The "you'll understand when you're a parent" argument...

[bnkywuv]

This is an argument I've heard and it really irritates me when I bring it up with a friend of mine and with my "mother" in the past whenever i brought up my dislike of parents who seem to do noting but ignore or punish their kids, or when discussing matters of youth liberation. It's always something along the lines of "you're not a parent so you don't understand XYZ." It seems to strike me as a last ditch attempt to say "you're inexperienced and childish" infantilizing adults...as if having kids is supposed to automatically change our minds surrounding sex and children, adult imagery and children, or our tolerance, and dare I say love for children. As if becoming a parent would strip all of us of being MAPs and turn us into..."normal" parents, or worse, toxic parents!

I hear this argument for sexual activities such as masturbation or even seeing "adult oriented" material when it comes to children. "I wouldn't want my kids to be looking at a busty girl in a skintight bikini because it might lead to sexual interests" and then I ask why, and that answer comes up sooner or later. It's struck me as a cop out way of saying "because you're not a parent you don't understand children and that ANY kind of sexual thing is inherently harmful to kids".

Then the parenting comes up. Like OK, I get it, kids are a handful, but not all kids are (genetics play into this as well as into adulthood) and saying that "you're not a parent so you don't understand why parents are slapping and scolding their kids all the time" seems...dunno...dismissive to me and in a way even enabling of toxic behavior, a hand-wavy attempt to not even consider our love for children is just naturally stronger and thus we may not have such an animosity for youth.

Yes, I get a worn out parent might be short tempered and snap at their kids, but parents who constantly yell at their kids, punish them relentlessly without explanation in a "because I said so now do as I say!" manner or with gaslighty techniques do not seem like JUST worn out parents. What's worse is they'll never apologize for hurting their kids. They'll punish them until they're sobbing mess, or even continue after they've broken down. If they do apologize it's never met with a real apology, a change in behavior. There are loads of people who have had similar childhoods who make great strides to NOT be that way and many who never develop such tendencies. Plus it just rubs me the wrong way (take that as you will).

It's as if to say when you have kids your love will and even SHOULD decrease, and as a result I never had kids. Maybe my mind would actually change, but I don't want to take the risk of becoming a person I hate either. I do have imaginary kids at least and that's good enough for me.

[John_Doe]

I think it's important to consider how what you imagine something will be might differ from the actual experience (what you imagine x will be is a simulation of a 'real-life' experience, I think you can speak with justified confidence about what the thing that you're imagining would be if that real life experience is perfectly simulated by it but my point is that what you actually do experience might not be. If Disneyland perfectly matches your expectations then you can know how enjoyable you would find it but it might not) but I also think that what you're describing can be a cop-out because people don't necessarily consider how real-life experiences with x vary greatly based on many different factors and people with the same experiences (as in the same sensory experiences, not their emotional response to their environment) can be affected differently by them. So I agree that it's a mistake to assume that, without question, this affected me in x way so you would react similarly (again, on the flip side, you should also consider that you don't know what their experience is like exactly). Some of what you're describing seems to be mistreatment (so you might lack information that would make the parent's perspective or behavior more 'understandable' without actually justifying it) or something that their personal anecdotal experience with parenting doesn't give them any authority on (e.g. sexuality is inherently harmful to children).

I hope I'm not misunderstanding what you're saying. I can't immediately think of anything I disagreed with my parents about when I was younger that, as an adult, I could see where they were coming from. I still think that my father was an abusive, arrogant, pointlessly authoritarian and immoral parent (I'm not seething with vitriol writing that out, believe it or not, it's just a fact/my belief). I think the problem is that so many parents feel entitled to create life for ultimately selfish reasons without seriously appreciating the situation that they've put their children in. Long before I became an anti-natalist, long before I heard of anti-natalism, I always had the mindset that I would love my children unconditionally and I couldn't possibly resent them because no one forced me to have them to begin with. Parents can avoid disappointing or unruly children by not creating them, children have no say in who their biological parents are or the circumstances that they're born into.

I'm not one of those anti-natalists who has an on-principle problem with making the choice to bring someone into existence on their behalf, nor do I think that happiness and suffering are asymmetrical in value (so, in ideal circumstances, pronatalism would be ideal), but people should always be mindful of the fact that they are indirectly responsible for all the suffering that their biological children might endure. That has enormous ethical implications when it comes to taking it upon yourself to actually create a new being. Life is factually a burden (i.e. a huge responsibility); you need food, you need shelter, you need warmth, you need intimacy and companionship, you need entertainment, etc. ('need' as in you will suffer without these things. For the record, again, I don't actually think that preventing needs-frustration fundamentally has more value than happiness) and your children have to take on this responsibility when you can wash your hands with them or when you pass away. I am far from the average anti-natalist, so a more typical anti-natalist might not think that I'm as as sensitive to the reality of this as I should be and I might not be, but even I realize that people generally don't seem to really appreciate the gravity of what they're doing to someone in bringing them into existence.

I also think the idea that children owe their parents obedience is incredibly backward. I wouldn't want my children doing hard drugs, for example, but if they disobeyed me that wouldn't anger me (maybe I'd be frustrated with their doing something that I believe is contrary to their long-term interests but I couldn't resent them for it as though it were an injustice against me). Again, I can't understand the sense of entitlement that some parents have to their children's obedience, children should obey their parents when doing so serves their welfare or the welfare of other people but there's no moral imperative to obey one's parents for the sake of obedience. And then they have the nerve to pull the 'as long as you're under my roof...' line of reasoning (which works from a libertarian perspective, if they give them the option of leaving and don't co-operate with the state to prevent their children from living independently) as if they're not responsible for their needing food, clothing and shelter to begin with.

Oh my God, HUMBLE YOURSELF if you are going to be bringing people into existence.

[RoosterDance]

They almost never put that much thought into it. It's just another way to rationalize poor judgement.