No, no it is absolutely not.
I thought I’d fulfill Betteridge’s Law upfront (If the headline is a question requiring a yes/no answer, the answer is always no) before I got into the text.
I’ve never really wanted kids. Like, ever. I have my reasons, which I won’t really go into here. My parents stopped saying “just wait till you have kids” pretty early on when I’d retort “Well then I won’t have any.” I sometimes thought I’d adopt---after they were past that little kid stage, so maybe age 8 or 9. Not anymore, though.
My sister and I watched the episode of Golden Girls where Blanche’s daughter gives birth when it first aired in the early 1990s and she noped right on out of there after that episode. She is not a parent. Don’t know if she’ll ever be one. I don’t know what my brother’s plans are (or care---it’s his life) but he’s not a parent either. They rather like their lives. Every now and then me and my spouse get offers from friends who say “We’ll gladly be your surrogate.” The offer low-key horrifies me every time and is politely declined. Also, we’re not Southerners---that’s where a good many of the gay and lesbian parents raising kids in two-parent same-sex marriages generally live—yes, really—and GOOD FOR THEM. Other than the occasional offer for surrogacy, partnr’s family has also never really asked, despite being one of those families that doesn’t know how to mind their business on things, heh.
I don’t want to be a parent. Ever. I don’t even want to be an uncle (but that’s not my choice, of course). Thankfully my parental units are cool. They always have been direct and blunt (makes holiday shopping super easy—they just tell you precisely what they want!) and have always said they don’t care if they have grand-kids or not. They have never and will never ask a question so many of my other remaining childfree friends get from their parents (“so when are you going to make me a grandma/grandpa?”---the question is extremely rude BTW). They laugh at the other parents in their age group who are shocked by this behavior but they’ve always laughed at the other parents in their age group (I mean...participation trophies? wtf, they always said!). But I still get bingoed by other parents.
Any-who, what was the point of this? People have a tough time not minding their business when it comes to the reproduction—or non-reproduction of others. 45 just appointed a woman who doesn’t seem to realize, (or is simply incapable due to her religion), that contraception absolutely works---if it didn’t, the US birth rate would not average 1.86 children per woman (as of 2014).
People seem to want to, even on the liberal/progressive side of things, make abortion a compromise position. It should not be one---whether one has a moral objection to it should not change the fact that it should be legally available for those who want it---for any reason (and if it were not legally available, there’s plenty of ways, albeit unsafe ways, to terminate a pregnancy early on---women have been doing so for thousands of years. Not only is it in the Bible, the Romans actually rendered a plant extinct from using it so much because it was an effective abortion drug). If we want vasectomies and tubals we shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get them if we’re unmarried (the US thankfully is somewhat more evolved than other nations who require both marriage AND children before you can get these. Still, in some areas of the United States, it can be very difficult for both men and women as all the childfree online social groups I belong to report.) Plan B and birth control should be widely available for those who want it.
Have we seen Colorado’s “experiment”? It is an amazing success—if you’re a moral scold about any of the following:
- unwanted pregnancies
- teen pregnancies
- abortion
Guess what? Colorado’s program reduced all three, and that real cash money that the state otherwise would have spent dealing with those was redirected elsewhere. Seems it’s a program that works better than teaching kids abstinence as is done in a good number of states. The statistics in those states indicate those programs are a failure.
I don’t care how many kids you do or don’t have. It’s just not selfish to not want any (or many—it’s your life! Do what you want!), and it’s not selfish to take steps to do so. It’s fine for methods to be legally and easily available, without judgment. Our Party Platform should be “yeah, we’re going to make sure these things are legal and widely available. We will make no moral judgement on that in our official platform, no matter what we might personally feel. Otherwise, we gon’ butt tf right out.”
Seems a simple solution to me.
(PS, I’m not relitigating the primary here. It’s over, people. This is a response to Trump’s latest hire.)