Parents exaggerate joy of parenting to justify costs: study

[Rubicant]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Precisely. The following people all have two things in common: they made immense contributions to the world, and they didn't have children. I don't want to say with certainty that correlation implies causation, but I think it's very likely that many of these people were able to accomplish the things they did because they were free of the time/money burdens associated with raising a child.

Susan B. Anthony
Louis Armstrong
Jane Austen
Beethoven
Coco Chanel
Julia Child
Leonardo Da Vinci
Emily Dickenson
Francis Drake
T.S. Eliot
Queen Elizabeth I
Robert Goddard
Handel
Immanuel Kant
Maynard Keynes
Freddy Mercury
Isaac Newton
Friedrich Nietzsche
Rosa Parks
Jean-Paul Sartre
George Bernard Shaw
Nikola Tesla
George Washington
Walt Whitman
Virginia Woolf
Orville and Wilbur Wright

I don't think Hitler had any kids either. Could go either way!

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I don't want to say with certainty that correlation implies causation, but I think it's very likely that many of these people were able to accomplish the things they did because they were free of the time/money burdens associated with raising a child.

Putting aside the kids or no kids thing, this is a poor argument. You put up a list of 30 people and say it's possible they accomplished what they did because they didn't have kids?

Why not just turn it around, and say how come history's most celebrated and accomplished people by and large did have kids - how come these people couldn't do what they did AND have kids.

I can pull almost any meaningful person's name out of a hat and I bet odds are better that they had kids than not.

Banting, Best, Einstein, and Suzuki. There's the first four that came to my mind, and they all had kids.

Let's pick four more:

Marie Curie - yep
Alexander Graham Bell - yep
Guglielmo Marconi - yep
Gandhi - yep

You had some musicians and artists on your list, here's 4 off the top of my head, as fast as I can name them so I don't think about it:

Yo Yo Ma - yes
Hendrix - yes
Van Halen - yes
Wes Montgomery - yes

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Rubicant

I don't think Hitler had any kids either. Could go either way!

Godwin's law dictates that this would come up.

I checked, and Mike Godwin, the inspiration behind Godwin's law, has a daughter.

[Rubicant]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Godwin's law dictates that this would come up.

I checked, and Mike Godwin, the inspiration behind Godwin's law, has a daughter.

Had to google that, never heard of it before. Really I was just trying to show that just because someone has kids or doesn't have them means nothing in terms of their contributions to society.

[MarchHare]

Putting aside the kids or no kids thing, this is a poor argument. You put up a list of 30 people and say it's possible they accomplished what they did because they didn't have kids?

The point I was addressing was the attitude that many people think they need to have children to leave some form of positive legacy on the world. Obviously that isn't the case.

[Mr.Coffee]

There's no one way to live life. That's the bottom line. Additionally, I don't judge or resent people that do justify the way they live their life to reinforce to themselves that they made the right choices for themselves. I don't care, it isn't my life. You do what you gotta do. If you want to have kids, go have kids. If you don't, don't.

And along the theme of my post here, despite the article's best efforts to value a child's upbringing- there's no way you can possibly quantify how much raising a kid costs. Like there are no variables that go into that.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Rubicant

Had to google that, never heard of it before. Really I was just trying to show that just because someone has kids or doesn't have them means nothing in terms of their contributions to society.

Exactly - Godwin has kids, and was still able to come up with the universal truth of Godwin's Law.

or were you meaning Hitler?

[V]

http://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_grisc...ng_taboos.html

Interesting TED talk about this very topic.

[NBC]

Originally Posted by macker

Well said.
Parents who are unwilling to risk the suffering of changing and growing and learning from their children are choosing a path of senility, whether they know it or not, and the world will leave them far behind. Growing and learning from children is the best opportunity most people have to assure themselves of a meaningful old age.

Wow. What a load of rubbish. I don't even know where to start with this.

[macker]

Originally Posted by NBC

Wow. What a load of rubbish. I don't even know where to start with this.

In what way? What I said was "Parents" read it again....if you are not a parent you can still have a very meaningful life. I also said "Most" but did not say "All" which another poster was getting hung up on. Am I making myself clear j/k

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Putting aside the kids or no kids thing, this is a poor argument. You put up a list of 30 people and say it's possible they accomplished what they did because they didn't have kids?

Why not just turn it around, and say how come history's most celebrated and accomplished people by and large did have kids - how come these people couldn't do what they did AND have kids.

I can pull almost any meaningful person's name out of a hat and I bet odds are better that they had kids than not.

Banting, Best, Einstein, and Suzuki. There's the first four that came to my mind, and they all had kids.

Let's pick four more:

Marie Curie - yep
Alexander Graham Bell - yep
Guglielmo Marconi - yep
Gandhi - yep

You had some musicians and artists on your list, here's 4 off the top of my head, as fast as I can name them so I don't think about it:

Yo Yo Ma - yes
Hendrix - yes
Van Halen - yes
Wes Montgomery - yes

Damn, I was hoping Suzuki was on the "did not have kids" list.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by zuluking

Damn, I was hoping Suzuki was on the "did not have kids" list.

Suzuki is on somebody's top (first) 4 list?!

[4X4]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Orville and Wilbur Wright

lol

Of course they didn't have kids.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by chemgear

Suzuki is on somebody's top (first) 4 list?!

In my defence, it was the "first significant name that came to mind" list. I don't count myself as a fan of Suzuki at all

[Traditional_Ale]

Sorry if this is too off-topic. Went searching for more famous people who didn't have children, and stumbled on to this gem:


Ten Famous People Who Married Their Cousins



Jesse James

- Jesse James married his first cousin Zerelda “Zee” Mimms, who was named after Jesse’s own mother. They had two children and remained married until Jesse’s death in 1882 at the age of 34.


Franklin D. Roosevelt

- Although they had met as children, they became reacquainted after a dinner at the White House in 1902 held by Eleanor’s uncle and Franklin’s fifth cousin, President Teddy Roosevelt. FDR was 20 at the time and was attending Harvard. They were married on St. Patrick’s Day, 1905, and had six children.


Johann Sebastian Bach

-In 1707 Johann Sebastian Bach married his second cousin on his father’s side, Maria Barbara Bach. She died in 1720. Not much is known about their marriage, but he remarried less than two years after her death.


H.G. Wells

- H.G. Wells first cousin Isabel Mary Wells, who he left after only three years. Wells was an English writer most famous today for the science fiction novels he published between 1895 and 1901: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, and The First Men in the Moon.


Thomas Jefferson

- Thomas Jefferson married his third cousin Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson in 1772. They had six children together. Martha died on September 6, 1782 and Jefferson never remarried.


Albert Einstein

- Albert married his second cousin Elsa in 1919, not too long after his divorce from his first wife Mileva. Elsa died in 1936 due to various health problems, and though Albert never married again he had several girlfriends until his death in 1955.


Charles Darwin

- All natural selection jokes aside, the man who popularized the theory of evolution married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood. They had a total of ten children. Darwin died in 1882.


Edgar Allan Poe

- At the age of 20 poet Edgar Allen Poe moved in with his aunt, uncle, and cousin after his father left and his mother had died. It was there in Baltimore that he met his seven year old cousin Virginia, who he fell in love with and married when she was only thirteen. She died eighteen years later in 1847, and Poe died only two years after Virginia’s death.


Jerry Lee Lewis

- In 1957 famous rock and roll musician Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin Myra, who was only 13 at the time. He lost an incredible amount of respect and credibility. The marriage almost ended his career and caused him to move from rock to a more country style. They had two children together, and ended up divorced in 1970.


Rudy Giuliani

- Governor Rudy Giuliani married a woman who he thought to be his third cousin, Regina Peruggi, in 1968. It wasn’t until many years later that they realized that they were actually second cousins. Regina and Rudy divorced in 1982, and Rudy married his second wife Donna Hanover in 1984.

[Red]

The writer talks about kids like they are a business/retirement plan.

I have 2 kids and money they cost or the benefits they might bring later on never came up in my family.

There is more to having kids than dollars and cents. Any parent will know what I mean.

Dumb research...

[BigBrodieFan]

Originally Posted by Red

The writer talks about kids like they are a business/retirement plan.

I have 2 kids and money they cost or the benefits they might bring later on never came up in my family.

There is more to having kids than dollars and cents. Any parent will know what I mean.

Dumb research...

The only time 'the benefits' my kids may ;bring on later' ever come up is when I tell them that I can't wait until they are grown up.. so they can have kids just like themselves.