Yeah it does seem like many of the "no contact" people are themselves childless. I doubt this is a coincidence.
Damaged kids become damaged adults, and if they realize it, they may decide that they wouldn't be good parents and rightly opt-out of it.
Children that didn't have the right opportunities, whether that's their parent's fault or not may not have enough achievement as an adult to take on the burden of being a parent. One can argue whether it is harder being young today than it was 20-30 years ago, but you can't argue that being a parent requires lots of resources in both time and money, and if you don't have both, it's the right choice to not be a parent.
Another layer is that the parents often want grandkids and will use them as an excuse or as leverage to maintain contact despite lack of respect for boundaries or even outright abuse. So there is an element of spite in denying them grandkids, and an element of self-protection in the same.
(this isn't meant to attack you for misclassification - but rather widen the pool of people who fall into this complicated class)
It’s not like I were divorced. I’m precisely never married, never had a long girlfriend, despite not being ugly nor totally stupid, and my loneliness drove me crazy (in the literal sense – since Covid I’ve honestly snapped a few neurons, so it’s quite over for me). But before that, I used to be a fine person, but they didn’t give me any lead on the love life. EVERY father would be happy if the kid plays with girls at school, just not mine because they don’t want me to pump-and-dump - well they don’t have to worry about this for sure. I really don’t get how people succeed at the love life, it’s totally not working for me.
I’m now workaholic and if I stop working, I’ll go insane with ruminations in a few hours only. I’m quite fortunate my worklife offers me the opportunity of working more, I’m a programmer-entrepreneur.
Anyway, if I were successful at life, I’d certainly be happy to call my parents more. It’s just that their opinion led me to a general failure, so I can’t hear more.
Until we can do that, we aren't really adults. That's what sets adults and children apart: responsibility. Children are not responsible for their own lives; rather, they live under the guardianship of adults.
Adults are responsible.
And it is a hate crime that we have probably two generations in the West that have been raised to be actively irresponsible: to reject the mantle of responsibility, and instead spend their time loudly blaming... everybody but themselves.
It doesn't matter how well-deserved that blame might be! Blame itself is toxic.
Look, I get it. My parents did a number on me, too. But I also recognize that they too were broken in many ways, and that they did the best they could with what they had.
Yes, that means they gave me a lot of shitty advice. But it was good advice to their younger selves.
That's why I'm not angry with them anymore. Not for the cheating, or the divorce, or any of the rest. Because I am adult enough to take ownership over my own life.
If a close friend told you that their BF/GF abused them and asked you what was the responsible thing to do, would you not tell them that they should first remove themselves from their abuser? Is it not precisely the responsible and independent choice for a victim to leave their abuser behind and move on?
Blame isn't necessary for estrangement. I broadly agree, blame is often toxic, and it's healthy to have a sense of cosmic empathy towards even people who have wronged you. It's not really clear to me who's ultimately "in the wrong" here, but the person you replied to is clearly taking the reins on their life: evidently, they're now dealing with life without their parents' help.
And yet there are so many levels and shades to abuse. Just like the errors we see in the products and programs we build. We have to ask if it was malicious, neglect or ignorance. The longer we live the more I ask myself whether large swaths of that low level trauma I endured was malicious or their own timeline to grow up, be better, realize their mistakes. Not fair, but also true.
My mother is not the same person she was when I was 12/16/22 and I'm glad we had space, but never truly cut ties despite how painful it was for so many years.
We aren't all afforded the same time, space, community to mature.
- But my mother hates dogs because they’re competing with her in terms of affection (or total lack thereof), and relationships don’t click with me, because most parents develop their child’s socialization and mine acted as if socialization wasn’t a subject. In some sense, their education taught me to rely on my skills, not on socialization (independence as a principle, which became loneliness). I have no example in my 38 years where I could rely on others when I was in need.
- It seems I have the face of someone to be stepped upon (I don’t know, some people have a face you want to slap, perhaps I look weak and people instinctively profit from it).
- In any case, they pushed feminism and helped my sisters more, and either you admit that feminism has an impact and gives women a better life than men, especially in terms of confidence in society, either you admit it doesn’t, in which case why doing it. But as it stands, given women’s experience and expectations, it is not possible anymore for me as a beginner to start a relationship. They do expect a set of societal conventions that I don’t know about (from not-breaking-up-by-sms to saying the right thing when it’s time to split or not split the bill, not even talking about in bed).
I’ll just take a dog, but I’m enraged that people talk so much about helping others and can let people down just next to them when they’re were 99% decent humans before. I mean I’ve donated dozens of thousands to charities in the past, and none of them is able to pay it back to lonely men. I was a decent being until I became insane under the lockdowns.
2020's pandemic and the associated mess with society is a thing. Just look out for yourself. Therapy is fine, you don't have to broadcast to everyone that you've chatted about issues. I've had a few sessions and to be honest, even those few sessions have given me ways to have internal conversations with myself by just imagining what a therapist would say. Just thought I'd offer that.
Still, take care of yourself, we only have one life here on the planet, plus you can't depend on 100 percent of the folks you run into to be on your side, most of us can be pretty self centered but don't let external insanities live in your head rent free. Humans are just not perfect beings.
Look forward to the future, surprises can and do happen. Cultivate friendships where you can.
I strongly disagree with this overbroad generalization.
> you can't argue that being a parent requires lots of resources in both time and money, and if you don't have both, it's the right choice to not be a parent.
I would be happy to argue this. Raising children is the most essentially human experience one can have. A society with fewer parents is a society well on its way to nihilism and extinction.
If that means trauma, then there is this concept of "Transgeneration transmission of trauma" not in terms of epigenetics (as this has not been proven yet), but in terms of behaviour of adults transmits trauma verbally and non-verbally to the child. I think this also applied to a whole range of responses/believes about how we approach life in general which is transmitted from parents to child. Yes, also the child has their own personality and might not be influenced that much, but nurture is pretty powerful especially in the forming years.
Not sure this is a 100% proven mechanisms in psychology (replicated and understood) but I can easily identify in my kid things that I wish I fix for myself and I see this in other parents with kids too.
I also think a child is a very powerful chance to change myself as kids can really be (specially when they are young and copy their parents) mirrors of their parents thus making identifying these mechanisms easily.
I am thankful that I think there are a lot of things that I caught early on, did a lot of work to fix them and managed not to transmit to the child.
I know enough parents doing fine for their kids without much money and even less time that I’ll have to contradict you. It’s infinitely better to be alive than have stuff or even ample parent time. I can attest to that from personal experience. In the short term it’s certainly convenient to avoid having kids as having kids is hard and requires sacrifices. However, it’s a commonly held myth that for many kids are beyond them due to time and money, presumably as a justification for precluding or severely limiting children. One has the ability to make that decision but one shouldn’t lie about the motivation because for many the choice is made to put themselves first and reject the sacrifices of being parents.
In some places kids can play outside and have a village of school connected people / things to get through just fine.
I guess it's also easier to do fine if you have church groups to help, and some places have other community that can help I am guessing. Perhaps that mall in Beverly Hills is a fine babysitter and teacher of life lessons - the malls around other parts of the country stopped being good for that some years ago.
I also feel that fine is also a gamble.
You might get affordable child care that does not abuse your kids and you might get a school system that teaches them life fine.. but you may not, and if you don't have the time to find out, or the money to change things drastically - you are essentially gambling with an innocent's life.
Again I feel this varies quite a bit from location to location and situation to situation. But I don't feel it is right to suggest the choice is putting themselves first - at least not in all circumstances, and I'd guess it's not the main factor in most of these conscious choices.
If your response to child abuse, a lack of affordable childcare, and ok schooling is that the children shouldn't exist, you've lost me.
> you are essentially gambling with an innocent's life.
You lose all bets you don't make. Life is a gamble full-stop so you are always gambling when you bring a life into the world. My main point is that there is a whole lot more room to maneuver for many childless couples from a purely practical point of view before it'd be established that having children were irresponsible for them. People have way too high expectations and a lot of ulterior motives that are the real barriers. One way to look at it is, what would you do to help them if you children already existed? Would you move somewhere cheaper/safer/closer to family? Would you sacrifice your career? Would you lower your standard of living? Would you sacrifice your lifestyle? If the answer to any of those is "no" (be honest now) then you've discovered an important part of your true motivations.
No, the argument is that some children shouldn't exist because some parents cannot afford to be successful parents.
It's odd to see such a pro-gambling position. On any other topic, no one would encourage people to make a risky gamble with someone else's life & happiness as collateral. And by the way, the loss you incur by not making a bet is not even close to the loss you can incur by losing this gamble. Clearly, you've never witnessed fates worse than death. I would never consider a life of misery & abuse preferable to non-existence.
And parental sacrifice is hardly the only factor. We know that children in lower socio-economic groups have significantly worse life outcomes on average. They have lower academic achievement, lower income, higher incarceration and crime rates. Will you pin that all on parenting? Poor parents just don't sacrifice enough? Doesn't matter how much you sacrifice when you can only afford a place in a high crime area and your child runs in with the wrong crowd and begins a generational cycle of incarceration. Doesn't matter how much you love your children when you have to spend most of your time at work away from them to afford basic necessities. Doesn't matter how much you want your child to succeed in school when you have neither the time nor education to even know how to help them. And we haven't even gotten to mental disabilities and neuroses yet. It costs money to manage those issues, more than some parents can possibly afford.
Everyone should have the right to make that choice. Reproductive rights are human rights. But if you believe you lack the basic resources to setup your child for success when the cost of failure literally isn't yours to bear, I could never accept that as an ethical choice. Bad outcomes are always possible regardless of wealth, but your wealth significantly alters risk and the whole equation to the point where one can say "that's a bad/good bet". If you knowingly make a bad bet, that's on you, except now your child has to pay the cost.
- also 'what themacguffinman said' in this portion of this thread!
"lot more room to maneuver for many childless couples from a purely practical point" - I agree, and some may be on a path to success, for many it's you against the world and the world is really good at keeping you down/in debt / out of safer places, etc.
So I have been helping some children, a couple as official fosters for 6 months or so, and another non-official for 10 years or so. We/they have moved to cheaper which is safer in some regards (better schools) - and less safe in others.
In this process I/we have sacrificed career and portions of career (partially 'for the children') - closer to family would not make any of the things better, but that may change around age 16 - to some degrees.
We have lowered our standard of living and sacrificed a previously really fun lifestyle.
My motivations for children has always been to provide a safe environment where they can learn well. This is much easier if you make 250k / year than if you make 50k.
While I know it's possible to sacrifice and ask for help, and certainly there are safe places to raise cheaper, say some towns in Alabama - but it's hard to figure out all about the schools / towns / pollution / etc etc until you are in it.. and moving is expensive.
I was blessed to be raised in a place that had sidewalks and neighborhoods safe enough to walk / bike / bus anywhere anytime. At that time, in that place, it might have been considered abuse to keep a kid inside.
These days we have places where (I believe it's still the case) that you could be arrested for sending your kid to the park (it's not safe).
Being in a safe place is not just about affording childcare. It's about being able to afford good food, go organic as much as you can, avoid BPA, microwaving plastics and more.
It's about safe streets, safe schools, after school safety, and so much more.
Like I said my original comment - in some places for some people this is no problem, yet in many places in the US 'all the things' are less safe these days, and in many cases quite dangerous/toxic truthfully.
I've heard of some interesting safety nets for challenged children in California, and I've witnessed those heartfelt 'the village / church helped X do Y' - but we don't have the same state-paid-for child help here where I am, you even get kicked off food stamps when you get a raise to 11.30 per hour here.
If I had a new kid today I don't know what I would do. Probably look at going to portugal or something like that (much research would be needed to really pick a place). The days of assuming that staying in the US provides top notch safety and education are long gone imho.
15 - 20 years ago I was still cautious about having kids, not knowing where I could afford a safe growing-up environment. 10 years ago I still believed that the basics like safe water and good educators were guaranteed across the US.
Today I know more, and more of the things I worried about back then are less safe today, and the costs associated with escaping those things are higher than ever.
So I still feel that "I don't feel it is right to suggest the choice is putting themselves first - at least not in all circumstances, and I'd guess it's not the main factor in most of these conscious choices." is true.
Surely there is somewhere in the US where these concerns are not so paramount, and for those that have other circumstances with family/church/etc, different for sure.
I'm in a fairly modern, popular, growing city / burbs, and the basics here are not as safe as they should be - and I don't see much of that changing anytime soon - unless you can afford to get to brentwood/franklin, I think you'd be better off moving much further away for child safety.
Sure you could keep them inside 24/7 - homeschool if you have a partner and things like that, rice and beans etc, if you had to, I get it's possible, and so kids should exist.
I still feel it's easier to make that choice when you either make lots of money or have found a small safe community with options - of which I don't think there really are that many for most people here anymore.
We have a good relationship and they re good parents but I cut all attempts at having them take more space in my life than the minimum. It's so common in France we call that killing your dad (I googled and it seems to be a Freudian expression we started using to say growing up) and is part of growing up.
I have a kid now, and I want her to get the fuck out at 19, and start a life of her own with as little need for my involvment.
The funny thing is I moved to Hong Kong eventually and couldnt convince my french gf of 7 years to follow me because she couldnt tolerate being so far from her parents. I then met my current chinese wife, born here, who is in a very fusional relationship with her mom, who talks to her for hours everyday, so much she needs to kill her phone at night to stop it. And they live an hour apart...
It s clear to me there's something in Asia that's different because they all seem just as fusional (I find it unhealthy), but it may be also a girl thing more generally ? I have a sample of 2 so it's hard to know.
In any case, my daughter will be encouraged to "kill her dad" and be on her own. Even if her mom might disagree :D