I love my kids. They are a ton of work but I couldn't imagine life without them. But being a parent is not for everyone and that's ok.
This meme was inspired by my wife telling me about our two year old having a full on five-alarm melt down at Sam's Club and screaming, "I see Christmas trees! I go see Christmas trees!" While my wife tried to assure her that they would go see Christmas trees on the way out. All you can do is laugh at the sudden realization that the poor person with the screaming child in the middle of the store is you.
Nothing should! Parenting is hard fucking work, and if you're not one hundred percent up for it, then don't do it!
Even in some fantasy ideal world where pregnancy and childbirth are easy, preschool is free, and the future isn't somewhere between bleak and horrifying... being a parent is still an incredibly taxing ordeal, mentally, physically, and emotionally. There are plenty of kids in the world. Nobody should get born to parents that feel even the slightest bit of reluctance at their existence.
Never say nothing will ever convince you (I don't want any child either by the way), let my try:
Imagine the following hypothetical, in a few decades, medical science solves ageing, fast forward a few hundred years in the future, you still have no child, you meet an amazing person about as old as you, also never had any child, you fall madly in love with each other, you live a few amazing decades together, and they start to say they'd like to try the experience of raising a child, It will only takes two or three decades before they are independent, a very small time relative to the infinite life ahead of you. Do you think you would say no with 100% confidence?
I don't want any child and I don't think I will ever want one, but I know my opinion might change one day for reasons beyond my current understanding.
Plot twist: it's their (child's) 260th birthday and they still won't move out of the fucking house
Luckily I don't have to be concerned about this hypothetical situation, as I have The Gay™️. I'll be sipping on my margarita, amused while the family that wanted to 'try having a child' is in tears as their 260 year old child throws their hotel mattress from the 6th floor balcony.
I counter the hypothetical with an actual reality!
The current rate of resource consumption by the human race guarantees complete and total collapse of anything resembling todays human society within the next 50 years, followed by a near extinction level population crash.
The surviving societies would then have no way left to re-enter the industrial age, as all easily accessible natural resources were mined out long ago, and they would lack the technology needed to access deeper veins/wells/etc.
This is not hypothetical, this is actually going to happen and humanity has said “we don’t give a shit”. This is not doomerism, this is proven scientific fact.
Climate scientists have been screaming and shouting about this for decades trying to get anyone to listen. We are way way way too late to stop it now.
Might as well enjoy some bluefin tuna before they go extinct too.
Totally agree that this is one of the most likely scenario, but I wouldn't say it is going to happen with 100% confidence. We need to act accordingly, and trying to prevent it, but there is still a slim possibility that we manage to fix it.