Why have kids?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why have kids?

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Not an Owl posted:

I think this is just a topic we're bound to disagree on, unfortunately. It's within my life philosophy that even if you have still suffered, with a positive perspective and outlook it doesn't really matter that much.

That is probably a very normal belief for a human to hold. Optimism is self-reinforcing.

All I can really say is that I hope you don't lose it.

# ? Jul 1, 2015 00:01

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# ? May 5, 2024 05:47

Slobjob Zizek: Jun 20, 2004

What is design, though? Why does evolution exist? There is clearly some fundamental property of the universe pushing lifeforms to reproduce. Why? I don't know, but you can't act like it's some anomaly.

# ? Jul 1, 2015 02:15

McAlister: Nov 3, 2002; by exmarx

Not an Owl posted:

Literally the only thing someone could argue to be designed by evolution is reproduction

Counterexample:

One of the reasons human birthing is particularly deadly is the relatively recent transition to walking upright. We don't just get aching backs and slipped disks due to the shoddiness of our backbone, it also changed the shape of our pelvis making it much harder to shove babies through it.

The contortions we have to go through to deliver a baby are ridiculous:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2006/07/bipedal-body/ackerman-text

quote:

In Karen Rosenberg's laboratory at the University of Delaware, a room packed with the casts of skulls and bones of chimpanzees, gibbons, and other primates, one model stands out: It's a life-size replica of a human female pelvic skeleton mounted on a platform. There is also a fetal skull with a flexible gooseneck wire. The idea is to simulate the human birth process by manually moving the fetal head through the pelvis.

It looks easy enough.

"Go ahead, try it," Rosenberg says.

Turn the little oval skull face-forward, and it drops neatly into the pelvic brim, the beginning of the birth canal. But then it jams against the protrusions of the ischial bones (those that bear the burden during a long car ride). More shoving and rotating, and it's quickly apparent that the skull must traverse a passage that seems smaller than itself, cramped not only by the ischial bones but also by the coccyx, the bottom of the tailbone, which pokes into the lower pelvic cavity. Only by maneuvering the skull to face sideways in the middle of the canal and then giving it a ﬁrm push, does it move a centimeter or two�before it gets hung up again. Twist it, jostle it: The thing won't budge. Rosenberg guides my hand to turn the skull around to face backward, and then, with a hard shove, the stubborn cranium ﬁnally exits the birth canal.

"Navigating the birth canal is probably the most gymnastic maneuver most of us will ever make in life," says Rosenberg, chair of the university's department of anthropology. It's a trick all right, especially if there's no guiding hand to twirl and ram the skull. And the neat two-piece model doesn't even include the broad, rigid shoulders of the human infant, a legacy from our apelike ancestors who, some 20 million years ago, evolved wide clavicles that allowed them to hang suspended from branches and feed on fruit. To follow the head, a baby's shoulders must also rotate two times to work through the birth canal; they sometimes get stuck, causing injury to part of the spinal nerves that control the arms.

Suddenly I understand as never before why it took 36 hours, two doctors, and three shifts of nurses to safely deliver my ﬁrstborn.

Birth is an ordeal for women everywhere, according to a review of birthing patterns in nearly 300 cultures around the world by Rosenberg and colleague Wenda Trevathan, an anthropologist at New Mexico State University. "Not only is labor difﬁcult," Rosenberg says, "but because of the design of the female pelvis, infants exit the birth canal with the back of their heads against the pubic bones, facing in the opposite direction from the mother. This makes it tough for her to reach down and guide the baby as it emerges without damaging its spine�and also inhibits her ability to clear the baby's breathing passage or to remove the umbilical cord from around its neck. That's why women everywhere seek assistance during labor and delivery."

Compared with humans, most primates have an easier time, Rosenberg says. A baby chimpanzee, for instance, is born quickly: entering, passing through, and leaving its mother's pelvis in a straight shot and emerging faceup so that its mother can pull it forward and lift it toward her breast. In chimps and other primates, the oval birth canal is oriented the same way from beginning to end. In humans, it�s a flattened oval one way and then it shifts orientation 90 degrees so that it�s flattened the other way. To get through, the infant�s head and shoulders have to align with that shifting oval. It�s this changing cross-sectional shape of the passageway that makes human birth difﬁcult and risky, Rosenberg says, not just for babies but also for mothers. A hundred years ago, childbirth was a leading cause of death for women of childbearing age.

Our reproductive system is pathetic. But evolution doesn't care ( about anything because it has no intent ). Evolution is a process that describes how populations change. The process of evolution can explain why we are so incredibly pathetic at reproduction.

And we are really really bad at it. A third of our zygotes don't even implant. Most creatures manage multiple births routinely while we typically can barely manage one fetus at a time. We are so helplessly pathetic that we need help to give birth even when things are going well.

We aren't this way because of a plan or a design or because evolution wanted it. Evolution doesn't want things anymore than gravity does. But when you lift something up and let go gravity explains why it falls down. And if bipedal tool users who have horrible maternal mortality can kill everyone else in their ecological niche ... then evolution explains why they are around now instead of other creatures that are much better at reproduction.

# ? Jul 1, 2015 05:57

McAlister: Nov 3, 2002; by exmarx

Oh, and as for the question of whether one needs to morally justify having children, I recommend folks read Angela's Ashes. It's an autobiography of growing up in Ireland in extreme poverty. It has a film adaptation of you don't have the time to read it.

The part where I lost it is when the author describes his mum filling the babies' bottles with water one day to hush their crying - they had nothing else to fill the bottles with at that moment and she couldn't stand listening to them cry anymore. The twins eventually starved to death as did another sibling born after them ( the book opens with a baby born before the twins dying as well ).

We can argue all day long as to how precisely to define "adequate". But the minimal moral justification for having children is the ability to provide for them adequately. And that level is somewhere above "so poor that you know they will likely starve to death before reaching adulthood".

Luckily, social safety nets keep citizens of prosperous nations from facing situations where infanticide is a mercy. That said one in four Texas children misses meals regularly

http://tfbn.org/hunger-in-texas/causes-and-solutions/

quote:

According to the USDA, 18.4% of Texas households (or one in five) experience food insecurity. An estimated 1.8 million Texas children, or 27.1% (one in four) live in these households. Texas ranks among the top twelve states in terms of its food insecurity rate, and second in terms of the number of food insecure households

Since 18% of Texas households are periodically sending their kids to bed without dinner due to there not being any food to eat in the house, but those households contain 27% of Texas children ... I'm going to conclude that they have more than one child on average.

I would state that it was immoral/unethical/unjustifiable for these Texans to have an additional child when doing so takes food away from the child(ren) they already had. I realize the kids are unlikely to die from these missed meals, but it negatively impacts their health, growth, and ability to pay attention in school.

My personal definition of "adequately" is above food insecurity as well as starvation.

# ? Jul 1, 2015 07:03

Not an Owl: Oct 29, 2011

McAlister posted:

Counterexample:

One of the reasons human birthing is particularly deadly is the relatively recent transition to walking upright. We don't just get aching backs and slipped disks due to the shoddiness of our backbone, it also changed the shape of our pelvis making it much harder to shove babies through it.

The contortions we have to go through to deliver a baby are ridiculous:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2006/07/bipedal-body/ackerman-text

Our reproductive system is pathetic. But evolution doesn't care ( about anything because it has no intent ). Evolution is a process that describes how populations change. The process of evolution can explain why we are so incredibly pathetic at reproduction.

And we are really really bad at it. A third of our zygotes don't even implant. Most creatures manage multiple births routinely while we typically can barely manage one fetus at a time. We are so helplessly pathetic that we need help to give birth even when things are going well.

We aren't this way because of a plan or a design or because evolution wanted it. Evolution doesn't want things anymore than gravity does. But when you lift something up and let go gravity explains why it falls down. And if bipedal tool users who have horrible maternal mortality can kill everyone else in their ecological niche ... then evolution explains why they are around now instead of other creatures that are much better at reproduction.

Yes but walking up-right is part of a process of natural selection: those who were able to walk up-right were able to reproduce more effectively than those who could not for whatever reason. While up-right walking still caused some dangers to the process of reproduction, it still must have enabled those who walk-upright to have more fit offspring or it wouldn't have been selected for.

# ? Jul 1, 2015 13:03

McAlister: Nov 3, 2002; by exmarx

Not an Owl posted:

Yes but walking up-right is part of a process of natural selection: those who were able to walk up-right were able to reproduce more effectively than those who could not for whatever reason. While up-right walking still caused some dangers to the process of reproduction, it still must have enabled those who walk-upright to have more fit offspring or it wouldn't have been selected for.

Nope. They were able to use tools better to kill the competition. Reproductive ability was directly sacrificed in favor of killing ability.

So if we are pretending evolution has "intent" then the "intention" that matches what it "did with us" is to be murder machines.

Bunnies would be a better example of a reproduction focused strategy. Not humans.

Hell, compared to other primates we are the worst moms in the animal kingdom. We practice communal child rearing and constantly pawn our kids off on others to watch. A practice which makes the occasional human who doesn't want kids of their own but instead just helps others with theirs an evolutionary advantage for a family line.

Ergo I get to declare that the super human force you aren't allowed to argue with "intends" what I want for me ( to not have the urge to have children and instead help others ) rather than "intending" what you want! And since the superhuman force doesn't talk ( or think or intend anything ) we can't get it to tell us who is right. So the discussion never ends.

Aren't religious arguments fun?

Wouldn't the discussion by a better use of time if we stopped hiding behind God/biotruths/Evo-psych and just honestly admitted we are saying what we individually think? Maybe justify our thought on their own merits without appeals to non-existent authorities?

# ? Jul 1, 2015 15:11

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Slobjob Zizek posted:

What is design, though? Why does evolution exist? There is clearly some fundamental property of the universe pushing lifeforms to reproduce. Why? I don't know, but you can't act like it's some anomaly.

Because given two things of equal complexity, the things that have mechanisms that try to make more of themselves, are more likely to exist than things that don't.

As in, you don't see living things that don't reproduce because there aren't very many of them, whereas things that do reproduce are more numerous.

# ? Jul 1, 2015 15:13

Not an Owl: Oct 29, 2011

McAlister posted:

Nope. They were able to use tools better to kill the competition. Reproductive ability was directly sacrificed in favor of killing ability.

So if we are pretending evolution has "intent" then the "intention" that matches what it "did with us" is to be murder machines.

Bunnies would be a better example of a reproduction focused strategy. Not humans.

Hell, compared to other primates we are the worst moms in the animal kingdom. We practice communal child rearing and constantly pawn our kids off on others to watch. A practice which makes the occasional human who doesn't want kids of their own but instead just helps others with theirs an evolutionary advantage for a family line.

Ergo I get to declare that the super human force you aren't allowed to argue with "intends" what I want for me ( to not have the urge to have children and instead help others ) rather than "intending" what you want! And since the superhuman force doesn't talk ( or think or intend anything ) we can't get it to tell us who is right. So the discussion never ends.

Aren't religious arguments fun?

Wouldn't the discussion by a better use of time if we stopped hiding behind God/biotruths/Evo-psych and just honestly admitted we are saying what we individually think? Maybe justify our thought on their own merits without appeals to non-existent authorities?

They were able to kill the competition better, sacrificing reproductive ability but ensuring that more reproduction would happen, as with less competition there are more resources for children to grow and reproduce themselves. Communal child rearing ensures that more children are able to reach reproductive age.

I'm not arguing with you because I think that reproduction is our "biological duty." I'm arguing with you because natural selection favors those who can have as many children as possible, whether it comes form better reproductive mechanisms or a way of reducing competition. Arguing that evolution isn't designed around reproduction is scientific ignorance.

# ? Jul 1, 2015 15:30

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Evolution isn't designed around anything, it just happens. It implies no degree of elegance or objective suitability, no authorial intent or purpose.

You might as well say that glacial erosion is designed to make drumlins. It does that but saying it's designed to do it is a rather weird way of saying it.

# ? Jul 1, 2015 15:45

Solkanar512: Dec 28, 2006; by the sex ghost

Not an Owl posted:

They were able to kill the competition better, sacrificing reproductive ability but ensuring that more reproduction would happen, as with less competition there are more resources for children to grow and reproduce themselves. Communal child rearing ensures that more children are able to reach reproductive age.

I'm not arguing with you because I think that reproduction is our "biological duty." I'm arguing with you because natural selection favors those who can have as many children as possible, whether it comes form better reproductive mechanisms or a way of reducing competition. Arguing that evolution isn't designed around reproduction is scientific ignorance.

Natural selection favors those who have children who go on to mature and have children of their own. Otherwise it would only last a single generation.

Even then, that's an overly simplistic view of the issue - one area of research is in the question of asexual vs. sexual reproduction. If the name of the game were reproduction and nothing more, then asexual reproduction would win every time, as you get to double the population every generation. Yet lots of organisms don't reproduce that way, why?

# ? Jul 1, 2015 15:46

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Solkanar512 posted:

Natural selection favors those who have children who go on to mature and have children of their own. Otherwise it would only last a single generation.

Even then, that's an overly simplistic view of the issue - one area of research is in the question of asexual vs. sexual reproduction. If the name of the game were reproduction and nothing more, then asexual reproduction would win every time, as you get to double the population every generation. Yet lots of organisms don't reproduce that way, why?

Partly because sexual reproduction accelerates diversification and partly because if you've ever watched a cow double its mass and split into two smaller cows, it's difficult to do with macroscopic lifeforms.

# ? Jul 1, 2015 15:56

screamname: Apr 6, 2015

Rodatose posted:

owning child gives your life shape and meaning with an average purpose-value equal to owning 3.7 dogs or 11 cats.

Owning a child?

You don't own people

# ? Jul 2, 2015 12:54

asdf32: May 15, 2010; I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.

OwlFancier posted:

Evolution isn't designed around anything, it just happens. It implies no degree of elegance or objective suitability, no authorial intent or purpose.

You might as well say that glacial erosion is designed to make drumlins. It does that but saying it's designed to do it is a rather weird way of saying it.

Everyone understands this. But it still tends to be useful to use the word "design" to talk about the reason why some trait was selected for and passed down.

# ? Jul 2, 2015 18:31

EB Nulshit: Apr 12, 2014; It was more disappointing (and surprising) when I found that even most of Manhattan isn't like Times Square.

I see. Why do you think that is?

# ? Jul 8, 2015 05:32

Divine Styler: Apr 8, 2005; quantum mechanic

Because it's the most profound and rewarding thing human beings are capable of. Good question OP.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 07:19

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Divine Styler posted:

Because it's the most profound and rewarding thing human beings are capable of. Good question OP.

Unambitious if you ask me.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 08:09

Brutal Garcon: Nov 2, 2014

Leaving aside for a moment whether or not it's a good idea: why is having children generally considered a "human right"? Is it just the lingering fear of eugenics?

# ? Jul 24, 2015 13:35

The Larch: Jan 14, 2015; by FactsAreUseless

Dzhay posted:

Leaving aside for a moment whether or not it's a good idea: why is having children generally considered a "human right"? Is it just the lingering fear of eugenics?

Because bodily autonomy is generally considered a human right.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 13:44

Avshalom: Feb 14, 2012; by Lowtax

I need to have a baby in order to perpetuate the Jewish identity of my line.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 13:51

Mc Do Well: Aug 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Its naturalistic fallacy. Biologically every individual feels entitled to reproduce and to enjoy the resulting 'profound experience'.

But this attitude ignores the external costs of unrestrained population growth.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:19

Doorknob Slobber: Sep 10, 2006; by Fluffdaddy

McDowell posted:

Its naturalistic fallacy. Biologically every individual feels entitled to reproduce and to enjoy the resulting 'profound experience'.

But this attitude ignores the external costs of unrestrained population growth.

who gets to decide which humans have babies and which ones dont

I don't think its fair to propose that we should have less babies without also talking about who gets to and who doesn't in a world where you're restricting population growth

v - I seriously doubt advertising in and of itself would be enough, social pressure is iffy. Have you ever known a woman who decided it was time to have a baby? She's unstoppable.

Doorknob Slobber fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Jul 24, 2015

# ? Jul 24, 2015 15:56

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

Antinatalist advertising and social pressure. Then they will decide for themselves.

Also it will breed a generation who are more resistant to advertising and peer pressure. (Maybe)

# ? Jul 24, 2015 15:58

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Reason posted:

Have you ever known a woman who decided it was time to have a baby? She's unstoppable.

Unless humans have developed the ability to undergo parthenogenetic reproduction, I don't think this is strictly accurate.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 16:05

Harold Fjord: Jan 3, 2004

How about everyone has the right to reproduce but not everyone has the right to their own offspring. We do this to a very limited extent in the worst cases, but what if we expanded that principal? Have as many babies as you want, but the state will take them away and you can request to have one assigned to you to raise. How would this affect the number of people having children?

# ? Jul 24, 2015 16:20

CSPAN Caller: Oct 16, 2012

I'm looking forward to a future where all the altruistic people refuse to have children on ethical grounds and all the assholes breed like crazy.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 17:25

Don Pigeon: Oct 29, 2005; Great pigeons are not born great. They grow great by eating lots of bread crumbs.

CSPAN Caller posted:

I'm looking forward to a future where all the altruistic people refuse to have children on ethical grounds and all the assholes breed like crazy.

This is the plot of a famous Mike Judge film and it won't happen.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 17:35

Broken Machine: Oct 22, 2010

Mystic_Shadow posted:

This is the plot of a famous Mike Judge film and it won't happen.

More educated people do tend to have fewer kids, and technology is making it so there's less need for people who can think independently. I don't think we're on our way to Idiocracy, but we are headed towards fewer smart people per capita.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 17:43

CSPAN Caller: Oct 16, 2012

Hey man, all I am saying is that no kids folk don't get that the world is literally Jurassic Park and life finds a way.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 18:21

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

Broken Machine posted:

I don't think we're on our way to Idiocracy, but we are headed towards fewer smart people per capita.

Except that better prenatal and childhood nutrition, elimination of parasites, more understanding about heavy metals, and more universal education means that things might easily go the other way, even if the people having children aren't the 'smart' ones.

CSPAN Caller posted:

Hey man, all I am saying is that no kids folk don't get that the world is literally Jurassic Park and life finds a way.

Nobody said it would be human life though.

Maybe the future apex species will be giant helminths. Who knows.

Hi!

# ? Jul 24, 2015 22:47

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

I want kids now only because it will piss off the people that think kids are a waste.

# ? Aug 5, 2015 02:17

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Guavanaut posted:

Hi!

It's like a real-life Carbots zergling:

# ? Aug 5, 2015 02:21

khwarezm: Oct 26, 2010; Deal with it.

OwlFancier posted:

Partly because sexual reproduction accelerates diversification and partly because if you've ever watched a cow double its mass and split into two smaller cows, it's difficult to do with macroscopic lifeforms.

That's a poor understanding of Asexual reproduction. There's nothing that stops Macroscopic life forms from asexual reproduction, its quite common, even in vertebrates there are whole species that appear to be entirely asexual. Usually its a process called Parthenogenesis, and its often most prevalent among creatures that live in very small population groups (i.e. geckos spread across a chain of tiny islands) where the benefits of sexual reproduction are mostly nullified since only a tiny local population can exist with little or no genetic input from the outside, so after a few generations everything would be hopelessly inbred anyway. Alternatively a species might be prone to extreme population bottlenecks as a result of their environment or lifestyle, or they might be spread over a very large area but have extremely low population density, finding a mate can be extremely difficult for many reptiles in high desert or Tripod fish at the bottom of the ocean so cloning oneself is a bit of a stopgap to keep the genes going for another generation if they can't find a mate. Of course most species that can reproduce asexually are also capable of sexual reproduction and would prioritize that if given the chance.

khwarezm fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Aug 5, 2015

# ? Aug 5, 2015 04:46

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

I know, I just find the idea of a cow undergoing mitosis funny.

# ? Aug 5, 2015 09:28

His Divine Shadow: Aug 7, 2000; I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.

screamname posted:

Owning a child?

You don't own people

I have a receipt that begs to differ

# ? Aug 5, 2015 12:04

Amused to Death: Aug 10, 2009; google "The Night Witches", and prepare for

McAlister posted:

Since 18% of Texas households are periodically sending their kids to bed without dinner due to there not being any food to eat in the house, but those households contain 27% of Texas children ... I'm going to conclude that they have more than one child on average.

I would state that it was immoral/unethical/unjustifiable for these Texans to have an additional child when doing so takes food away from the child(ren) they already had. I realize the kids are unlikely to die from these missed meals, but it negatively impacts their health, growth, and ability to pay attention in school.

My personal definition of "adequately" is above food insecurity as well as starvation.

Hello! I was one of these children from your statistic who at times had no food in the house and I say your morality is dumb as gently caress. But then again this thread as a whole is basically peak goon

# ? Aug 5, 2015 13:14

Radbot: Aug 12, 2009; Can't post for 3 years!

Star Man posted:

I want kids now only because it will piss off the people that think kids are a waste.

Sounds like you've though this through, you should go for it.

Also agreed that family planning is peak goon

# ? Aug 5, 2015 13:29

DismemberedLemon: Jun 20, 2015

Amused to Death posted:

Hello! I was one of these children from your statistic who at times had no food in the house and I say your morality is dumb as gently caress. But then again this thread as a whole is basically peak goon

I agree, it's goony to think that having children miss meals is a bad thing.

# ? Aug 9, 2015 06:04

Mc Do Well: Aug 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

How can you support abortion when you yourself could have been aborted?

# ? Aug 9, 2015 13:50

DarkCrawler: Apr 6, 2009; by vyelkin

McDowell posted:

How can you support abortion when you yourself could have been aborted?

Because sometimes I wish I had been?

# ? Aug 9, 2015 15:18

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# ? May 5, 2024 05:47

DismemberedLemon: Jun 20, 2015

McDowell posted:

How can you support abortion when you yourself could have been aborted?

Because if I was aborted I would have no opinion at all, lmbo.

# ? Aug 9, 2015 18:52

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