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Can I also add: to anyone witnessing a stranger's kid having a tantrum, be gentle. It is not bad parenting or child abuse or anything like that, at least not in the vast majority of cases. If you want a loud tantrum to be stopped right there and then you basically are demanding that a person, who is not yet able to control or even understand their emotions fully due to an undeveloped brain, is being controlled. You want less Karens in the future? Let the kids, please, experience these tantrums and find a way to deal with them. And be easy on the parents. They cannot shut down their kid like a machine and if they can - they shouldn't, it most likely would require some form of violence or control that you would not want a child to experience if you really gave it a thought. And believe me the parent is feeling like shit already, no need to look down on them.

Please remember you also were a kid once.

(Also, my love goes out to anyone named Karen, it is a beautiful name and wear it with pride, I am sorry it has become tainted. )

Yeah, not getting what they want might mess up a kid's afternoon. Being taught that throwing tantrums can get them what they want might mess a kid up for their entire life.

I love my kids. They are a ton of work but I couldn't imagine life without them. But being a parent is not for everyone and that's ok.

This meme was inspired by my wife telling me about our two year old having a full on five-alarm melt down at Sam's Club and screaming, "I see Christmas trees! I go see Christmas trees!" While my wife tried to assure her that they would go see Christmas trees on the way out. All you can do is laugh at the sudden realization that the poor person with the screaming child in the middle of the store is you.

Nothing should! Parenting is hard fucking work, and if you're not one hundred percent up for it, then don't do it!

Even in some fantasy ideal world where pregnancy and childbirth are easy, preschool is free, and the future isn't somewhere between bleak and horrifying... being a parent is still an incredibly taxing ordeal, mentally, physically, and emotionally. There are plenty of kids in the world. Nobody should get born to parents that feel even the slightest bit of reluctance at their existence.

What if it saved world hunger?

Also: try with a good sauce and fries.

Never say nothing will ever convince you (I don't want any child either by the way), let my try:

Imagine the following hypothetical, in a few decades, medical science solves ageing, fast forward a few hundred years in the future, you still have no child, you meet an amazing person about as old as you, also never had any child, you fall madly in love with each other, you live a few amazing decades together, and they start to say they'd like to try the experience of raising a child, It will only takes two or three decades before they are independent, a very small time relative to the infinite life ahead of you. Do you think you would say no with 100% confidence?

I don't want any child and I don't think I will ever want one, but I know my opinion might change one day for reasons beyond my current understanding.

They invented child abandonment for a reason.

I shit you not, I once watched a lady talking to the information desk at an art museum about a membership with a toddler. The kid started getting antsy, and didn't listen after she told them to stop trying to run away. She had the kid lay down on their stomach, and she very gently put her foot on the kid's back, so she was in effect halfway standing on them. The kid didn't even seem upset, just "This is what happens when I don't listen." Awe inspiring.

Okay, that's new.

She does it to me! Let's one rip and with a mischievous little grin says, "I toot."