this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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Some people would say that attempting to reach your own self-fulfulment through your children is a form of child abuse. Certainly it can easily become abusive and I don't think it's a positive pattern to encourage.
Having a child aught not be about what you want or even what you need. That's backwards, and it's exactly the sort of lie we tell ourselves to try to post-hoc rationalize a decision that our bodies have made for us, and we want to believe we made for ourselves.
That's not what I am talking about. I am talking about simple emotional dependence on your children for your own needs. That is a classic abusive inversion of the relationship.
Once you die, it's over. Dead people don't have interests. Making plans for when you are dead is even more irrational than convincing yourself that having children is a benefit to you or anyone else. All this stuff about fulfilling your ancestor's legacy is romantic twaddle you use to confuse yourself.
Jfc, imagine bringing a life in to this world for the sole purpose of them being a vehicle for your ambition to, what, have some "legacy" you've convinced yourself you have, live forever? 🤯🙄🤦♀️
And it's people like you who are then completely shocked and horrified when your kids don't want to any contact with you anymore, or when kids of people like you never want to reproduce because they don't want to inflict a similar existence on to anyone else..
This is the most arrogant thing I have seen in a while. Stop using kids to achieve your own goals. Use people who actually care. It shouldn't be hard to find people who want to build a Dyson swarm (a dyson sphere isn't realistic even). As for forcing people to be successful: that's not how success works, how having kids works, and ignores the shit show that is modern society.
Its more that humanity is a long line of tragedy and triumph echoing through eternity, and being able to extend your accumulated wisdom to the next link in the chain is both exciting and challenging in a way nothing else in life really is.
That's a weird thing to say, because I've found my parents and in-laws and siblings/cousins to be absolutely invaluable. I think the modern western lifestyle may have seriously fucked this generation. And if you've become alienated from your parents AND your kids, that's definitely a shit existence.
But I would present an alternative. Don't. Stay in contact with the people you love, whether that's blood relatives or found family. Be nice to people and try to make the time together pleasantly memorable.
Then maybe your kids will want to share that experience with their kids, and you get to add another link in the chain of existence.
Nope. That way lies delusions of grandeur. Life is short and I'd rather focus on living it today rather than worrying about a "legacy" I'll never experience.
And that way lies the kind of entitlement that leads parents to think their children's lives are their own.
You aren't achieving anything past your life. Your kids are. Their ambition is theirs, not yours. Stop thinking you can take credit for it.
And I'll all but guarantee you they did those things simply because they love you, not because of some grandiose idea of a "legacy" or a desperate need to live beyond their death.
Planning for the future in order to care for your family and friends is an expression of love, not ambition.
Lmao, I can't have dream that are further than next week. By the time my kids grow up, their dreams will be what, the next hour?
That seems pretty vain