Pope Francis echoed conservative weirdos recently by calling the decision to have pets instead of children or simply have no children at all “a form of selfishness” without addressing all the very good reasons why young people today are staying child-free (like the fact that we’re all broke as a joke).
Not only that, he claimed that “a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity,” suggesting childless people are less human than those who popped out a baby.
“Today … we see a form of selfishness,” he said. “We see that some people do not want to have a child. Sometimes they have one, and that’s it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children. This may make people laugh but it is a reality.”
He did at least mention that there are people in existence who want kids but can’t physically have their own due to high risk to the mother or infertility issues, and suggested they adopt but seemed to dismiss any other reasons by advising people to just take the risk because he says so.
“Having a child is always a risk, but there is more risk in not having a child,” he said.
People who are childless by choice, especially women, have long been attacked by others as “selfish” no matter how many times childless folks point out that the decision to have children can absolutely be selfish — whether it’s to find meaning in their lives or obey a man in a fancy hat for Jesus points.
Today, there are many people who express that they would like to have children but have chosen not to for pretty selfless reasons, such as to not create more humans in a world facing multi-system ecological collapse because we used up too many planetary resources.
But the real heroes here are definitely the people posting jokes about Pope Francis being a virgin (allegedly) or photos of their awesome pets.
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