I appreciate the fact that you seem to think you're doing the environment a huge favour by not proliferating your genes all over the place, what with the human species hitting 6 or 7 billion and climbing at a rate of knots despite countries claiming declining and aging populations and their respective governments desperately trying to bribe people to breed.
I find it great that if you don't want kids, that you're not bowing to the ridiculous traditions of society to get married and have them anyway because it's something to do on some checklist that someone seems to have invented as a measure of a "successful" life.
I even agree that the baby bribe would be better spent on anything else, because I really don't see what could be so bad about population decline. Humans aren't going to go extinct, and sustainably stable is a metric buttload better than this ridiculous endless growth thing.
But kindly shut the fuck up about those of us that have kids and/or want them. I have read mind numbingly stupid, ignorant comments raging on about how those people with kids are getting a "free ride" at the expense of those without kids. If there is a free ride, I wanna get on it. I'd love a free ride so Josh could stay home and do the domestic stuff (which he quite enjoys) and I could make money on the side with my little web dev business and hopefully make some major money with my animation.
Equally mind numbing is the simplistic assertion that because there's more people in a "family" than a "single" or "couple" they MUST consume vastly more resources and producing vastly more pollution, no exception.
Look. We're a family of 5. Me, Josh, three kids. OMG LARGE FAMILY! SELFISH BREEDERS!
Yeh.
We live in a 4x2 on a decent sized block of land. Not unlike a lot of other selfish breeders, like a lot of my friends, who also live in 3+ bedroom houses, though some have bigger tracts of land than others (some of them live on farms).
Astonishingly, a lot of singles and couples also "need" 3+ bedroom houses. They need somewhere to store the amount of Stuff they have. And have guests.
Family cohabitation generally expects to share pretty much all resources. Couple/sharehouse cohabitation generally don't. Particularly in a sharehouse situation, having your own Stuff is useful if you want to move on when the lease is up (or randomly).
The amount of Stuff in a couple's or share house seems to match the amount of Stuff in most family homes.
We have two cars. Josh drives up and back to work in one every day, and that's pretty much all he does with it, aside from the exceptionally rare trip to the shops or the library (and then he only drives because it's close to closing time by the time he gets home and ready to go, otherwise he'd walk). I have one of those fuel guzzling SUVs, it gets used a few times a week and probably guzzles a hell of a lot less fuel than a lot of others I see prowling around the roads. Plus whenever mine is out, it almost always has more than one person in it. A lot of other families I know that can afford to have two cars often will have two cars if they don't work somewhere convenient to public transport. The stay home partner (assuming one is stay home) "needs" that freedom to be able to get out of the house.
Singles if they have a car, usually just have the one. Couples tend to have one each, because they "need" the same freedom. And if you have houseshares of 3+ people and they each have one car? That's 1 car per person vs 2 cars between 3+. And ours are more likely to be filled with more people more of the time.
Now the freeloader argument, where your hard earned taxes are paying for us to freeload. Again, I missed the free ride, dammit. My husband works full time, and is paying taxes. I work very casually, and don't make enough to get taxed yet. I also get the base rate of FTB. AHA! There's that freeloading!
It's not that much of a freeload if we're helping pay for our own freeloading. Apparently we don't quite make enough money to be considered "comfortable". I'm not going to complain if the government wants to supplement our income. We would get by without it, and I don't think we'd struggle too much, but saving up would definitely be a lot harder. And if we're freeloading, then obviously the pensioners, carers, uni students and people looking for work (many of them who also happen to be childfree) and single parents are also freeloading bludgers, getting to live their carefree lifestyles off your backs.
We will completely ignore the fact that a lot of the aforementioned are hovering slightly above the poverty line if Centrelink is their only source of income, because it makes it harder to screech about them being freeloaders and to be all self righteous about your hard earned money going to support their freeloading lifestyle.
We have a single disposable income to spread between 5 people. We homeschool our kids, so there's however much cost we want to incur buying them supplies and things for whatever they're interested in at the time, and taking them out on excursions. For those with kids at school, there's school fees, uniforms, books, and materials. This is in addition to mortgage (or rent for people who are renting), grocery shopping and "lifestyle".
Yes it's our own stupid fault for having kids in the first place, but after spending money on kid related stuff, there's not a lot left for adult related stuff. Childfree couples and singles have "more" of a disposable income, especially if they're a couple and both working and nothing to spend on but themselves and each other. Some save up for whatever or just don't feel a need to buy Stuff. Others buy heaps of Stuff and go on long epic polluting holidays. But it's okay, because who doesn't like buying Stuff or going on a holiday? I take one every two years to go see my family on Christmas Island. And I love my digital art toys.
Depends entirely on the "family" and the "couple" and the "single". I know a number of very frugal, environmentally conscious childfree couples and know of a few completely clueless "want this no matter what the cost" families. But generally, us selfish breeders may give more of a shit about this planet than you think because our kids and their kids etc have to live on it long after we don't have to worry about it anymore.
Decentralising food production from mass agriculture to "organic" community and vertical gardens perhaps supplemented by small farms, and energy from huge power stations to something like solar and maybe a wind turbine on every roof, or maybe something that doesn't cost as much power as it manufactures in its lifetime might be discovered would be a much better start than whinging about how other people are ruining it for you (sorry, I meant the planet, because you're completely altruistic).
Engage brain before flapping face or pounding keyboard.
Could just be hormonal rage and me taking comments of total strangers that weren't even directed anywhere near me way too personally but at the moment I'm trying to work out why some friends of mine are friends at all if my life is so abhorrent to them. I hope it's because they love me as much as I love them.
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With the world population in the billions, many more people need to dissuade others from having children and if they are going to have them from having more than one or two. Governments should never give money to encourage having children but only to dissuade or to help the poor.
How awful that you are home-schooling. I don't think you understand social problems well enough to be providing education for your children and you are keeping them from learning the nuances of social interaction that come with dealing with what in the U.S. are called public schools.
Too bad you didn't follow your own advice of "Engage brain before flapping face or pounding keyboard" and your observation that "Depends entirely on the 'family' and the 'couple' and the 'single.'" Many things do, BUT childfree and childless will always use less in the end since they will not continue to produce descendants who use SUVs throughout the future. Your SUV alone means you have no right to fuss about anyone else's behavior. Worse yet, you are setting really bad examples for your children of buying an SUV. How outrageous that because you had too many children -- three when the replacement pop was long 2.2 -- you think it is okay if the gov. gives you money. What relentless greed. The childless throughout history have almost always contributed more than the child-burdened a quick skim through historical documents shows. Some of the child-burdened meant to do more, some had their work destroyed by their children as was true of some of Papa Haydn's work. Without his children we would have had more of his music. Heart-breaking.
Since the childfree aren't burdened with children, you wanted to burden them with your whinging. You chose children. Now start acting more mature in your raising of them.