So maybe childless people shouldn't treat parents as people who just made a choice they regret ("Why are you complaining about how hard it is to own a yak? No one made you buy a yak") because it's a socially necessary job

But think about that first

This would be a decent argument if we lived in a communal society, the kind of society we probably should live in

I might be invested in your struggles to take care of your kids if I actually did know that your kids were going to help take care of me when I'm old

But I don't

Parents who say this kind of thing talk like everyone they're speaking to is well off and has a retirement plan, like we've all got well funded 401ks and can afford long term care insurance

"Whose grandkids are gonna be changing your bedpan in 50 years"

I dunno, maybe nobody

Your kids *might* "take care of me" or they might abandon me to die in the street

Your kid might fuck me out of what financial security I have once I become politically inconvenient

Your kid might lay me off or evict me

That's the whole POINT of this whole spat

We live in a society, as they say, and not a very nice one

We aren't given the expectation of some kind of reciprocal obligation among everyone

We dispose of everyone who becomes disposable in short order

And parents who feel disposable relative to childless adults because all they see are their colleagues at work having fun with their extra free time don't see the big picture when they call childlessness a "privileged" state

Everyone becomes disposable when they're old

And you know who's most disposable of all?

Someone who becomes old, or disabled, or unemployable, or otherwise "useless" who doesn't have anyone tied to them by blood or obligation

Obviously parents actually do know this and although they often refuse to admit it this is a major, massive, completely selfish reason to have kids

"I don't want to die alone

I want someone young to visit me, someone to be connected to when all my friends are dead or dying"

It doesn't always work, obviously, we've all heard stories of old people who haven't seen their kids in years (often, ironically, because their kids are busy with their own kids)

But it's a decent strategy, sure

I just wish parents would admit that this is a thing and that it is a fundamentally selfish motivation

Unless you experience the worst case scenario of disowning or being disowned by your kids, your kids' emotional obligations will be to you in 20 years, not to me

Yeah I mean they'll pay *taxes* to support me in certain ways just as I have to pay taxes to support them now

Whoop-de-fucking-do

Social services in this country ain't shit

Most of the "care" you think I'll receive from your grandkids I'll have to pay for, and pay a lot

It doesn't have to be that way, and maybe it won't be that way in a glorious communist utopia

But in the world as it is right now, it looks a lot like you having kids is you investing in YOUR future, not mine, certainly not the future of the whole human race

That's... how it's always been, it didn't use to be controversial to say this

Our ancestors were very blunt about the fact that they saw their families as in competition with other families and that fecundity was an expansionist move to claim territory for their side

If you don't see it that way great but you're going to have to demonstrate that you don't instead of asking me to take it on faith

From where I'm sitting families are just as willing to viciously tear down other people's kids and parents for their own kids and parents as ever