Solid points about my anti-marriage and anti-children attitude

There is a point in every woman’s life, in which her mother and/or other female relatives share their hopes and dreams of their ideal son-in-law and grandchildren. Which is where I begin to have big problems explaining my attitude towards this two glamorized institutions. And today I had to confront my point of views to my mother and aunt, who shared their dreams about my future, without consulting me first. It is weird that even today a woman is expected to get married and have children – sometimes it feels like almost a duty you have to repay to society. Marry and reproduce?

So, here is what I have to say on the subject of marriage and children:

If marriage didn’t exist, would you invent it? Would you go “Baby, this shit we got together, it’s so good we gotta get the government in on this shit. We can’t just share this commitment ‘tweenst us. We need judges and lawyers involved in this shit, baby. It’s hot!
- Doug Stanhope

Let’s start with marriage. It is over-glamorized institution with expensive PR and huge annual profit. When you peal off the scab of marriage it is nothing more than a legal contract between two people, whom by putting their signature declare they will never sleep with anyone else, but each other. There is nothing romantic about a bunch of lawyers and governmental officials, digging into your personal and sexual relationship with your partner. So, as Doug Stanhope have already put it, if marriage didn’t exist would you invent it? Would you involve bunch of judges and lawyers in this?

 

Marriage for me is a dead and unnecessary institution. If two people want to spent the rest of their lives together, they can do it, without having to sign a legal contract. Which makes the potential divorce much easier to handle from a practical point of view (well, it will probably put divorce lawyers out of practice). Of course, if your partner is greedy and offended by the way it all ended, you might have some problems trying to negotiate on your common assets, especially that expensive furniture in the living room, you guys purchased with your bonuses three years ago. Personally, I would take the sofa and the coffee table, let him have the rest!

Divorce becomes much more complicated, when the couple was stupid enough to involve children in this entire mess. A lot of people are going with the argument, that if you are not married, the man might refuse to pay support for the child/children. NOT true. First of all, I have seen it happening – if a man doesn’t want to give financial support to his children, he can find a way around it, even if he was married. Second of all, the only thing you have to do today, if you have a child, but you are not tied up in marriage is to acknowledge paternity. Pain in the ass procedure happens to work.

Marriage also has it’s more “romantic” side – after you are done with all the paperwork, the woman can wear an expensive white gown and along with her husband they can gather their close friends and relatives to…do what exactly? Celebrate other people’s approval of the person you chose to sleep with to the rest of your life? Spent shit loads of money on one day celebration, where friends and family over-eat and over-drink? For what? So you can get into an impressive white dress and get all the attention that was stoled from you at prom? Meh. No thanks. I’d rather invest those money in something more practical and selfish. And I don’t need that fancy mixer. If I wanted it, I would buy it myself, thank you.

Winning the argument on marriage wasn’t that hard. The hard part came, when I had to express my feelings towards children. More specifically, not wanting to have any. Yes, yes, I have heard it all before – you are still young, you will grow up, you will change your mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah! I doubt that. First of all, I don’t really like children. A lot of my older friends have some – some of them I find cute and adore. Most of them are such a pain in the ass, that I have specifically installed some idiotic app on my HTC with some bubbles that will keep the little annoying creature silent and occupied so I could actually exchange some words with its parents. Second of all – I have a long history record in my family of heart problems, addiction, diabetes – genes that I would rather not pass to the next generation. Obviously, evolution is trying to exterminate my family, so I’d rather not fight with nature.

Besides, I do not feel comfortable enough to bring an innocent being to this planet and undertake the task of shaping it into a decent human being. It is hard thing to do – I’ve seen my parents devote their entire existence to this job and they still failed in a lot of ways (not blaming anyone here, of course). Parents can help you become a decent being, but can also totally fuck you up – not on purpose anyway. I don’t want to take on such an extraordinary difficult responsibility, because I believe I am not really suited for that kind of job and most of all – I don’t want it.
Of course, the other side argued that not having children would be the worse thing I can do to myself. Who would take care of me when I grow up, was the question asked. Even if I have children, why would I want to bother them, with taking care of me? By the time I start dying from liver cancer, they would have families of their own, and the last thing that I would want from my loved once is to worry and watch me die. Death and masturbation are the two things I demand to have privacy for. And besides, if I get diagnosed with some horrible decease, I wouldn’t try to argue with science and fight for those 10% survival chance that I got – nope. I’d go to Switzerland and arrange an euthanasia – I don’t like life that much and I have a legal right to die under heavy doses of morphine, rather than suffer in pain until my last breath. We have technology now.

Another one of my major points, when it comes to childbirth is the times we live in. Why should I bring an innocent child to pay off for the mistakes we’ve made as civilization? Have you ever stopped and thought about the world we live in? Have you ever made a realistic assessment about where things are heading to? Do you think this would be a proper environment to raise a child? As a Rabbi friend once said – buckle your belt, Dorothy as the world is going to hell!

From what I observe, we have failed as species and sooner or later we (as all other species that have extinct from this planet) will face extinction. I’d rather trust my instincts and abide the laws of nature and leave evolution do its job. Therefore I am not planing to make things worse, by bringing yet another child. There are plenty as it is, and a lot of them don’t even have basic living conditions. So if I ever grow up and change my mind, I would much rather adopt a child, rather than have one pushed through my vagina from some OB/GYN. Isn’t this what Christ would do?*

*the final sentence of this blog entry is identified as sarcasm for potential conservative Christians and especially Catholics, who aside from lacking sense of humor, common sense and LOGIC, are absolutely unable to identify sarcasm and irony.