A confession before bed

[the_great_elk]

the good vibrations memeOkay, so actually two. I don't expect you to respond to the meme, mostly because I'm a lame-butt and am not responding to the meme much. I do just kind of like the song, and I wanted to pimp it on my LJ

Comments

[escherichiacola]

Haha, it's the internet. People tend to either forgo their filters or it's just a sort of pack mentality where everyone tries to one up each other.

I sympathize because...I really adore children. While still a handful they've always hit a soft spot with me. It's become a running joke for people because if there's a family gathering or a social event with older people I'll end up spending the entire time with kids while all the adults talk.

[snowflakie06]

My best friend goes on and on about hating kids and at the same time she says she wants to have kids but not until she's 26 at the earliest and I'm just like 'uh huh, okay, whatever'. I seriously feel like asking her which is the truth because if you don't like kids and hate how much they scream and cry, why would you want to have your own? Though of course she says that hers would be the best behaved children in the world. Yeah, uh huh, like you can really stop them from being kids.

Me, on the other hand, I love kids and I can't wait to have one myself or adopt or whatever route I decide to go when the time comes :)

[the_great_elk]

To be fair, I think that most people feel like that, and that a lot of people who don't like kids end up liking them once they have their own. I doubt that it's that her kids will be the best behaved; more likely, she'll have to change her own outlook in order to accommodate her offspring! So I don't mind people who feel the same way as your friend (sort of) does, but I also wish people would realize that themselves. I honestly can't see myself being about to control my children any better than any other parent, but I also can't see that stopping me from ever having children to start with.

Yay! I'm sure they will be super cute and awesome.

[solmedes]

Guilty confession time. I'm one of the folks who doesn't like being around kids. Even I'll admit that this due to my inner personal framework rather than anything to do with the children themselves; I'm a big-time nit about my personal space, having quiet around me, and making sure all my planets are in orbit, so to speak -- my personal feng shui. If this makes me sound like a prima donna...well, on some level, I am. I'll admit it. XD

But also, kids are generally highly energetic, and virtually all have a mischief streak, so you gotta keep your eye on them as much of the time as possible. They're not yet at the point in life where they're practiced at containing themselves. (You don't often run across real twelve and fourteen year olds who think and behave anything like their anime counterparts, incidentally.) I'm just...so far removed from children on a personal level that simply being around them drains me - saps my energy, frazzles my nerves, and makes me breath a noisy sigh of relief when they're finally away from me.

[the_great_elk]

I've encountered it in real life too, with friends who are adamant that they don't want children because they don't like them. That's well and good, but it annoys me when people simply go on and on on this point about how awful children are. It doesn't make you cool, it just makes you seem like you're completely immature. Not wanting children is one thing, and people don't want children for a lot of different reasons. But just being continuously annoyed by their existence - and having that opinion somehow evaluated to be cultural cache and "better" - is bizarre to me

[leafing]

I think there's more to it than most people give credit for. Most "child-bashers" I know are very, very lonely people.

There's this mindset that having kids is something necessary and inevitable. If you don't do it, you're a failure. Having kids implies success in life, and more importantly, a lack of loneliness. I've been struggling with this personally because A, I'm probably physically incapable of having children, and B, I have an intense fear of physical contact ever since a guy tried to take advantage of me last year.

Recently, a friend of mine (who's a few years younger than me) had a child, and I expressed concern over it because her family doesn't exactly have money and she was still in highschool. The response? "You'll only understand when you have kids." When. I was about ready to maul her.

She wasn't the first person I've heard this from, and I'm sure she won't be the last. You can be a goddamn genius but you won't know anything about the world until you have kids, which is of course inevitable because