Listening to a book…“Sapiens”. Author talked about how dependent kids are. How compared to other animals, our babies need alot of support in the early stages of life.
Like alot of you I’m sure, I’ve got a fair amount of kids in my life…none of “mine” but some kind of are. I guess my point is we may not have kids, but really, they are all our kids, as supported by evolutionary biology, it takes a village.
Edit: Going a bit deeper…the author explains that for millions of years, while we were tribal, nomadic gatherer/hunters. We didn’t know who’s kids were who’s, obviously the mother was primary caretaker, but, circling back, we evolved to raise kids as a community, not so much of the “traditional” mom/dad/child dynamic popular today.
I don’t plan on “having kids” but still, I think it’s all our responsibility (hopefully a partially enjoyable one) to help. Hard to argue anything more beneficial for our societys future than having well developed youth.
There are two problems with your idea.
First, in a true “community” situation, the parents will have been giving to their community their whole lives. Most of the modern “it takes a ViLlAgE!” parents are entitled mooches looking for handouts; they’ve rarely lifted a finger for anyone outside of friends and family.
Second, disciplining children used to be a community action. Anyone from the community could chastise a child, or tell the parents and expect the behavior to be corrected. Many modern parents become the defensive “mama bear/papa bear” when someone doesn’t worship their child (or worse, is critical of them). They may encourage their childrens’ bad behavior, or make excuses for it (“kids will be kids”).
TL;DR: Modern ‘parenting’ is diametrically opposed to “the village”
For me, child free means child free. I don’t have much to do with my nephew, because I simply don’t like kids.
I don’t think the OP understands the difference between childless and childfree. I am childfree for the same reason as @minorsecond. I am no ones village and if you need that and don’t have one you should not have had kids.
Yikes
You’ll find my sentiments are comment among childfree people.
No way. I have made the choice to not have kids in my life. I am certainly not helping someone else raise theirs.
Sounds like we are in pretty different boats. I have siblings, nieces/nephews, neighborhood kids and friends kids in my life. I’m not sure how I’d choose to not have them in my life.
Anyway, you must have had plenty of positive influences in your life other than your parents? Surely your grateful for them?
I’ll help mentor kids if they look to me for that, but as someone who was parentified by my mother - I have zero interest in being forced to help raise kids again.
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Such parents certainly exist but in my experience, most are grateful for help. Again, iny experience, discipline can be tricky but not usually isn’t too complicated. Worse case you can “tell on them”.
As my edit mentioned, I agree that modern, 1st world parenting has gotten away from such evolutionary roots, but I think “diametrically opposed” is overselling it. For example, most still send their kids to school.
