An opinion piece was posted (complete with counterargument) by a pal online today:

“I Think People Without Kids Have Empty Lives And I’m Not Sorry About It.”

Do I really have to read beyond something so closed-minded?

I tried my hardest, but the comment thread was really far more interesting to me. Most of us seemed to agree that we disagreed with the original author – and all for various reasons. Honestly, I feel like she may’ve been going for an extreme shock factor approach to get more page hits. Because no one is this narrow-focused and unable to consider that there are more types of people than “healthy parent” versus “healthy non-parent”. As my buddy Dax who shared the article said, the author isn’t accounting for the various reasons people can’t or shouldn’t have children. As she commented – what about those who’ve tried to have kids and cannot? For medical reasons?

Although it’s an opinion piece (everyone’s entitled to their opinion, including the wrong ones) and I shouldn’t care, I’ll sound off for anyone else doubting their decision to remain child-free because of shade-throwers like this chick. Even though I couldn’t make it past the part that read: “unless you’re a monster who abandons your children, but let’s assume none of you are.” We’ll cherry pick the salient points for the sake of this piece, because some of them seem to be a shared perception I’ve unfortunately seen elsewhere as well – all based on ignorance. Ignorance is, in a way, a disease. So, we have to have a modicum of compassion for the ignorant by shining the antidote of education on them until they get better.

Let’s start with that quote I couldn’t get past.

People aren’t “monsters” and you can’t “assume” anything. People do things that seem so bad, we can’t believe they’re real. That’s when we use words like “evil” and “monster”. But, the truth is, they’re human people, some are plain sick, some were raised horribly, and there are even more “monstrous” acts one can do than just walking out on the other parent. We’re not even accounting for the mentally ill here; the ones who look normal on the surface, but suffer daily mind-rape underneath and who feel pressured into having children (because of finger-wagging opinion pieces like these), only to realize their minds aren’t right too late. Or worse – the ones who don’t even realize it as they drown their babies in the tub and lay them out to dry on the bed, throw their kid off a bridge, or video record a toddler playing with a handgun. (All real examples.)

I’d like to think I’d never be that person, but so long as I know there’s a shred of a chance that even one of my character defects would potentially make for a remotely defective child (who becomes a defective maladjusted adult), then maybe selfish is the most selfless thing I can do.

’cause I’d rather have an empty life than create an empty one from scratch.

There’s a bit in this piece where she claims she just feels sorry (or “deeply sad”) for those who’ll never have kids. No. I don’t believe, deep in the bone prison my cardiac organ lives in, that she feels sad for anyone. That’s just some passive aggressive language people tokenistically add in as a gift wrap for their judgment. Who I do feel sorry for is A.) anyone suggestible enough to read her article and make the wrong decision for themselves and the new life they create out of guilt, and B.) the poor child raised by someone so narrow-minded as this author.

What chance can that kid have?

Aside from becoming a judgmental narrow-minded “monster”?

Who ends up bearing more of the same – out of guilt?