken people in other countries should not be having kids when they have no hope of moving out of the sewer they live in.  Is the 35 year old American female drug addict making the right choice by having kids in the hopes that this will turn her life around, when in fact there is no certainty in this goal whatsoever?  Some women say having kids changed them for the better; other women have kids and yet continue to be addicted to drugs and drag everybody else down with them.

You make some good points, skepticdude.  You make some strange ones, too.  I'm not quite sure where gun control comes into the question of the benefits of reproduction, for instance.

I think the most relevant thing you address is that natural selection doesn't particularly care for our well being, and didn't design us to desire children when we're most socially stable and financially successful.  I find it particularly illustrative that many of the posters in this thread have unwittingly advocated a double standard.  Men are genetically programmed to want to have sex with LOTS of women.  Some men can accomplish this goal rather easily, and yet both men and women generally agree that it's better for men to curb their "natural" desires and restrict their sexual activity to one partner at a time.

However, if we start suggesting that women are programmed to desire kids, whether it's in their best interest or not, and women should sometimes curb their "natural" desire to be a mother for the good of the state, or the family, or their partner's happiness, or even their own happiness, we are accused of being the worst kind of human being possible.

thanks for the compliment.

In short, crime victims are teaching the world how wrong it is to have kids when you live in poverty (the place most criminals come from).  With more criminals being killed, we send a message that you shouldn't have kids until you first become a good role model for them.  In other words, it's a real bad idea to start a family in the projects, junior will probably end up dead by the time he's 14, because this city/neighborhood/locale/village doesn't put up with criminals.

We should only expect evolution to be animalistic, and create beings that are animalistic.  But enough evolution has occured that we are mentally developed enough that we can live happily without resorting to our jungle instincts. 

Because the choice to have kids is intensely personal, any idea that disagrees with a female's choice to have kids is thus believed incorrect.

I didn't know Kelly had three kids, but I think anybody could have figured out that the woman who wrote the OP, even if left unidentified, was speaking as a mother.

HOPKINS SCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN IN MUSHROOMS CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/07_11_06.html

Griffiths is quick to emphasize the scientific intent of the study. “We’re just measuring what can be observed,” he says; “We’re not entering into ‘Does God exist or not exist.’ This work can’t and won’t go there.”  

In the study, more than 60 percent of subjects described the effects of psilocybin in ways that met criteria for a “full mystical experience” as measured by established psychological scales. One third said the experience was the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes; and more than two-thirds rated it among their five most meaningful and spiritually significant. Griffiths says subjects liken it to the importance of the birth of their first child or the death of a parent.

Random Musings:

Why is it that birthing pangs sound like orgasmic pangs?

Why is it that mushrooms look like penises?

Why do magic mushrooms proliferate on dung (cow/horse/goat shit)?

Why is the penis situated near the asshole?

Why does a baby's head look like a pin of a mushroom head?

Why is it that eating magic mushrooms can produce a spiritual/mystical life changing experience much like giving birth?

Things that make me wanna go Hmmmm....

-RR

Those weren't my words, and I believe that I even clarified my position on what that article had to say and that it was more to spark conversation than a scientific declaration.

I'm sure you'd feel differently if you couldn't get out of the poverty due to whatever factors affected you (lack of legitimate jobs, prejudiced employers, poor education, etc.).  Sounds like you lack a good deal of empathy.  I doubt you'd keep your "death to all criminals" stance if the only way you could get a meal was by knocking off a liquor store.  Also, your idea of executing juveniles reeks of an obsession with killing.  I've read several of your posts, and you seem to think that death solves everything.  So why don't we just fire off all our nukes now and kill everything on the entire planet?  That'd eliminate crime.  And before you say I'm overreacting, I'm being sarcastic.  You seem to be serious.

You also seem to bunch together unrelated things.  Courthouse hangings and the carrying of firearms are separate issues.  I'm very pro-2nd Amendment, yet entirely against public execution (execution in general, but especially public execution).  What do protecting what's yours and killing people for intimidation/sadistic entertainment have in common?  Jack squat.

And I'm not $%&#@ having kids. I have two sponsor children - I send $$ for parents who wanted kids to raise them without me adopting them and taking them away from the people who love them. It's an ideal situation.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair had a brat and now he's a total Christian lunatic. Reproduction doesn't guarantee anything. Education is a better bet. Work for sound science education in schools, as I am.

P.S. This world is already overpopulated; atheists aren't ever going to catch up with theists in breeding.

Don't mind my business, I won't mind yours.

I think the reason intelligent people have smaller families is that larger families are a distraction to intelligent pursuits.  More kids require more resources, which requires more time for the acquisition of those resources.

I was agreeing with you, I just had a different angle. The idea that people can claim that childbirth actually increases the average well-being of the average woman is a stretch. Not least of all because no decent study can provide a before-and-after picture that doesn't include the lack of sleep, the justification of effort, and whatever chemical cocktail it is that make mothers go ga-ga over their babies.

Even outside of a purely scientific discussion, deciding that a woman should have babies because it's somehow healthier is hooey.

MODS - this thread is extra - extra slow loading, as is another of Kellym's .... not a huge deal, but just saying ....

What about post-partum depression and psychosis? It accounts almost entirely for the increased rate of depression in women vs. men. What about the fact that there are more women pursuing their BA's, but fewer getting Masters and PhD's because they got knocked up and had to stop, whereas their male counterparts have a reduced responsibility to stay home? What about incontinence that can be permanent? And how about this: childbirth may reduce your risk of breast cancer, but it increases your chance of ovarian cancer, which is far more deadly.

And your basic statement, all by itself, is incorrect. Women who have children don't live as long as women who don't. Every child a woman has cuts 2-3 years off her lifespan.

There is give and take in everything, and encouraging women to breed by claiming it's the only way they'll be healthy is so incredibly slanted and false I don't even know where to begin.

Besides, who cares if you are "healthier" (which is truly debatable due to the reasons above) if you spend 20 years of your life never doing anything for yourself? That is unless you have the money and the lack of a conscience to hire a full-time nanny and basically pretend your kids aren't there.

Depends on what your goals are, doesn't it? If you want to "settle down" and have a family, good for you. But women who don't desire to have kids shouldn't be lied to and conned through false health advice into breeding when that isn't what they want. I've seen these types of articles all over the place, and they're about as scientific as your mother telling you that cracking your knuckles causes arthritis. As far as I can see, it's just a bunch of white people feeling threatened by the declining birth rate in developed nations.

Childless/free women get called selfish and warped, but no one ever considered that maybe they want to give their time and energy to other things. And, let's just be honest: high intelligence and breeding come into conflict with each other. You can pursue one or the other. It is very difficult to pursue both with equal intensity. Which is fine, since most people don't want to, at least not to the same level. You pick your lifestyle understanding the give and take involved, and most people are fine with that. So why aren't you?

And yes, I'm a woman who doesn't want kids. So sue me.

 Oh... I'm always glad to rehash this thread.  It pisses people off so much...

Thanks, Cass.

For anyone who's pissed off at this thread, you should read my stuff on sex, too.  You can get some righteous fire going in your loins.

What's So Great About Sex?

What Science Says About Human Sexuality

On Myth, Sexuality, and Culture

Female Sexuality and Origins

I totally agree with the sentiment you have expressed.  I hate egotistical couples who reproduce thinking that their children are "special".  Their children merely serve as trophies to their parent's self image.   Well, hell...Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson were all some giddy mother's newborn baby and look at the damage they did !

To hell with having children.  Every time I see some pregnant woman I just want to slap her fucking face and scream "Hey you stupid cow, we have over six and a half billion humans walking around now. We don't need any more fucking people !!!"

And what of the children who really are special/extraordinary?

Absolutely. Why is this a bad thing?

Obnoxious logical fallacy anyone?

Einstein, Sagan, and yours truly did not hatch from eggs, motherfucker.

Where? Are you able to bear children in this 'hell'?

What if I were to ask if you had considered other reasons for the alleged population growth surplus?

For one second, did it ever occur to you 'overpopulationists' that the reason there are so many people is because health care has dramaticlly improved over the last hundred years?

You get to live longer instead of being replaced every 37 years or so. Why not increase the death rate if the birth rate is too much for you?

One would think with the plethora of capitalists on this site then someone would have mentioned 'sustainable growth'. More old people = More young people to support them in their 'twilight' years.

I'm looking forward to my late 40's. 26 years of parenting; don't think I won't take advantage of my progeny and whatever success comes from my completely self-motivated childrearing experiences.

  Darth, are you attemting to convince me that the millions of parents who truly believe that their children are "special" ( ie, significantly more gifted than the average child ) are actually correct in their assessment?  Would'nt this be a prime example of delusional, ego-driven thinking ?   Yeah, I'm all for that.

  Children who serve as trophies for their parent's self-image frequently is a bad thing.  Parents who live vicariously through their children is not some unknown, rarely seen behavior.  Asshole dads who put unrealistic pressure upon their sons can be seen on almost any athletic field in America.  They're usually the ones who are screaming at their kid for not being perfect ..... or mothers who enter their young daughters in fucking beauty contests when they're still in elementary school ( Jon Benet Ramsey comes to mind )

 So the darling little baby boys who grew up to become Ted Bundy, Henry Lee Lucas, Richard Speck, Richard Ramirez, Angel Maturino Resendiz, Dennis Rader and all the others like them are merely an "obnoxious logical fallacy ?"   Yeah, all those serial killers and mass murderers around the world don't really figure into the equation....unless you're one of their fucking victims..    http://media.snuffx.com/h6sh7f/070608/raped-murdered.html    ( ...but shucks, all those dead victims don't really matter, do they ? )

  The reason the world is over-populated is simply because people ( via "healthcare" ) are living so much longer ?  Yes, everyone knows it's all because those horny people in their 80's and 90's are out there fucking everything in sight.

  Thanks for attempting to correct my misguided point of view and your efforts at exposing me to the true wonder of child-rearing. 

I'm starting to like this thread, it pisses people off, which is always fun.

Although this is for the most part, not my area of expertise (so I will stand down) there is one thing that cropped up which is. Please, to everyone who has said it, for the sake of the most rudimentary understanding of biology, stop insisting that the "purpose of life" is to reproduce, and please stop linking the notion to evolution. Biologists never talk about "purpose". The concept is fundamentally unscientific. Biological features do not arise because the evolutionary process had some express "purpose" of fashioning them. They arise only because they are stochastically favorable occurances. The process has no foresight. The process of evolution cannot be personified. Because of stochastic favorability, life forms like you and me have tendancies to want to pass on their genetic material. This does not mean that you are "supposed" to pass on your genetic material, or that you "should" (this is a naturalistic fallacy). Evolution does not care about you. It doesn't "care" about anything. It is a consequence of the ability of certain molecules to hold the template to guide their own synthesis. It has neither goal nor desire. If all biological life was destroyed tommorow, "evolution" would not sigh and say "well, 5 billion years of work down the drain". Do you understand? This process cannot be personified in any way, shape or form.

PZD, I'm suprised at you. You know full well that is not what he was saying. The connection between people living longer and increased population is completely obvious. The death rate/birth rate ratio drops. So, even if the birth rate was constant, then we would still have more people. If you have x number of people being born per day and y number of people dying per day, then the population will depend on the ratio x:y. If y drops, the population goes up.

  It's okay dg.  I was just lobbing some sarcasm back at Darth, ......although I must say him calling me an "over-populationist" makes it sound as if he is someone who idolizes the Pope, if you know what I mean. 

No. I'm saying that there truly are remarkable children in this world. When someone says their child is special, you must defer to them because they have more interaction with the child than you do. How do you know that the little whining brat doesn't go home and compose?

They are the judge of how special their children are, not you. The very idea that your subjective appraisal of someone else's child is correct is closer to "delusional, ego-driven thinking", in my opinion.

So does every beauty queen child get murdered because her parents weren't watching?

For every anecdote there is a converse example.

What some 'asshole dads' are like does not prove a pattern. Even if we presuppose this is a bad thing for the child, it still does not determine any eventual outcome due to the presence of many other variables involved with said child's upbringing.

For every anecdote, there is a converse example. In other words, there can be found an equal number of names of people who have had nearly identical parents and lifestyles, yet they grew up just fine and are productive members of society.

Even on my list of horrible theists, there are people who had wonderful lives and fantastic parents yet they still wound up on the list (subordinate to Deanna Laney and Andrea Yates). There are literally millions of women who live comparable lives to those two women yet they don't drown or beat their kids with rocks. Do we blame grandpa and grandma for having them as babies????

If we go down that path then you can see we wind up in near infinite regression where we start analyzing the parental mistakes of Australopithecus Afarensis!!! Shit like: "Well, if Lucy had put this baby in the cave instead of under the tree when the eagle went by then I wouldn't be on anti-depression meds!"

You're just being silly now. I hope you read deludedgod's post on this. He broke it down for you a lot better than I was willing to.

That's not what this is about. I don't care whether or not you rear a child. I do care when you declare that no one should or only the people you assert are best-suited for it should.

You can take two individuals: one with a great life and one with a horrible life, give them both children, and get a wholly unexpected result from either or both. We see this all of the time in fact. Rich christians put god in the lives of their children, food on the table, time with the kids, etc. and they become atheists. The converse holds as much truth. Atheists raise their children with open, hungry minds and BAM! they become preachers.

Granted, there was something that happened, but it wasn't necessarily the fault of the parents in either case.

Whether or not I wind up being a great father can't be determined until the final product (fully grown, intersubjectively successful adult person) is reached.

Ooh!

One more thought...

Sparta

Spartans allegedly examined newborns for defects, keeping the 'good' and trashing the 'bad'. They did not look at the child's parents and say "You'll just fuck this kid up." before throwing a child into the pit.

Hey Darth,  ....let it go man.  I'm not Paisley for christ's sake.  If you don't agree with me on this topic, I can live with it.  Cheers.

LMAO. I gotta 'win' someone over in one of these recent discussions with other atheists about other topics than theism.

If I lose too many in a week it makes me spend more time in introspection via self-doubt. lol.

as long as "monkey seees monkey does"we both childless and none will co-exist,but the real problem ,there will be many more monkies with kids than not.

The GOOD news is the chidless  is not acting like a MONKEY,and therefore we are PROTOTYPING the new HUMAN.

and in  the very very ,far future ,childless will have an OFFSPRING saying, hmmmmmmmm,now ...this is a human being.

Cuz in reality the reason we dont want children now is simply we dont believe humanity is yet to be replicated

bahahahahaha

Responding to a 4 year old post from someone who no longer frequents the site eh?