(no subject)

[gothwalk]

I've just spoken to a doctor from the clinic where I'm getting the vasectomy done. She's agreed to do it, but she also tried to talk me out of it on the basis that I'm too young.

I don't understand this reasoning. At 25, I'm old enough to vote, drink, own a gun, drive a car, and, get this one, old enough to decide to have kids. Or, indeed, have six of them already. But I can't decide not to? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would have thought that having kids was more of a decision than not having them. More life-changing, more expensive, more of a strain on an already over-strained planet?

<offensive>Goddamn Catholics.</offensive>

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Its definitely your choice and I wouldn't want to suggest otherwise, but 25 is very young to be making a decision about something so permanent... men can father kids right into their 60s or even later, and you will change as a person over the years and what you want now won't necessarily be what you want then. Which is not to say you are too young, or that you don't know what you are doing, just that things change. People change. Desires change.
Um. Get some sperm saved somewhere, just in case? :)

[crowyhead.livejournal.com]

'Course, if by some chance there's some mind-changing in the future, there's always adoption. Having children doesn't necessarily entail actually biologically fathering (or mothering) them.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

This is true.. there are so many kids needing homes. Which makes it a pity how many hoops prospective adoptive parents have to jump through to "prove" they can be trusted with kids when any moron can have sex and end up with a baby and then be a useless parent... but thats a whole 'nother rant :)

Adoption

[(Anonymous)]

Ok, I don't know many of the folks here (found this thread from an entry on Puritybrown's LJ) but had to jump on this comment:



OK, I'm with you on the second part of that. But speaking from wide experience, prospective adoptive parents have to jump through far few hoops. There are "Irish" kids sitting in Romanian orphanages now because some "nice", Irish, childless couples decided to adopt and "jumped through the hoops" - then found they couldn't cope. Solution: send the child back. There are dozens of Irish couples who jumped through the hoops, got approval to adopt, and then went to baby broker agencies and offered them a blank checkbook. The number one source for adoptions into Ireland for a while was Guatemala - where many adoption lawyers have been jailed for child trafficking (q.v. www.casa-alianza.org). Every week in the GRO, a civil servant has to tell someone for the first time that they've been adopted, because the adoptive parents who "jumped through the hoops" never bothered telling them. There are adoptive parents who, thanks to challenging the introduction of age limits, collect both a children's allowance and an old-age pension.

I could go on, but this isn't the place.

Adoption has to be in the best interests of the child - always. It should be about finding the best parents for the child, not the other way around. Sure, 'natural' families can screw that up, but at least in adoption it can be aspired to.

Respectfully,

Anton

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. But what about those people who have kids, and then decide they don't really want them? Why aren't people who want kids told "ah, wait a few years, you might change your mind." ?

[sciamachy.livejournal.com]

That'd probably be a good idea - a lot of people are doing that anyway though - waiting till their thirties or fourties to have kids. Unless you get one of those reversible snips where they just tie a knot in the tubes, what you're doing is for keeps. Even someone who has kids can, if the worst gets to the worst, put them up for adoption, but unless you have a reversible op, there's no way, once it's done, that you can then have your own kids.

Having said that, I don't believe it's a duty everyone has, to have them - in most social animals, breeding is done by some animals but not all. In wolves for example, only the alpha male & female breed - the rest of the pack however play a vital role in seeing that there is enough food for all, including their nieces and nephews.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Good point, and I think in a lot of cases, people should wait. I hate the assumption that everyone should automatically want kids and be strange for not wanting them (I don't want any, never have done). Just always bothers me about making irreversible decisions, I guess I just always like to have an escape route if things change :)