People Who Don't Want Kids...

Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
  • 2 weeks ago
In this episode, I investigate the impact of parenting on a child's desire for family, challenging the belief that this inclination is a reliable indicator of upbringing. I argue that even well-raised individuals may choose not to become parents, highlighting a moral obligation to continue our lineage rooted in historical struggles.
I explore the influence of modern comforts on parenthood decisions and suggest that contemporary concerns often stem from a reluctance to confront life's realities. Key indicators of a well-raised child include their ability to engage meaningfully with others, which reflects their upbringing.
Throughout the discussion, I emphasize the importance of dismantling adult-child hierarchies to foster open communication. Ultimately, I stress parents' responsibility to empower their children and hope this conversation inspires listeners to reflect on their values regarding family and personal choices within society.

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Transcript
00:00All righty, questions from freedomain.locals.com.
00:05Is this a fair way to gauge if a child has been well-parented?
00:08Asking whether or not they want to have their own family and children someday.
00:13In other words, is it possible that a well-parented kid would not want to be a parent when they grow up?
00:17Yeah, I mean, as you become a parent, it becomes progressively more important.
00:21I actually say it's very important to begin with, to figure out which children are raised well or not.
00:27Because, I don't know, your kid's security and happiness and all of that depends upon them having reasonably decent friends and all of that.
00:35So, it is time for rank prejudice time.
00:38This is just, I'm not saying there's some big rational argument behind this.
00:42I'm just telling you straight up.
00:44For me, people who don't want kids are weird and depressed.
00:50There's something, to me, so foundationally wrong with people who don't want to have kids.
00:57And I'm not talking about people who struggle to have kids or people who want kids but can't find the right person.
01:02I mean people who are just like straight up antinatalists, don't want to have kids.
01:06And it's incomprehensible to me as a whole.
01:10And, of course, I can't help but think of the four billion years of evolution that got us to where we are.
01:16And it just takes one selfish person to break the chain.
01:19It just takes one selfish person.
01:21It's such, like all of our ancestors reproduced.
01:24That's why we're here.
01:25Every single one of our ancestors reproduced.
01:28And they reproduced with the general idea and goal that other people were going to continue on the line.
01:36Right.
01:37It's the old question of if you knew ahead of time that you and your wife had some genetic whatever,
01:45that if you had kids, all of your kids would be sterile, would you have kids?
01:51I think a lot of people would certainly have some pretty significant doubts about that.
01:55Is it worth having kids if you know your kids are going to be sterile?
01:58So we have kids on the idea or argument that they're going to continue the line.
02:04They're going to continue the bloodline.
02:06So, you know, you got to think of how many millions of generations go back to the dawn of living creatures that get to us.
02:14So every single one of those millions of generations struggled and fought, killed, died, survived the most unimaginable horrors in order for you and me to exist.
02:26To not pay it forward to me is such a fundamental lack of gratitude that it is incomprehensible as a whole.
02:33Having children is a deep celebration of the joys of existence.
02:40Having children is honoring all the sacrifices of all those who came before you,
02:46who handed the guttering candle of life through the endless storms of both pre-history and history.
02:55Every ape that dodged a jaguar.
03:00Every serf that survived.
03:02Everybody who raised children during a time of plague, of pestilence, famine, war, natural disasters of every kind, displacement.
03:11People, you know, humanity got down to about 10,000 people during the last ice age and they fought their way back.
03:18If any one of your ancestors had chosen not to have children at all, you wouldn't be here.
03:24Or if they'd chosen to have one less child and your parents or someone along the line happened to be late in the birth order, well, and you wouldn't be here.
03:35Now, if with all the comforts and conveniences and medicines and dentistry of the modern world, you can't stand to be here,
03:42then there's something wrong with what happened to you or what you've done with it or both.
03:47And if you say, well, you know, my childhood was traumatic and so on.
03:51And yes, of course, I understand. I've talked to a lot of people over the course of the show.
03:55Yes, a lot of childhoods are very bad. Absolutely.
03:59However, imagine what it was like when superstition reigned.
04:06I mean, science is only a couple of hundred years old, really.
04:09And the sort of general education of the general population and the values of science, reason and objectivity is really only 100, 250 years old.
04:18So, you know, 0.0001% of sort of human evolution.
04:23We actually had a rational scientific understanding of the world prior to that.
04:27It was all gods, ghosts, goblins, the undead, spirits, superstition, curses, voodoo, like of every terrifying kind.
04:36The world sort of epistemologically in terms of its actual reality, the world was a nightmare of psychosis.
04:47The world was a nightmare of psychosis.
04:51You lived in a waking dream of satanic devils and priestly classes and sacrifice and murder and torture and you name it.
05:04And so almost all of human history was a massive fever dream of rank, terrifying, psychotic subjectivity and torture and murder.
05:12You know, there's this kind of funny myth about how the witch burning, oh, it's just witch hunting.
05:18Well, and it's like, oh, all these strong independent women were challenging the church and they got killed.
05:23It's like, no, that's not what happened.
05:25It was women informing on other women for the most part to take out sexual rivals.
05:29One hysterical young woman even informed on herself.
05:32And a lot of women were in fact arrested for being witches because they were giving abortion potions to other women that were causing the death of people.
05:40They were literally murderers in that way.
05:43So that's life throughout almost all the human history.
05:46You believe the earth was flat and that we lived in the mind of battling demons and gods and ghosts and ancestors.
05:53And what would be considered pure psychosis in the modern world was everybody's general perception of reality.
06:03You lived in a madhouse of deranged people with just enough wit to deviate from everything that is natural, but not enough wit to classify anything as objective.
06:15Oh, don't you like it when those sentences slide together that way?
06:19When the syllables fornicate and you get some glorious offspring.
06:23A lot of what I do is oral sex, let's be honest.
06:26So, because I'm now analyzing sex.
06:29Why, what did you hear?
06:30Oh, filthy.
06:31Anyway.
06:32So, I think a child who was well-raised will see that his parents enjoyed being parents.
06:39They enjoyed having children.
06:42They enjoyed the whole process and they are pro-life and they are affirming and they are enthusiastic about the future or at least enough to have kids.
06:51And the people who don't want to have kids.
06:54Well, I mean, they're on strike.
06:56And why did people go on strike?
06:57Because they're miserable.
06:59Or, you know, there is a certain laziness that people have about having kids.
07:07In that they say, well, you know, they may have all of these abstract reasons, you know, like some environmental depopulation nonsense, right?
07:15But, you know, those same people who say it's really, really important to not have kids for the sake of depopulation are very keen on sending endless aid to the third world, which causes a lot of people to have a whole lot of kids.
07:25So, it's certainly not that.
07:27But there is a laziness.
07:30Every day, it's easier to not have kids, right?
07:35Every day, it's easier to not have kids.
07:37Every day, generally, it's easier to not eat well and just follow your taste buds.
07:41It's easier to not exercise, right?
07:44It's easier to not think.
07:45It's easier to not read.
07:46You know, flipping on some failed video is easier than reading a book by Dostoevsky.
07:52So, I mean, it's just a kind of laziness.
07:55And so, generally, when I'm meeting kids, I obviously don't talk about their future plans for families because that's not exactly where their mind's at.
08:04But the thing I look for the most when it comes to meeting kids is are they able to have a conversation?
08:10Are they able?
08:11Are they socialized?
08:12And not just socialized for other kids, but are they socialized to have eye contact, firm handshake, have a conversation without freaking out?
08:20Because if they can't have a conversation with an adult without freaking out, it means that they've been fairly aggressively raised and kind of they live in a state of caution or fear.
08:30So, that's mostly what I look for.
08:32Are they able to have a conversation?
08:35Or, you know, a lot of people, and it's a funny thing how, for a lot of people, the line between child and adult is this massive gulf.
08:47Like, the adults were never children, the children are never going to grow into adults, and so on.
08:51I mean, I remember trying to have a conversation with a girlfriend's parents.
08:57Gosh, I was in my, I was 19 or so, and I was having a conversation with a girlfriend's parents, and everything was just kind of stilted and awkward.
09:05And, you know, even back then, I wasn't the worst conversationalist in the world, so everything was kind of stilted and awkward.
09:11And then, they were also there to meet my mother, believe it or not.
09:15Yes, this was a long time ago, almost 40 years.
09:18But, my mother came in, and their entire demeanor completely changed.
09:23They were no longer dealing with foolish, wayward youths.
09:27They were, in fact, dealing with another adult who deserves respect.
09:33And they got up, and they were, their whole demeanor changed, their whole posture changed, the animation in their voice came there.
09:40They straightened up, they beamed, they were very positive.
09:45Because now, you see, even though I was, of course, legally an adult, now they were dealing with another, capital P, parent.
09:56And they were dealing with adults, and did not have to bridge this massive gulf between.
10:02It's funny, because, of course, thinking back then, let's see, they would have been younger than I am now.
10:08Yes, my girlfriend was my age, so she was probably 19 or 20.
10:12And they would have been 25 when they had her, 45, even if they were 35, 55.
10:17Yeah, I'm older than they are now.
10:19And so, one of the things that I look for with kids is, can they have a conversation with an adult?
10:26And what that means to me, if they can, what that means to me is that their parents have had conversations with them.
10:34And haven't created this massive artificial gap between adults and children.
10:40I mean, we're not a different species, for heaven's sakes.
10:42It's just a matter of time until the child becomes an adult.
10:46And I remember when Izzy was little, I made, you know, I took great pains to, I showed her some pictures of myself when I was younger.
10:53And said, you know, like, I was a kid, and this is just a process.
10:56We're not totally different.
10:57I'm not some big magical adult and all of that.
11:00And, you know, some different species or anything like that.
11:02I'm not some demigod or whatever it is.
11:04So, I really wanted her to understand that there was not some big weird magical gulf between myself and her.
11:13Because, you know, when you're a kid, your parents seem like demigods, right?
11:17I mean, they're big, tall, strong, powerful, incomprehensible, vastly superior in skill and language and size and strength and all of that.
11:24And I was just like, no, I was like you are.
11:27And you grow to, you know, won't be quite as tall, probably.
11:31But, you know, you'll grow to be tall and knowledgeable.
11:34And it's just a matter of time, right?
11:36So, because I really, I don't like this massive gap or division between adulthood and childhood.
11:43I think it's a power play, right?
11:47I always go back to, there was, oh my gosh, Johnny Fever on the old WKRP had a daughter and her daughter had a boyfriend.
11:54It was kind of hippy-dippy, right?
11:56Justin was his name, Justin?
11:58Anyway, so, Johnny Fever is trying to tell Justin something and it's like, power trip, man.
12:03He's like, Justin, Howard Hesseman played.
12:06We are here to get down.
12:08It's this famous switch from you're having my baby right now to some rock and roll.
12:15He took the whole record and scratched and they went from easy listening to rock and roll.
12:20It was a great show, a great show.
12:22And power trip, man, power trip.
12:25Well, that's a lot of adults, right?
12:27We are better.
12:28Oh, yeah, politicians do this too.
12:29Priests do it too.
12:30Teachers do it.
12:31Like, we are superior.
12:32We are a different species.
12:34You know, basically, you little shits need to get your lives in order.
12:37You know, like if you watch the movie Blackberry, which maybe I'll talk about in the show tonight.
12:41Watch the movie Blackberry.
12:42There's this, you know, big rotund sociopath who comes in to scream at the engineers and try to get them to act like adults,
12:50which, you know, kills a lot of the creativity of the company and so on, right?
12:54So, yeah, that's sort of the major thing that I look for with kids.
12:59And I hope that this helps.
13:01Answer la question at freedomain.com to help out the show.
13:05I really, really, really would appreciate it.
13:08Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful afternoon.
13:10I'll talk to you in a couple hours.
13:11Bye.