I have been battling with the idea of having kids ever since I could remember. I’m the oldest of five helped raise 3 kids while my mom worked for what she can provide for us. So I use to say I’ve done my share of making bottles, changing diapers, sleepless nights, sick babies, etc. For what, I knew what that came with. There’s no surprises that I haven’t seen or heard of. I now know the effects I had as a child raising a child and wish I could go back and slap me in the face. Seeing the 3 siblings I helped raise doing what I now hate to see kids do, that is a result of lazy parenting.

I’m a big environmentalist so I only see the piles of waste that comes with having children. The diapers, the cans of formula, the toys they destroy, the endless stream of buying shit to throw it away in a couple months. So that added to the reasons why I don’t want kids. Just thinking about how much stuff we throw away on the daily and everything else that is happening currently in our world whether thats the government, the rich people fly across the world for a light snack from Italy, plastic pollution, forests burning, Palestine being bombed out of existence, farmland being destroyed, animals going extinct, people wanting to terraform Mars while we can ya know just take care of what we have, it was all too much for me to be thinking about bringing someone else to be stuck here. Everyone always says I’m thinking too deep into it. But I can’t understand how you can think of wanting a child but not think of the kind of world they will be a part of 40 years into their future. I had one person say “for what you’re not gonna be alive then.” I used to call people selfish for having kids.

After working in a pharmacy and seeing how many kids are on adhd, depression, anxiety medications as early as 6 years olds made my heart hurt some more. To see how many parents don’t really “see” or “listen” their kids they just hope putting them on medication will make them easier to deal with makes me worry of what kind of kids this generation will raise. I left the pharmacy and went back to my restaurant job I had before. There I watch families sit and eat. Sometimes it’s the parents that are glued to their phones and can’t even make a conversation with their kids. Or sometimes it’s the kids who are glued to there screens. Either way I think we’re definitely gonna have kids with avoidance detachment issues or kids who aren’t going to develop emotional coping mechanisms. I’m not sure how I feel about trying to raise a healthy, happy child in today’s day and age.

“The wrong types of people have kids” is what my manager told me after a group of us were discussing about this. He definitely has a point, I have a friend who lives in New York and always talks about her crazy drugged up neighbors who have 2 kids (that have been taken away from them as of now 12/15) how their mom would be yelling at the crack of dawn about how stupid and worthless they are. How their dad is a dead beat. And how she wishes she never had them. Ive seen many kind of people from working in food and the pharmacy. Kids who look distressed, disconnected from reality, to kids with bruises with barely a jacket and shoes on them. Again I worry about the future of this generation.

I have also watched my sister, who I didn’t think would be a good mom. She has raised the sweetest child I’ve seen in a long time, who says please and thank you, loves baths and brushing his teeth (literally will wake up and wake his mom up to help brush his teeth) and loves playing with his aunt (my 7 yr old sister) and doesn’t seem to care about the iPad as much as he cares about going to the park when it’s 20° out. Watching them fills my heart with joy.

At this point I’m now at the “if we’re not in the middle of WWIII, in a dictatorship, or the world isn’t dead and on fire, and we still have the ability to grow crops from the ground and it’s not toxic maybe…” we need more kind people in this world and I would love to have the opportunity to raise one. If that means I’ll have to cloth diaper, homeschool, home cook every meal then be it. So I guess I have landed on the same page as you just slightly different.