the famous writer placed his glass firmly on the white tablecloth, leaned back and declared: “Glynnis MacNicol, you have a terrible life!”
I do believe that people can have happy lives without children. It's not for everyone.
I believe they can be ‘happy’, but they’ll eventually regret it if they finally grow up to be an adult and realize that our children are the only real legacy we leave behind.
The childless will die and within a short time, nobody will remember them or anything about their ‘happy life’.
I’m also skeptical of anyone who feels the need to write a book or article about how happy they are. Sounds to me like she’s trying too hard to convince herself that she’s happy.
Neither a big family nor childfree is for everybody. I know some incredibly happy folks with lots of kids, I know some quite happy folks with none. There really isn’t anything that is LESS the business of other people.
I agree. In fact I would put it - I know people who should NOT have kids.
Some people that DO have children would have been much better to the gene pool if they had not reproduced.
The Darwin awards go to such people
I don’t believe it, either.
My wife cannot have children and in our 50’s we have yet to have a single person disparage our life for it. In fact, we have a lot of friends that never had children. We also have lots of friends with children. It has never had any difference.
I’m one of those rare creatures, the lifelong straight bachelor.
And you know what? I may not be happy, but I’m not miserable. I think people approach the issue of happiness from the wrong direction. God doesn’t care that we’re happy. He cares that we do the right thing whenever there’s a tough choice to be made.
Looking back on some of the tough choices I have had to make, I am happy that I always treated women properly in a “gentleman of the old school” sort of way.
However, I realized at the same time that this sort of attitude seems to be a guaranteed formula for failure in the post-Sexual Revolution world.
For reasons I can only partly understand, today’s women say they want a man who “treats them right.” But in reality, if you give kindly, considerate, sincere interest to a woman, she will dismiss you as boring. You will be consigned permanently to the “friend zone.”
What they prefer is “bad boys.” You want women all over you, be a criminal.
And I should note that I am neither deformed, demented, nor destitute. I could stand to lose some weight — but that applies to half the population.
What I am is a traditional Catholic, and definitely bookish. I have had the dreaded “I” word (intellectual) applied to me, but I much prefer “scholar.”
After all, knowledge is everyone’s birthright, and not just for the elite. However, the Leftist elite don’t want to acknowledge this, hence the need for a word such as “intellectual.”
What I cannot be is a “bad boy” — hence I failed and failed and failed to attract a suitable partner. At 39, I gave up completely, and started to realize that being unattached had some big advantages.
Try this one: I have never been married, but I’ve also never been dragged into family court by a vengeful spouse and had my life destroyed. Obviously, I can’t condone men who abuse or cheat on their wives. But I’ve seen too many instances where the wife filed on the husband mainly because she had gotten bored after 10 years or so, and wanted out.
Marriage is supposed to be lifelong commitment made in the presence of God. I don’t recall anything in the marriage vows about “until boredom do we part.” Yet I submit that’s the cause of the vast majority of divorces.
I’ve written too much already. Being a lifelong bachelor today is like being Switzerland in the gender war. And if you’ve read your World War II history, you will know that Switzerland was able to maintain its neutrality largely because it was heavily armed and difficult to invade.