BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Not married - no kids - disability choice

Lisa,

From an earlier post in this thread you asked: "Why is there not a stronger connection between these *existing* children needing love, and these groups of parents wanting to raise children?

I think that question would be a great thread somewhere...I'd like to hear thoughts on that. I think I've heard there are about 500,000 kids in America that need to be adopted. How many in the world do we adopt and we can't give home to 500,000 kids.

Is this more of a government problem, red tape holding up parents who want to adopt, or is it about wanting a "baby?"

I'm just curious, the end of that post stuck with me.

Violette - actually we've discussed this situation in several other forums. Let me see if I can go dig out the thread that has those numbers.

OK here you go - one thread was in the Gay-Lesbian forum -

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No, go back. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, assuming you were a college graduate (and could keep up with English).

And this is your out? Anyone can look at my year-long posts and feel pretty comfortable with my ease of the English language. *sigh* You want to wear me out with this nonsense, and frankly, your forum is benefiting in volume because of it...for this reason, I'll stop it before you do.

We probably did miss the boat here, Lisa. We were never interested in, nor intruded on, forums that didn't concern us.

Who are you to deem what is productive for the Married, NO KIDS forum? How could you possibly understand? Of course, you're engaging in the new threads, because they're about things YOU can identify with. You have a child. You will never, ever, ever as long as you live understand what it's like to either not be able to have a child or to have decided to not bear life. What about this concept do you not understand?

As far as your Buddhist reference goes, I'm not even going to repeat your feel-good lecture blather. We were always interested in CHILDFREE opinions, no matter the religion, race, background, education, or political orientation.

You will never understand this, though I know I wrote in plain English.

OK right I'm reading through those posts again. I remember I looked for quite a while during that discussion and there doesn't seem to be a central clearinghouse of "orphan children" numbers for the various countries in Africa. In many, outside agencies simply don't know what is going on. But for example in Zimbabwe alone, most aid agencies guess that there are about 900,000 orphans and that their care systems are *completely* overwhelmed. The countries don't have enough beds, there isn't enough food, and certainly not enough caregivers.

It is not at all that the government is somehow preventing people from adopting the children. It is that parents in the US primarily want newborn "white" children. The reason we have unadopted children in the US is primarily that those children are older and adoptive parents do not want older children or children with issues. Then going internationally, adoptive parents are less likely to want children of non-Caucasian skin tones.

Angela -

I appreciate your clarification, it has certainly made your point of view much more clear.

As I have mentioned, I do have a large number of couples who I talk with who are married without kids, and I am explaining the views that we all agree on. It appears that you are saying that their views are not valid?

If there is a specific view that you feel is invalid, please let me know which one it is - I'll give them a call, explain your issue, and then I can give you their response in their exact words, if you feel my "translation" of their words is not adequate enough for you to respond with. That is fine by me!

As far as what is productive for MNK (in regards to ranting vs not ranting, I imagine) - this was a key reason we did the changes we did recently. It was not my feeling which instigated the change. If we had gone by my feeling, it would have changed months ago. Rather, it was the large volume of complaints by MNK forum members who felt as if they did not want to post in a place filled by ranting. As site owner, I am the recipient of all "forum contact form" messages. All of those messages come to me. So a flood of messages has continually come in from MNK individuals who wanted to know why the MNK area was so full of anger and anti-child posting. They wanted a place where they could feel supported as a MNK individual - not a place where each post was complaining about the actions of a child or parent.

It was in response to those repeated messages, and in discussions with Kim and the rest of the BellaOnline community - that we began to take steps to ensure that this forum was inclusive towards all, rather than reflecting the views of a very small segment of the community.

If you felt the change was solely because of my personal feelings, then I apologize for that miscommunication. It was not at all a personal decision. It was a group decision based on an enormous amount of feedback by forum members here.

I would like to add that I feel concerned by an aspect of your post. It appears you are saying that - as a MNK forum member - that you actively do NOT want any person posting in here who is not married - and who has children. So you explicitly want to exclude from this forum any person who is not married, or who has children.

Is that true, or did I misinterpret what you said?

*deleted*

Oh Lisa...just when I thought we could shake hands...

How could you misinterpret something I never said? I neither said nor implied that that I "actively do not want any person posting in here who is not married." How could I? I'm not married myself. But I don't have kids, and that way of life was the heart of this forum (or the recent generation of people who just left it), be it that someone like yourself (a parent) sees it differently - for what you or others thought it should be - or not.

That is why I asked for clarification.

You said:

"We were always interested in CHILDFREE opinions, no matter the religion, race, background, education, or political orientation."

This is explicitly a forum for married no kids. You are saying you are interested in CHILDFREE (emphasis yours) opinions.

On one hand, if BellaOnline was going to be an environment which only "was interested" in having Buddhists post in the Buddhist forum, gays post in the gay forum, republicans post in the republican forum and so on, then the appropriate response would not be CHILDFREE opnions are interesting. It would be that MARRIED CHILDFREE opinions are interesting. That is the area this forum was created to represent.

However, BellaOnline is an inclusive environment. The Buddhist forum warmly welcomes posts and opinions from all people, including non-Buddhists. The Christian forum warmly welcomes posts from all people, including non-Christians. This is true for the gay forum, the republican forum, the atheist forum.

What, then, are you as a married-no-kids member (but not a married person) saying about whose opinion is welcome here in the married-no-kids forum? Is it only people without kids, regardless of wedded state?

If so, that is not what I have been hearing from the many messages I have received each day, via the contact form, from the readers of this area. They are all saying that they want this to be an area where everybody feels welcome to post.

But again, maybe I am misinterpreting your post?

I'm a regular on the MNK forum and I'd just like some details on the actual members who are contacting you with these concerns.