Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
No-one has said either of those things?

The first might be in reference to my comment, and that was clearly not universal, but applying strictly to myself. Find your own damn way of growing up. Heck I even said that foisting kids on others will not work. The second is an utter misreading of Heinlein, whose point is that you can't force people to be moral, no matter what.

GW
Clear implication - in fact, I'm pretty sure it was said. Lets review:

"Having them [children] makes you a better adult" - to the extent where people are advocating forcing it, in order to improve other people. That is basically saying that you're not good enough at being an adult without having kids. Or not having full moral standing without kids.

Then your sole argument against doing that can be boiled down to "no, because some people either can't become proper adults, or won't become proper adults, and thus the kid will be in a bad situation." That's not arguing against the premise that people should have kids because it makes them better people [and thus they're not as good as they should be without having kids]. Completely ignoring that some people don't want to have kids, and we're no worse people, regardless if our reasons are "I would make a bad parent", "I don't want them", "I can't have them", "I don't want to pass on genetic problems" or whatever. Note that your statement has an implicit acceptance of childfree and childless are not proper adults, by saying that they would have to become proper adults. Heck, you approve of taking that choice away from people in order to "improve" them and force them to grow up - "I approve of the objective, but it could harm the baby".

Your response didn't say it, but also failed to challenge it at all, basically reinforcing the view.