Comments | liveonearth: Childless 1

liveonearth

Childless 1

Mar 10, 2015 20:41

I'm a 49 year old childless woman. I might have been fertile at one time but I am not anymore. I look at people with children and think they must have a lot of guts, to have babies in a world like ours. And then there's the chaos of childrearing, the diapers left by the side of the road, the screaming brats in the grocery store, the traffic jams ( Read more... )

evolution, legacy, women, reproduction, sports, family, gender, fertility, childbirth, creativity, culture

Comments 4

neptunia67 March 11 2015, 16:11:51 UTC

I have asked myself these same questions and many more, many times. How do I make a mark on the world? Will people remember me? Who will take care of me when I grow old? Has this life been useful?

Do you think childless men ask themselves the same questions? Is it inherent in we humans to feel like we didn't live as full a life if we don't have offspring, leave no living legacy?

liveonearth March 11 2015, 16:27:52 UTC

I think it's central to life, not just humanity, to feel driven to reproduce. It is a symptom of the dysfunction of our culture that so many of us don't want to contribute baby humans to the melee. While it is understandable as a symptom of a difficult time, it does not answer the questions on an individual level. What to do?

neptunia67 March 11 2015, 16:46:33 UTC

It absolutely is central to life, and we are the only species that can choose whether or not to bear children. Animals of other species who are unable to reproduce for any reason die and don't reproduce whatever issues caused them to be unable to bear offspring in the first place.

Which brings me around to another thing I often find myself mulling over... that our technology makes it so that we can pass on defective genes, thus weakening the human gene pool in general.

liveonearth March 11 2015, 19:30:05 UTC

Yes. There are good arguments supporting the idea that natural selection is reduced in human populations because of our ability to modify our environs for comfort and to support those with disabilities. Also poor people are having more children than wealthy and educated people on the planet--how this will play out is yet to be seen.

If you haven't seen it yet, the movie Idiocracy takes a humorous look at one possible future in which people are dumbed down over generations. It's from 2006 and it wasn't well recognized (by me at least) at the time. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/