Why I will never have kids. Probably.

Once upon a time, I had a crush. And once upon a time as well I talked to her about my paranoia. About not wanting to have a kid. About not wanting to have a “burden” that will wake me up every two hours in the middle of the night just because he wets his bed. About not being able to spend my vacation around the world because bringing a kid on a plane trip around the world doesn't seem much fun.

And then, all of a sudden, I lost contact with her. Bam. Just like that. She ignored everything I sent: from text messages, BBMs, to Skype messages. She was probably scared after seeing my protruding belly and all the new pants I had to buy because I was getting fatter by the minute. Or probably she wasn't really into me. Or maybe she was just scared to have a serious relationship with someone who didn't want to have kids. I sure hope it was the latter because I don't really like exercising. That's beside the point. Anyway.

Why is our society so reluctant about the very idea of not having kids? Tell someone that you don't want to have kids, and they shun you. Tell someone that you don't want to have kids, and they will think you're out of your mind. Tell someone that you don't want to have kids, and they will act as if you just told them you are worshipping Satan. Why?

Here are several good reasons why I don't want to have kids, and why you should not either (there is some math in here. As a Math major, I figured out that the best way to get someone to believe you is by confusing them using numbers).

1. Kids are annoying. As heck.

   If I have to pick something as a comparison to how annoying they are, I would say they are the physical embodiment of nails on a chalkboard. At least if someone is scraping a chalkboard with their nails, you can slap them so they stop doing it. If it's your own children being annoying... Well, it's not like you can't slap them.

   
   

2. Raising kids is costly fucking expensive.

   On my last spring break, I went to Florida and went to Universal Studios. There was this Harry Potter Theme Park called "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" I know 'wizarding' is not a word, but whatever.

   
   

   

   Of course, they have Hogwarts there, duh.

   
   

   

   And the ever-so-famous Butterbeer.

   

   Andd... A picture of me drinking Butterbeer. Not important. Anyway.

   
   

   

   This is what I really want to show you. A Gryffindor sweater. For eighty-fucking-five bucks.

   
   

   I was actually really interested at the sweater, until I flipped the price tag. At which point I put the sweater down and went to look at chocolate frog instead. Then four kids came and grabbed the sweater and they were all like "mom, can we buy this?" with their puppy eyes. And yeah, their mom came and bought each one of them a sweater. So in a span of three minutes, their mom spent $360 with taxes. Oh God. I could have bought a year-worth of Dr. Pepper with that much money.

   
   
   I shit you not. Seriously. Apparently it costs as much as $475,680 to raise a child to age 18. And an additional $127,683 to send your kid to a median-priced university. For those of you who think I magically summon these figures, here.

   
   
3. Tougher competition for them.

   I actually started thinking about this ever since I read The Hunger Games trilogy where the protagonist Katniss Everdeen refused to have kids because she was scared that her kids are going to be picked for the Hunger Games just like her sister was (I think this was on book two).
   
   
   Okay. Comparing our world with The Hunger Games world probably doesn't make sense to you, but at least it does to me. I'm graduating this semester. And if you are still in high school or in college and you don't know how hard is it to get a decent job, trust me, it's hard. Like, really hard. While in The Hunger Games world your kid would only have 0.1% chance to get picked as a tribute to kill each other, in the real world your kid has 100% chance to enter the "game." I mean, it's hard enough for a recent graduate to get a job now. I wonder how hard it will be like 25 years from now.
   
   
   A rough idea: current world population is 7,035,028,771 (and probably is now 7,035,028,860 by the time I finish typing this sentence). And it is estimated that the world is currently growing at a rate of around 1.1% per year. Which means that by 2040 the population will reach 8.8 billion people (already counting the mortality rate).

But of course, it's your genital and you have complete control over it. Please don't let a blog stop you from overpopulating the world.