I once asked my mother why she had children and said she did not really know; I have heard other people say the same. This leads to wondering whether there is more to this than meets the eye, such as, a greater force maintaining a supply but for what purpose?
There is a lot to be said for family planning, something "they" don't teach anymore. That subject covers a lot of ground too, from sex-ed to budgeting a household. They teach crap in American schools, a bunch of useless junk you will never use.
Why did I have children? I always knew, from a young age, that I wanted two kids.
Why did I have them when I did(at age 21 and 22)? Diaphragm failure, then condom failure. I had my two and got sterilized.
Fair enough, it seems that things went to plan.
It is an interesting question. Clearly evolution is the driver and I think it was Dawkins who suggested some years ago that the genes are the replicaters and the organism the vehicle by which they replicate. What this doesn’t address, is there a motivating force behind the need for gene replication as a mechanism.
read Schopenhauer.
Will do!
Dear ole Arthur!
No matter what? I always learn something on this site. "He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), wherein he characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind and insatiable metaphysical will." Ah...that desire to fuck is beyond the average human's power of will? The dude was a jerk and at best he may have influenced a few....
@fantasticalice It’s relevant to call Schopenhauer many thinks but ‘jerk’ is not one of them. I suggest you take a closer like at his antecedents and contemporaries if you want to really learn something before taking blind statements from Wikipedia in isolation, a resource not renown for its finest academic references!
@Geoffrey51 ,
wasted advice on a brainwashed idiot.
@callmedubious Sadly, I suspect you are correct
Your mother, in the days before good contraception, and No abortions, had very little choice!
And so, knowing this, why would you ask any older women such a question?
The reasons you outline are probably the case. I was just curious, wondering if there was any great plan, I must remember to only ask younger women!
Two great forces that drive life: survival and reproduction. I argue that everything else is subjugated to those two motivations.
Most probably.
basically what Shopie says. the universal will.
from protozoa all the way up.
Probably most pregnancies are not planned. The force is sexual drive.
In one word: concupiscence.
That deserves to be two words!