• AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I know a guy who “doesn’t understand why vasectomies are so popular all of the sudden. Any child is a gift, especially if you’re fifty.”

    I don’t want to have 15 kids that I can’t afford and would only provide a terrible upbringing dipshit.

    He also does not understand why women don’t always give natural child birth anymore. “Women did it for hundreds of years.”

    Yes. The life expectancy was like 35 back then. This Christian anti science shit is beyond stupid.

    • khannie@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      That’s bananas. “Any child is a gift” and “vasectomies being popular” aren’t mutually exclusive. I have a lot of kids and I reached a point where I’d had enough. I love them all so deeply and if my wife said to me tomorrow that she was pregnant well then I would love that child dearly. I love kids.

      Still…No more child tho plz. ✂️

      There’s a cautionary tale that does the rounds in our family about my auntie who somehow (now remember we’re talking 1950’s aggressively Catholic Ireland here) ended up having a conversation with her priest where she somehow implied that herself and her husband avoided sex around ovulation. From recollection it was during confession.

      Priest says “no bueno”. She says “okiedokie”.

      Nine kids. Nine. My mother is still angry about it and she’s very, very old.

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 month ago

        That makes me think of a story of my wife’s uncle who was an, apparently somewhat heretical, Irish priest. Effectively telling a parishioner who was pregnant and would not be able to be able to support another child, nor any health complications that might arise, that if the local bishop was so concerned that she carry the child to term, maybe said bishop should be the one to take responsibility for the care of the child.

        Not sure when for certain but likely 70s or 80s Ireland.

        • khannie@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Ireland was more or less entirely run by the unseen hand of the church until, I’d say, the 70’s and to some extent the early 80’s. Sure they even had a special position for the church in the original constitution in 1937.

          In the early 80’s people were becoming very wary and then all the various scandals broke loose, coming thick and fast in what seemed like a never ending flood at the time. In the space of the 30 years between 1970 and 2000 the country essentially became irreligious as a result.

      • MirthfulAlembic@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        That priest was not speaking based on the Church’s beliefs, then. Natural family planning has been largely accepted by the Church for centuries, and the Pope more formally said it was ok in the early 50s. You just have to be ok if it leads to children anyway.

        • khannie@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Good to know but I will not be telling my mother that. My auntie has long since passed (mum’s the baby in her family) and that would outrage her to the point of heart attack.

  • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    “Haha remember when women didn’t have a choice when their husbands wanted intercourse? And abortion was illegal? And so the woman was forced to birth as many children as her husband wanted?”

    Psychotic.

      • jaybone@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        And half of them could die before reaching teenager. Which is mainly what accounted for that low average life expectancy. So you needed to have backups.

  • lukstru@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Tbh it’s not only grandma. Grandpa was involved as well, and it was usual that grandpa wanted to but grandma not, and they did it anyways.

  • randint@piefed.social
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    1 month ago

    I still don’t understand how so many people used to be able to afford having so many children, but not nowadays. Was child-rearing just less expensive back in the days?

    • klemptor@startrek.website
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      1 month ago

      Parents weren’t giving their kids a gilded childhood. Children worked. Having more children meant more help with the farming, housework, etc., and/or they could work in coal mines, as chimney sweeps, etc. And also most kids didn’t go to college back then and got married off young, so the parents had less financial burden. Plus the cost of living was a looooot more reasonable in comparison to the average household’s income.

    • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Back then, you could ship children off to mines, chimney sweeps, boot polishing. They can be paying their own way from age 3!

      The “glorious past” that MAGAts want to go back to

      • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Also, once the first girl is old enough (like 6) she can take care of the other kids so you don’t really have to do anything except to keep making them.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 month ago

    Fifteen or sixteen kids. Completely irresponsible. Pull out, dawg. Shoot it on her belly. Why would you do this to yourself?

    • phx@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      15-16 kids, probably starting from when she was 15-16yo which was normal in those days…

  • digdilem
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    1 month ago

    Sex was sex, much like it is now, only with less contraception and more privacy.

    Then advertisers realised they could use it to sell literally everything and now it’s everywhere.

  • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Do you think having more kids is a sign of having more sex?

    You can have sex once a month or once a day and still end up with the same number of kids.