There is a certain societal pressure to have children when you are "of age". This meaning, once you are into your career and are in a stable environment it is time to start having children. 'Everyone must have children', that is what the expectation is.
Okay, so that makes a lot of sense. The only real reason we are born is to reproduce and keep the human race going. But, not everyone has to have children. Not everyone -wants- to have children. It is just what we see as the life goal of everyone. When you are younger you dream of getting married and having kids; well I did at least.
Sometimes things get in the way of this. Some people just cannot have children, due to health problems. What then? Or what if you are gay? You and your life partner can't exactly have children of your own, so what do you do then? You often hear people say, "You can always adopt!." Even though this is not the same as having your own children, people feel raising a child is an experience everyone is supposed to have.
In a world as over populated as it is, I do not see the need for everyone to go out and have children. We have, what, seven billion people on this planet? Why does everyone need to go out and increase this population? There are so many people dying of starvation, and in third world countries, there isn't much more room for people. So why are we still telling people to have big families? I think the population should find a way to go down to a more reasonable number.
Also, not everyone wants to have children. Some people are okay with having a successful career and a loving husband, maybe even a cat; you do not always need to have a bunch of children running around to be happy.
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I agree, you don't necessarily need to have children to have a complete life in these times. If this was like the 1600s or something, people would want to have kids to help out on the farms, carry on the name etc. But it's not the 17th century and we're not living on farms anymore, majority of us. So why would we need to have so many kids.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of the social "ouuuu" has gone out of having children. Of course I want a little bro or bro-ette to carry on my family name, but I can just as easily picture myself without kids. It's not something I need, or even want that much (especially after having my neice over for a couple hours when she was a baby--yeah no thanks!). Enough of the world killing!
ReplyDeleteI agree that it's not necessary to have children anymore. It's not like in medieval times when people were dropping off all the time from the plague and whatnot. Back then they needed tons of kids for their families to even survive, but we definately don't need that anymore. The only problem is that if we reduce the number of children dramatically, we will end up with a ton of old people and nobody to support them, so either way it's a bummer...
ReplyDeleteThat is a very good point. We do need more people to be born to take care of the older generation. This is something I never even thought of. But, we still need to find an equal middle. Otherwise we will become far too over populated.
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