Why Do Folks Keep Having Kids On Purpose?

By

When was the last time you looked at a random couple on the street and thought to yourself: “They’re missing something. I can’t quite put a finger on it. Oh yes, two-and-a-half pissy-pantsed, runny-nosed miniature people that look like them. Yes, that would be perfect.”

To be frank, you haven’t. So why do you think that having your own pissy pantsed, runny noses skipping around fucking shit up is a better idea? It’s because you want to feel significant. You’re not. You’re just a selfish asshole and these are the reasons why those little zit-faced delinquents and their equally shitty offspring won’t be calling you when you’re old and lonely.

1. You really want to spend the money on yourself

Don’t kid yourself because you’re sure as hell not fooling anybody else. There’s a reason that developed countries have lower birthrates.

When people were hunting and gathering and trying not to be eaten by sabertoothed tigers and shit the kids were like insurance. If you had 10 like 4 would live and be able to feed your ass until you died at the old age of 30 or whenever folks was dying back then. When people started farming like 5 out of 10 kids would live and work your farm until you died at 55 from polio or whatever was killing people then. Simple economic decisions governed your desire to have kids. Now teenage girls have babies to get gub’mint monies, but if you’re a functional member of society you’d much rather get a new ipad, or take a trip to Fiji because that’s a lot more fun than Gerber and Oshkosh B’gosh for the foreseeable future. Sure your child may grow up to be a baseball player or a doctor but the risk is higher he/she will be autistic and require all of your funds and patience. Of course, you might be like the two percent that can do Fiji AND raise successful kids, and if you are write your own damn article since you clearly have this shit figured out. For the rest of y’all mouth breathers out there, spend your hard earned money that’s left after your student loans to get your teeth fixed so we don’t have to stare at your ugly grill and your seeds for years to come.

2. You don’t have that kind of time

The only thing more valuable than your money is your time.

Do this: Sit down. Make a list of all the shit you wanted to do with your life when you were 15. Read it again. You know why you didn’t get to actually do two whole things on that list? It’s because you don’t have the kind of time it takes to feed the hungry in Guyana and become CEO of Apple. You don’t even know what happened to the last three weeks because you were either drunk or at work and now you’re eating noodles to meet the rent this month. Again! The funny thing is, Fred the “responsible” insurance salesman next door with two kids is in the same boat as you. Except Fred will go to prison if he doesn’t feed his babies fried chicken buckets and pizza pockets since lord knows his wife Nancy isn’t cooking. She has her own job too that she’s trapped in to afford trapper keepers and the car note. That’s why he’s at work 16 hours a day and passion-starved Nancy is fucking her personal trainer. He made his choice. You don’t want to end up like Fred. Do yourself a solid and make time to stay in shape and continue to fuck your future spouse responsibly.

3. You can’t give them a good life

Family values blah, blah, blah, smart parents, rabble, money is no issue, rabble, rabble. The facts all point to the parents’ lives being a terrible indicator that the children are going to be happy, well-adjusted people. Kids with every advantage in the world grow up to be pill poppers and serial killers. Pro athletes have children with birth defects and suicidal teenagers. Those are the best of situations.

Poor people’s kids lives flat out suck from the get-go while giving the parents something to think about besides whether Prego or Ragu is on special in the noodle aisle. The middle classes’ runts sucked all of their parents’ resources dry while at least getting to go to Disney and eat at Olive Garden. The upper class kids…fuck them if they turn out miserable, but if their parents weren’t afraid of being lonely when they no longer were wealthy and/or fuckable enough for the world to remember, they wouldn’t even consider trying to raise a child with all the shit that can go wrong either.

Shit, you could hit the jackpot and pop out a bona fide genius, and you’d still run the risk of them dying their hair like a cartoon character and shooting up a movie theatre, or locking themselves in a cabin without a shitter and mailing crude bombs to people, or writing an unbelievable best-selling novel and hanging themselves afterward. If everyone would spend a fraction of the time and money than those badass little offsprings would’ve required becoming somebody important they could at least hang on to the societal status for like a decade longer, maybe two. The point is it’s your kids prerogative and theirs alone how their lives will turn out, and you can control that about as much as you can control the weather.

4. You’re insecure and don’t want to address your actual problems

Like I said earlier, if you’re rich, healthy, have a great relationship with your family, and wake up in the morning with a smile on your face ready to take on the world, keep doing it big homie. But those people aren’t reading this since they’re off doing something important. As for the rest of us, we just tryna make it to tomorrow with a clean criminal record and respectable credit score. Sure, you might have an exemplary child that grows up and becomes a model son or daughter and is attractive and rich with material possessions and enviable experiences. I also might win the Powerball next week. We’ve already established that parenting is but an iota of the equation, but the chances of you even getting that right are about the same as my quick pick. When your child is 30, he is probably going to get most of his enjoyment in life from pornography, just like you and your dad. Until the day comes when you can watch the Huxtables and tell Bill Cosby to step his sweater game up and get his shit together, don’t even think you’ll have anything to do with raising a successful and fulfilled human being.

5. Enough about you, let’s focus on them

We’ve already touched on the fact that you are in no way fit to add another life to the world that shares your genetic makeup and current position in the social strata, but really, have you watched TLC lately? Fucked up kids is being popped out like autistic hotcakes. Remember all the “normal” kids that ate glue and performed sex acts in the bathroom in middle school (I’m going to assume you went to public school)? At least if you shook one of them to death the judge would feel your pain, but what about the “special” kids that the school tried to lock away from the rest of us goonies? What’s that? You forgot about them because they ate lunch an hour earlier than the rest of us so the school could “teach” them how to wash our dishes? Yeah. And they were like 22 years old in the 8th grade. A lot of you reading this are probably not even 22. Like 3 out of ten kids in America are fucking obese. OBESE. You ever walked through a children’s cancer ward? There’s only two ways out: Bawling or soulless. Well, make that three: dead, if you’re one of the poor kids. You don’t want those problems, so use birth control.

6. No matter what you’ll die alone

One of my dear friends, who has a very good job and an overall excellent life situation, is a big supporter of the pro-kids movement. On a road trip we got into somewhat of a debate on the merits of each of our respective positions.

“I want to leave a legacy. I don’t want to feel like I left the earth and didn’t matter,” was the main gist of his argument.

Although I am able to completely relate with the underlying point he was making, siring more people is the complete wrong way to go about that. You want to know why people remember Jesus’ father? Because his father was God, who allegedly told Jesus not to have anymore fucking kids. Name the dad of one other famous or historical person that isn’t also famous or historical. Buddha? Genghis Kahn? Michael Jordan? You can’t. Guess what else? It’s possible the parents maybe got to live it up for a while and get some well-deserved enjoyment off that little sucker, but it’s an absolutely certainty that the parents died, at which point they stopped giving three fifths of a shit about their legacy, and their grandkids probably forgot about them too. You want to leave a legacy? Don’t leave it up to your balls and ovaries – do something great. Paint a picture or write a book or invent some shit. You probably can’t because you’re completely ordinary like me, but don’t let it get you down. Everyone great was a failure first except Mozart. And you don’t know Mozart’s parents either.

In conclusion, your kids won’t bring you happiness unless you were already happy, help you accomplish your goals unless they are anomalies of nature, or make a valuable contribution to society that has anything to do with you because you are a certified hot mess. Maybe I’m projecting. Maybe my tune will change when I’m old and lonely and insignificant. Maybe one will even slip past the goalie and I’ll find the joy of parenthood liberating. But probably not. And probably neither will you.