Cathy Classics by Cathy Guisewite for April 28, 2010

It’s probably best if they don’t have kids.

They do well enough with the dogs. Irving’s folks, not so much.

Pursue my career and wait for children or have children young and loose my career? At my 10 year reunion am I going to be president of my company or show photos of my kids in rags? Of course 7 billion is hardly enough to populate the earth..

But which do you think God will care about more, Lewreader, your career, or how well you treated your family and obeyed His commandment to “be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth”?

And yes, I’m aware that I’m about to get clobbered for voicing an unpopular opinion! ;-)

Career first = kids well clothed and brought up by someone mature enough to know how (maybe a nanny)

Kids first = no shoes for said kids and parents who leave them unattended while they go partying.

God has nothing to do with it, only Common sense (which by the way is not so common). Why do god fearing people suddenly seem to lose all touch with reality????

If a couple decide to have kids, they should plan on raising them too, not handing them over to a nanny.

Secondly, the greedy society we live in is just as much as a problem as overpopulation. A child/ teenager doesn’t need 10 pairs of shoes, a whole closet full of clothes and a room to himself to be healthy and happy. If we would get ourselves used to a “lower” standard of living, more people could live together without ruining the Earth.

And besides, 2 or 3 children is hardly considered “breeding like rabbits” IMHO

Back to Cathy and Irving…they should never have children (imho). They are both too self-absorbed…

I sometimes wonder what God would have to say, if the bible was rewritten for today. “You can quit populating the earth for a few years now, you morons..I never meant for it to come to this!” LOL

She is going to wake up and realize that it is too late. Fertility doesn’t always wait (not saying it is necessarily a bad thing in this case). I have a feeling they will try to adopt, realize how much work it is to have a kid then head back down to the pound to rescue some more dogs.

Wow, a lively discussion today. Way to go, Cathy! Personally, considering that this strip’s thing is to take people’s quirks and magnify them, I think it could be very amusing to watch them go through the process of trying to become parents and then possibly become ones.

Also considering that it’s a comic strip and no one is upset at the Family Circus family for having 4 imaginary kids (oh, the humanity!), have as many kids as you want, Cathy and Irving! LOL!

Am I the first to speculate that the world just might be a better place if Cathy and Irving fail to reproduce? Given the uncontrolled clothing/food/gadget addiction of these two, I hate to think what kind of consumers their offspring would be… might just suck down everything on the planet single-handedly.

Coming up….when they DO try, they find out that either one or both were sterile from birth :P

People who decide not to have children are entitled to make that life choice without fear of guilt, reprisal, or peer (parent) pressure.

well, would it be funny if cathy has a kid winds up in the part of the mall that sells baby stuff dealing with same saleslady with the pencil in her hair? I don’t know, depending on guiswite’s talent ,that could be a new , funny twist to the strip……buying shoes and handbags and dealing with each other’s in-laws is getting stale. maybe it’s time for a change, just like the major change when cathy , after all those years, finally married irving

Am in the position to remind you that there are women who biologically “miss” their opportunity to even have a choice whether to have a child or not due to early menopause which no one looks for in their late teens or early twenties. Actually there is no “good” time to have a child - a child jsut naturally disrupts everything. No one is ever ready to have a child and for heaven’s sake don’t wait tillyou can afford them, you never can.

Have you all seen the movie Idiocracy? It’s about what will happen when the intelligent, career-focused folks put off having children while the rest of the human race doesn’t. (Just keep telling yourself, “It’s only a comedy.”)

Now for my two cents’ worth. Yes, having children changes everything with the rest of your life. So does marriage, or any commitment that requires you to think of something other than yourself. And yes, it can mean trouble and disruption. But until you learn how to set your life aside for the sake of someone else’s life, you will never understand the full meaning of love, or fulfillment. (Neither will you ever have a clue about how God could have “so loved the world…” – but that’s another topic.)

None of this is a platitude or a cliche, it’s experience. If you haven’t had the experience yourself, hope that you’re lucky enough to.

Whew! Where’d all these people come from today?

I’m the first one to defend God and the topic of God in comments, especially when the God bashers show up, and I have no problem joining in the discussion, but Cathy has never had a religious theme, and the topic really doesn’t apply to today’s strip either.

Hopefully, these two just don’t want children. Not everyone SHOULD have them, even if they already do have them, and some people are better off with a dog than little humans. Kids aren’t for everyone.

Strip-wise, I was thinking about what their kid would be like. It would either end up like Frasier and Niles Crane, the exact opposite of these two, or it would be a neurotic, obsessive, compulsive, slave to cereal and toy consumerism with a procrastination problem. That would just be a normal kid, wouldn’t it? So why bother? It wouldn’t be funny, and Calvin has already been done, so she can’t go there with it.

After thinking about that, it points out that if the kid was just like Cathy and Irving are, and that would equal normal child, it just drives the point home that these two are middle aged children, and too self centered and scrambled for a child, even if Miss Guisewite could write the child with an unexpectedly unique personality.

I still say she needs to get herself out of this boring, go nowhere mess, do the middle aged dating thing, go cougar, and hook up with a muscley hunk. This strip needs to be livend up. Not made more boring with children.

I love Cathy, so please don’t write back that I just hate everything, because I don’t.

I also like Family Circus, which is based on Bill Keene’s real life family, and uses the things the kids really said and did, so I don’t know what’s “imaginary” about it. At least Family Circus makes you laugh, and at least the Keene’s are good parents, unlike any of the people in FBOFW, and God forbid, Cathy and Irving.

Adoption, Anyone?

I love when people use the exceptions to prove the rules…most people I know stop with two or three kids. Approximately enough to replace themselves (yeah, I know we overlap more than that.) And I agree with ABC…if we lived a more agrarian, less consumeristic lifestyle, “overpopulation” would be billions of people off (instead of just millions.)

One friend’s daughter just had twins at age 48. Another friend has a daughter who just gave birth at 40 Yet another friend just told me she knows someone who is pregnant at 54. Not to worry Cathy – plenty of time.

Women are now having their own grandchildren and everytime I think I’m past the possible age, they push it back a few more years. I too think the world is overpopulated, but for those who choose to have 1 or 2, it doesn’t hurt anything (replacement rate). It’s the folks who feel they have to “breed like rabbits” who are the concern – and yes more than 4 is in that category.

Susan and LegalEagle- I had my 4 kids in the early 60s right after my marriage in 1959 but insisted on a TL shortly after we finally had a girl (the 4th) and had to have his “permission” for that :-( As I look back on my marriage, the only good thing about it was the fact that I had 4 really great kids - and now the grandkids ;-) I told my X that our income could not support more - too bad that others do not consider that.

That’s where having faith that God will provide comes in handy, vldazzle. He never gives you more than you can handle – or more than you need in order to prosper. It’s the selfish insistence on having the best of everything and anything all the time (when it’s neither necessary, nor even desirable to do so) that’s the problem, not having a large family.

Those children whom people refuse to have “because it’s inconvenient,” or “because the time’s not right,” or “because MY/OUR immediate needs are all that matter” have just as much of a right to experience the joys and challenges of earth life as those who refuse to have them do; it’s an essential part of God’s plan for His children’s eternal progression for ALL of His children to come to Earth, obtain a physical body, and be tested and grow through their experiences on Earth. Who are you and I to rob any of them of that right?