Question About Catholicism and Childfreedom

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tiziana
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
LilyM said:
Just listen to yourself! Imagine if I said to you ‘well, I just don’t like Anglicans. Don’t know why. Just never met one who didn’t really annoy me. I find them disgusting. So - if you’re Anglican I don’t like you. Don’t want to like you. I find YOU disgusting. Can’t be bothered even trying to get to know or like you. And you can just deal with it. Ner ner ner.’

How on earth would you feel? Would you not be a bit surprised - not to say upset - that I would never even bother to explore the reasons behind this totally irrational (hint: if you don’t know why you do or feel something, then it’s irrational) and unfair hatred of Anglicans as a group?
Click to expand...
Listen to yourself. This is the very definition of apples and oranges. Being Anglican is a religious choice, and it is something that is forever. A person is not going to grow out of being Anglican.

But a person will eventually no longer be a child, and that means that person will eventually be able to take care of him or herself, converse on a higher intellectual level, probably not get into all kinds of disgusting messes, etc. When that happens and said person reaches maturity, the acceptance of them changes.

There’s a big difference.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
That’s an unfair assumption. Yes, he can live the way ge wants because he has no children. But how do you know that the way he lives is selfish? Perhaps he’s dedicated to a career that helps people in need. Or maybe he devotes tons of time to charitable causes.
Click to expand...
The defense is appreciated, but I’m a sportswriter and don’t have time to devote to anything, charitable or not. Outside of going to church, every bit of time outside of work is spent either sleeping, cooking or making my girlfriend feel special.
 
NightHawk2005 said:
The defense is appreciated, but I’m a sportswriter and don’t have time to devote to anything, charitable or not. Outside of going to church, every bit of time outside of work is spent either sleeping, cooking or making my girlfriend feel special.
Click to expand...
I figured. Very few people are as charitable as they could and/or should be. But my main point stands. Judging the selfishness of a person based on whether or not they have reproduced is uncalled for and a very poor indicator.
 
NightHawk2005 said:
Listen to yourself. This is the very definition of apples and oranges. Being Anglican is a religious choice, and it is something that is forever. A person is not going to grow out of being Anglican.

But a person will eventually no longer be a child, and that means that person will eventually be able to take care of him or herself, converse on a higher intellectual level, probably not get into all kinds of disgusting messes, etc. When that happens and said person reaches maturity, the acceptance of them changes.

There’s a big difference.
Click to expand...
I actually get along very well with all my grown-up cousins that were kids just a few years ago. I have more in common with them. We can talk and laugh together. If they’re emotionally scarred from my relative lack of attention to them as children, they certainly don’t show it.

The people that matter most in a child’s life are the parents, and to a lesser extent, grandparents, siblings and teachers. If a person chooses not to have children because they’re not particularly fond of them, there is no one to feel the negative brunt, so long as they’re not deliberately persecuting them (which I admit, it’s probably the sign of a sick person to seek out people just to lash out at them).
 
Nabooru said:
I actually get along very well with all my grown-up cousins that were kids just a few years ago. I have more in common with them. We can talk and laugh together. If they’re emotionally scarred from my relative lack of attention to them as children, they certainly don’t show it.

The people that matter most in a child’s life are the parents, and to a lesser extent, grandparents, siblings and teachers. If a person chooses not to have children because they’re not particularly fond of them, there is no one to feel the negative brunt, so long as they’re not deliberately persecuting them (which I admit, it’s probably the sign of a sick person to seek out people just to lash out at them).
Click to expand...
Agreed. It’s far worse to bring a child into the world and mistreat him or her than to prevent a child from ever existing. If I have a child and don’t raise the child properly, I’ve done a great disservice to another human being. If I don’t have a child, my sperm cells will never know the difference.
 
NightHawk2005 said:
Agreed. It’s far worse to bring a child into the world and mistreat him or her than to prevent a child from ever existing. If I have a child and don’t raise the child properly, I’ve done a great disservice to another human being. If I don’t have a child, my sperm cells will never know the difference.
Click to expand...
Exactly!!
 
Nabooru said:
I don’t need a psychologist just because I don’t want children and don’t like their behavior.

And, if you don’t like Anglicans, that’s your problem, not mine. There are plenty of people that don’t, because of the whole Henry VIII marriage thing. What does your dislike of Anglicans have to do with me? What does my dislike of children have to do with them? Are you going out and deliberately seeking Anglicans to cut them down? No? Me neither. When I interact with kids I’m polite and try to keep the conversation short. Their response is to shrug and move on to the next person. Do you spend hours and hours of crying over the emotional scarring of all those horrible, horrible people you met in your childhood who didn’t seem interested in your new toy?

Personally I feel you must be a very child-centric, mommy sort of person, and you feel offended if anyone else thinks differently, like it’s a personal attack on your lifestyle choice and your own children. Like I said, I have dogs, I love dogs, and I know people that absolutely hate dogs. It’s no big deal. Unless, of course, you want it to be.
Click to expand...
Firstly - don’t assume. I have no children, through a mixture of circumstance and choice. I am content with that. I will also be content if in the future I am blessed with husband and children. I may even be called to be a nun. Or just single and/or childless. God’s will be done whatever happens. So I can assure you I have no vested interest in pushing a motherhood agenda on anybody.

I cannot for the life of me fathom anyone calling children ‘disgusting’, though. As a whole group. Just dismissing every last one of them with such an awful disrespectful epithet. In the sam way, and for the same reasons, that I also can’t fathom anyone calling all childless people ‘selfish’ or similarly derogatory labels. Or all Anglicans. Btw, to me it seems far worse to dismiss someone for something that is not within their control - like being a child - than for their chosen faith, yet I would still deem it sad in the extreme to hear anyone label all members of a faith group in a derogatory way, as if they all share the undesirable traits of some individuals in their group.

Of course we’ve all met children who are at least a lot of the time unpleasant. I wouldn’t dream of tarring all children with the same brush as a result, any more than I would label all adults unpleasant or disgusting due to the bad behaviour of some.

Look, I’m not saying you have to go out and love children and have a dozen (or any) of your own. I’m not even suggesting counselling because of the dislike of children. I am only suggesting it for the noise issue. I too have difficulties in noisy situations of all kinds. And came to realize that it does hinder me in social situations of all sorts, not just where children are involved. And that I am not powerless against it. And that it is only to my, and others, benefit to gain what power I can over it.
 
There’s a difference between actively hating children and simply not liking them. This world is full of children, and needless to see I meet, see, and hear them the better part of the time, and I have not liked what I’ve seen so far. It therefore rests on my reason, based on the experience I’ve had, that I don’t like children.

I am not blaming children for being children. Believe it or not, I was once a child myself. And I honestly think about my childhood, specific incidents I remember, and I think about how annoying I must have been. But I don’t beat myself up over it because I couldn’t help it. That doesn’t mean that I should find everything a child does enjoyable. Just because you soiled many, many diapers as a baby doesn’t mean you should have no problem with changing them today! You’ll actually find that in life you can’t force yourself to like or dislike anything; it’s ingrained in you. If you don’t like eggplant you can’t just say, “You know what, I’m going to go against my instincts here and just like eggplant from now on.”

It’s not a dog’s fault that a dog is a dog. And there are very badly behaved dogs out there and very good dogs out there, but that doesn’t mean a person has no right to dislike them. There are qualities inherent to dogs that cannot be avoided: They shed, they bark, they drool at times. And a lot of people don’t like those. Not their fault. They’re not bad people.
 
Nabooru said:
There’s a difference between actively hating children and simply not liking them. This world is full of children, and needless to see I meet, see, and hear them the better part of the time, and I have not liked what I’ve seen so far. It therefore rests on my reason, based on the experience I’ve had, that I don’t like children.

I am not blaming children for being children. Believe it or not, I was once a child myself. And I honestly think about my childhood, specific incidents I remember, and I think about how annoying I must have been. But I don’t beat myself up over it because I couldn’t help it. That doesn’t mean that I should find everything a child does enjoyable. Just because you soiled many, many diapers as a baby doesn’t mean you should have no problem with changing them today! You’ll actually find that in life you can’t force yourself to like or dislike anything; it’s ingrained in you. If you don’t like eggplant you can’t just say, “You know what, I’m going to go against my instincts here and just like eggplant from now on.”

It’s not a dog’s fault that a dog is a dog. And there are very badly behaved dogs out there and very good dogs out there, but that doesn’t mean a person has no right to dislike them. There are qualities inherent to dogs that cannot be avoided: They shed, they bark, they drool at times. And a lot of people don’t like those. Not their fault. They’re not bad people.
Click to expand...
And if someone said ‘I don’t like study’, or ‘I don’t like black people’ or ‘I don’t like Jews’ would you honestly say to them ‘right on, you just listen to your instincts, and go with them, nothing you can do about it - be dumb, be racist, whatever’? Or would you say ‘it is to your benefit to at the very least examine the reasons WHY you dislike study/blacks/Jews - which perhaps are not valid ones - and at least TRY to cultivate a more positive attitude towards them rather than feeding up your dislike and focusing only on the negatives’?

Yes, dogs do bark, shed and drool. There’s nothing inherently wrong with barking, dog hair or drool. If there were, EVERYONE or nearly everyone would dislike them, and everyone or nearly everyone would dislike dogs because of them.

As a dog owner, I don’t dislike the barking (which is, after all, merely the dog trying to communicate), the shedding (I have long thick hair, and believe me I shed almost as much as some dogs!) or even the drool - which is nothing a little soap and water can’t fix quickly, and is really only confined to some breeds, with most dogs being well able to keep their drool to themselves.

Certainly you shouldn’t OWN a dog if these things bother you, but I don’t think it’s accurate to describe them as inherently unlikable. Nor, most importantly, do I think that anyone has the right to label dogs en masse as ‘disgusting’ because of it. I think particularly that labels such as ‘disgusting’ well and truly cross the line into active dislike.
 
First off, stop using the word “disgusting”. You keep posting as though I used it, when in fact you did, not I.

And the thing is, there are things inherent to children that are due to their youth. I’m not saying it’s inherently wrong. I’m just saying I personally don’t like it, and it’d be better if I weren’t around it. I think you’re trying to turn my “not liking” of children into “hatred of children”, which it isn’t.

What’s inherent to children? Babies cry and demand constant attention. Toddlers go through a stage when they’re spoiled, constantly fighting and screaming when they don’t get their way. That’s part of their development. Older children don’t know very much and don’t have much experience, so they don’t have much to talk about with an adult. Often this means they just talk about themselves. They don’t know any better but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Their general mannerisms and idiosyncrasies just don’t gel with me.

If someone doesn’t like me, because they don’t like my way of speaking, or the jokes I make, or the questions I ask, or even my physical movements, whatever. It’s not my job to change every part of myself to conform to what they think is “what I should be” - BUT, it’s not their job to like me, either.
 
40.png
Nabooru:
I’m in the same boat. I describe myself as “child free”, and I’m going to be blunt: I don’t like kids. I don’t know why, I’ve just never met one that didn’t annoy me. When I’m around them I can’t stand it, they always misbehave in one way or another, they’re spoiled…I’m sure everyone thinks their kids are perfect but I see quite the opposite. (Well, I have met a few people who genuinely dislike their own kids…few and far between though.) I have a huge sensitivity to screaming, things being knocked over when kids runs into them, crying, whining, etc.

While people hate me for this, I have to ask, if you hate dogs, is it wrong for you to decide not to have them? Do you think you’d be a good good owner if you did? I personally love dogs, I don’t understand how people couldn’t love them, but I don’t insist that they must have them anyway, or that if they get one “then you’ll know”. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them, I don’t pester them to know why they don’t like them, or to change their minds (how can you change your mind about something you like/dislike anyway? Can you force yourself to like tomatoes if you find them disgusting?
Click to expand...
My emphasis, but you most certainly did use the word.
 
Nabooru said:
Where? Show me.
Click to expand...
I quoted the post where you did so directly above my response - see where it says ‘Originally posted by Nabooru’? It’s post number 48 in the thread - the first one you wrote in this thread.

And then note the last word that you used in the bit I quoted, where I underlined and bolded it for emphasis.
 
I must say, you are trying to condemn me very, very hard.

If you’ll notice, I used the word “disgusting” in relation to tomatoes. Tomatoes are food. Not people. A word “disgusting” is commonly used when one is describing disliking a particular food, even in an analogy.
 
Nabooru said:
I must say, you are trying to condemn me very, very hard.

If you’ll notice, I used the word “disgusting” in relation to tomatoes. Tomatoes are food. Not people. A word “disgusting” is commonly used when one is describing disliking a particular food, even in an analogy.
Click to expand...
Well yes, tomatoes are food. But your purpose in even mentioning tomatoes was to use your attitude towards them as an analogy for your attitude towards children, no?

Yes, analogies aren’t always perfect, in as far as the objects (ie tomatoes and children) are inherently quite different so the correspondence isn’t absolute.

But if a word doesn’t accurately describe your feelings towards both the objects of the analogy then why would you choose to use it at all?

And I don’t need to try very hard - I simply need to quote you!
 
Okay, here’s an analogy for people who like kids:

“I love the kids my friends and cousins have, their expressions, their sayings. I can’t wait to have some of my own. If you were given a pineapple, and found it to be sweet and juicy, wouldn’t you want to have more to yourself?”

Should we then accept that such a person is stating that they think children are sweet and juicy? Or that the sweet juiciness they admire in the pineapple is the same feeling they have for children?
 
Nabooru said:
Okay, here’s an analogy for people who like kids:

“I love the kids my friends and cousins have, their expressions, their sayings. I can’t wait to have some of my own. If you were given a pineapple, and found it to be sweet and juicy, wouldn’t you want to have more to yourself?”

Should we then accept that such a person is stating that they think children are sweet and juicy? Or that the sweet juiciness they admire in the pineapple is the same feeling they have for children?
Click to expand...
Precisely - the same feeling. In your case it is that feeling which is described by the word ‘disgusting’.

In the case of the pineapple the feeling is described by the words ‘want to have more’. Not by the words ‘sweet and juicy’. Sweet and juicy aren’t feelings, they are characteristics. Wanting is a feeling. And so is disgust.
 
LilyM said:
Well yes, tomatoes are food. But your purpose in even mentioning tomatoes was to use your attitude towards them as an analogy for your attitude towards children, no?
Click to expand...
No. You are simply taking one feeling toward something completely different and using it for your own purposes. They could have used any number of phrases to describe how they hypothetically feel about tomatoes and you would have twisted it. You are seeing something that isn’t there.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top