Really?
I can think of plenty of ugly and evil people whose moms did not bring something beautiful into the world....Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and how about that guy from Cleveland they just arrested for imprisoning 3 girls in his house for 10 years?
19 comments:
A little too open-ended. Read it against the grain. It doesn't necessarily say "children are beautiful," just that being a mother makes "something" beautiful.
I know someone who did scientific research on tissue samples from placentas. Some of those researchers probably thought the afterbirth was beautiful in some weird way, so yes, birth can make some beautiful "things." As a teacher, I need people to continue to reproduce -- having a job is a beautiful thing. OBGYN's get paid for deliveries, and a paycheck is a beautiful thing, so...
Sure, why not.
Besides, those guys in Cleveland thought those women's mothers made something beautiful, so even the sickos agree with the sentiment.
Not sure how much pride a woman can claim for doing something like getting pregnant, considering you can get pregnant when you're unconscious and can gestate a baby while you're in a coma. Even giving birth is not actually an act of creation or "making" something. Babies grow inside you in an involuntary process. You no more "grow" a baby inside you than you grow a parasite. It's not a price-winning pumpkin from your garden.
Oh, you should know better than to bother with those kinds of details.
I am sure someone would argue that a REAL mom wouldn't have given birth to a monster...she must have done something.
And of course, people without kids NEVER give the world anything "beautiful." /sarcasm
This reinforces my suspicion that a lot of people have kids because they don't have the ability or imagination to accomplish anything more unique or interesting. It gives them "permission" not to bother trying to accomplish anything that actually takes skill. Anyone can have unprotected sex, after all. (But apparently, not everyone can use punctuation correctly. Take a closer look at the picture.)
And like you said, plenty of people out there are decidedly NOT beautiful. And even those who aren't criminals are generally pretty mediocre. Very few people achieve true greatness, regardless of how you define "great."
Exactly, it's Russian roulette. You don't know what kind of disorders/deformities they might have, what kind of person they'll be, etc. etc.
Not to mention the fact that whatever you're creating is also going to do quite a lot of damage to the environment, deplete already diminishing natural resources, and create a whole lot of unnecessary waste!
Forgive me, but I feel like going on a personal Mother's Day rant right now...
Similar to sentiments that you have expressed in previous posts about Mother's Day, I also don't like the fact that we have a special holiday reserved for mothers. And that we are supposed to somehow be eternally grateful to them.
I'm feeling cynical today, so bear with me...
My mother did not do a particularly great job. When we were little, she was a bit uninvolved, even neglectful. I don't feel particularly close to my mom. I think lately we've gotten closer, but for the majority of my life, it was like she hardly knew me. She didn't even make an effort to get to know me. My mother's also not the smartest person in the world (what you said before about the most inadequate parents having the greatest amount of children really resonated with me--it's totally true!) which caused her to make some pretty bad decisions. And she's really been irritating me lately, because now that the kids are close to moving out of the house, she's REALLY been going on a Mother Martyrdom binge. I'm full of all these things I want to say to her like, "yes, Mom, but you see...you CHOSE to be a mother and you CHOSE to have six children...and you didn't even do that great of a job at it."
Don't get me wrong. My mom wasn't completely awful. There are definitely worse mothers out there. But I just don't feel the way about her the way my facebook friends feel about their mothers. They'll be posting statuses tomorrow about how their mom is the best mother in the world, and how they want to strive to be just like the amazing person their mom is...I just don't feel that way about my own mother.
Am I an ungrateful, selfish, entitled brat for thinking this and feeling this way? I don't think I am. I think it's more complicated than that. Right now, I'm just resentful that I'm expected to show appreciation for someone who doesn't deserve it.
Temujin...you are just too funny!!!!
Ha ha! Reminds me of when a work colleague announced she was having a boy. Another colleague, with no trace of sarcasm, said: "Wow, what an achievement!" I think she was being completely serious... To this day I can't work out how that's an achievement!
So many women use pregnancies and raising children as an excuse for not studying or working... It is disgusting.
@Alex I have seen things that way too. A looot of people I knew from years ago who are now parents weren't particularly gifted or a genetic freak in any way. When you hear about someone that's just average in life, you can't say, "Well, is there a reason they felt they needed to pass on their genes?" without coming across as the biggest jerk in the world and the topic of eugenics, Hitler, etc. follows. I've always had a sneaky suspicion some of them were doing that to opt-out of the hard stuff in life as well.
Reminds me of the cliche about how your child could grow up to cure cancer someday.
My reply to that:
"Why aren't YOU doing to something to cure cancer? Why are you leaving it to the next generation to work on it? Getting pregnant is a terrible anticancer strategy. You'd be better off donating that money to the NIH. Imagine if every generation says that the next generation will cure cancer. Then it never gets cured."
It's such a shame that so many women my age (29) throw their professional and personal ambitions away so that they can stay at home with their kids all day. What's the point of going to college and taking on student debt to get married and quit working 5 years later? I think a lot of women consider having a child their greatest "achievement" which I find incredibly sad. If you want to change the world for the better, do it yourself and don't put that burden on a child.
I think proper grammar is beautiful.
How about an apostrophe in "didnt"?
How about not capitalizing random words like "Beautiful"?
I hope the writer didn't (see what I did there?) discontinue her formal education in order to have children.
Never, ever let your reproductive status get in the way of proofreading!
I love it when women claim their greatest 'achievement' in life was having a baby. Umm you know in my entire life I've never met a woman who 'accidentally' wrote a novel or who got drunk at a party and woke up with a law degree.
I know so many women who where depressed because there couldn't get pregnant (fast enough) and who are now depressed because they can't get no sleep . Life will always be hell for them.
This is hysterical !!! Glad I'm not her.. Maybe you will want to post this :)
http://www.chicagonow.com/baby-sideburns/2012/12/going-from-one-kid-to-two/
Thanks for posting this. I hate seeing those types of posts on Facebook.
My husband and I are "fence-sitters," so we've not yet decided whether to have a child. We like children, but are highly analytical as to the decision to become parents. Furthermore, my husband is 20 years my senior with a position as a professor and researcher. After having lived overseas and worked for years,I am completing my last year of law school.
We've been married for 11 months though together for over four years. We have a comfortable life: we've almost paid off our modest but comfortable home, cars. Our only debt is my student loans, which we plan to pay off early. We love to travel, eat at nice restaurants, cook nice meals. We have a dog we love and besides her funny antics, a low tolerance for chaos.
Our friends urge us to procreate while simultaneously griping about their babies. I've never dreamed of kids, but I have dreamed of travel, a career, I cannot thank you enough for this blog. I've always seemed out of place in the Southern city in which I live and this is a big reason why. After perusing countless child free blogs and reading books, we've still not made a decision. I love working, and I'm writing law related articles to be published. We do know that if we have children, we'd be happy with just one and getting sterilized after; we'd also want to hire a doula, night nurse and nanny since my parents have admitted they won't be super involved as they still work. I also need intellectual stimulation and cultural activities, so I would be a loving though very nontraditional working mom.
At least I will have made a truly educated choice. Perhaps the other problem with parenthood is this culture of hyper parenting helicopter parents. When I lived overseas, parents still had their own lives outside of their kids. My parents did as well.
Blue -
Your life sounds fantastic. You didn't say in your post why you are undecided. What is it about having kids that appeals to you? There must be something or you wouldn't be on the fence.
Oh barf. Tell this to all the children sitting in foster care or orphanages waiting to be adopted.
Fantastic. I am so happy to have found this community. For a long time I thought I must be heartless for stifling my vomit every time I saw a post like this one on Facebook. Now I have unapologetically hidden these people from my news feed. Bliss.
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