Raising Kids Who Love Nature
Enjoy it while it lasts
Extinction
Raising Kids Who Love Nature
I’m Gen X and I have two kids. I have good kids. I’d like to think they’re pretty smart too, and I’ve raised them to love Nature. We have long discussions about how humans are destroying the very life support system we rely on.
They understand and they’ve adjusted their behavior accordingly.
Sure, they’re still kids doing kid things but they’re not like all the other kids.
They like to bike around the hills where we live. They tell me I should bike more like them so I’ll be less fat.
My daughter likes to go down to the lake and catch bullfrogs. She likes to fish — when it suits her — and can catch them better than I ever could at her age. She’s 17.
My son likes to feed the birds. He builds little feed platforms for them and buys bird food. He waits for the seeds to go on sale and then asks us to buy 40 lbs of seeds and bags of peanuts. He’s pretty frugal about it. He’s 15.
I remember working out in the yard when I saw two garter snakes mating. They were all entwined and rolling around. I yelled for the kids to come out.
They came flying out because they knew when Dad yelled for them to come out, it meant there was something cool to see.
I’d point and show them what I found. We’d all marvel at it and I’d tell them to enjoy this. I’d tell them how beautiful and rare it was to see this and to remember it. I’d tell them to tell their kids one day.
My daughter looked at me and said, “Dad, I’m not having any kids. Why would I bring them into a dying world?”
The end of children
I was a dipshit 20-year-old and didn’t want to have kids. Why would I? They’d only cramp my style. I wanted to get out there and party, fuck, and not worry about anything. Tomorrow will always come, I thought.
Well, everything changed when I met my partner and we had our kids. Now I love kids. Hell, I’m pro-choice-life like. I love babies, especially wanted babies but since I have no uterus I have no say in what a person does with their healthcare related to it.
Having children and planning for a family, is A-OK in my book. If a couple doesn’t want any, who the fuck am I to change their mind?
My children don’t want to have any children. They look at how fast the environment and climate are changing and don’t want to bring a child into a dying world.
If the world was thriving, they’d want to have children. They want to show them all the wonderful things they saw growing up. They want their children to catch frogs, fish, hike, bike, and be outside without being scorched to death.
They look at us “old folks” and wonder why they’re going to inherit a dying space rock and are flipping us off.
They’re not playing the capitalistic game of life anymore.
They’re not going to play this bullshit anymore of “born > grow > couple up > have kids > retire > die” escalator anymore. Oh and work 60 hours or more a week from ages 18 to 65 and live in a van down by a dried-up river.
Why should you bust your ass if everything around you is disappearing? What’s going to be left for their children to enjoy?
Maybe they’ll change their minds with the right partner, but something about this generation feels different from all the rest.
The white baby savior
I believe we can still turn it around but it’s going to be hard. The only way to succeed is to punch destroying corporations in the money belt.
How do you do that?
Simple, stop having babies.
Get snipped, use condoms, go celibate, or experiment with other genders. I don’t care but don’t make any more consumers.
No more consumers = no more growth.
Growth has to stop and we have to reduce consumption down to sustainable and healthy levels.
This scares the SHIT out of the corporate establishment. Their prime directive is to “maximize shareholder wealth.” No more consumers, no more maximizing shareholder wealth. No more selling billions of plastic water bottles.
No wonder jack-asses like Elon Musk, the capitalistic frat boy of our generation, keeps saying we need to have kids. He needs more consumers to buy his Teslas.
No more kids, no more diapers and junk to buy from Amazon.
No more kids, no more new houses.
No more kids, less food consumption.
No more kids, less carbon footprint.
No more kids, fewer consumers.
Why do you think Roe v Wade was overturned and why they’re coming for contraception and gay marriage next?
The LGBTQ+ community can’t produce offspring, so that’s not good in the authoritarian nazi’s eyes.
Contraception prevents having babies, so that’s not good either.
Oh and women having control over their reproductive rights? Nope, can’t have that because we need more babies to buy shit from the corporations.
Of course, they want to have white babies, they need to have a ruling class over all the other people. So they’re coming to undo interracial marriage next. White babies are destined by god. White babies are the savior.
What the actual fuck is happening right now? I shake my fucking head.
These people ARE THE CANCER that’s destroying our earth.
What do animal populations do when the food is exhausted? They migrate and die off to a sustainable level. The weak will perish so the herd can survive.
I’m not one for watching people starve to death. I’d like to believe I’m more compassionate, so what’s the most humane way to solve the gut punch we’re giving our life support systems?
Stop having children and bring our population down to a more sustainable level.
Enjoy it while it lasts
Everyone, enjoy it while it lasts. If you have children or plan on having them, remember that they’ll probably never experience the wonder of Nature the way you are now.
They’ll be born or grow up in a world with 1000s of newly extinct species. They might never know the sting of a honey bee or be able to swim in an ocean teeming with life.
If you want future generations to experience any of what precious little we still have left, then don’t have any children.
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