There’s No Tomorrow

This is pretty much what I would answer, if I could do it succinctly, every damned time someone asks Jodi and I why we aren’t having kids.

I think I’m going to go learn how to create flaming swords out of household parts. Also, could you guys kindly give me all your bottle caps? They might… I dunno… come in handy after the collapse. Even if said collapse doesn’t happen as a result of a nuclear apocalypse, I just want to be sure I get ahead of the dystopian future.

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There’s No Tomorrow
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12 thoughts on “There’s No Tomorrow

  1. 2

    This is pretty much what I would answer, if I could do it succinctly, every damned time someone asks Jodi and I why we aren’t having kids.

    Thank you for doing your part to ensure the movie “Idiocracy” becomes reality. What with idiots like the Duggars having almost two dozen of their little robots, rationalists will have a hard time keeping up.

    Oh, and I would also have accepted “We’ll adopt, so she can stay thin” as a reason to not have children. (Thanks, Tim Minchin!)

    Err, also – don’t ask how many kids my wife and I are planning to have.

  2. 3

    Wannsinn. There’s never been a tomorrow and the wrong people have always been the ones having kids. Have as many kids as you feel like having and no more.

  3. 7

    I’ve already got plans for when the apocalypse hits: yank Frostmourne off my wall, armour up in my goalie equipment, grab my grandfather’s rifle, then head out to secure Okanagan Springs brewery and Gambrinus Malting, hitting up abandoned pubs along the way to grab boxes of bottle caps. Then, spend the next few months fending off mole rats, ghouls and headcrabs (yeah, I know I’m mixing post-apocalyptic universes here) long enough to rebuild some semblance of society on the back of a local beer economy.

  4. 8

    The best part about turning 40 is that the frequency of the “when are you two going to have kids?” question has dropped dramatically. I never mind people commenting, “Oh, you guys don’t have kids?” because way more people have kids than don’t. The same way some people will note observationally that I’m left-handed. I get it, I’m in the minority and any minority trait or stance makes people curious. But it always bothered me when people just assumed that there must be something wrong with me. The worst was the smug, “Oh, you’ll change your mind.” Assholes. When I insisted that if I were to change my mind, which I thought highly unlikely, my Pascal’s baby wager was this – I’d rather not have kids and wish I had than have them and wish I didn’t. When you’re speaking to someone who acknowledges that raising children is a serious business that should only be undertaken by people who are more mature, more financially secure and much, much less selfish, I think it’s a bad thing to insist that they should have kids anyway. “Gosh, maybe you’re right. I’ll try to squeeze them in between band practice and school, and I’m sure we can raise a healthy child on my $18,000 a year wages!” Assholes.

  5. 9

    What, you don’t want to be President Daddy? Afraid some do-gooding sociopath will come along and execute you in the middle of your election cycle in order to steal your unique high-powered hunting rifle?

  6. 11

    Michael:

    Thanks for hitting the nail on that one. I get those types of questions all the time, the problem for me is that I do want kids but I know I will probably never have them for one very basic reason.

    I want to be the stay at home parent.

    I’ve never had a problem with letting my potential future wife further her career while I stay home with the kids, staying at home with the kids is something I’ve always wanted to do. Yet, all my life, whenever I’ve told a woman that she quickly finds someplace else to be.

    Only once did I find a woman who was actively looking for a stay at home Dad; she was infectiously passionate about her future plans but she wasn’t fond of daycare nor staying at home with the kids, she really wanted at stay at home husband who wasn’t threatened by a successful woman. We had amazing chemistry and there was a definite attraction between us and had she not been fourteen years younger, or perhaps if I wasn’t fourteen years older, we might have been able to make it work.

    Being close to 40, I’ll be 39 this year, women my own age or older tend to already have kids that are nearly grown up and so they aren’t really looking for a new father or to start over with a new family. I get that, I don’t expect them to, and there are some older women with with similar interests who have kids that I’d actually be interested in giving up my dream to pursue a relationship with.

    Younger women tend to not like the optics, see above, with family and friends constantly berating both or one of us for her supporting her “lazy husband” so he can stay home. I suppose I could lie and hide this from them, I just don’t think its really a great idea to start a marriage based on lies and half truths and spend the next however many years being miserable and unfulfilled.

    So here I am, close to 40, and people asking me all the time when I’m going to settle down, pop some kids, and start a family. Yet when I explain I want to reverse the gender roles by being the stay at home parent I’m told I’m a lazy bastard who should be ashamed of himself. Or that I’m worthless for “expecting” my wife to support me, just so I can stay at home to play with the kids, rather than go out and provide for my family like a “real” man would.

    Assholes.

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