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To: timm22; discostu
I'm genuinely perplexed by the vehemence of your reactions. It's almost universal for people to hope to have satisying and even supportive contact with their children as the years go on (you evidently agree on that one) and yet you say it fails as a "motive" for having kids. How can a hope not be a motive?

There is, certainly, such a thing as a disordered love or a disordered need. An adult who has children for the purely instrumental purpose of making servants out of them would be rather a monster. Children belong to themselves, and to God; they are not their parents' chattel.

But is that what you're getting at?

There are some people who just choose to get married and then do not precisely "choose" or "plan" children, but accept their children as they come. They accept them out of generosity or inadvertence, out of piety or a flexible sense of hospitality. They may well have hopes and dreams, but none of them can be absolutely imposed on the children as if the child had an obligation to perform on a contract.

Is that what you're talking about?

244 posted on 02/26/2008 2:10:42 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o (Puzzled.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Again the objection isn’t to hope, the objection is to that being the REASON to have kids. “I’m having kids to keep me company in my 70s and remember me after I die” is NOT hope, it is not anything that even resembles hope, it is a sad shallow motivation for bringing life into this world, a motivation that leads to children as props.

What I’m getting at is exactly what I’ve sad. That there are very shallow reasons to have kids, and that the people who put forth those shallow reasons tend to be the ones quickest to accuse the childless of being shallow.


247 posted on 02/26/2008 2:19:24 PM PST by discostu (aliens ate my Buick)
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