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(coming from a happy parent and dog caretaker)
IMHO: except in pathological situations, dogs truly love their owners.
It's brutal to say such things and certainly to hear them, but objectively, yes.
Just unbelievable levels of self-aggrandizement and scorn for your fellow humans in this comment. It is honestly a shame that you could propagate this forward another generation.
Having kids is good. Calling people "pathetic" for not wanting to or not feeling like they would succeed at it is bad and counterproductive.
Avoid unnecessary or unwanted struggle, leave those who choose it to it, it is theirs to own and bear.
Even if we can't remember, we know they were there. They succeeded in carrying on the species. We can wonder about them and what their lives were like.
"Lo, now, do I see my fathers and my fathers' fathers back to the beginning!"
"I go now to join my fathers, in whose mighty company I shall no longer feel ashamed."
Having children is hard. Life is hard. Avoiding having children is shirking your duty to have a hard life. Dogs shouldn't make you happy because that is coping with life's hardships. Having children, which is hard, is the path one should take to wantonly endure hardship. If you choose not to, you are pathetic...
What if I didn't have a dog or cat, and still chose not to have children? Still pathetic? What if I had children, and hated every minute of it, but fulfilled my duty to endure the hardship... AND still had a dog I love? What if I really really enjoy lemonade - should I avoid that because it brings me joy, but life is inherently supposed to be hard, therefore I am coping and pathetic?
This is such a mind-boggling judgmental stance on what life is and should be and what others should do with their agency over their own lives.
As I said to the wantonly miserable OP who started this bizarre comment thread - godspeed to you! I'd wish you a nice life, but I don't want to go against your philosophy that one should invite hardship into one's life, so... Have a miserable life?
Life is procreation, to which you are encouraging failure in it's goal. I don't care what you do, I'm just sharing hard to swallow pills.
Global fertility rate decline speaks for itself. Women were not empowered to make fertility choices. Now that they are, different choices are being made than that historically. These trends will continue as global TFR settles at 0.5-1 over the next several decades.
https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/will-world-look-like-l...
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-countries-by-fert...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Also, decreasing fertility rates have more reasons than just female empowerment. Look it today‘s societies … many people can‘t even stay together with their partner for more than a couple of years.
If all one can say about their life is they were a parent and had/raised kids, in a world with 8-10 billion people, that is nothing special in my opinion. Congrats on your checkbox achievement sort of thing.
TLDR Kids are optional, life can be meaningful without having them, and they are very expensive in most of the world. Happiness is reality minus expectations and no one is coming to save you, it’s just you. Don’t drag others down with advice from a place of emotion versus facts. Willful ignorance and arrogance deserves no sympathy.
Doubly pathetic that you can't envision any other way of thinking and experiencing life. Have you actually thought out and considered your position or is this simply a lazy knee-jerk opinion that you've had fed to you?
Awfully small minded and pathetic to think that your chosen way of life is the One True and Acceptable Way. It's a very immature mind that can't accept differing opinions and perspectives.