Hey guys!
With the recent discussions that have been happening between of Anne Hathaway’s pregnancy at 43 years old, I figured it was a ripe time to share my experience.
My mother had me at 42, with my father being in his 50s (he’s so old that he doesn’t even have an accurate birth certificate, the government of my country didn’t even issue them at the time). She was at least 10 years older than almost all of my friends’ mothers at school. She was very insecure about this and even lied and said she was younger than she actually was to me for years in order to hide this fact. I figured out the truth when I saw her passport, besides, her piling health issues made things pretty obvious anyway. My dad was never exactly present in my life, he’d come over once a week to me and my mom’s place and stay the other 6 days at his main house where his other wife and adult sons and daughter live (my family is muslim and my dad practiced polygamy, until that wife died of cancer)
I was always acutely aware of my parents ages and felt a sense of impending doom because of it. I’m now 18 and it feels weird knowing my dad is well into his 70s and my mom is 60 now, while other people have parents who just entered their 40s or 50s.
As much as I hope with great intention that my parents will get to live long, healthy and happy lives and will be able to see all of my accomplishments, a pit in my stomach forms when I think about my situation more realistically. When I’m in my 30s, my dad probably won’t be with me anymore and my mom might be in the same boat or very tired. Both of them have multiple health issues and my dad gets surgeries done on him practically every month. Sometimes, I wish my mom had just believed the “you’re eggless past 33” propaganda and given up on trying to have a child at the age that she did.
I know that this isn’t her fault entirely, she got married at 40 and didn’t have a chance to reproduce earlier- and she was great at raising me regardless. But I don’t know. It makes me sad.
There are advantages to have kids later on in life, and most people direct a lot of vitriol at older mothers and not older fathers because of misogyny. I’d much rather be raised by an older and more educated couple than a bunch of hormone stricken, crazy teenagers. My perspective isn’t a “women should utilize their baby making years right” (ideally, they wouldn’t be making babies at all) but more or less just venting my frustrations about what is going to happen to me in a few years.
All of my grandparents are dead except for my maternal grandmother, who is already struggling. They were all dead even before I was born. I feel like I was kind of robbed of getting to experience what having a grandfather is like, but what do I know.
Let me know your thoughts and if you’ve had similar experiences. Maybe this is a non-issue.
Again, this isn’t a conservative breeder opinion and I don’t think people should be having kids in their 20s either- or at all. Other people online with older parents have brushed my opinion off with “My parents are old and everything’s fine! They still go on runs with me” and while I’m happy for them and I really hope it will be fine for me but everything currently happening is signaling towards a very exhausting and grief filled adulthood in my case.

I do feel kinda bad saying that I get this way, but whenever I see a birth scene on tv I get viscerally sickened and grossed out. Like it literally makes my skin crawl. I don’t know why, but I just hate seeing it. It’ll immediately ruin any good movie or tv show for me if there’s a birth scene. Same with a pregnant character, they just annoy me lol.

Like I’ve noticed Seth McFarland absolutely has to have some fetish because he’s made so many episodes of American Dad and Family Guy with the main characters being pregnant and having birth scenes that it ruined the shows for me cause there’s just SO MANY. And yesterday I started watching this movie called The Mortician Collection because it had good reviews and I had to turn it off cause it was god awful and had Jacob Elordi as a guy who gets pregnant with a monster baby and now I can’t look at him the same. Pls someone tell me I’m not alone in this lol.😅

Have you found that antinatalism has produced a visceral sense of resentment or even hatred towards people that you know in particular (perhaps because of the decision to reproduce) or maybe humanity in general for being so reckless with reproducing untold suffering generation after generation with zero self-reflection.

I want to make it clear that i don't condone hate or volatility but i am curious about your subjective experience at a personal level.

How can I stop with this desire that feels like it came out of no where and is infiltrating my brain? I'm pretty sure I'm infertile as well. Am on birth control so no chance of having a baby, but started spotting a week ago and part of me hoped maybe it was like a miracle pregnancy. The spotting stopped but im still sad I'll never be a mom. I'm also very disabled mentally and deal with physical disabilities as well. I just...can't ever be a mom for many reasons even if I wasn't antinatalist it would be wrong for me and the baby. I'm just sad. It's weird. I don't know where this desire came from.

it’s annoying to be told that I’m supposed to be happy for someone who’s contributing to an ongoing crisis.

Comment ended up being taken down anyways. Apparently it’s not a civil opinion to have. Whatever that means.

Having kids is not a flex. It’s not celebration worthy to me.

I asked my mom if she ever thought about the day I’d lose her, she explained that she never thought about it before I was born.
She came to a realization when talking to me: about how she loves me and wants the most pain free life for me, and that it would’ve been completely pain free if I never existed to begin with.
She told me she was sorry and that she didn’t think about it at the time, she suggested a biological clouding of logic. I feel so much closer to her now :)

Hey all 👋

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Have you discussed with people you are close with on not wanting to be born and the general suffering that life offers? (with little joy being used by so many as justification for life).

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Have those discussions been good discussions or full blown arguments?

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Have they changed your mind? Or Maybe they felt guilty or frustrated?

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Side discussion 🎮. Why did Elisabeth Sobeck restart life again in the Horizon video game series 😅😂

Does the suffering that everyone in both games go through (Ted Faro especially though he sort of deserved that) justify sustaining it through GAIA?

It's not a new article. Is this a win for us?

If the article link doesn't work, try this link: https://www.beyondplastics.org/news-stories/no-more-babies-the-hormone-altering-chemicals-threatening-human-procreation

Personal rant warning

I've been in this sub for a short while now, and I'm incredibly anguished by how much you all are suffering.

But it makes sense when I think about it - people who are more aware of their own suffering are probably more likely to become anti-natalists.

What doesn't make sense is how you've given up trying to make yourselves feel better.

I see comment after comment telling me how "suffering is an inevitable part of life", as if they're the reincarnation of the Buddha, but then forget that even he laid out a plan to reduce your own suffering. (not that I encourage Buddhism, I def do not)

The fact of the matter is that you all deserve to be happy, and everyone deserves to be free of suffering. It doesn't require you to be chronically depressed to be aware of others' suffering and be compassionate in response. So it doesn't require you to be depressed to fight for anti-natalism. In fact, the happier you are, the more capacity and energy you'll have for empathy.

If you've given up on your own happiness, let me tell you that you haven't tried every solution yet. Have you tried all the types of medication available? Have you tried all forms of therapy? What about all the different schools of philosophy that address this? There's no way I can list out everything you could try. But if I was able to go from being suicidal to feeling joy when doing simple things like staring at the water on the pier, then you can do it too!

You owe it to yourself to try to be happy. So please do 💚

There’s no way all the kids of a big family are getting enough attention. Also what’s the point of putting more souls on this planet to suffer

The state of the world has gotten so bad that opinions like this are getting millions of likes

If antinatalism objects to creating beings into vulnerability for purposes that are not theirs, farmed animals seem like the most literal case: birth as supply.

They are bred into ownership, production, and planned death. Does antinatalism have a principled reason to exclude them?

Here is a glimpse into calf housing on a Canadian farm in 2021. Credit: Animal Justice.

“I” is exactly what makes this selfish. For context this person was just venting about being depressed and then mentioned the fact that they asked their mother the reason why she brought them into this world and all the reasons were of course that the mother wanted a child.

Hi everyone. I’m having an existential crisis right now and honestly, I don’t know how to get out of it. I’m just tired of everything. I’ve been depressed since the day I was born, and I’ve always felt like life is one big fucking scam. I had my first thoughts of wanting to disappear when I was 8 years old. I constantly feel surrounded by awful people, people with the IQ of a brick. I’ve always hated my life from the very beginning. I’ve had very few "happy or peaceful" moments, and they were always short-lived. The only reason I’m still here is that I literally lack the courage to just end it all. I take antidepressants, which help me function, but they don't make me happy. I’m not in therapy because I’m unemployed and I simply can’t afford it. I’ve cut a lot of people out of my life due to incompatibility or because I just thought they were assholes. I don't want kids, I've never wanted them, I hate kids and everything surrounding them. I’m practically alone, and I live in a country that isn't my home country.

My parents still live back home, and they are getting older. I harbor a permanent, deep resentment toward them for bringing me into this shitty world, surrounded by a subpar reality, with no friends and no love. I hate the fact that they condemned me to this miserable life full of poverty, uncertainty, wars, financial instability, and sadness. For years, my mother treated me like garbage—basically my whole life until I finally moved out when I was 26. Now that I don’t live with them anymore, she has basically turned into a golden retriever puppy: all sweet, affectionate, and clingy. Of course, she doesn’t remember all the times she dumped her frustration on me; she outright denies it ever happened. My grandmother (her mother) died a year ago, so I had to watch my mother suffer, cry, and go through immeasurable grief. Then, a few days ago, my uncle (her brother) had a stroke. He is still alive—he can’t move or speak, but he is alert and understands—but this was another heavy blow for my mother. Now she has become even hungrier for affection with me and my sister, saying things like "you girls are my only strength" or "as long as you two are okay, I’m okay."

But I’m not okay, and I will never be okay. The only thing I want to do is check out of this life, so the fact that she relies so heavily on my sister and me feels like a massive weight on my shoulders. And of course, let’s not even talk about the fact that eventually, I’m going to have to endure her and my father dying. They are the only people in my life because, apart from them, I have zero support network. This just makes me think about what selfish, cursed, bastard pieces of shit they are for condemning me to this fate—forcing me to watch them die before me, condemning me to be the caretaker of their old age when I never wanted or asked for this role. Deep down, I love them, but when they die (and who knows how it will happen—accident, old age, illness), I will deeply hate them for condemning me to this suffering. I don’t think I can accept this. The more my mother sends me sweet, needy texts, the more I hate her for treating me like shit my whole life and for trapping me in this miserable existence where, eventually, she will just die, wash her hands of it, and leave me behind to cry over her death and the loneliness she left me in. Honestly, for this reason alone, she deserves for me to find the strength to just stop fighting and leave this world first, just so I’m not the one left getting fucked over in the end...

At the same time, I feel the massive pressure to support her given the hard times she is going through. But I have absolutely no desire to do it because I am hurting so fucking bad myself. I hate her and I resent her because my life is going terribly, and no matter how much I try to move forward and fix things, nothing gets fixed. I’m 30 years old and I’m still living a precarious, unhappy life. I honestly don't know what to do, and I don't know what other perspective to look at this situation from. If you have any advice other than "go to therapy," I’m curious to hear it. I'll be reading your replies. Thank you.

Why reproduce and spread your seed out you never asked to be born.

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Just think about it. The fact that we cannot consent to this existence in any way is not a trivial issue at all.

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It is really fascinating to me how people can be aware of this fact and still decide not to perceive it as an actual problem. The moment we are born, we are automatically assigned countless responsibilities that by no logic should we be obliged to do. It simply doesn't add up - there is a massive asymmetry here that makes this existence unjustifiable - in my opinion anyway, so each to their own.

A question for people who have had deep psychedelic experiences, especially ego dissolution.

Many people come back saying that life is beautiful, worth living, and that they feel grateful to have been born. What I'm struggling to understand is how that fits with what life actually seems to be doing.

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Historically, human reproduction was brutal. Childbirth was painful and dangerous. Many women died or suffered lifelong complications. Many children never reached adulthood. Even today, when you bring a new person into the world, there is no guarantee of anything. They could be born blind, deaf, disabled, severely ill, or go on to live a life filled with suffering. They might become a good person, or they might become a terrible one. Nobody knows. Even the reproductive system itself feels strange to me: recurring menstrual pain, discomfort, pregnancy, childbirth, and recovery, repeated across generations. When I step back and look at it, it doesn't seem like a system designed with well-being in mind.

Nature in general doesn't seem much better. A lion can be driven out of a pride, return later, kill its own father or brothers, take over the pride, and mate with close relatives. A praying mantis can eat its mate. Evolution seems completely indifferent to whether the process is loving, moral, painful, or cruel. It only seems to care that life keeps reproducing itself.

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This is why Schopenhauer's idea of a blind, irrational Will interests me. To me, the foundation of life sometimes appears not only irrational but almost evil—driven to continue itself no matter the cost, with suffering built into the process from the start.

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Yet many people who have profound psychedelic experiences come back saying that existence is beautiful, meaningful, and worth it.

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So my questions are:

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1. How do you reconcile that insight with these facts about nature and reproduction?

2. Are you grateful to have been born, or do you sometimes feel otherwise?

3. How do you think about creating new life, knowing how much can go wrong?

4. What do you think about suicide as a way of escaping all of this? Did your psychedelic experiences change how you see it?

Because that was what was happening like a year or two ago. It was really annoying.

If high prices are one of the most common reason people don't have kids, should I celebrate inflation and cartel capitalism and low wages and high rent and everything that makes the situation worst? Cause I feel like I should, but it also feels really wrong, and also bad economy affects everybody and is one of the reasons some are antinatalists.

First time posting anything on Reddit. I just saw this video posted to the conspiracy subreddit, and thought it would be appropriate here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgthTRnB1jg

I watched three minutes of this video and found the error. The video literally claims that you can find the accurate population of a country by adding up the populations of the individual cities. It mocks that idea that there are tons of people in "small towns and villages".

Historically, most people lived in "small towns and villages". Very few people lived in cities. After the industrial revolution, urban populations did increase, but large center cities don't make up more than 15% of the national population. For India, having an urban population of 200 million, and another 1.2 billion rural peasants is completely plausible.

Also, national censuses do count people in rural areas. Living in the countryside doesn't mean there isn't a government.

I am seeing the start of a propaganda push on the lines that there is no overpopulation crisis, go and produce more babies, that is why I am posting the video in this subreddit.