A big part of the parenting experience involves endless surprises from what the kids do and say. I mean, you think there's an age when their ability to surprise you will wane a bit, but not so much.
However, kids do eventually get to an age where they think they know everything. But guess what? Parents are full of surprises, too. They were kids once, too, and they've seen and heard so much more than you'd expect. I think Raphael Samuel is still learning some things about his folks.
Samuel is a Mumbai-based anti-natalist who believes that it's wrong to bring kids into the world and subject them to a lifetime of suffering.
However, he also says that his own life doesn't necessarily reflect that.
"My life has been amazing, but I don't see why I should put another life through the rigamarole of school and finding a career, especially when they didn't ask to exist," he told ThePrint.
"I want to tell all Indian kids that they don't owe their parents anything," he says.
Typically, Indian culture values familial ties and encourages the growth of family trees. It isn’t uncommon for up to three or four generations of a family to live in one household.
In the images he posts, he wears a large, obviously fake beard and sunglasses, and includes messages like "Isn't forcing a child into this world and forcing it to have a career kidnapping and slavery?"
Although it might seem a bit outlandish to most, his page has over 3000 likes, and more than 4000 followers — so he isn't the only one.
Praise like, “Bet you didn't think so many people felt like you. I've agreed with everything I've read so far. People think I'm a freak when I talk like this - but they can't argue against it” fill the comment section.
One commenter left a thought-provoking perspective, “Your parents did not choose you to be born. Do you know how many sperms were released? You fought to reach the egg first and you won. You chose your parents and not the other way around."
Both of Samuel's parents are lawyers, and Kavita made a lawyerly argument in her statement to The Mirror, saying that "I must admire my son's temerity to want to take his parents to court knowing both of us are lawyers."
For a mother being blamed for having her child without consent, she is impressively level-headed about the situation.
She says that in the coverage he's recieved, "His belief in anti-natalism, his concern for the burden on Earth's resources due to needless life, his sensitivity toward the pain experienced unwittingly by children while growing up and so much more has been ruefully forgotten."
The argument is actually true — humans are definitely behind some of the worst damage to this Earth, both morally and physically.
But how would someone get an unborn baby's consent to do anything? Don't parents make decisions for their kids until they're legally adults, at age 18?
Nevertheless, Raphael told the BBC that after he told his parents of his plans to sue them, "She said that's fine, but don't expect me to go easy on you. I will destroy you in court."
He's still looking for a lawyer to take his case. "I know it's going to be thrown out because no judge would hear it," he said. "But I do want to file a case because I want to make a point."
h/t BBC
