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"Be fruitful and multiply" is a common verse to advocate having children, among numerous others. There seems to be a stigma toward people who choose to not have children. It's expected that you will grow up and have kids one day. Do you think it's morally wrong to not have kids? To explain further, I'm referring solely to bringing new children into the world (whether that's naturally, through IVF, artificial insemination, or what have you), not abortion or adoption.

There's arguments from both sides that assert the other party is selfish. Parents for continuing their genes instead of adopting an existing child, and child-free people for supposedly living life just for themselves.

As someone tokophobic (one who fears childbirth) and not fond of kids in general, it would be more wrong for me to bring an unloved child into the world than to go without. If I want kids one day, which is unlikely but possible, I'd prefer to adopt for various reasons.

Your thoughts?

Agreed. In the cases where people have biological children in the hopes of seeing little copies of themselves and their partner running around, that could be disappointing. There's kids who look nothing like their parents, myself included.

I agree with you 100%!
I choose not to have kids by birth, when there are so many kids, I'd like to adopt.

I seriously doubt the the Boomers are so concerned with their social security to push the younger generations to be fruitful.

They grew up where it was natural to have large families. In fact, they are the last generation to be like that. Before their generation, the only reason there wasn't so many large families was because of infant mortality rate and shorter average life span. It was common for women to have 8 to 20 pregnancies and less than half of those children would survive past five years of age.

The reason that most baby boomers encourage the younger generations to have actual families is because family was the focus of their generation. Not adventure, not sex, not entertainment, it was all about family. It was what brought them happiness, and they believe that that's where it's at.

The day and age is changing though. Humanity doesn't have to rely on large families to ensure it's continuity because of advances in medicine, and technology. With the changes in mortality rates around the globe, the mindset of humanity seems to be changing as well. Case in point, people implying that having children is less moral than choosing to refrain.

The choice to have children is not a moral issue in and of itself. It's just a decision that a person can make. It might be considered a moral choice if a woman (or family) doesn't have the means to take care a child.

Look, I wasn't trying to be smug.

I talk to real people, not rely on national polls. Have you ever had to answer one of those things? They don't ask you what you think. They give you answers and you have to choose from the "best" one. Then they base their story on that. They are rigs. They manipulate people to give the answers that they want to report, and they make people sound less like people. If you talked to each and every individual on those public opinion polls, I would put money on the fact that not a single one of them (at least random takers) would say, we need babies so there will be someone to work for my social security check when I'm 99 years old.

I've read several papers and such. I have even answered several of those polls on issues from what I "feel" about my retirement security, to why I would choose one political party over another (although I'm Independent, I never get that option), and I am here to tell you, there are no answers on those things that I would even think to say when asked to actually give my opinion in my own words. It's multiple choice with all wrong answers. That's the fact. Opinion polls mean less than crap.

People who make their living off of propaganda like this can't be depended on to give the opinions of a whole population, yet we let them get away with it, and we depend on their opinion. They make money off of stirring people up. They run political campaigns on it, they convert sheep to their way of thinking, and they sell books about the uproar they instigated. They get their faces immortalized as a hero or a villain, I don't think it matters to them as long as they get their likeness in a museum.

Yeah, Boomers had their fun, every generation has their fun. So what they had drugs then. Before that it was dancing. There is always sex. During the American Civil War, sexually transmitted diseases were the number one killer of pretty much everyone. LOL It doesn't mean that they didn't value their families.

Thing is, they didn't have nearly as many distractions back then as we do now. Everyone depended on each other for everything; entertainment, therapy, food, clothes, friends. it wasn't until the mid to late 1800s that all that began to change, yet mortality rates were still high, and people still valued having large family structures.

By the time of the Baby Boomers, mortality rates had taken a drastic drop. The Baby Boomers' parents were still of the mind that they needed the larger family structure. They instilled that into their kids.

Anyway, I didn't suggest you pulled it out of your a**. I am convinced now that you went to the wrong source to get your facts. Anything you here in the media, needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It needs to be investigated, not by going to other media sources, they all get their facts from the same source. You need to go to the real life people the story is about.

i have to say, i feel in agreement with this. i can't claim to know Baby Boomers personally, the only people i know from that generation were never Baby Boomers. just people from that generation. but i do read History, and it's pretty clear that Family was infinitely more important in that time than it is nowadays.

i admit even i don't place a whole lot of value in blood-family, and i'm one of the people who will look at spoiled rotten brats these days and comment about how bullshit it is that spanking them is considered physical or emotional abuse. xp

point is, while there are the senior citizens who want more grandchildren to take care of them, even most of them have actual good intentions for their urgings. they honestly believe it to be better for their own children, and for their family. and there are plenty more old geezers who don't even care about their own health, just wanna make sure that their descendants have a large and happy family that they can be proud of.

also, you got pretty freaking snappy back there, sanguine.

actually... ********, i think i remember you, your one of those super-judgemental "i'm-always-right-and-you'e-always-wrong-rawr" folks! =.=

:inches away warily.:

I have the choice to want kids or not, it shouldn't be a law for me to have children. Having kids takes much dedication and I want a bright future of many things that I want to do, and having kids does not involve that.

I personally would like to have a baby.
And that's where debate ends. Making this a moral problem is very manipulating.