moved from Main List: on not having children

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Laura Ingalls Huntley" wrote in 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/78224 :

<< P.S. If I ever have three daughters (which I won't, because I'm 
not ever having kids), I'm going to name them James, Tomas, and 
Mordecai.  In that order. >>

I'm not going to say "Oh, those poor kids! Going through childhood 
'teased' by all children and through life sorting out confused 
grown-ups."

And *I* am most certainly not going to tell you that not wanting to 
ever have kids is 'just a phase' you're going through. That's what 
people told me when I was your age ... and for years thereafter ... 
and now I am 45 (46 in November) and I never had children, never 
wanted to have children, never particularly liked children, still 
hate babies, and do not regret lack of children.

However, I do feel concerned about the gene pool: if all the most 
intelligent and talented women (such as you) refrain from 
childbearing, that works out the same as if some superhuman hobbyist 
human-fancier was breeding FOR stupidity.

(*I* feel noble rather than guilty for not inflicting MY genes for 
obesity, ugliness, social ineptness, depression, and generally being 
a loser on the gene pool.)

Drifting even further from my topic, I believe in *both* genetics 
*and* environment, causing me to have opinions which will offend 
EVERYONE. On such opinion: Women who hand their children over to be 
raised by a nanny are putting their child in the environment of the 
intelligence, education, mode of speech, table manners, religious 
beliefs, political beliefs, of a person who chose that line of work 
either because she obsessively adores being with children, or because 
she CAN'T get anything that pays better. (The same for men who turn 
their children over to be raised by wives, but at least the men are 
positioned to have some knowledge or their wives' behavior and 
opinions.) Result: double-bind. Women with good genes either withhold 
their good genes from the gene pool or submit themselves to a yucky 
life of childrearing.