Selfishness and Why I got Snipped

Intro

December 6th 2024, I received a vasectomy at the age of 27. I have spent the weekend healing and going over in my head everything I want to tell people about why I did it and what lead me to finally do it. I’ve been listening to podcasts about it and reading stories on Reddit, and I have some thoughts on why I specifically want to get it done. Primarily I wanted to focus on my ideas of selfishness and how it helps us go navigate the human experience.

A lot of what I learned before fully committing to a vasectomy where ideas and sentiments that I gathered as an adult but never really wanted to act upon until the overturning of Rowe v. Wade in 2022 and the subsequently vicious attack on abortion access across the United States. I live in Kentucky, which as of now still has a functional abortion clinic thanks to lawsuits by Planned Parenthood and various activists. I do commend their work and I hope they succeed, but I hold (as do many others) that vasectomies are the vastly superior for of birth control for being safer, more effective, legally easier to obtain, and (allegedly) reservable or at the very least easy to bypass with frozen sperm samples.
    I wanted to acknowledge that those events have played a part in my decision making, but only in that it made me want to finally do it even though I had worked it out philosophically prior. I still took time to get around to it for financial reasons. Roe v. Wade happened at a time I was transitioning to a new job and getting off my parents insurance. Then the job I took had bad insurance so I swapped to my current job and I waited until I had hit my maximum out of pocket so it wouldn’t cost me anything.
    I think I detailed that right. I will disclose that I barely understand insurance and worked out this plan with my fiance who does work healthcare and does understand this stuff. I’m a tech guy who fancies himself a philosopher, but that’s not necessary to know the American Healthcare system sucks ass and is misleading by design.

Back to it

I have listened to and read a good number of stories over the years and just this weekend as I recover. I have received a pretty balanced set of takes from people with and without kids as to why they had a Vasectomy and the overt reason is obvious of not wanting any more kids. Whether that’s zero or ten, it’s obviously the case that the would be father has had enough. It is a decision that is made in the best interest of the father ultimately but it is also a couple deciding that their life and sanity is more important than having children. Which I argue is selfish.

Selfishness as a virtue

Now worry not, I think selfishness is good actually. Humans have the capability of selflessness but most of our day to day decisions are made because of selfishness. We are ourselves and by virtue of that fact nearly every single decision you will ever have to make will be about yourself. It is a selfish thought. That isn’t a condemnation it is just a reality that nearly every decision you make will be to your own benefit. Even indirectly. The act of helping your friend move is in a way selfish because it is building a relationship that will ultimately benefit you in some way. Maybe your friend will help you move one day or you enjoy their company so you do nice things for them because you want more good fun interactions.
     And everyone is selfish, that’s why we are where we are. We all want what is best for us and it is pretty obvious the benefits of organizing in a large scale community where we can all compartmentalize into niche’s that we’re individually good at. Not everyone would make a good farmer so only some of us are. Not everyone would make a good nurse, but some of us do it anyways for the money. Okay there’s flaws in the system, but that’s for a different blog post.
     By in large, I think selfishness is good in that it ensures you are taken care of and stable enough that you can help other people better. I work on myself and my career because I want to be able to help friends, family, and those in need when I can. So, if I focus most of my attention to making more money or becoming a more skilled human, I have more skills and resources to share with my community at large. Of course I think there’s a proportional limit to net good one has to generate before they’re just selfish assholes again, but that’s not the point here. No the point is that an amount of selfishness is needed to maximize your own ability to be selfless person.

Selfishness and Parenthood

Parenthood is a selfish decision when we cut down to the material reality of what is happening. You are either deciding that a child will ruin your way of life or better it. They will take your time away from yourself and your hobbies or become a new means of interacting with the world. They will financially ruin you or guarantee your life’s work will go to someone you care about. Either way this isn’t a decision that is made to the benefit of the child as the child doesn’t exist yet. No, the only thing that is driving such a decision is your own self thinking about the joy you can experience with or without a child.
     Either way this isn’t inherently bad. Having or not having kids can be the very thing that catalyzes you to be the best possible version of yourself. Lots of fathers talk about how much they changed for their kids. My own dad quit smoking and worked towards a degree because of me. But on the same hand, children can massively derail plans to become the best version of yourself. There’s a Trad Wife TikToker who gave up a career as a ballerina to become a, well, Trad Wife. She claims to be happy, but I see no joy in her life style let alone her eyes. I’ve even heard stories from friends who were freaking out because they had thought they got someone pregnant on a drug fueled bender and after the scare they became clean. Their fear was bringing a child into that environment and realizing how bad it would be, but having the kid would not have gotten them out of drugs as it was a cope for their poverty.
     In the end, I stand by that having kids is a selfish decision. There is no real reason to do it other than to appease your own moral sensibilities or to catalyze your life or relationship into a point you want it to be in. You may have noticed I haven’t even entertained ideas like “giving your parent’s grand children” or the eternally flawed “legacy” arguments. You as a human being should be worth more than your ability to reproduce. If you can’t be proud of who you are without a child to impart your ideals onto, then are you someone a child should look up to?

Why I didn’t want kids

I for one have always been attracted to challenges. Being dared to do something is a fast an easy way to get me to do something just to prove that I can. I enjoy honing skills and overcoming large scale obstacles. And that’s what I see having children as, it is a long term challenge that will continue to evolve and change in difficulty. However, I view the risks of failure for that challenge far worse than nearly everything I have done so far.
     The risks in me going to college is that I won’t graduate. I did fail college. A lot happened the year I was supposed to graduate, but it is one of my larger failures. However, I am fine. I went down a different career path and I now live comfortably. I even have the opportunity to return to school through my current job. The risks of fucking up being a parent are much worse. If that turned out to be a challenge that was too big for me, there is no chance to redo. The worst case scenario is a life of torment for someone who wasn’t included in the decision making process or the death of my partner. The gamble over maybe having a good relationship with a human being of my own flesh and ruining three lives minimum is not something I want to roll the dice on. That is selfishness to a degree that effects others and I do not condone that.
     In addition to my own fears of being a good parent is the world as it exists today is not one guaranteed to help my would be child. The flaws in the selfish system we have made it to today are peaking out because it has become too large and too impersonal. Institutions we are sold as being for our own good and to help us are in fact the source of much of our anguish and suffering. Massive corporations have managed to make great business out of tracking everything about you that is profitable and making sure that every aspect of your life is monetized by some one. Ads appearing in nearly everything you can think about interacting with. Your information feeds being tailored to maximize staring at a small phone screen all day (regardless of if that content is good for your mental health). Landlords working together to maximize the rent prices without it being a technically a conspiracy against the poor. And health insurance companies making sure you never get to use their service for what they promised.
     Recently, the CEO of a health insurance company was assassinated in the streets of New York City and it has been a massively celebrated event among the working class. This is one of the largest Health Insurance providers in the united states that implemented a flawed AI operated automatic claims denial process that I’m sure has inflated their profits and removed the human layer that had to explain to another human being why their loved on is going to die because their care was too expensive.
     I worked healthcare in a call center for three years. I just did call directory work. My job was predominantly to direct patients to the right office numbers or page on call physicians. But it was also to give patients a place to vent before they got to talk to a doctor in hopes they’d calm down. For three years I would hear stories of people from all ages with horrible health insurance in tears as they explained their medical issues and how hard it is to find money for such things. I have Crohn’s disease and good insurance so I have been fine with relatively little debt. I’ve been lucky so far, but it seems almost an inevitability that my luck will run out. I am fortunately a health aged individual with relatively little complications. But a child who is just an addendum to an insurance policy is much less valuable.
     Our world does not want people to live in it. They want all entities alive within it to be milked for all they’re worth.

Ah so you’re a nihilist?

No I am selfish…and a bit of a nihilist. Despite my trauma and jaded perspective, I actually do think I am in a position career wise that parenthood is possible. Including my fiance’s income, we’re more than set to be able to comfortably afford a good life for ourselves and offer a life to a child that could theoretically never have to live through the hell most working class people are destine for. I’m transitioning to Network Engineering and my fiance is finishing nursing school soon, that’s a net house-hold income over one hundred thousand dollars a year. My area is a more expensive area of the state, but that’s more than enough to be comfortable. We’d both have a lot of time to be home as I can Work From Home and my fiance will work three twelve hours shifts a week. It’s by far one of the better situations a working family can get into.

But my fiance and I don’t want kids.

It was always ultimately that simple. We’ve both thought of that a lot throughout our lives and that was an important thing to both of us when we started dating. I don’t do well with kids. I tried volunteering as a tutor for six year olds and it wasn’t a fun experience for me. I hated it. My fiance tried baby sitting for a summer, they only had a few kids and it was awful for my fiance. Yeah I’m sure it’s different when it’s your own child, but frankly I met very few kids who beat the spoiled brat allegations. Myself included, I’m sure I was a nightmare at some point.
     I also really don’t want a kid ruining my alone time with my fiance. I get annoyed when the dog jumps between us when I’m trying to enjoy my fiance’s company. That is not going to change with a small human being as it is generally considered “illegal” to lock those in a room by themselves for a few hours while I watch a movie or go out to dinner.

Wrap ups here

Selfishness is the only materially relevant reason to make the decision on parenthood. This is mostly based on my own reading of Egoism years ago when I read “The Ego and Its Own” by Max Stirner. I couldn’t tell you the finer points he makes as, to be honest, it reads like the writings of a mad man going through some serious shit (which it is). Please feel free to send me related readings to the linked email on the front page or DM me on Bluesky or Mastodon. I would love to see what your own thoughts are on the subject of parenthood or this idea on selfishness as well.

Thank you for reading!