The Word Cloud

31 Comments

• 

  by Wrathnar the Unreasonable 1 year ago

  Equation for Love
  
  L = Gt^2/s^4
  
  Where G = 6.67 * 10-11 (m³/kg s²) or (N m² / kg²)
• 

  by Gerilyn 1 year ago

  Who's paying these scientists.. and how much? and who cares? Really- of all the things they can 'scientifically' research it's that some blokes want babies and some women don't. Well- I shall sleep sounder in my bed tonight.. actually I won't... but again- who cares.
  
  Must say I loved this little gem of yours: Broody?! It's a term coined by breeders to describe hen fowl ready to mate and produce fertile eggs. Can the term be applied to cocks?
• 

  by Normal Normington 1 year ago

  Madam....
  Okay, so there are weirdos who live life against the grain but they are not the the norm and....
  No one is the Norm only Norm is the Norm..
  Scientists kill em all
• 

  by Liss 1 year ago

  Such a waste of time! It annoys me when you hear "and a two million pound study has revealed that people prefer blue socks to red" - SO!?
  
  And these campaigns like the ones I used to get at school, something obscene like £3 million spent on leaflets and a key ring that says "dont do drugs". Wow. Thanks alot. Half of my year are either incarcerated or unconcious and where are those key rings now!? I ask you.
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  by Barb 1 year ago

  "Okay, so there are weirdos who live life against the grain". This is people who decide not to have children?
• 

  by MinxieAD 1 year ago

  I wonder if we should apply for a government grant to conduct a scientific study of whether people really care about this scientific study.
• 

  by Liss 1 year ago

  *runs for the hills cowering
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  by Amarantha 1 year ago

  Wrath, thanks for the equation. Wish I'd known about it in my youth; it would have saved me a lot of aggravation!! :-D
  
  Barb, the comment you take issue with is a side-swipe at researchers who love to put us all into neatly labelled boxes. I have no children and when I was obviously of child-bearing age I was constantly attacked for being selfish (always by women who didn't know my circumstances at all). I never rose to the bait.
  
  Normington has it about right. :-D
• 

  by Barb 1 year ago

  I hadn't taken issue with anything - I was just seeking clarity of what the comment meant.
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  by Spangles 1 year ago

  I have never understood the argument that not having children is selfish. I don't have children and, like you, Ama, I've often been told I'm selfish. How so? Selfish not to be believe that I'm so wonderful that I have to produce my own progeny so the world still has some vestige of me when I drop off the twig? It is very strange. I must add that now it's too late for me to have children I rather wish I did have them! Heigh ho.
• 

  by Tony 1 year ago

  Selfish? That is weird. I suppose the only logical reasoning would be that you are depriving potential children of their existence by 'selfishly' deciding not to have any. But since they don't exist, can their potential feelings be considered? And if not, can your decision still be held to be selfish? Is this an existentialist argument? Confused? You will be...
• 

  by CJ 1 year ago

  The 'selfish' argument is something that is often thrown at my childless (through choice) best friend. We think it's down to this idolisation of motherhood - that in order to be a mother, you are somehow being 'selfless', whereas if you decide to live your own life the way you wish without children, you are 'selfish - which is absolutely ridiculous. I can think of far more women who are 'selfish' in their desire to have children - one friend in particular is currently on her third pregnancy, despite not being able to afford the two the already has (ironically, she is my childless friend's sister in law - who is now expected by the rest of the family to give the 'breeder' money... because what right do a childless couple have, earning more than the ones who have children?). Her argument? It is 'her right to have as many children as she wants'. So it's perfectly okay for her to keep breeding until she can't have any more (her literal goal - she has admitted to me she won't stop, and ideally wants 5 kids. In a 2 bedroomed house. And she wants none of them to go to school, because schools 'poison children's minds'. And she is 37, therefore running the gauntlet in terms of giving her kids long term problems. I think the phrase is 'don't get me started'...), but my friend, who has decided that her lifestyle is incompatible with kids and that her and her husband are happy living their little unassuming life is somehow 'selfish'?
  
  Makes no sense to me at all - and I do have kids!
• 

  by zomb00 1 year ago

  I suppose that that would be an ecumenical matter
• 

  by Spangles 1 year ago

  Maybe that's it, Tony. As you say, it's a very existential argument. I've often wondered if it's because the sp-called selfish woman is intelligent and is deemed selfish in not giving birth to equally intelligent children who will contribute something of value to society. I've always been so astonished by the reaction that I've never had the wit to ask the person to define their terms. I shall have to try to remember to do that if it ever happens again!
• 

  by Amarantha 1 year ago

  As I've said, I never rose to the bait because the observation was an ignorant one to make and arguing with ignorance is a waste of breath. Also my childlessness I saw as the business of no-one but me.
  
  Since this has attracted a deal of unforeseen comment and I am not in an argument with anyone about it, I will say that I always felt the women talking that way - mothers all - must have thought my childlessness enviable if to them it proved me selfish. Perhaps it was simply a coincidence that my life-style in those days was a good deal more affluent than their own? I wonder if a childless pauper would get the same amount of stick?
• 

  by Caducean Whisks 1 year ago

  Ely, Spangles and Amarantha, couldn't agree more. I think - sadly - that much pressure comes from the girl's own parents - I've heard it said - recently too - that it's OK for a daughter to go to university and all that, but they don't want to wait too long for the grandchildren, i.e. she can have a 'play' career for a while but her *proper* job is securing the family line and supplying grandkids.
  Funnily enough, nobody ever asks a man how he plans to balance fatherhood with a career.
• 

  by Amarantha 1 year ago

  And I've never heard a man accusing childless women (or men without children) of being selfish, Whisks.
• 

  by EzBloke 1 year ago

  EzBird had the peer pressure for both marriage and kids; thankfully she was strong willed enough to hold out for someone better (we have only been engaged 19 years this year, so no rush and she still lives in hope (who is this Depp guy anyway?)) and apparently I've always been firing blanks (well that's not true; they say it's a "low" count which we found out was, in fact, "about six..." of which, we understand, four are lazy, one swims the other way and the other one is likely to be Chinese and god forbid if EzBird had a Chinese kid, her mother would have a coronary; she still doesn't know I'm black, this pale skin is flour and that familiar smell she attributes to me in the summer is pie-crust...), besides EzBird has always maintained she only ever wanted one child and that I seem to be it. Perhaps I have shared too much...
• 

  by EzBloke 1 year ago

  Oh, and I prefer red socks... they match my eyes in the morning
• 

  by CJ 1 year ago

  I actually held out as long as I felt I could, even though I always knew I wanted kids, just to spite my family (well, that wasn't the whole story - I also wanted us to be as financially secure as possible, but I definitely took a sly amount of pleasure out of telling them that I didn't want kids all the way through my 20's...) . I know that sounds terrible, but after ones mother has made a bet with a friend that she would be a grandmother before he was a father, and ones grandfather says, just before ones wedding day, 'now you can give up this silly university thing and concentrate on doing what you should do' (god forbid, I was 21 when I got married. Yep, a total old maid...), it makes one rather belligerent about these things. However, in the defence of equality, my mother badgers my brother just as much, even though he is single, but they are actively trying to discourage my sister, who desperately wants a child but lives with a feckless work shy knobhead who already has one child he never sees (nor contributes towards), and they don't want him doing what he did to his ex-fiancee, namedly getting her pregnant and then running to the hills just after the baby's born...
• 

  by Autumn 1 year ago

  When people say 'selfish' (about people who choose not to have children), I have always took it to mean 'too selfish with their time, energy, love and money' to share these things with children. i.e. liking couple-time/going out/holidaying etc.and spending all their time/energy/love/money on themselves rather than on any children. In any case it seems a bizarre reaction to personal choice! I have also heard people who have lots of kids being called selfish...
  
  I am fortunate enough to have three daughters and I have been called selfish for choosing to give up work to bring them up, and selfish when I went back to work as they grew up!
  
  Basically - you can't win whatever you do! There is always someone comparing themselves favourably who should be getting on with their own lives. I think it's their way of trying to justify their own choices - but no idea why they feel need to do that. I find it disgusting to comment on someone's childlessness anyway - they might have been trying for years and knowing a couple like that it is heart-breaking.
  
  I don't think a childless pauper would get called selfish - perhaps they would be seen by the 'name-callers' as sensible for not having children they can ill afford?
• 

  by Gerilyn 1 year ago

  Ahhh I think all this is sad. My mum was married with a baby at 19.. (divorced at 26) she never went to college but she tried to do her best as a single parent. She always encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to and that said, my family were over the moon that I went to university.
  
  Both my mother's side and father's side were happy that I'd chosen to further my carreer. My dad's mum is a retired headmistress, she had taken the unusual step of mothering 3 children and holding down a successful carreer in teaching.
  When I told my family that I was expecting my first child- at the age of 31- they were again delighted. I think mum was relieved I hadn't done the baby stuff as early as she did because then she'd have been a 36 yr old Gran- eek.
  
  I've never looked at a childless woman and thought she was being selfish.. I may have looked a little envious if that woman happened to be walking past in a pristine expensive looking outfit while I dragged my boys in the other direction wearing chocolate and snot stained clothes. While we were trying for our first child I would look envouisly at the bumps of pregnant woman.
  
  So I find it all a bit sad that other women have encountered these prejudices from a) other woman and b) their families.
• 

  by CJ 1 year ago

  For the record, my parents were absolutely stoked that I went to university (grandparents, not so stoked...), since I was the first person in my family to go, ever. My mother was just desperate to be a grandmother. She had me at 17 (my mum and dad swear blind they didn't know she was pregnant when they got married!), and was a childminder in the days when you could have 7 under 5's on your books at once, and so the house was always full of kids, and she admits freely to missing that - she just loves kids, I suppose. Me? I'm with Geri. I had Lucy at 31, and now I will admit to being a little envious of those women who don't have to worry about getting babysitters / have the time to pick out matching socks in the morning / aren't forced to wear snot covered clothes in public, but I never begrudge any of them it, and I certainly don't view them as 'selfish'. What I *DO* view as selfish, however, are the men in their 30s / 40s (like a few friends of mine...) whose wives/girlfriends are desperate for kids, but they say 'I'm not ready... I'm too young!'. Well, sonny jim, I am afraid that your other halves don't have that luxury - you can keep producing the little wrigglers until you die; whereas she doesn't. Either man-up or cut the poor girl loose - don't force her into childlessness (or rounds and rounds of expensive IVF) because you can't grow up.
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  by CJ 1 year ago

  Just for the record, I also think women who sabotage their contraception to have kids against their partner's will is also selfish ( I know two women who have done this, and their smug pride at having done so made me feel faintly sick). It's a two way street, after all!
• 

  by Tony 1 year ago

  Hey Wrathnar, Did you expect any of this when you posted:
  
  Equation for Love
  
  L = Gt^2/s^4
  
  Where G = 6.67 * 10-11 (m³/kg s²) or (N m² / kg²)
  
  I think that must be the Newtonion equation, which worked perfectly well up to about the late 60s/early 70s, but we now obviously need the Einsteinian expansion, which introduces the child factor:
  
  (Cm + Cf)/2 - CF + s²
  
  where Cm and Cf are the numbers of children wanted by the mother and father, respectively; CF is the Career Facter and s is Selfishness.
• 

  by Amarantha 1 year ago

  Why did you square the selfishness factor but not the career factor, Tony?
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  by Tony 1 year ago

  And why was it + and not - ? I'm afraid the higher mathematics of it are beyond me , Ama.
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  by Amarantha 1 year ago

  Me too, Tony. Calculus was my very weakest subject at school. What the asterisk denotes I've no idea but it looks rather pretty there among all those nasty numbers and angles don't you think?!
• 

  by Tony 1 year ago

  * just means multiply. Used intead of x to avoid confusion with letter x :-)
• 

  by Caf 1 year ago

  OK, not sure what you're getting at here, I am a woman who has chosen not to have children, is being part of a "smattering" a bad thing, or just one of those things??
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  by Amarantha 1 year ago

  Well now, Funny Girl, I reckon you're the greatest thing just the way you are! HIYAH CAF! I was protesting about scientists wasting everyone's time and money proving scientifically what our Grandmammas knew all along! The childless women bit (are we weirdos? Are we selfish or not?) was kicked off by Barb and like Topsy, it jest growd.
  
  I am a childless woman so wouldn't like to comment one way nor t'other :-D!
  
  !