Did people like this exist 30-50 years ago?
Not just people who don’t want to have kids, but people who actively detest children in their lives?
Or did our society just not exalt this kind of narcissism?
9 thoughts on “Honest Question”
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Yes. Nothing is new. Also people like this weren’t written about in the media 30-50 years ago as entertainment (and maybe propaganda?).
Note the subheading:
W. C. Fields was more entertaining.
I think there have always been a few. C.S. Lewis confessed to not enjoying the company of children, and he died in 1963, so do the math there. My step-uncle also got a vasectomy back in the 1970s because he recognized he was too selfish for kids. Always treated my kids well, though.
There is also the literary theme of the old codger who hates kids, the guy who shouts “get off my lawn” and such. So I think there have always been a few.
That said, if you rephrase the hypothesis as “it’s more socially acceptable to actively dislike the company of children”, then yes. Lots of reasons, starting with the false notion that one can have a retirement without helping children become mature adults, born of S0cialist Insecurity, contraception, and a lot more.
Sure, people like this existed 30-50 years ago and more. You’re correct that they didn’t get written about very often. I also think that 50 years ago, there would be a good chance that this person would’ve actively chosen to move away from their family since it sounds like she isn’t close to any of them. She could’ve set up in a new town, with a circle of, mostly spinster, friends, and she she would’ve maybe shared a letter or two per year with her sister. She never would’ve had to see her nephew in person.
Maybe not, but then, we didn’t have the Vice President making a special trip to a Minnesota abortion clinic to celebrate killing unborn children, either.
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/14/kamala-harris-abortion-clinic-minnesota-visit
My thought, regarding VP Harris, is that it’s probably not her first trip to an abortion clinic….and also that there is a very real chance that even pro-choice voters will turn against her due to the “ick” factor. A fair number of people support legal abortion, but acknowledge, as did President Clinton, that it should not be merely safe (for the mom at least) and legal, but also…rare. So to celebrate Planned Infanticide crosses a line.
Oh, they existed. But they were viewed as eccentrics. These days, they are the core of the Communists’ nihilistic belief system.
I liked my kids just fine when they were young.
I even like my grandkids even though I don’t understand them most of the time.
I, however, generally do not like other people’s little terrors. Possibly because I’m a country boy and raised my kids the same way I was raised (minus the milking of cows, gathering of eggs and tilling of fields), but I live in an urban setting around people who raise their kids in accordance with the “kindler and gentler” parenting that’s in vogue. Which means that their kids are all undisciplined, disrespectful brats that I can’t stand to be around.
Or perhaps that’s just me being a curmudgeon in my old age.
At any rate, I’m definitely a member of the “get off my lawn” club.