My Dear Hard Drive

Posts Tagged ‘child’

Not having children is one of those things that seem to attract controversy all the time. I personally knew I didn’t want kids fairly early in my life. It may have started as admiration toward my auntie who lived in New York (instead of Isokyrö, Finland, Europe) and didn’t have children because she didn’t want to. I wanted to live in New York and not have children, too. However, as my fondness to New York grew thin and my admiration toward my auntie diminished to more realistic levels, I still didn’t want children. To me it’s something that other people do. There’s a bunch of things that other people do, like go to work every day to do something they hate to stay alive in the life they hate and get drunk when they can’t handle it anymore. Having children is one of those things. It just isn’t something I can really see myself doing. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to have a job, like a real job that actually pays you every month (or week like they do here, I’ve been told) and not when someone finds your work worthy. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to be drunk. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to be a parent. So far, none of those things have felt right.

Sheldon the Wonderhorse said, when commenting on Mad Typist‘s blog post about not having children, and I have to quote: “One of my biggest fears about having kids is how much it would cut into my Xbox time. Pathetic, I realize.” Sadly, I see the dilemma. I worry about loosing valuable computing time. And sharing my Barbies with a kid. And not being able to have dogs because all the money would be spent on the kids. I thought that as long as these things seem important in comparison to having children, you really shouldn’t have any.

People should just let us be and butt out!

However, the part where childfree people get up and arms about the “breeders” nosiness and intrusion to their right to not have children, I don’t really get. Sometimes people ask if I’m going to have children. I always tell them how I feel about it. Sometimes people tell me that I will change my mind, and sometimes my mother gives me funny reasons to have children. Often I explain to people why I don’t want children. However, during my 25 years of dedicated “I will not have children”-time I have encountered only one (western) person who simply could not wrap her mind around the idea of me not wanting children. She was 22-year-old German, curiously, and I met her at a friends wedding soon after I got married, which is the reason she inquired about our child situation. I didn’t find it infuriating that she asked, or that she couldn’t understand us not wanting any, I found it utterly amusing, especially as she was so much younger than we were. I LOVE IT when people don’t get me and I get to explain my reasons to them and see how their narrow view of the world gets shaken up. I don’t do it violently, I laugh and joke and giggle when I explain things, I’ve seen it has a lot more chance to sink in than driving a point through with an iron fist demanding some acceptance or what ever. (Goes with the stereotype-post I wrote yesterday, how can you change their minds if you have already decided they won’t change their minds before you even try to explain things.)

Men who want me to breed will be ex’s!

The dating world seems to be a tough place for women who don’t want to have children, too. I’m glad I never realised this while I was still dating, because I had enough problems with men as it was. Adding “he can’t be wanting children” to the list of demands would probably have totally depressed me. Instead I didn’t bring that up until I was asked and I can’t remember anyone asking that on a first date… Or the second… I have never tried to hide it or make an issue out of it. I can’t remember it coming up until things got serious. I remember my mom telling me that no man would want to marry me if I didn’t want children. I thought she must be mad thinking that, and I was a bit insulted because she seemed to think that the only value I could possibly have to a man was my ability to bear children, especially as she had a lot of examples around her of married couples without children. As it turned out, my husband didn’t want children either, and it was never discussed until we got really close, at least that I can remember. It was a non-issue. While we’ve been married, we’ve both taken an imaginary trip to the baby land and came back screaming. In fact, sometimes that I wander off my track at super markets and end up on the baby isle, I feel like running away screaming.

It is not us who should be explaining themselves

I feel that most parents should have stopped to think before breeding. They should have asked the kind of questions like: What will they be able to offer the child? Will they be good role models? Will they provide the children with the kind of security and understanding that a child needs and deserves? And the question you are not even allowed to utter out loud: What kind of genes are you providing to your child? It seems that no amount of inheritary problems should stop a human being from reproducing. Not even if the child is likely be so allergic that any sign of life will suffocate him or her, no, that should not be effecting your decision to be a parent! Every child deserves to be born, and every parent deserves the right to be raising their own biological children. I asked one woman who is not exactly the cover girl of health, that isn’t she worried that the child might inherit her health problems. She replied that her life wasn’t that horrible, she survived. I was left to wonder, that would it have made a difference to her if her parents had known what she was likely to go through and still decided to go ahead with having her, and not only have her naturally, but force her into the world through artificial insamination because one of the health problems included trouble of reproducing. And it left me wonder why no doctor ever questioned her decision to have children, while women who want their tubes tied have to explain and explain and wait until a certain age to get the procedure done. If they are afraid of getting sued, they should draw up a legally binding contract that takes away the possibility to sue afterwards.

There’s always the other side of the coin

While I sit here and judge some parents for having their children, and you might be judging me for not having them, I realise there is always the other side to the story. Luckily these days it is fairly okay not to have children or adopt or do what ever you want really. The only thing that worries me is when those children in question are caught in the middle of the adult selfishness. I can rest easy knowing that what ever I do, I will not hurt my child in any way, and I have provided the best possible protection to my offspring by not having them in the first place. Nothing will hurt their immortal souls. *grin*

And before you head offline, you might want to read this post “You’ll change your mind” by Verbal Remedy.

This here is my dog. Cute, isn’t he? Looks very friendly and cuddly, doesn’t he? Most of the time, that is exactly what he is too. He is the most loving and friendly dog with adults and over 7-year olds or so, which would be all that he should be fine with in his every day life. He is not at all used to young children though, especially toddlers… And that is where we constantly get into trouble.

Now, this would not be any kind of a problem if people would just listen to me… But here’s what happened today – and this is not an isolated incident.

Me and the dog were sitting outside at a café minding our own business, when a father carrying about a 2 year old son came to us. Without warning or questions, he shoved his kid into Primo’s face. I told him to be careful, as my dog isn’t used to kids, but the father smiled with the most heart warming smile and said “that’s fine.” Now I repeated myself, putting my hand out in the gesture, that to most people say “stop, stay away, don’t come close” and told him again, that my dog is not good with kids, and that he might bark. “That’s fine”, said the man, and pushed his kid closer, while Primo was escaping further down under the table. “He’s not used to kids” I said the third time, and he repeated, for the third time, that it was fine, and moved closer following the dog towards the depth of the table. I heard Primo letting out a low growl as he was pressing himself against my leg, so I informed the man, who I wasn’t sure heard it from the general noise. I can’t recall what he said, but my guess would be “that’s fine”. I expected that the announcement that the dog is growling, a generally understood message of aggression, would make him go away but no.

I was trying to speak calmly to the father, and reason with him and make him understand that the situation was not “fine”, because I didn’t want to scare the kid by starting screaming myself. Obviously that is what I should have done, because at that point Primo was already freaking out, and let out a huge German Sheppard size bark, that is supposed to say: “Get the fuck away from me before I bite your freaking head off!” The kid got it. He certainly got it. He started screaming, and I could make out the words “he will bite me”. All I could say was “that was what I meant” and look at him apolitically. “That’s fine” he said again, and continued to the kid “That’s fine, he’s just not used to kids…” (Like it would matter to a two year old WHY the big bad dog barked at him.) “Oh, you heard me after all?!” I thought to myself, but just clenched my teeth and tried to smile for as long as he went away. What I wanted to say, was that “No, you stupid idiot, it’s not FINE. It’s not even in the same ball park as FINE. If it would have happened, that my dog would have bitten your kid that you shoved in his face regardless of my warnings, it would have been my dogs fault and he would have ended up dead in this FINE situation. It is not FINE, because your kid will now grow up thinking that dogs hate him, when in fact it is nothing but their uncertain movement that makes dogs nervous.”

Dogs react to toddlers differently to other people. Toddlers are almost without an exception scared of dogs at some level, and therefore they approach with hesitation, even when they do it themselves. That makes the dog assume, that the kid is up to no good, and he wants to HARM ME. That is when they can react unexpectedly, by barking or by biting, and neither one is a good outcome.

What I have found, is that this is so very often a situation with men with their sons. For some reason, I’ve noticed that little boys are more scared of dogs than little girls are, maybe because it’s a male thing to see animals as beasts instead of cuddly toys, or possibly because their dads keep shoving them into faces of strange dogs. Is it some sort of a male ego thing, that you have to force your toddler to pat a dog he’s terrified off? “No kid of mine is scared of a spaniel!” And at the same time the twit makes things worse… And then they have to get out of the situation with a bit of an embarrassed look on their faces as they must admit that their kid was, after all, afraid of a spaniel. (Mothers usually ask if it is fine for the kid to pat the dog and when I tell them “probably not a good idea” they move away, which is all I’m asking.)

I was already thinking of getting a fucking pepper spray to protect my dog and their kids from stupid fathers with a point to prove, but I think I’ll just have to find that tone of voice that says: “I am fucking not kidding, man, keep your kid away from my dog or I will bite you.”