Children Are a Waste/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Basic Trope: Children are seen as inconvenient and burdensome.
  • Played Straight: Alice and Bob decide they do not like children, and have no interest in caring for, paying for, or cleaning up after them, and get sterilized.
  • Exaggerated: Alice and Bob decide that all children should be killed, and destroy any children they see.
  • Inverted:
  • Justified:
    • Alice and Bob are conscious and reasonable Child Haters who are simply being consistent in their logic.
    • The lifestyles of Alice and Bob who are globe-trotting researchers do not allow them to conceive a child.
  • Subverted: Alice and Bob have careers that involve dealing with children, and are always happy to look after their nieces, nephews, and neighbors' children.
  • Double Subverted: But have no interest in having children of their own, and use the Children Are a Waste argument when their parents start with the whole I Want Grandkids thing.
  • Deconstructed: With people opting out of parenthood, there is a "graying" population and the governments are concerned about a shortage of workers and taxpayers.
  • Reconstructed: Until they realize the Earth's got seven billion people on it, and that the large human population requires vast amount of resources that will eventually be exhausted, leading to widespread misery.
  • Parodied:
  • Lampshaded:
    • "Alice and I have no interest in spending umpteen-gazillion dollars raising a child..."
    • "No thanks. I'll leave the responsibility of schoolyard bullying and victimization to those who have time to waste on the antics of their stupid offspring."
    • "Children are our future. Today belongs to me!"
  • Averted: Alice and Bob never discuss having or not having kids. Or kids in general.
  • Enforced: The country's government of Alice and Bob declares that having children will be strictly regulated.
  • Invoked: Alice and Bob are contemplating the possibility of having kids, but decide that they can't afford on their salaries to give a child a good home (even with both incomes), or that they aren't cut out to be Good Parents.
  • Defied: Alice and Bob decide that they really want a child, and they'll make it work, even if they do have to take some parenting classes here and sacrifice some tropical vacations there.
  • Discussed:
  • Conversed:
  • Played For Laughs: Alice's mother wants grandkids, and does everything she can to "help" Alice and Bob conceive a child (such as slipping Alice fertility drugs).
  • Played For Drama: Almost always is.

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