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I hope to have a large family for this reason. I dont know if I'll have the time to give kids my full attention. I found my brother was/is the reason I'm a ne

I hope to have a large family for this reason. I dont know if I'll have the time to give kids my full attention. I found my brother was/is the reason I'm a nerd. Sure my dad was a database manager, but I spend hours daily with my brother gaming. I dont even think I wanted to spend a half hour with my 'boring' dad.

toasterlovin 8y ago
When thinking about having children and about the level of care and attention you’ll be able to give them, I think it’s useful to have the right comparison in mind. If you’re considering having another child, that child’s choices are not between your limited time and attention on the one hand and, on the other, parents who can shower them with time and attention. Instead, the alternative to your limited time and attention is never getting to be alive. When you frame things that way, the answer for parents who are considering another child is pretty much always to give the child the gift of life. In the developed world, at least.
- ck425 8y ago
  Life isn't automatically good!!! Bad parenting can, and does, create lives that are arguably better to have never existed.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    I think it’s pretty patronizing to make this choice for other people. IMO, there’s only one person whose moral right it is to decide whether a life is worthwhile. And that’s the person whose life it is.
    - ck425 8y ago
      No there's not, because one lifeform's existed can effect others. Additionally when debating if life should come to be, the lifeform in question can't have an opinion until after the fact.
      - toasterlovin 8y ago
        Think about the kind of life you think would have been better off not existing. Surely there are people alive whose life fits your criteria. Now imagine telling one of these people that it would have been better if they never existed. Probably they'll tell you where you can stick your notions.
        ck425 8y ago
        I'm not suggesting someone goes and tells them, that would just cause more pain. I'm suggesting we stop that life from existing in the first place.
        toasterlovin 8y ago
        If you have other reasons for not wanting a life to exist, that’s another matter. But if your only reason is that, in your estimation, that person would have a life not worth living, that seems awfully presumptuous. Life is optional. Let them decide if they want to be alive.
- mkirklions 8y ago
  >the alternative to your limited time and attention is never getting to be alive. Eh, if anyone should have kids, it should be the financially well off and educated people. Remember that your logic isnt going to stop impoverished people from having 4 kids and welfare.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Yeah, you and I might not want impoverished people from having kids that they can't afford (since guilt will compel us to step in and assist). But I would bet that 99 out of 100 people who grew up in the worst kind of poverty would happily do so again rather than never have existed. So, from the child's point of view it's a good tradeoff.
- CalRobert 8y ago
  "is never getting to be alive." I suppose we may differ on this but I don't really view that as a negative. I don't think there's a pool of "potential people" from which we draw when making a new person. An infinite number of beings don't exist, and won't. I actually would love to see more work on the nature of consciousness and the self, and what exactly gives a new foetus or baby its awareness of the fact that it exists. And yet I'm not entirely consistent internally because even though "I want someone to hang out with when I'm old" is part of the reason kids sound fun, most of it is "bringing a new being capable of experience joy into the universe", so I guess I sort of agree, in a roundabout sense.

toasterlovin 8y ago

When thinking about having children and about the level of care and attention you’ll be able to give them, I think it’s useful to have the right comparison in mind. If you’re considering having another child, that child’s choices are not between your limited time and attention on the one hand and, on the other, parents who can shower them with time and attention. Instead, the alternative to your limited time and attention is never getting to be alive. When you frame things that way, the answer for parents who are considering another child is pretty much always to give the child the gift of life. In the developed world, at least.

ck425 8y ago
Life isn't automatically good!!! Bad parenting can, and does, create lives that are arguably better to have never existed.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  I think it’s pretty patronizing to make this choice for other people. IMO, there’s only one person whose moral right it is to decide whether a life is worthwhile. And that’s the person whose life it is.
  - ck425 8y ago
    No there's not, because one lifeform's existed can effect others. Additionally when debating if life should come to be, the lifeform in question can't have an opinion until after the fact.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      Think about the kind of life you think would have been better off not existing. Surely there are people alive whose life fits your criteria. Now imagine telling one of these people that it would have been better if they never existed. Probably they'll tell you where you can stick your notions.
      - ck425 8y ago
        I'm not suggesting someone goes and tells them, that would just cause more pain. I'm suggesting we stop that life from existing in the first place.
        toasterlovin 8y ago
        If you have other reasons for not wanting a life to exist, that’s another matter. But if your only reason is that, in your estimation, that person would have a life not worth living, that seems awfully presumptuous. Life is optional. Let them decide if they want to be alive.
mkirklions 8y ago
>the alternative to your limited time and attention is never getting to be alive. Eh, if anyone should have kids, it should be the financially well off and educated people. Remember that your logic isnt going to stop impoverished people from having 4 kids and welfare.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Yeah, you and I might not want impoverished people from having kids that they can't afford (since guilt will compel us to step in and assist). But I would bet that 99 out of 100 people who grew up in the worst kind of poverty would happily do so again rather than never have existed. So, from the child's point of view it's a good tradeoff.
CalRobert 8y ago
"is never getting to be alive." I suppose we may differ on this but I don't really view that as a negative. I don't think there's a pool of "potential people" from which we draw when making a new person. An infinite number of beings don't exist, and won't. I actually would love to see more work on the nature of consciousness and the self, and what exactly gives a new foetus or baby its awareness of the fact that it exists. And yet I'm not entirely consistent internally because even though "I want someone to hang out with when I'm old" is part of the reason kids sound fun, most of it is "bringing a new being capable of experience joy into the universe", so I guess I sort of agree, in a roundabout sense.