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One Wonders What Might Constitute "Altruistic Reasons" to Have a Child


Why on earth I am even seeing this utter merde in my feed, I don't know. But it has me wondering what they would think would constitute "an altruistic reason" to have a child.

However, even running a raging fever I'm not stupid enough to ask them. Thus this post.

First, most of what I think of as "human sexual morality," such as shotgun weddings, is rooted in the reality that babies happen. I have been baffled for decades by modern attitudes that implicitly assume having babies is akin to making a grocery list and going to a store where you can feel confident they will have in stock exactly what you want exactly when you want it.

This flies in the face of everything I know about reality. People either go "Oops! I'm pregnant!" or they have their fertility horror stories of how much it took to successfully get pregnant after years of trying. 

I'm the exception. Sort of.

My first baby was a case of "I'm what?!" but with my second child we skipped birth control like two or three times and I turned up pregnant. 

I thought it would take at least six months. I was surrounded by people pointing to their second child and saying he took eight months or two years.

Then I had to call my older sister and admit I was pregnant AGAIN and feel bad about telling her because she still was early in her long journey of trying to get a kid.

Oops! Sorry! My bad!

Anyway, I had my first child "seven years ahead of schedule" and my 22 year marriage was rocky for like 21 1/2 years ...or maybe more like 25 years. The relationship began with him picking an argument and we never stopped arguing. There never was some blissful "honeymoon stage" of the relationship. 

So I spent a lot of years expecting to end up as a single parent and chose to have a second child ANYWAY. My reason for doing so: My oldest is very socially impaired and I felt he really, really NEEDED a sibling to grow up at all socially functional and healthy.

Fortunately, my younger son thinks his older brother is COOL! And he was frequently short of sleep in his youth from trying to keep up with his brother who needed less sleep than him. 

I fundamentally don't agree with a lot of current trends in labeling kids and medicalizing normal development issues, as if anyone not fantastic at some assumed set of "normal" skills is clearly defective. 

Human babies are very underdeveloped. Unlike a lot of animals, they don't start running around moments after birth. They take a shocking, scary long time to develop the capacity for basic skills like walking. 

Humans are designed for a tribal environment and historically they tended to grow up with a lot of siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. Now, a lot of people in wealthier countries have only one or two kids and when, on average, they turn out different than in the past, we act like the kid is defective rather than that the social ecosystem in which they are developing has dramatically changed, so you should really expect different outcomes generally. 

So given my views of development, I looked at my oldest child and went "He NEEDS a sibling. Full stop. He will never be functional if he grows up as an only child, and never mind that I live in terror of ending up a poverty-stricken, divorced single mom and another child is another mouth to feed."

So I gave him a little brother to hug and squeeze and rub his fur backwards and call George and they like each other ANYWAY. 

Maybe that's not altruistic. Maybe it's enlightened self interest because I have spent decades trying to figure out how to make sure someday my oldest can move out on his own and I can do other things.

But it certainly wasn't "selfish" in the way that word is usually used.

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