ps. instill shame and respect and ETIQUETTE into your childs mind. and tell them to stop playing their meaningless music through their cellphones.

Great artical. As someone who went through a divorce because I didn't want kids yet because I wasn't ready to spend the years of undivided attention yet this sort of thing hits home. Why ahve a kid if you are not willing to take the time to be a parent. I wasn't ready so I said no. Not that fucking hard. Yet so many parents resort to this plug and play parenting idea that some one else should have done it all for them. Its uterly disgusting. Truly a wonderful artical.

it's funny, the older i get and the longer i spend away from the mountains, the more i miss it all. i can remember saying, from the comfort of a desk at one of my first dotcom jobs, that i could happily live out my life without ever being stuck in a tent on some god-forsaken mountainside ever again.

now here i am riding my bike, hanging out in the park, taking any excuse i can get to go out with friends and get away from the keyboard / screen / controller.

i can't imagine raising a kid without that vital experience of being a part of the world -- actually being able to run through the dirt in their bare feet and see things living around them.

I always brought a Gameboy or a game console with me whenever I had to go camping with my parents. Why? Because camping sucks.

Great article. I dont think there's anything wrong with raising kids with technology as long as there is moderation coming from the parents. But what do I know, my kid is only a year old. Nothing exceeds like excess.

Fucking A right. Self-entitlement is by far the ugliest American trait and all these people who feel that it's their duty to over-populate what's left of America with as many kids as they can squeeze out can...Oh fuck it, just fuck it...

I don't want kids. I don't want even the possibility of adding to the shitstorm of worthless people being popped out and set in front of the TV. I had something really insightful to say, but I've lost it. Damn you!

i know, i'm starting a "just because you have reproductive organs does NOT mean you should use them" campaign as soon as i achieve world domination. i'm also putting birth control in the water.

+ a bazillion for using the word Luddite.

Your like the 5th person I know who actually knows what it means. Ahh, the admiration is expanding

I would suggest you count me as #6, but I don't "know" you.

Luddites are boring. Geeks are more fun.

Hmm. I sense much parental hostility.

People who aggressively pursue their "right" to have children can be just as annoying (if I offend, tough) as those that advocate mass sterilization or birth control. Yes, some parents are so incredibly stupid and irresponsible that they should think twice about breeding, but it can be difficult when you don't have the mental faculty to think at all.

On the other hand, I know several loving, caring and responsible people that refuse to have kids. The funny thing is that they would probably be the best parents you could possible imagine, better than my parents at least. And mine were not that bad, except for that whole religion thing.

Complain all you want about the stupidity of people today and weep all you want for the future. But if you are raising GOOD kids, they can be part of the solution rather than the "idiots" breeding us into more of a problem. Kids are crapshoot. Good people come from bad families as much as bad ones come from good.

All in all is it about choice. The urge to procreate (not just fuck like bunnies) can be a powerful one. There are so many positives and negatives on both sides that no one solution will fit everyone. In the meantime, suffer the fools as best you can and make the choice that suits you best.

I was discussing something like this with a friend (who has children) the other day. When I was a kid, I pretty much had free reign over the television. I could watch what I wanted, and pretty much for as long as I wanted. But, of course, that was 20+ years ago (a fact that sort of makes me cringe). The stuff on TV - both in terms of content and just pure amount - was so much different. In other words, come 11AM in July - there wasn't much I wanted to watch on TV. So, I'd read a book or go outside and play. Even video games: Nintendo rocked, but it got pretty repetitive after a while. The media formats themselves are so much different, I think I'll have to be one of those parents I used to consider bitchy and overprotective and severely limit my own kids' exposure to this crap.

I never grew up that way, but I know exactly what you are talking about. If my mom caught me playing Nintendo for more than an hour, it was either time to do chores or go outside and get some fresh air. A little discipline goes a long way. I consider myself pretty well adjusted. I'm a little immature at times, but aren't we all? Anyways, as of now, I live in an area where all the kids have grown up. However, one of my band mates lives in a kiddy populated area and I see all of this first hand through visiting him. These kids are the perfect example of what you speak of.

I think these kids are certainly being raised by their television sets and video games.
These neighborhood kids will notice us unloading band equipment and they'll all 'Healy-up' to the driveway and start talking to us about Halo or Gears of War. They're nice kids but some of them (and i'm gonna take this in a different direction) know way more than someone their age should. I was talking to one of them and this kid knew what a rusty trombone was (don't ask me how the conversation led up to that. I don't even know. The kid spouted some crazy stuff).

WTF? This kid was like 6. When I was that age, I could never phathom what that meant. I could've easily heard it, repeated it, all the while not knowing the true meaning being the words. However, I asked this kid if he even knew what that was and the kid went into the details and was dead on. This is something they obviously could've picked up from a classmate or a movie or something. I was just blown away that this kid was more than well-informed with such a sexual detail. But, hey, this could've been something he learned from sneaking into his fathers porn DVD collection.

Anyways, these kids stopped coming around after a while and we started to wonder if they got bored of us or not. Eventually we found out that one of the kids got a copy of my bands CD, burned it for all of his friends, and now they're all banned from visiting us (the CD itself pretty sexually explicit). So, at least some form of parenting and discipline is going on. Then later we heard that one of the parents took away the CD and began putting it in heavy rotation in their own player. So now i'm favoring the notion that a lot of the stuff the adults do rub off on the kids.

While reading this it brought back my memories of my own camping adventures as a kid, and also what I'd say to my own children (when I have them) if they wanted to bring their electronic heroin with them on a family vacation.
You see, the kid you see playing his Wii in the RV is the same child I was at that age; addicted to my electronics like a two-pack-a-day-smoker is to his nicotine. The big difference, however, is I had parents who would never let me get away with my addction. The same type that, not only cut me off from video games during the week when my grades were slipping, but also then sat down to help me through my homework. I didn't thank them at the time, what kid in his right mind would, but looking back I certainly can!
My folks were rarely the type who'd try to sit us intront of the baby-sitter in the box. Oh, there were certainly times that they wanted to get rid of me so they could have the house to themselves, but their response was never "oh! Look! TV!" It was more likely to be "Why don't you go play outside with your sister?" or "Call your cousins up and go play with them". I usually did, begrudgingly of course (I hated being told what to do back then, just as much as I do now!), but I almost always had a great time. At the very least, I had my younger cousin Tommy to torture if things got really boring (Tom grew up to be like a brother to me, but he was an annoying hang-along as a child. We used to try to run him over with our bikes )
IF all else failed, I'd end up in my bedroom, reading. We were a family obsessed with books; some of my favorite memories are of my Dad, my Mom and I sitting in the living room reading (my sister was usually in her bedroom playing music; it took her a bit longer to get into reading than the rest of us). Although even books were not an excuse to get away from family time: I'm 25 years old and this past December my Dad treated the entire family out to dinner at a steak house we like. I exicted the car carrying the book I was reading at the time; he looked back at me "Go put that book back in the car", he said firmly, "we can talk to the rest of us instead". And, being the good son, even at the age of 25, I grumbled....but I put the book away and had a great time

I just turned thirty-six yesterday and I have no clue what a rusty trombone is. Have I finally lost touch? Then again, my job (network programmer and instructor... now a web programmer) always forced me to be a luddite at home, kind of like the overworked gynecologist who comes home, looks at his wife wearing a lace thong, half a bottle of flavored Astroglide, and holding out a crazy straw, and throws up.