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.
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2026
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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.
It is no more of an unreasonable extrapolation than "Having a child right now is like pushing them in front of a moving train." Does that mean that the only time anyone should have chosen to have kids was white people in the 50's to the 90's? That every minority in poverty in the U.S. is making a bad decision to have kids? Only the wealthy 1% should have kids?
Your logic and understanding of responsibility is garbage. You can only really be responsible for the things that are in your control, regardless of how it affects your kids. Being a parent doesn't make you suddenly have the responsibilities of an omnipotent being. You do your best, as you hope those before you did.
Communism is for the people who will be born anyways AND for the kids people choose to have. That is the whole point. That our struggles and suffering may have meaning more than simply lining the pocket book of some capitalist.
And choosing to have kids in spite of the possibility that it may not be great in the future is the risk that every informed parent takes, any time, for all time. I'd rather someone who understands the risks of having children be having children, than someone who doesn't give a shit.
the train thing isn't an extrapolation it's an analogy. if it comes down to asking me i'd always tell someone not to have a kid, it's not motivated by classism or malthusianism. you (should, situations unfortunately differ) have the power to prevent everything bad that happens to someone in their life, regardless of the proximate or ultimate causes of circumstance. Rich people having kids is child abuse 100% of the time.
you can share responsibility for things that are outside of your control if you're responsible for someone being put into a situation they otherwise wouldn't have been. having a kid is an extreme version of this as is shoving someone onto train tracks, but there are other examples like leaving someone somewhere dangerous or inducing them to take on elevated risks. The worst version is when you have certainty in what will happen even though you don't strictly influence it.
Then it's as absurd of an analogy as is the extrapolation of the idea of nobody ever having kids.
You are ridiculous. Rich people absolutely can be good parents to their children. I know plenty of petite-bourgeois fucks who, despite generally being assholes to their employees, are extremely generous to their children, handing them an easy life that is much less stressful than their own, but still holding them accountable for basic social mores. Idk where you are getting this idea that every rich fuck in the world is Elon Musk.
I'm not claiming you are following malthusianism or classism. I am claiming that you are pursuing absurdist nihilism, or just straight up anti-natalism.
Having a kid is not the same as shoving someone in front of a train. You can say it as many times as you want, but there is no ethical system in the world outside of a strictly anti-natalist one that would agree with that. Unless you are arguing from a completely utilitarian perspective that humanity is and always will be more unhappy than happy. And in that case, there is no circumstance, even under communism, that one could ever ethically choose to have a kid because the situation will never be good enough because there will always be too many unknown unknowns. You cannot possibly claim that you have the same level of certainty as pushing someone in front of a train will harm them, in the fact that the world is definitely going to get worse, and that there is no way that we can fix it, while choosing to have children. Because if we actually believe we can fix it, and should attempt to do so, then why should we be afraid to have children?
By your logic of negligence, every car accident is also the responsibility and fault of every other driver on the road because without them that person wouldn't have been in that place at that time. Every electrician is responsible for every electrical fire in a house they installed, even if it occurs 50 years after they installed the system. After all, they are inadvertently putting someone into a dangerous situation they otherwise wouldn't have been in. Every time I burn myself it is the responsibility of the first hominid who harnessed fire. Every time a butterfly flaps it's wings it is responsible for the hurricane on the other side of the world.
Your idea of negligence basically reduces down to an absurdity that the only ethical thing to do is literally kill yourself, so that way you are never inadvertently harming someone through your actions. But then you are still screwed because there is a possiblity that you are inadvertently harming someone through your inaction, where they would be in a safe environment if you had acted. This is basically just secular Christianity, where the most ethically sinful position is that of ignorance of Christ, but that is still a sin. At least the Christians have some shot at ethical behavior and redemption.
Have you ever considered just becoming a Quaker?
There are levels of acceptable risk in the world, the challenge is understanding the cost-benefits of those risks, and understanding actually how personally responsible you are for mitigating that risk. The risks around having kids here and now in the U.S. are still far far lower than most other places and most other times. I'm not saying everyone has to have children, but I would hope that at least the people who do have children wanted to have them, and I will never say that wanting to have a child is a bad thing, because the alternative, having a child that you do not want, is far, far, worse and more risky for the child.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?"
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.