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He didn't address couples counseling and therapy as factors in keeping marriages going. There's always been marriage counseling; today it's a professional thera

He didn't address couples counseling and therapy as factors in keeping marriages going. There's always been marriage counseling; today it's a professional therapist you hire, but in the old days it was your priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you on how to get along. Today in First World industrial societies, couples just try to wing it, moving out from the parents' house as soon as economically possible, living in a tiny nuclear household, sometimes very far away from the parents, and few humble themselves enough to try counseling. My wife and I have been getting couples counseling on and off since before we were married, and it's helped a lot in learning how to communicate. Those knock-down, drag out fights are today a distant memory and instead we try to focus on communicating our needs, on expressing our feelings in a non-confrontational manner, etc. I'm all for more couples counseling. Kids help, too. My amateur theory is that fundamentally speaking a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. Kids are inconvenient and expensive and people mistakenly feel they'll have a happier life without them, but in a certain sense it's an empty life. Some people probably should not raise kids, but the majority probably should, but also should learn better communication and then they will have a healthier relationship with both their spouse and their children. Just my humble opinions :)

sergiosgc 12y ago
> (...) in a certain sense it's an empty life. Inappropriately harsh position. A couple unable to conceive can easily have a meaningful life, even without going through the adoption path. It's just that having kids is the beaten path. You know from the onset the path all the way through. It is known what society expects from you and you feel happy fulfilling the expectation. A childless couple must create a journey together. It's a different path for each couple, thus with higher risk. The good news is that higher risk carries higher reward.
- dasil003 12y ago
  > You know from the onset the path all the way through. Spoken like someone without kids.
john_b 12y ago
> "Kids are inconvenient and expensive and people mistakenly feel they'll have a happier life without them, but in a certain sense it's an empty life." s/kids/startups/ to see how ridiculous this sounds. Any kind of presumption that other people should make certain major life decisions a certain way just because you feel that will make them happy sounds extremely presumptuous.
- ArtDev 12y ago
  Selfish jerks can benefit the most from having kids :) Unless your legit nuts or completely broke, it is a good thing for all. Having kids is like going to college. Its expensive, difficult and challenging.. but in the end, you are sad to think of what would have happened if you had not taken the plunge.
- dasil003 12y ago
  Sure it's presumptuous, but not as presumptuous as your substitution. Kids are a biological imperative, startups are not, so it's not quite that ridiculous-sounding.
- genofon 12y ago
  humans are animal and as such we have the instinct to procreate. Maybe this is not true for all humans but most of them will feel that urge. Natural selection works pretty well on this: the one that don't feel that urge will be less likely to procreate and so to pass their genes to the next generation.
flavor8 12y ago
> My amateur theory is that fundamentally speaking a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. That's certainly what evolution has favored (by definition) in terms of primal drives, but that doesn't mean that living life without them is in some sense "empty". Evolution isn't innately wise; e.g. we have very common diseases like cancers, dementia etc in the population because they tend to show up late in life, after the next generation has already been produced. So, just because some particular behavior or attribute is in our genes does not make it "good", it just means that we are programmed in that way due to some set of evolutionary-historical circumstances. And on the flip side to your point, if you have kids as a way to fill a void in your life, you may find yourself having an existential crisis when they move out and go to college.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  I think reproduction is a pretty fundamental instinct that goes back almost to the beginning of life on this planet. We're programmed to reproduce. Even people who intellectually choose not to reproduce are drawn to the sexual act of reproduction, though of course they defeat the mechanism with birth control devices.
  - flavor8 12y ago
    I don't think you contradict anything I said - we're in agreement that it's in our programming.
  - aliakhtar 12y ago
    Sure, we're programmed to have sex. But gay people are programmed to have gay sex, which doesn't result in children. Some people have a parental instinct. Many people, including me, don't.
lisper 12y ago
> a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. This misses to very important points. First, we weren't designed. Second, while it is true that there is evolutionary pressure to have a desire to reproduce one's genes, this is a gross oversimplification of our nature. We are not merely survival machines for our genes. We have these big brains, which give rise to all kinds of interesting secondary phenomena, like having ideas, making music, writing poetry, inventing computers, and arguing about things on hacker news. Because of this incredible richness and diversity of potential human experience, raising kids is just one of myriad ways to have a happy and fulfilled life.
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  This misses the fundamental point: we were designed to reproduce. It's innate to not just our species, not just our kingdom, but to basically every living thing. And yes, I would argue in fact that we are merely survival machines for our genes. We homo sapiens fancy ourselves above the fray, but in reality we are every bit as much part of the cycle of life as are bacteria, trees, and fish.
  - lisper 12y ago
    > we were designed to reproduce No, we weren't designed to do anything (because we weren't designed). We reproduce because reproduction is an essential component of the evolutionary process that created us. But: 1) for humans, reproduction of memes is at least as important a component of our evolution as reproduction of genes and 2) even if you consider only reproduction of genes, the reproduction of genes is NOT the same as the reproduction of individuals. You should read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.
humanrebar 12y ago
[...]in the old days it was your priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you on how to get along. ...this is still very common, though perhaps it's a culture you aren't exposed to very often.
aliakhtar 12y ago
> It's what we were designed to do. No, we weren't 'designed' to do anything. Evolution hard-wires us to have sex, by making sex pleasurable. Kids are just a by-product. The parental instinct varies from person to person, just like some people are gay, and some people have 0 parental instincts, like me. > people mistakenly feel they'll have a happier life without them, but in a certain sense it's an empty life. That's your opinion. My opinion is, my life would be empty if I didn't achieve anything significant because I was too busy looking after kids / paying for them, etc.

sergiosgc 12y ago

> (...) in a certain sense it's an empty life. Inappropriately harsh position. A couple unable to conceive can easily have a meaningful life, even without going through the adoption path. It's just that having kids is the beaten path. You know from the onset the path all the way through. It is known what society expects from you and you feel happy fulfilling the expectation. A childless couple must create a journey together. It's a different path for each couple, thus with higher risk. The good news is that higher risk carries higher reward.

dasil003 12y ago
> You know from the onset the path all the way through. Spoken like someone without kids.

john_b 12y ago

> "Kids are inconvenient and expensive and people mistakenly feel they'll have a happier life without them, but in a certain sense it's an empty life." s/kids/startups/ to see how ridiculous this sounds. Any kind of presumption that other people should make certain major life decisions a certain way just because you feel that will make them happy sounds extremely presumptuous.

ArtDev 12y ago
Selfish jerks can benefit the most from having kids :) Unless your legit nuts or completely broke, it is a good thing for all. Having kids is like going to college. Its expensive, difficult and challenging.. but in the end, you are sad to think of what would have happened if you had not taken the plunge.
dasil003 12y ago
Sure it's presumptuous, but not as presumptuous as your substitution. Kids are a biological imperative, startups are not, so it's not quite that ridiculous-sounding.
genofon 12y ago
humans are animal and as such we have the instinct to procreate. Maybe this is not true for all humans but most of them will feel that urge. Natural selection works pretty well on this: the one that don't feel that urge will be less likely to procreate and so to pass their genes to the next generation.

flavor8 12y ago

> My amateur theory is that fundamentally speaking a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. That's certainly what evolution has favored (by definition) in terms of primal drives, but that doesn't mean that living life without them is in some sense "empty". Evolution isn't innately wise; e.g. we have very common diseases like cancers, dementia etc in the population because they tend to show up late in life, after the next generation has already been produced. So, just because some particular behavior or attribute is in our genes does not make it "good", it just means that we are programmed in that way due to some set of evolutionary-historical circumstances. And on the flip side to your point, if you have kids as a way to fill a void in your life, you may find yourself having an existential crisis when they move out and go to college.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
blisterpeanuts 12y ago
I think reproduction is a pretty fundamental instinct that goes back almost to the beginning of life on this planet. We're programmed to reproduce. Even people who intellectually choose not to reproduce are drawn to the sexual act of reproduction, though of course they defeat the mechanism with birth control devices.
- flavor8 12y ago
  I don't think you contradict anything I said - we're in agreement that it's in our programming.
- aliakhtar 12y ago
  Sure, we're programmed to have sex. But gay people are programmed to have gay sex, which doesn't result in children. Some people have a parental instinct. Many people, including me, don't.

lisper 12y ago

> a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. This misses to very important points. First, we weren't designed. Second, while it is true that there is evolutionary pressure to have a desire to reproduce one's genes, this is a gross oversimplification of our nature. We are not merely survival machines for our genes. We have these big brains, which give rise to all kinds of interesting secondary phenomena, like having ideas, making music, writing poetry, inventing computers, and arguing about things on hacker news. Because of this incredible richness and diversity of potential human experience, raising kids is just one of myriad ways to have a happy and fulfilled life.

blisterpeanuts 12y ago
This misses the fundamental point: we were designed to reproduce. It's innate to not just our species, not just our kingdom, but to basically every living thing. And yes, I would argue in fact that we are merely survival machines for our genes. We homo sapiens fancy ourselves above the fray, but in reality we are every bit as much part of the cycle of life as are bacteria, trees, and fish.
- lisper 12y ago
  > we were designed to reproduce No, we weren't designed to do anything (because we weren't designed). We reproduce because reproduction is an essential component of the evolutionary process that created us. But: 1) for humans, reproduction of memes is at least as important a component of our evolution as reproduction of genes and 2) even if you consider only reproduction of genes, the reproduction of genes is NOT the same as the reproduction of individuals. You should read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

humanrebar 12y ago

[...]in the old days it was your priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you on how to get along. ...this is still very common, though perhaps it's a culture you aren't exposed to very often.

aliakhtar 12y ago

> It's what we were designed to do. No, we weren't 'designed' to do anything. Evolution hard-wires us to have sex, by making sex pleasurable. Kids are just a by-product. The parental instinct varies from person to person, just like some people are gay, and some people have 0 parental instincts, like me. > people mistakenly feel they'll have a happier life without them, but in a certain sense it's an empty life. That's your opinion. My opinion is, my life would be empty if I didn't achieve anything significant because I was too busy looking after kids / paying for them, etc.