A touching tale of a child's boundless curiosity and how it, in question form, tests the limits/boundaries of so-called adult (grown-up) views, knowledge, presuppositions, and so on. However, rekindling this exact childlike hunger for answers you mention here in me, I ask you, "what's in it for the child?" Should we have children just to discover the flaws, big and small, adults have?

Sometimes people very deliberately set out to have children, and sometimes they very deliberately set out to NOT have children. Most of the time children happen because sex is urgent and usually feels pretty good. Reason has little to do with it.

We should probably have children or not have children for many different reasons. Many people get to see their actions and lives in a different light when they have children or work with them. With better scientific proof of how children should be raised newer generations might get a better chance of doing better by each other than older generations did.

For the child there is warmth and caring and sometimes answers if their family is wise enough. Friends if they are lucky to find someone who loves the same type of questions or games or talks or toys and so on. Of course being born means nothing to the unborn if there is no soul and being born is not considered a gift by so many because life can be cruel, unwelcoming and lonely.

It depends I think.

I agree. But in the spirit of Idiocracy, some people have kids very late because of reasoning. People have a lot less children these days because they can choose not to.

Women of the world have on average two kids less today than in the sixties I think it is.

If you are looking for a reason to have kids, apart from wanting to have kids, then you are not ready to have kids.

OP is a great example of children's negotiating skills. "You talk about what I want you to then I'll eat what you want me to." However

Notoriously insensitive to subtle shifts in mood, children will persist in discussing the color of a recently sighted cement-mixer long after one's own interest in the topic has waned. — Fran Lebowitz

The average number of children is declining. However, in 1960 the world population was a little over 3 billion. Now it is about 8 billion. Somebody didn't get the memo.

I asked him if he was hungry for maybe the twelfth time that day. — PulsarDK

Perhaps you are obsessive compulsive. Then there is the child's fascination with cement mixers or edges of the universe. How old is this kid? I think I was old enough to drink when I first wondered about those pesky edges of the universe. Has your child been drinking?

I don't know whether children are any 'wiser' today than they were in the Roman Empire, say, or the Neolithic Age. What is different about children in the last 50 years, anyway, is that they are subjected to a deluge of information that they were not before media saturated culture. I'm not criticizing media here -- I've enjoyed the deluge (NOVA, National Geographic, Netflix, Internet, etc.). Had I a child he or she would have seen a lot more science and BBC drama than I did back in the 1950s.

Unfortunately, and I'll criticize media now, the deluge of information on the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio has been accompanied by a lot of garbage on the other channels. So some children will ask about the edge of the universe, others will not.

:up:

might be that they ask more interesting questions than most adults a lot of the time — PulsarDK

And then they become those "most adults". What a pity, what a waste.

That your children are likely to have a good life and/or you are going to bring them up to make the world a better place.

The only problem I have with this is that your children could have children, that have children, that have children, et cetera. You can't expect all of these future generations to have a good life, and some may have horrific lives. And as far as making the world a better place, the evidence shows introducing generations more people to be doing exactly the opposite.

I think OP is an argument for spending time with children rather than having children. You don’t need to be a parent to be in a position where children might ask you interesting questions. In fact, I would imagine school teachers get these questions more often.

True. If you have kids in order to improve the quality of conversation at home then you're taking a gamble. If you go into school teaching in order to hear interesting questions from children then again it's quite a risk.

Slavery has been abolished; you cannot 'have' kids, except the way you have guests, if you are hospitable. Don't expect them to bring a bottle, or thank you when they leave. If you need an argument for hospitality, don't bother, and kids likewise; all the profit has gone out of it these days.

Most of the time children happen because sex is urgent and usually feels pretty good. Reason has little to do with it. — Bitter Crank

I don't know about "most of the time." My decision to have kids was pretty deliberate. If it was based upon sex just feeling good, I'd have had far more than just 2.

It depends I think. — PulsarDK

Agreed! Evil is subtlety taken to stratospheric heights. You won't see it until it's too late.

I think OP is an argument for spending time with children rather than having children. You don’t need to be a parent to be in a position where children might ask you interesting questions. In fact, I would imagine school teachers get these questions more often. — TheHedoMinimalist

Agreed :up:



To be honest I guess that kid asked “where the edge is located” so randomly without any base. Probably the child saw it in TV or a book previously. It is not innate making those such of questions because we need some knowledge and culture to do so.
Kids can make these questions about “physics” or “mathematics” because they are stubborn questioning literally everything.
This is exactly an argument which develops exactly the opposite from the OP: not having kids

I think OP is an argument for spending time with children rather than having children — TheHedoMinimalist

You deserve an award for this, you know. All I can offer you is a :up: and :clap:

children — TheHedoMinimalist

school teachers — TheHedoMinimalist

In the educational setting in which I grew up, children were not taught how to learn and teachers were not taught how to teach. It's a miracle that we learned anything at all.

I noted the decision was often quite deliberate, either way. But with 8 billion sex drives in operation, conception without intention is likely to be a fairly frequent event. Hence, the growing world population.

You deserve an award for this, you know. — TheMadFool

Well, thanks :)

Teach your kid to see his own mind as the cause of everything good or bad in his life.

No. I will never teach any kid that. Teaching a kid that narcissistic type of crap will destroy lives. Like Trump's positive thinking.

No. I will never teach any kid that. Teaching a kid that narcissistic type of crap will destroy lives. Like Trump's positive thinking. — PulsarDK

Self reflection and self responsibility are the opposite of narcissism.

sometimes they very deliberately set out to NOT have children — Bitter Crank

Many men will put in deliberate effort now to avoid having children due to the tyranny of child support laws. Which isn't really an avoidance of children but an avoidance of tyranny.

Are child support payments tyrannical if one has abdicated support for the children one has sired or borne?

It would seem closer to tyranny if I was forced to support somebody else's children having no connection to me.

Because kids are cool. Best reason to make one or two or more.

Eighteen years of payments for 18 minutes of entertainment seems tyrannical to me. It's not like there only one person involved eh.

Kids from an actual decision to make them is different, but even then, if one parent takes the kids and cuts the other out of the kid's life, then the funding should also be cut off.