no toilet paper?
You can be damned sure the crazy fundamentalists are gonna have a shit ton of kids. And some of those will vote.
100% of scientists agree that not-having-kids will solve our climate change crisis in one generation.
It’ll take more than one…
Well since we can’t count on our leaders to be responsible
lol, yes Millennials and Gen Z are trying so much harder to fix the situation by voting for change… ohhh wait
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/yes-trump-improved-young-men-drew-young-women-rcna179019
Yeah I’m afraid that the lesson is that Gen Z is not actually the future, they are going to repeat the past. What makes me sad is that they should have been the future but social media made sure that didn’t happen.
Did social media make sure that didn’t happen, or did the fact that virtually every generation ultimately repeats the mistakes of the one before it ensure that didn’t happen?
That they could have been so much better without Zuckerberg, Savage, Peterson, etc.
but the system is rigged or my vote doesn’t count or genocide joe or some stupid shit
Look at this guy thinking that we can vote our way out of this when we only have two, corporate sponsored, candidates.
If I ever decide to have kids then I’m adopting because I can’t in good conscience bring a life into this shitty world
Given the glut of unwanted children from our abortion prohibition, we’ll be needing a lot of new adoptive parents in the near future.
Babies get adopted quickly. It’s the older children who need homes.
Not foster kids. Foster parents/adoptions are always needing people, even babies. Sometimes the babies have to sleep in the DHR office, because there’s nowhere for them to go.
Talked to a social worker - kids in DHS care sleep in homeless shelters, hospitals, DHS offices. Teen group homes are inherently damaging to them; I’ve never seen a good one.
Foster teens. Short term commitment. They will have severe trauma and can be hard to deal with, but you would be amazed at how they respond if you can genuinely provide love. Love and Logic is fucking magic.
If you can’t foster, you can be a child advocate. Many states have CASA programs. Visit the kid once a month, let them know someone cares, and tell the court what you think is best for them. Even just something like a phone call “hey, kid left something behind at the group home - any way we could get that moved?”
Or even just someone to protect them from the group home. A dozen seriously traumatized kids, with staff paid less than $15/hr on a week of training. A place that provides opportunities for people to be around children, who are already isolated and have limited access to supportive adults… and financial incentives to cover anything up.
I don’t think there’s much hope for the future, but we can focus on the now and helping the children who are already here.
Good to know. Thank you for sharing.
Ceaușescu’s Romania
Craziest thing about this graphic is that it leaves so many major issues off while also covering so much horseshit.
I mean it’s clearly a pandemic era comic. The whole no toilet paper thing and deadly viruses.
Was gonna say, wheres the fascism going retro?
no board is big enough to put all the problems
We didn’t start the fire. It was always burning since the world’s been turning.
Yeah I don’t really get comics like these, or any other form of “[my generation] has it the worst, the world had been destroyed, why should I have kids” that more or less ignores all of history.
For context, I’m gen Z/millennial with a child and planning another with my wife. We’re not rich or living in nice city of whatever, just living in a smaller city in Europe.
Oh thank god one person on this threat who is not opposed to children or straight out antinatalist
garbage health care
mass shootings
violent racism
The US is far from the only country with violent racism. In terms of healthcare, the privatization. The Canadian healthcare system is being increasingly enshittified by conservatives up here, too.
Look at this guy who thinks the USA invented racism and holds a monopoly on it.
The comic is very America-centric if you look at the problems mentioned in totality.
In Europe it’s just sparkling “let them down in the Mediterranean and/or make sure they stay in their own neighborhoods.”
I was going to say… I don’t see the UK anywhere on this map
Not the same level of problems with mass shootings in the UK. And whilst I take the point about healthcare it’s a very different kind of issue, and if you get triaged conveniently it can work out for you… Really just depends what you need and how old you are, but at least having a baby and keeping it alive is fairly well covered
I mean, the UK has 2 out of 3 of those. And most countries have the violent racism.
Most countries have racism, some have violent racism… and there are some in which terrorist organizations like KKK are freely roaming the streets and are ok for some reason.
Anyway, it feels wierd to speak shit of the USA when there currently are countries actively working on ethnic cleansing.
the UK has 2 out of 3 of those
Change “shooting” to “knifing” and its 3 for 3. The UK has a huge hooliganism problem. The country is rife with domestic violence. But no (non-police) guns!
Most countries have less violent racism now than at any other point in history.
That bar you’re bragging about stepping over is subterranean.
RIP Alaska, Hawaii, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
When we go down we are taking all of you with us.
Don’t worry we know
r/iam14andthisisdeep
At this point I think the GOP are just taunting people who won’t bring kids into this. Jokes on them though, if theyre having kids from some sort obligation and not to love and properly nurture them it’s just bad news for everyone involved. Have fun with all that trauma.
Conservatives are often very insecure people who have never overcome their own childhood trauma or understood why they want children. That trauma and insecurity just gets passed down.
I know, I’m the child of two. For the last 20 years I’ve been completely isolated from all my family by no doing of my own. I often wonder what the fuck all that was about. You know, the whole, bringing 4 kids into the world then putting fasicists into power. Like I got problems, true, but I’d of prefered keeping myself and not being a plague to those around me.
Yeah sounds like my childhood. My parents made my life a living hell then suddenly grew up and realized that everyone around them was broken. We have a better relationship but the damage was done long ago to me siblings and we still have problems.
Glad you’re ok, and seem pretty cool from the little I know of you. We got a raw deal in all this, you know. I think it’s OK to feel that way.
Figured out tags. You got my first!
This plus observing and learning from others convinced me that most people should not have children prior to the age of 30. This is time to grow up, party some, get established, and become yourself. Then you’re ready to parent.
Thanks for the nice words. I’ll keep an eye out for you in the future. Need to figure out Joe to do tags.
Where do you think we get new Republicans from?
Generational trauma. It’s all just generational trauma.
And religious indoctrination programming children to blindly follow strongman authority figures and not require any proof when forming their wolrdview.
New Democrats too.
I really wish that you had someone to add to the conversation.
BOtH sIDeS
Republicans saying they hate Communism, then doing a Nicolae Ceaușescu speed run.
Thats one of the reasons i’m not having kids. I have a decent life by any metric but I had to work my ass off and face a tonne of resistance in my career. It always feels like I’m playing catch up with the cost of everything going up and up to the point where I’m just exhausted and depressed. Like, what is the point of living?! it honestly feels like theres just nothing left to enjoy anymore, everything has been monetized to hell and back. They told us as kids that you can be anything you want when you grow up, the future is bright and if you work hard you will be rewarded and its just not true. I can’t do that to another person, these problems are only getting worse with no end in sight.
That’s the point? The left get demoralized and the right can’t be because they have no morals. Its part of the reason right wingers tend to have a dozen children, it’s quite literally biblical drown them in numbers bullshit.
it’s quite literally biblical drown them in numbers bullshit.
Yes, it’s called (disgustingly) the “Quiverfull Movement”
Idiocracy is a documentary
It absolutely isnt
President Comacho has a problem, finds the most qualified person to fix it, does so (reluctantly) and then dosen’t take credit. This so divorced from reality that it should be concidred high fantasy.
That’s the only thing preventing it from being categorized as a documentary.
I thought about it and it’s just unfortunate kimbo slice died before he could eventually be president. He could have been the one.
DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN REPEAT DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN
THIS MESSAGE IS FOR ALL RESIDENTS OF PLANET EARTH
NO ONE NEEDS YOU TO BIRTH THEM
ABORT. ABORT. ABORT.
WE HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE, THE PLANET IS BURNING, THEY WILL NOT LEAD GOOD LIVES. IT’S NOT WORTH IT. PULL OUT BEFORE YOU NUT HOLY CHRIST PLEASE DO NOT HAVE KIDS
This is mostly copied over from my recent comments elsewhere, but it is very relevant here too.
By 2030 we are going to be 40% over capacity on fresh water resources globally. and 40% of arable land has already been depleted, and 95% will be by 2050.
And that’s just water and food.
Once arctic ice sheet coverage gets below 1,000,000 square kilometres, the planet will be absorbing more heat than it reflects and this is called a Blue Ocean Event.
The BOE will trigger the Clathrate Gun which will cause seabeds to rapidly realease fuck tons of methane, cooking the earth in it’s own atmosphere.
2024 Arctic sea ice likely reached its annual minimum extent of 4.28 million square kilometers.
Greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing and fuelled by climate change, the world’s oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year.
So it’s basically a race between whether the drought and famine kill us all first, or the BOE setting off the Clathrate Gun will.
Either way, it is unlikely the human race survives the century. Creating more people to suffer in this dying world, is stupid and cruel and is only going to speed up our demise.
Well. Fuck.
Would you put your child through all that, plus force them to wage slave their whole life to pay their landed lord? All for a hit of dopamine and serotonin?
Consider loading up a crack pipe instead and save some needless suffering.
putting aside the innumerable issues with the stance “it is fundamentally immoral to have children”, sweet mother of mercy the solution is not life-ruining addictive substances
Is that directed at me, or at other people reading this comment chain?
And why are you telling people to smoke crack? You are promoting suffering by doing this, and that is illogical and mean spirited when the rest of your comment is talking about reducing suffering by not procreating.
Are you arguing in bad faith here, or have you just not thought this through properly?
Please consider adoption as an alternative if you are in a stable situation and want children.
You don’t even have to be in a stable situation to be a Big Brother/Sister at your local Boys and Girls club or a court advocate/CASA for a child. Volunteer at a school district. Children recognize how fucked everything is, and on the whole they are suffering. We need kind and loving adults to show up for them - to teach them art and read them stories to show them the parts of living that can hopefully make it worth it.
My SO and I have both decided that we definitely don’t want kids but would discuss the subject if any one of us seriously considered it for one reason or another. What we agreed on, though, is to look for adoption rather than biological children. We both have stuff we’d rather not pass along, firstly, and secondly, there’s so many children that don’t have any family. It’s sorta like “adopt don’t shop”, if you will.
or wood chipper
Just get a vasectomy honestly. You can keep nutting inside afterwards. Deal?
i’ll take two
deleted by creator
Speak for yourself I’ve got a vasectomy
The catch-22 is that if the people with environmental values don’t have kids, those values aren’t passed on to the next generation (unless they become teachers or media personalities).
You don’t need to have kids to pass on values. The basic premise of your statement doesn’t hold up.
Well, like I mentioned you still need some sort of interaction with kids. Or maybe influence their parents enough to have them indirectly pass on those values you imparted on them. But I still think that if the smartest, kindest, most compassionate people among us stop having kids… well then that’s not great for that next generation. I’ve just always felt that giving up one of the primary factors of life, reproduction, seems very defeatist. But on the other hand, if someone genuinely doesn’t want children then by all means don’t.
I know at least one friend that wants to adopt/foster once they’re ready, instead of having biological children.
The justification was similar to what you said, where they want to pass on their values / legacy, but don’t care about the genetic side
This is the answer. The problem is the huge expense to adopt at least in the US. Money that could make a better life for the child being adopted is taken by the state.
We need to streamline adoption while still vetting the potential parents as unlikely to be abusive.
Yeah this has always pissed me off with my non-parent friends. You really think you have that much influence on random kids you have fleeting interactions with? Unless you’re a teacher or in some other position where it’s your job to interact with kids, your opinions aren’t getting passed down to anyone.
They could always get more involved with their community. They don’t have to be a parent or have some specialized education to be a coach or volunteer at a youth center.
My scoutmaster did more to instill honesty, leadership ability, and respect for community in me than my mom or absent father ever did.
Now in my career I take mentoring new hires more seriously than anything other than general safety. My company hires a lot of young men with no direction and shitty childhoods. It’s not as good as getting to them when they’re young, but when I’m their only friend 200 or 800 miles from home I get the privilege to impart some important ideas and philosophies.
Scoutmaster is a job that works with kids, so I agree with you there. And mentoring is important too. But these things are less important than the impact you make as a parent. For most people the family is the anchor.
lol fucking obliterated
Any society that doesn’t impart those values across the board to its citizens will devolve into shit regardless.
It’s basically just math.
People with zero values are going to fuck like rabbits and people with values aren’t.
If trash family has 5 kids they can’t take care of and a dad that leaves, that’s at least 4 really mad poor kids that are going to blame a lot on somesuch minority for their problems in 18 years.
It seems like vanishingly few people in the US care about the good of broader humanity anymore. Destroying the environment is fine as long as it creates jobs. Poisoning the water tables forever with fracking is fine as long as it makes cheap gas. Genocide was supported by both parties in the last election. Both parties are waving guns around even as school kids die in ever more frequent mass shootings. Its a race to the bottom and no one cares to change course.
For all those values, even in yourself. There’s no better motivator to make an effort for the future, than having a kid you want the best for. If you don’t have a kid, you’re not passing your environmental values, or you educational values, or all the other values you may have for what makes a better society. Nor do you have any reason to hold to them yourself.
I don’t mean to try to push anyone toward having kids, but if you do want to have kids but give up thinking the world is getting worse, that decision is part of the world getting worse. If you do want kids, there’s all sorts of opportunity to make this a better world for both yourself and them, and longer, and plenty of opportunity to make an actual difference
Just passing along the value of the bidet may be worth it, according to the comic
By that rote though everyone that has had children in the past has cared for their future and the future of the social and actual environment they will inherit. We wouldn’t be having this discussion if any semblance of that was true.
There are plenty of reasons to think this true, and plenty of reasons the world is getting better over time. Maybe not the next four years, and maybe not for everyone, but there are so many stays at global and national levels that have trended up for decades and continue to do so.
And before someone single-minded chimes in about Gaza. War and atrocity has always been an ugly part of our history and also has trended downward over the last several decades. Just the fact that we can get so worked up about ending atrocities somewhere else in the world that doesn’t affect us, is a great sign for the future
If you don’t have a kid, you’re not passing your environmental values, or you educational values, or all the other values you may have for what makes a better society. Nor do you have any reason to hold to them yourself.
…
Why does it have to be my kid for me to care?
Like actually. Are you seriously saying being a parent somehow intrinsically makes someone a better, more caring, and impactful, person? Or that parenthood is the only way to achieve true conviction? That’s literally not how any of this works.
Not bringing children into the world in no way prevents you from caring about making the world a better place, and acting to make it so. And doing the things that make the world better doesn’t functionally require having a kid. All it takes is some basic fucking decency.
Which is something people already have, but get taken away by the grind of survival or material success. That is maybe why you have this fucked up idea that people get it by having a kid, but in reality that’s just a huge life event that wakes some people up enough to take a look around and start caring again.
And passing good things on doesn’t require having descendants. If you’ve ever changed someones mind on something for the better, you’ve successfully passed on “values you may have for what makes a better society”. The person whose mind you changed doesn’t even need to be younger than you, thought doesn’t procreate through fucking genetics.
Plenty of parents are made no more profound than they were before by the act of procreating, and will conently continue to do nothing to improve the world. There are parents who will protect their own to the detriment of everyone else.
Kids though, if raised by caring parents, care from the start, but then have that heart crushed by society until they too have a kid of their own.
But in there is way for everyone to care, all the time.
The whole idea that it’s ok not to care about and deal with bad stuff unless you personally are somehow impacted is the whole reason we’re in this mess, and it’s perpetuated by people being forced to live in a constant scramble of stress and consumerism.
Not by people not having children.
I would add that the sentiment is also wrong in the other direction. I’ve personally encountered multiple parents and grandparents who hit me with the “well it won’t affect me, I’ll be long gone” reasoning regarding climate change.
So yeah. What a stupid and offensively self centered thing to say. If you personally didn’t give a shit about other people before, that’s actually a character flaw, not a rite of passage you complete by roping children into this mess
I don’t need to have a child to care about passing down a habitable planet to the next generation.
What is the acceptable level of tragedy to impart upon a non-consenting progeny? I vote for zero
You’d have to be immortal, first. Most kids are gonna live to see their own parents pass.
Tragedy is a part of life.
It’s easily avoidable tragedy, unaddressed by those who could do something about it, that’s the problem.
Even worse, there’s potentially extinction level tragedy happening right now, going unaddressed by those who can do something about it.
Tragedy is a part of life
Yes. And tragedy is categorically bad, and tragedies cannot be experienced by that which is not alive (i.e. non-sentient). Thusly, a total absence of (sentient) life would be a total absence of tragedies and vice versa; in other words, sentient life and tragedy are virtually biconditional. The continuation of sentient life and tragedy is wholly avoidable if the relevant capable parties were willing, and it can often be abated on a small scale on an individual basis.
Most kids though? I’m not going to go looking for stats but let’s just say 95% of children are outliving their parents right now. Awkward sentence there. I mean parents who are dying today, 95% of them didn’t outlive their children. I hope that makes sense. Yes that’s not how statistics work, I’m trying to make a point.
What’s an acceptable level to drop to before we say fuck this we’re done having kids? I knew I didn’t want kids when I was a kid, but I’m an outlier.
Let’s say 85% is the number for kids born today. I believe that’s already unacceptable. It’s so unnatural.
I think the number is worse than that. The mass climate migration/water wars are going to really get moving in the 2040s if not earlier. I don’t want to live through that. I definitely don’t want a child to live through that.
Historically we’ve tolerated MUCH higher rates of infant and child mortality than we do today. People will keep having kids even if most of them will die.
tolerated
I don’t think many women had a choice in the matter.
Agreed. It’s just now we have more options. At least we did before the Christian Nationalist Supreme Court made abortion illegal in half of the US. Even with this there are still more options and more education than in the distant past.
People will keep having kids even if most of them will die
“even if”? Biologically, knowing that most of your offspring are going to die is a reason to have as many kids as possible.
The trouble with this graphic is that millennials are part of the problem now. The oldest are over forty. We’ve all seen the footage of Jan 6th. There were very few boomers in their 60 and 70s.
There’s a whole fucking generation between Boomers and Millennials. Yes, Gen X does get overlooked often, that’s the running joke. But they’re far more likely to have soaked up Boomerisms and benefited from better economic ROI than Millennials who hit college just at the cusp of the 2000s, and for whom everything thereafter has been a shit toboggan.
Don’t forget the Millennials who graduated high school/college during the 08 housing crisis.
Dr. Toboggan! Dr. Shit Toboggan!
And we just saw the first corrupt Millennials enter office this election.
It will be 20 more years before the Millennials are the geritocracy and hold any real power
By then our country will be over
Matt Gaetz is an elder millennial like me, and he is a fucking dipshit… and he’s going to be attorney general of the United States despite being a proven pedophile and having committed statutory rape AND has mininal legal experience.
I’m Gen X, but cusp with Millennial. I said at 15 or 16 I’d never have kids & stuck with it. I’m more resolute than ever & feel like I would have massive guilt if I had caved. I felt the world was too fucked up back in the 90s. I wonder how my younger self would deal with the world today.
I’m on the other side of the generational gap (nearly gen x, but millennial), and I was terrified during my late teens/early 20s of becoming a parent. I could not imagine raising a child the way I was living paycheque to paycheque, if I had a paycheque at all…
That feeling never went away, and I still wouldn’t know how I could possibly afford that. I decided in my mid 20s that children would be a decision I would leave up to my wife (wherever I had a wife to make the decision). I was/am instinctually driven to want them (a feeling I mostly disregard), but given the state of the world and my own financial situation, I can’t say that I want to force any intelligent being, especially one that is my offspring, to suffer through a lifetime of this shit like I have been forced to so far.
I didn’t ask to be here. If someone had given me a choice, I would have probably opted out of gestures all of this.
I’m currently in a long term relationship, and we’re planning on signing the papers next year, so soon I’ll have someone I can legitimately call my wife. She is very much on the side of “never have kids”. So that’s my decision as well.
Instinctual drive isn’t enough to cause me to overlook how things are going. I love my (non-existent) children too much, than to force them into living a life in these circumstances. Fuck no.
I was/am instinctually driven to want them (a feeling I mostly disregard), but given the state of the world and my own financial situation, I can’t say that I want to force any intelligent being, especially one that is my offspring, to suffer through a lifetime of this shit like I have been forced to so far.
This is interesting to me, as I’ve never had the biological urge to have kids. I love them and enjoy hanging out with them, joking, playing, etc., but never my own. In any case, I commend you on being resolute.
I’m currently in a long term relationship, and we’re planning on signing the papers next year, so soon I’ll have someone I can legitimately call my wife. She is very much on the side of “never have kids”. So that’s my decision as well.
My girlfriend doesn’t want them either. She’s a good deal younger than me - 31 years old - but she says something similar to me: raising kids in this world would be a tragedy.
Frankly, I’ve always felt there are too many humans. I never understood the push for more. Just maintain or reduce the population naturally.
Good luck staving off that biological imperative. I feel lucky not to have it myself.
It’s not difficult for me, to say the feeling isn’t felt very strongly, would probably be an understatement.
The other comment I want to make is that I agree that there’s too many humans, however, the economy survives by constant growth, so that’s a thing. It has to do with how money works and is valuated.
The video “money as debt” is a good resource for more info on that.
Bluntly, I don’t care since I’ll be long dead when the economy collapses under it’s own weight.
You could adopt a kid. And give them a home. That is 1 option.
I considered that and it was part of my early stands: IF i had a kid, I would adopt since there are so many without parents.
Just like Millenials and Gen Zs, my life is hard enough to pay for financially. I don’t know that I could provide something positive for a child. I need to be honest with myself about this shit.
