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The best argument for having children

PulsarDK August 03, 2021 at 03:06 7275 views 27 comments
might be that they ask more interesting questions than most adults a lot of the time. Like a young child asking me where the edge of the universe is located. I asked him if he was hungry for maybe the twelfth time that day.
Instead of making food he didn't want I made up a thrilling tale about the precise location of the edge of the universe, gave him a number of half bad metaphysical answers and asked someone with an engineers degree if he could please help with an explanation involving physics and mathematics. The child ate afterwards.
I should maybe ask myself why constant updates about stomach content and hunger was so important that I didn't even think about edges or the universe.

Comments (27)

TheMadFool August 03, 2021 at 05:01 #574755
Reply to PulsarDK A touching tale of a child's boundless curiosity and how it, in question form, tests the limits/boundaries of so-called adult (grown-up) views, knowledge, presuppositions, and so on. However, rekindling this exact childlike hunger for answers you mention here in me, I ask you, "what's in it for the child?" Should we have children just to discover the flaws, big and small, adults have?
BC August 03, 2021 at 05:42 #574769
Sometimes people very deliberately set out to have children, and sometimes they very deliberately set out to NOT have children. Most of the time children happen because sex is urgent and usually feels pretty good. Reason has little to do with it.

PulsarDK August 03, 2021 at 06:50 #574777
Reply to TheMadFool

We should probably have children or not have children for many different reasons. Many people get to see their actions and lives in a different light when they have children or work with them. With better scientific proof of how children should be raised newer generations might get a better chance of doing better by each other than older generations did.

For the child there is warmth and caring and sometimes answers if their family is wise enough. Friends if they are lucky to find someone who loves the same type of questions or games or talks or toys and so on. Of course being born means nothing to the unborn if there is no soul and being born is not considered a gift by so many because life can be cruel, unwelcoming and lonely.

It depends I think.
PulsarDK August 03, 2021 at 06:52 #574778
Reply to Bitter Crank

I agree. But in the spirit of Idiocracy, some people have kids very late because of reasoning. People have a lot less children these days because they can choose not to.
PulsarDK August 03, 2021 at 06:57 #574781
Women of the world have on average two kids less today than in the sixties I think it is.
Banno August 03, 2021 at 07:18 #574782
If you are looking for a reason to have kids, apart from wanting to have kids, then you are not ready to have kids.
Cuthbert August 03, 2021 at 07:30 #574783
OP is a great example of children's negotiating skills. "You talk about what I want you to then I'll eat what you want me to." However [quote=Fran Lebowitz]Notoriously insensitive to subtle shifts in mood, children will persist in discussing the color of a recently sighted cement-mixer long after one's own interest in the topic has waned.[/quote]
BC August 03, 2021 at 16:37 #574913
Reply to PulsarDK The average number of children is declining. However, in 1960 the world population was a little over 3 billion. Now it is about 8 billion. Somebody didn't get the memo.

Quoting PulsarDK
I asked him if he was hungry for maybe the twelfth time that day.


Perhaps you are obsessive compulsive. Then there is the child's fascination with cement mixers or edges of the universe. How old is this kid? I think I was old enough to drink when I first wondered about those pesky edges of the universe. Has your child been drinking?

I don't know whether children are any 'wiser' today than they were in the Roman Empire, say, or the Neolithic Age. What is different about children in the last 50 years, anyway, is that they are subjected to a deluge of information that they were not before media saturated culture. I'm not criticizing media here -- I've enjoyed the deluge (NOVA, National Geographic, Netflix, Internet, etc.). Had I a child he or she would have seen a lot more science and BBC drama than I did back in the 1950s.

Unfortunately, and I'll criticize media now, the deluge of information on the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio has been accompanied by a lot of garbage on the other channels. So some children will ask about the edge of the universe, others will not.
180 Proof August 03, 2021 at 16:40 #574915
baker August 03, 2021 at 18:08 #574940
Quoting PulsarDK
might be that they ask more interesting questions than most adults a lot of the time


And then they become those "most adults". What a pity, what a waste.
Down The Rabbit Hole August 04, 2021 at 21:22 #575441
Reply to PulsarDK

That your children are likely to have a good life and/or you are going to bring them up to make the world a better place.

The only problem I have with this is that your children could have children, that have children, that have children, et cetera. You can't expect all of these future generations to have a good life, and some may have horrific lives. And as far as making the world a better place, the evidence shows introducing generations more people to be doing exactly the opposite.
TheHedoMinimalist August 05, 2021 at 02:02 #575551
I think OP is an argument for spending time with children rather than having children. You don’t need to be a parent to be in a position where children might ask you interesting questions. In fact, I would imagine school teachers get these questions more often.
Cuthbert August 05, 2021 at 08:21 #575624
True. If you have kids in order to improve the quality of conversation at home then you're taking a gamble. If you go into school teaching in order to hear interesting questions from children then again it's quite a risk.
unenlightened August 05, 2021 at 08:53 #575629
Slavery has been abolished; you cannot 'have' kids, except the way you have guests, if you are hospitable. Don't expect them to bring a bottle, or thank you when they leave. If you need an argument for hospitality, don't bother, and kids likewise; all the profit has gone out of it these days.
Hanover August 05, 2021 at 12:57 #575672
Quoting Bitter Crank
Most of the time children happen because sex is urgent and usually feels pretty good. Reason has little to do with it.


I don't know about "most of the time." My decision to have kids was pretty deliberate. If it was based upon sex just feeling good, I'd have had far more than just 2.
TheMadFool August 05, 2021 at 13:05 #575674
Quoting PulsarDK
It depends I think.


Agreed! Evil is subtlety taken to stratospheric heights. You won't see it until it's too late.
javi2541997 August 05, 2021 at 13:32 #575685
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I think OP is an argument for spending time with children rather than having children. You don’t need to be a parent to be in a position where children might ask you interesting questions. In fact, I would imagine school teachers get these questions more often.


Agreed :up:

Reply to PulsarDK

To be honest I guess that kid asked “where the edge is located” so randomly without any base. Probably the child saw it in TV or a book previously. It is not innate making those such of questions because we need some knowledge and culture to do so.
Kids can make these questions about “physics” or “mathematics” because they are stubborn questioning literally everything.
This is exactly an argument which develops exactly the opposite from the OP: not having kids
TheMadFool August 05, 2021 at 15:19 #575717
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I think OP is an argument for spending time with children rather than having children


You deserve an award for this, you know. All I can offer you is a :up: and :clap:

Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
children


Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
school teachers


In the educational setting in which I grew up, children were not taught how to learn and teachers were not taught how to teach. It's a miracle that we learned anything at all.
BC August 05, 2021 at 16:58 #575775
Reply to Hanover I noted the decision was often quite deliberate, either way. But with 8 billion sex drives in operation, conception without intention is likely to be a fairly frequent event. Hence, the growing world population.
TheHedoMinimalist August 05, 2021 at 23:52 #575955
Quoting TheMadFool
You deserve an award for this, you know.


Well, thanks :)
hope August 07, 2021 at 04:44 #576471
Reply to PulsarDK

Teach your kid to see his own mind as the cause of everything good or bad in his life.
PulsarDK August 07, 2021 at 13:53 #576681
Reply to hope

No. I will never teach any kid that. Teaching a kid that narcissistic type of crap will destroy lives. Like Trump's positive thinking.
hope August 07, 2021 at 15:37 #576726
Quoting PulsarDK
No. I will never teach any kid that. Teaching a kid that narcissistic type of crap will destroy lives. Like Trump's positive thinking.


Self reflection and self responsibility are the opposite of narcissism.
hope August 08, 2021 at 15:57 #577378
Quoting Bitter Crank
sometimes they very deliberately set out to NOT have children


Many men will put in deliberate effort now to avoid having children due to the tyranny of child support laws. Which isn't really an avoidance of children but an avoidance of tyranny.

BC August 09, 2021 at 20:24 #577975
Reply to hope Are child support payments tyrannical if one has abdicated support for the children one has sired or borne?

It would seem closer to tyranny if I was forced to support somebody else's children having no connection to me.

Book273 August 09, 2021 at 21:27 #577996
Reply to PulsarDK Because kids are cool. Best reason to make one or two or more.
Book273 August 09, 2021 at 21:31 #577997
Reply to Bitter Crank Eighteen years of payments for 18 minutes of entertainment seems tyrannical to me. It's not like there only one person involved eh.

Kids from an actual decision to make them is different, but even then, if one parent takes the kids and cuts the other out of the kid's life, then the funding should also be cut off.