My sister is pregnant and part of me is excited to be an uncle but part of me is also kind of scared.
I’m not a full blown anti-natalist or anything, but part of me feels it’s a bit irresponsible to bring a kids into the world right now. And outside of that larger existential fear I also have some personal ones.
Me and my sis had a kinda rough childhood. Our parents weren’t directly abusive but they had a really dysfunctional relationship that made growing up in the same house as them really stressful. The result is I’m kinda of jaded about relationships and have personally sworn off the idea of having a family, but my sister wants to. And I want to be supportive but I’m afraid of her repeating the same mistakes. Her and her husband haven’t been together that long and while he seems like a good guy overall I question how compatible they are. And I already see the stress of being pregnant taking a toll on their relationship and am worried a baby is just gonna make it worse and they’ll end up just like our parents, angry, resentful, and unconsciously taking it out on their kids.
Again, I love her, I want to support her family, I even like the idea of being a cool communist uncle, but I guess part of me is scared she’s gonna repeat our parents mistakes. But I don’t feel like I can be honest about that without really hurting her feelings.
Idk, just venting.
I get it, which is why the important thing is to be there and be supportive
If you’re worried the kid is gonna get messed up, you’re not going to know if you end up starting a fight and having your sister cut contact with you
Several of my friends (who i barely support them having dogs) have had kids and it’s weird
But I held my tongue because, oh my god, you do not want to go down the road of “Are you sure you want to do this?” Because that road only leads to people losing their goddamn minds
Yeah this makes sense.
Even if this is a bad decision I guess the best thing I can do is be a good bro/unc.
At the very least I can teach the kid to play Valheim!
Plus even if things do end up your worst case scenario (hopefully/probably they won’t) you can be a cool and supportive uncle to the kid, and give them another role model/support structure. And you get to have some of the joy of kids (I’m not sure if this is real, or myth) without a lot of the annoying stuff, so you both can win a little bit.
When I was a kiddo I remember being fascinated with my uncle, thought he was the coolest thing ever.
Kids are great, but also terrible
Like all people, they contain multitudes
My parents always loved to tell me how much easier I was to raise compared to my brother
I was easier because I was bullied so badly, that I basically gave up on doing anything and just wanted to die
Didn’t want to do anything other than play NES games and read my comics, all things I could do in the safety of my room
Yeah I think it’s completely reasonable to be realistic about kids, particularly before you have em. I have similar concerns about kids as OP. But I figured if their sister is having a kid? Just gotta look for upsides, because the thing is happening or not happening outside of your control-and like others mentioned, you are not going to improve things by estranging yourself from your dining by trying to convince them to not do the thing they clearly want to do. So you just gotta accept and focus on the potentially good stuff. The kids could be psychos—I thought my nephew was a little psycho and basically didn’t like him, but turns out he just needed to get some socialization (kid was born during pandemic, home schooled) and now that he’s in preschool, he’s a pretty nice little guy. But just to say, you never know I guess.
As someone with some much younger cousins I can second basically everything you said. It really is cool being the grizzled old radical role model.
Every parent repeats their parents mistakes; to say that any parent doesn’t do that at some point is foolish. The reality is people are not their parents, and people’s experiences growing up with them will inform how people parent, positively and negatively. You have to work on the negative side of that coin all the time. Not for nothing though; you’re not the one having a kid. You should put your energy into being involved in the kid’s life as their uncle; supporting your sister’s family in whatever way you can, will go a lot farther than simply being frustrated that they are having a kid at all.
Edit: But also, who are we struggling for if not for the kids? I’ve come to the conclusion a long time ago that most of what we’re struggling for is something I’m never going to see. Our kids, though? Their kids? That’s who the struggle is really for, isn’t it? For all future generations? People have been having kids in the worst of times; times even worse than now, all throughout history. What makes our time so unique that we get to stand here and say that having kids in this time is a moral failure or fault of those who have them? You’d have to condemn every one of our ancestors for having kids under that worldview.
yeah, in addition to this, i’ll posit that perhaps your sister is looking to heal from her less-than-ideal childhood by providing a better childhood for her offspring. kind of a “heal through doing” thing. people have been having kids through the worst of times of all human history. i wouldn’t want to but that’s why i’m not gonna.
my SIL had been a jerk and a bully to her siblings (my partner) her whole life, well into her 20s when she should have grown out of it. she had kids and became a pretty good mom. she’s not nearly as mean to her kids as she was to her siblings. and the kids are a hoot.
Things won’t be better for our kids or their kids, that’s the core of the concern. The negative effects of climate change are only accelerating and are going to keep getting worse for a long time. Our ancestors did not reasonably expect that things would only get worse and worse for us, but we have very good reason to expect that.
Not to say anti natalism is the correct position but you have missed the fundamental problem people are concerned about.
Edit: and also like. Even if it’s just the next two generations, if you literally only see decline in your entire life, even your grandchildren are exclusively seeing life get worse for, at least, their entire childhood, and from a far worse starting point. Your kids likely won’t experience any improvement until late middle age. Things are going to be seriously grim by that point and won’t recover even to where we are now before the grandkids are old. It’s not just the world you’re bringing them into right now and it’s far bigger and worse than the political problems. We really have done worse than projected regarding the environment at every possible turn and there is no reason to expect that to change soon enough to prevent things like continent-wide famine and natural disasters. That’s the world people are worried about putting their kids in, not the still relatively mild conditions today.
Something some people overlook is that kids can still end up ‘messed up’ even if you do everything right. You can also raise a good kid in a bad environment. Kids are their own people and you shouldn’t place too much of a value judgement on the act of having kids.
Kids are their own people and you shouldn’t place too much of a value judgement on the act of having kids.
kids being their own person are exactly why people should think long and hard about subjecting someone to the next 30 years of geopolitics and global warming
The individual doesn’t control the systemic conditions people are born into. No one does, but those interested in perpetuating the system are going to continue having kids regardless.
we don’t control the systemic conditions but we are aware of them and we know what we’d be signing a future person up for. I don’t schedule the train but i can choose not to push someone onto the tracks.
Our ideas are not spread by genetics.
Why even be a communist then?
you’ll have to explain how you get to that question before i can answer it because it doesn’t make any sense to me to ask it.
The likelihood of us making the world immediately better for ourselves is extremely slim. We work to make it better for the people who come after us. So they don’t have to suffer like we did. We don’t know what the future entails. Nobody does. Maybe it does get better.
If no one has kids, then actively pursuing communism becomes pointless. Who cares? Not like any of this will exist in the future. No kids means no workers, which means no capitalism.
Someone has to have kids. So why be such a downer about it? Why frame shit as ‘Pushing someone out in the tracks’? Having children isn’t murder, it isn’t a felony. It isn’t remotely anything like that.
None of us get out of this thing alive.
ah i see.
If no one has kids,
is a totally unrealistic extrapolation.
communism is for the people who will be born anyway, whether by accident, lack of choice, or parents not considering the life their child will have.
Someone has to have kids
not really. we could all electively stop but that’s about as likely as everyone waking up tomorrow and being vegan or the same religion.
So why be such a downer about it? Why frame shit as ‘Pushing someone out in the tracks’? Having children isn’t murder, it isn’t a felony. It isn’t remotely anything like that.
as a parent you are responsible for the situations you put your kid into. that includes things that aren’t really under your control. Yeah that school has better academic performance than another but if the high-achieving school has a horrific bullying problem then you’re responsible for your kid being in that situation to begin with.
so the thing about it being irresponsible to throw someone into this mess is that their parents and society owe the ones who are as much as we can give them.
since society is shitting the floor on that obligation: talk the parents into being responsible, be there for the kid as you’re able, and nudge them toward not having a second kid if you can get away with it.
Understandable. I think maybe just focus on what you can control and your own actions if you bring it up with her. Like you said, this is a dicey conversation to have.
But you could frame it as your own worries about you being a good sibling/whatever you decide to call yourself as the nuncle/nantie, because you both know your childhoods were rough. And because of that, wanting to support her as much as possible, and you want to give the kid as good as life as possible. Maybe if you offer yourself as help she won’t feel threatened by concern about the kiddo in the future. And long term, this is good for the kid too. Having a trusted non-parent adult is great for kids, *especially *if the parenting is poor.
But anyway yeah i really have mixed feelings when i see people having kids. I’m not antinatalist either but… i live in colonizer usa and… i’m just gonna say it. we really don’t need any more treatlers here lol. But hey, material conditions and all that, likely their kids will be radical due to the impending collapse and it’s her body her choice to have kids so, it is what it is. sorry if my chatting is too advicey, feel free to tell me to fuck off to be honest lol :) i just like to be too helpful sometimes, it’s a problem.
I hate my family member for having kids because they’re a asgmongold loving fascist scum, I feel sorry for the kids, they’ll grow up to be hateful little demons
Nah, she probably has the same feelings. Best just to say it. like, be nice and have a conversation about it. Say somethibg like, “you know how you are having a kid? I am afraid that when I have a kid I will perpetuate the negative things we absorbed and that the world is a bad place to bring kids into. How did you get through these feelings?”
Just treat her like the way I treat my boomer parents: they’ll inevitably step on the bear trap that’s in plain sight and I can do nothing but mitigate the damage caused by the very obviously placed bear trap. Go and be the best goddamn uncle her kid will ever have.
(This is assuming your evaluation of her and the prospects of her kid are entirely correct.)
(This is assuming your evaluation of her and the prospects of her kid are entirely correct.)
I’m def not 100% confident. They could be great parents, also they both have good jobs so at the very least the kid will be well off.
I’m maybe just dooming a bit cuz I’ve been feeling kinda anxious lately with all the shit going on in the world, it’s totally possible I’m wrong and my sis is gonna love being a mom and the kid will be super happy. I think everyone here is right, the only thing I can really do on my end it strive to be a good brother and uncle.
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